The History of Labour Intermediation: Institutions and Finding Employment in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 9781782385516

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Finding Work and Organizing Placement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
1 Organizing the Market? Labour Offices and Labour Markets in Germany, 1890–1933
2 Between Labour Market Constituencies: The Struggles to Establish Vocational Counselling in Weimar Germany
3 Organizing Labour Markets: The British Experience
4 Creating a National Labour Market: Public Labour Exchanges in Sweden, 1890–1920
5 From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed: Trade Unions and Labour Market Intermediation in Western Europe in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
6 Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail in Late Nineteenth-Century France
7 Transforming Soldiers into Workers: The Austrian Employment Agency for Disabled Veterans during the First World War
8 The Use of Public Labour Offices by Job Seekers in Interwar Austria
9 A Vocation in the Family Household? Household Integration, Professionalization and Changes of Position in Domestic Service (Austria, 1918–1938)
10 Tramping in Search of Work: Practices of Wayfarers and of Authorities (Austria, 1880–1938)
11 Labour Mediation among Seasonal Workers, Particularly the Lippe Brickmakers, 1650–1900
12 Sardars, Kanganies and Maistries: Intermediaries in the Indian Labour Diaspora during the Colonial Period
13 ‘Organizing the Labour Market’ in a Liberal Welfare State: The Origins of the Public Employment Service in Australia
Concluding Remarks
Notes on Contributors
Index

Citation preview

The History of Labour Intermediation

International Studies in Social History

General Editor: Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam Volume 1 Trade Unions, Immigration and Immigrants in Europe 1960–1993 Edited by Rinus Penninx and Judith Roosblad Volume 2 Class and Other Identities Edited by Lex Heerma van Voss and Marcel van der Linden Volume 3 Rebellious Families Edited by Jan Kok Volume 4 Experiencing Wages Edited by Peter Scholliers and Leonard Schwarz Volume 5 The Imaginary Revolution Michael Seidman Volume 6 Revolution and Counterrevolution Kevin Murphy Volume 7 Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire Donald Quataert Volume 8 Anarchism, Revolution and Reaction Angel Smith Volume 9 Sugarlandia Revisited Edited by Ulbe Bosma, Juan Giusti-Cordero and G. Roger Knight Volume 10 Alternative Exchanges Edited by Laurence Fontaine Volume 11 A Social History of Spanish Labour Edited by José Piqueras and Vicent SanzRozalén Volume 12 Learning on the Shop Floor Edited by Bert De Munck, Steven L. Kaplan and Hugo Soly Volume 13 Unruly Masses Wolfgang Maderthaner and Lutz Musner

Volume 14 Central European Crossroads Pieter C. van Duin Volume 15 Supervision and Authority in Industry Edited by Patricia Van den Eeckhout Volume 16 Forging Political Identity Keith Mann Volume 17 Gendered Money Pernilla Jonsson and Silke Neunsinger Volume 18 Postcolonial Migrants and Identity Politics Edited by Ulbe Bosma, Jan Lucassen, and Gert Oostindie Volume 19 Charismatic Leadership and Social Movements Edited by Jan Willem Stutje Volume 20 Maternalism Reconsidered Edited by Marian van der Klein, Rebecca Jo Plant, Nichole Sanders and Lori R. Weintrob Volume 21 Routes into the Abyss Edited by Helmut Konrad and Wolfgang Maderthaner Volume 22 Alienating Labour Eszter Bartha Volume 23 Migration, Settlement and Belonging in Europe, 1500-1930s Edited by Steven King and Anne Winter Volume 24 Bondage Alessandro Stanziani Volume 25 Bread from the Lion’s Mouth Edited by Suraiya Faroqhi Volume 26 The History of Labour Intermediation Edited by Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

The History of Labour Intermediation Institutions and Finding Employment in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Edited by Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2015 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2015 Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The history of labour intermediation: institutions and finding employment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries / edited by Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner, and Alexander Mejstrik.      pages cm. -- (International studies in social history; volume 26)    Includes bibliographical references and index.    ISBN 978-1-78238-550-9 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-78238-551-6 (ebook) 1. Employment agencies--History--19th century. 2. Employment agencies-History--20th century. 3. Labor--History--19th century. 4. Labor-History--20th century. I. Wadauer, Sigrid.   HD5861.H57 2015   331.12’809034--dc23 2014033564 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78238-550-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-78238-551-6 (ebook)

Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations Introduction: Finding Work and Organizing Placement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

vii 1

1 Organizing the Market? Labour Offices and Labour Markets in Germany, 1890–1933 Thomas Buchner

23

2 Between Labour Market Constituencies: The Struggles to Establish Vocational Counselling in Weimar Germany David Meskill

53



3 Organizing Labour Markets: The British Experience Noel Whiteside

4 Creating a National Labour Market: Public Labour Exchanges in Sweden, 1890–1920 Nils Edling 5 From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed: Trade Unions and Labour Market Intermediation in Western Europe in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Ad Knotter 6 Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail in Late Nineteenth-­Century France Malcolm Mansfield 7 Transforming Soldiers into Workers: The Austrian Employment Agency for Disabled Veterans during the First World War Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin

74

92

117

151

181

vi

Contents

8 The Use of Public Labour Offices by Job Seekers in Interwar Austria194 Irina Vana 9 A Vocation in the Family Household? Household Integration, Professionalization and Changes of Position in Domestic Service (Austria, 1918–1938) Jessica Richter

236

10 Tramping in Search of Work: Practices of Wayfarers and of Authorities (Austria, 1880–1938) Sigrid Wadauer

286

11 Labour Mediation among Seasonal Workers, Particularly the Lippe Brickmakers, 1650–1900 Piet Lourens and Jan Lucassen

335

12 Sardars, Kanganies and Maistries: Intermediaries in the Indian Labour Diaspora during the Colonial Period Amit Kumar Mishra

368

13 ‘Organizing the Labour Market’ in a Liberal Welfare State: The Origins of the Public Employment Service in Australia Anthony O’Donnell

388

Concluding Remarks Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

415

Notes on Contributors 421 Index425

Illustrations Illustrations

Illustrations Figures 8.1 Percentage of men and women registered in different job placement agencies in 1928 8.2 Mediation by gender as a percentage by public, commercial and non-­commercial labour exchanges in Vienna in 1933 8.3 Percentage of mediation, according to professional branch, by public, commercial and non-­commercial labour exchanges in Vienna in 1933 8.4 Selection of the most relevant attributes in the first dimension (three times higher than the average CTR of 0.12) as mentioned in the text 8.5 Selection of the most relevant attributes in the second dimension (three times higher than the average CTR of 0.12) as mentioned in the text 8.6 Integration of the first two dimensions (most relevant attributes, cos² three times higher than average) 9.1 Quantitative comparison of different forms of placement of domestic servants in Vienna city 9.2 Placement implemented by the Reichsverband der christlichen Hausgehilfinnen in Vienna 9.3  Reichsverband der christlichen Hausgehilfinnen: Number of members in comparison to requested positions 9.4 Placement implemented by the domestic workers’ trade union Einigkeit 9.5  Einigkeit: Number of members in comparison to requested positions 10.1 Deviations from the overall average (= 0) 10.2 Visits (or individuals visiting) per year in relief stations of Lower Austria, Vorarlberg, Bohemia and in the city of Wels (Upper Austria) (logarithmic scaling)

202 203 204 210 214 217 240 245 247 251 253 301 303

viii

Illustrations

10.3 Visits in relation to intermediations in Vorarlberg (V) and Bohemia (B) (logarithmic scaling) 10.4 Number of visitors in various lodging houses. In brackets: the province where the lodging house was located and the inhabitants of the town according to the census of 1934 10.5 Percentages of registered occupations of wayfarers visiting the relief stations in Lower Austria (1899) and Moravia (1895) 10.6 Proportions of some common occupations 10.7 Proportion of some categories of unskilled labourers 10.8 Proportion of people staying in Bohemian relief stations of all people placed in employment 10.9 Percentage of visitors under the age of 40 11.1 Average ranking per age bracket, showing the average brickmaker’s career (data set as of 21 January 2011) 11.2 Schematic representation of the scores by age class, which determines the success of a career (data set as of 21 January 2011) 11.3 The relation between the age at death and the success of a career (data set as of 21 January 2011) 11.4 The relation between death causes and the success of a career (data set as of 21 January 2011) 11.5 The relation between brickmakers’ status and the success of their careers (data set as of 21 January 2011) 11.6 The relation between status of the father and the success of a career (data set as of 21 January 2011) 11.7 The relation between status of one’s father-­in-­law and the success of a career (data set as of 21 January 2011) 11.8 The relation between marital status and the success of a career (data set as of 21 January 2011) 11.9 The relation between region of destination and the success of a career (data set as of 21 January 2011) 11.10 The relation between the place of origin and the success of a career (data set as of 21 January 2011)

304

305 307 308 309 309 312 348 349 350 351 354 355 356 358 359 360

Illustrations ix

Tables 8.1 Development of the registered requests for work in Austria, the placement rate in public labour offices and unemployment rates between 1910 and 1937 by gender 8.2 Example of the variation of attributes in the sample 10.1 Naturalverpflegsstationen in Cisleithania 10.2 Age of visitors in lodging houses and age of people accused of vagrancy and begging based on court records 10.3 Visitors at Herbergen of the Kolpingverein 11.1 Composition of the data set of 1869 (data set as of 21 January 2011) 11.2 Lippe residents, deceased 1840–1875, whose year of birth was known in 1869 (data set as of 21 January 2011) 11.3 Age at death of the brickmakers in the 1869 sample (data set as of 21 January 2011) 11.4 Causes of death in 1869 (data set as of 21 January 2011) 12.1 Emigration of Indian labourers under the contract system

199 207 300 311 317 342 343 344 345 372

 

Introduction

Finding Work and Organizing Placement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

How do people search for and find work? What does that involve? What organizations intervene or attempt to do so? These questions became more important once wage labour became more widespread and public policy concerned itself with job seeking. Yet despite the issue’s significance, historical research on the subject remains quite patchy. This volume assembles case studies that investigate job seeking and job placement practices. In particular, the book focuses on organizations in European countries, Australia and India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, it does not only sketch out developments in a broad geographical area and extended time frame but – and this seems even more important to us – it also indicates the manifold dimensions of this research subject. Firstly, these studies explore a range of different forms of searching for work or employment, by which the various participants articulated specific interests, perspectives and agendas. Hence, there were not only people in search of work (commonly omitted in the relevant research), but also placement agents, trade unions, municipalities, administrations, state authorities, schools and so forth. Secondly, the contributors address several contexts in which more organized labour intermediation emerged as something to be regulated and/ or controlled. Thirdly, the chapters collected here illustrate different approaches to this topic, ranging from a history of organizations and regulatory notions to an analysis of practices and autobiographical

2

Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

accounts. Accordingly, the volume strives to represent the complexity of this subject and to open up possibilities and perspectives for further research. We do not proceed, however, from a specific definition of labour intermediation. Definitions tend to exclude one or other variation of the phenomenon in question, drawing on ‘logical logic’ in lieu of ‘practical logic’.1 This is true of any attempt to define something per se. David H. Autor, for instance, characterizes labour intermediation as ‘entities or institutions that interpose themselves between workers and firms to facilitate, inform, or regulate how workers are matched to firms, how work is accomplished, and how conflicts are resolved’.2 Such a definition is quite broad but at the same time (too) circumscribed. In our view, it would be an impediment to limit research on job seeking-­related entities or organizations to a particular form of mediation or specialized placement services. This book instead takes an exploratory approach, uncovering the manifold interrelations of search practices and of different attempts to arrange placement services. Moreover, we do not want to narrow the focus to particular kinds of (formal) wage labour. Rather, a principal question – at least in several of the volume’s chapters – is how different livelihoods entailed different ways of finding work, inasmuch as work came to be historically redefined by the emergence of new forms of labour intermediation. In our introduction, then, we intend to outline the overall topic, the questions at stake and the lines of inquiry pursued.3

The Variety of Practices and Institutions How did public labour intermediation and labour market policy emerge and develop? What impact did this have on search practices and on social categories? These are clearly central questions for historical research in this field and are posed in several chapters in this volume. (The understanding of what is to be seen as a public exchange varies from nation to nation; here the term is used to designate labour exchanges run by local communities, provinces or central states, as distinguished from private exchanges run by associations or commercial agencies.)4 Yet in modern Europe one can find multiple employment seeking scenarios, which may (or may not) involve organizations and facilities. Despite a few isolated exceptions, public placement facilities did not exist before the last quarter of the nineteenth century.5 At that time, a greater variety of facilities started to offer placement services. Public exchanges developed in this context, along with (and against) other forms of placement. As a result, this volume does not seek to reconstruct the history of job seeking and

Introduction 3

placement exclusively from the perspective of a nascent system of public labour intermediation. Instead, public placement policy is examined in relation to other commercial or non-­commercial placement services as well as in the context of social reformers, unions, employers and (last but not least) job seekers using (or avoiding) the placement services offered. To begin with, we would like to provide a brief overview of the multiple options – as examined in the chapters of this volume – that were available to nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century Europeans for finding work or benefiting from job placement organizations.6 One common practice of job seeking was to take advantage of social networks provided by family, friends or colleagues.7 This way of searching for a job coincided with the recruiting practices of those firms which made use of their employees’ contacts to fill vacancies, or which delegated this task to foremen, labour recruiters or gang leaders.8 Besides those options, it was very common to ask for work at workshops, factory gates, building sites, port entrances or mines. This practice – addressed by several contributors in this book – was known in Germany and Austria as Umschau (‘looking around’), in the Netherlands as leuren om werk (‘hawking for work’) and in Great Britain as ‘calling around’.9 Guilds, trade unions, relief funds or associations (such as the Catholic Kolpingverein in Central Europe) and relief stations supported skilled workers whenever they went on the tramp in search of labour. In particular, servants and agricultural labourers could find a job or post through the ‘open air markets’ found in some European regions until the Second World War. Responding to newspaper ads also became a new means of searching for a job in the nineteenth century, though it was never able to replace personal ties. Among the most important organized forms of job placement until the First World War were commercial placement agencies. They clearly met needs, as in the case of servants who were generally not organized in unions or associations and were thereby not easily able to call around for posts. To the extent that data are available, one finds that such agencies were responsible for a majority of (registered) job placements in some European (and other) countries, especially in the areas of domestic service or agricultural work.10 Both the research literature and surveys of that period suggest that, apart from actual commercial offices, placement was often practised on the side by innkeepers, concierges, waiters, warehousemen, travelling salesmen and peddlers.11 Placement was additionally offered by philanthropic and confessional associations, some of which can be regarded as direct forerunners of state-­run (particularly municipal) employment exchanges.12 Such associations were founded as general charitable organizations for the poor, or set up to support specific groups like apprentices, homeless, ­prostitutes or convicts. In addition, they created not only

4

Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

labour exchanges but also hostels, asylums, wayfarers’ lodges and railway missions in which a range of services – including job placement – were offered. Trade unions and employers’ organizations likewise founded their own exchanges as a tool for political action and for guiding (if not controlling) the allocation of labour.13 The importance of union-­ run labour exchanges varied from country to country, as delineated in Ad Knotter’s chapter. In Great Britain, where unions had long been established and accepted, such institutions were particularly significant. In France, unions were allowed to have their own labour exchanges after 1884. In states such as Germany, Austria and Sweden, craft cooperatives also ran (or were obliged to run) their own job placement services prior to the First World War, albeit with varying efficiency.14 The job placement activities of schools and political parties also had some impact.15 Overall, these ways of searching for employment or placing labour did not disappear in twentieth-­century Europe, even as public labour offices plainly became more significant.

The Multiple Functions of Organizations Offering Placement A particularity of this early period’s various organizations (that applies also for early public labour exchanges) is evident from many of the chapters in this volume: job placement was usually only one of many services offered. The French bourses du travail might serve as an example, as discussed in Malcolm Mansfield’s chapter. Aside from job placement, these institutions offered travelling benefits, lodging for wayfarers and advanced training courses. They also served as trade union meeting places, where strike funds were maintained and consumer cooperatives were housed. In addition, they were called upon to distinguish the employable from the unemployable.16 Philanthropic exchanges frequently offered lodging for wayfarers, cheap meals and bathing facilities whereas organizations with confessional backgrounds usually joined job placement with proselytizing. Foremen and labour recruiters not only signed up but also supervised new workers while also providing loans and helping migrants to integrate socially. Piet Lourens and Jan Lucassen describe in their chapter the role of Ziegelboten (or ‘brick messengers’) in the job seeking of brickmakers from Germany’s Lippe region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These Ziegelboten travelled from factory to factory negotiating over the number of workers hired and wages to be paid. Likewise, they eventually became responsible for the brickmakers’ burial funds (Sterbekasse). Amit Kumar Mishra’s contribution examines different kinds of recruiters and

Introduction 5

their role in the plantation economy of Southeast Asia. He reveals an array of services provided by the sardars, kanganies and maistries who not only recruited and supervised labourers from India but also granted them credit. Commercial placement agencies were another form of job placement, combining costly placement activities with lodging – a practice often criticized as exploiting job seekers. Hence, these organizations and facilities exercised multiple functions. Yet they all had something in common: the offer of some kind of support (whether free or at a price) to those in need of resources, especially social and professional ones. These unspecialized activities made sense, both in reference to the old poor welfare or to a market of personal services.

State Policy: Restricting, Regulating and Producing How did state policies of labour intermediation emerge in this context? The launching of public labour exchanges as of the late nineteenth century is related to the understanding of local or national problems in that epoch. The requirement for public labour intermediation was acknowledged with regard to various questions: to the newly ‘discovered’ unemployment (as several chapters in this book illustrate), pauperism (as Noel Whiteside points out), casual work (as described in Anthony O’Donnell’s chapter) and migration or vagrancy (addressed by Sigrid Wadauer and Malcolm Mansfield). The starting point and main target of public measures could differ from country to country. Although public policy mostly targeted casual work in Australia, it focused on persons with stable employment records in Great Britain. As Anthony O’Donnell’s chapter demonstrates, rationales and agendas were clearly capable of shifting over time. Last but not least – as highlighted in many chapters here – state intervention was seen as necessary in improving existing practices of job seeking and placement. These included calling around for work, often criticized as ineffective and humiliating, as a pathway to vagrancy.17 Apart from establishing public labour exchanges, state policy accordingly aimed to regulate, restrict and/or integrate already existing forms of labour intermediation. Since the prevalent commercial agencies were suspected of malpractice, they were the main objects of criticism – not only of governments but also of unions, charitable organizations and (in part) employers.18 Detractors at the time argued that the economic interest of commercial agencies harmed job seekers, as well as the rest of the economy.19 The agencies were thus accused of exploiting job seekers by charging high fees for their services. They were alleged to have provided false information, thereby encouraging work-­shyness and frequent job changes. Finally, they were

6

Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

blamed for driving young women into prostitution. As a result, in most of nineteenth-­century Europe, legal regulation and restriction of commercial placement agencies – such as requiring licences – were the state’s first steps towards intervening in job placement.20 Just how extensive or strict this policy was, particularly before the First World War, varied from nation to nation. Other placement services that were private (as defined by the ILO)21 but free of charge did not appear to be as problematic. Placement services run by benevolent philanthropic associations in Germany (and to a lesser extent in Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium) might even be regarded as precursors of public employment exchanges. These came to be increasingly subsidized by municipalities. Gradually integrated into communal administrations, they were ultimately managed by those municipalities. At the same time, placement agencies were transformed from anti-­poverty associations to labour exchanges for combating unemployment and organizing the local labour market. Unions were often reluctant to give up control over placement, since they feared losing their influence on wages and labour relations. When public employment exchanges were able to integrate union-­or craft-­run exchanges, they began to become more essential in attracting qualified workers. Similarly, other organizations (such as the police or post offices) could be authorized or ordered to conduct placement services. In some countries, free of charge labour exchanges were subsidized if they fulfilled certain requirements (as had already been the case before the First World War in Denmark, France, Switzerland and Norway22) – a way for the state to influence policy or implement certain rules.

State Policy: Establishing Public Labour Exchanges In the late nineteenth century, and particularly by the First World War, public placement services were instituted more broadly. They began to resemble public employment exchanges in the later sense, for they were (in one way or another) supposed to contribute to the organizing and controlling of labour markets, instead of just offering assorted help to those in need. The practical enforcement of labour intermediation by European states differed in at least two respects, depending on the practical meanings of state and job placement. Public labour placement could be initiated, established or run by municipalities (i.e. in Switzerland,23 the Netherlands,24 Belgium,25 Germany until 1927 and in some cities of Austria-­Hungary26), by provincial authorities and/or districts (i.e. in Bohemia27 and Galicia28) or by national authorities. In Great Britain, one of the few examples of national placement before the First World War,29 the establishment of a centralized

Introduction 7

system of labour exchanges represented a sharp break with the country’s non-­interventionist tradition, as Noel Whiteside contends in the present volume. In many cases, the central state would only be involved marginally or hesitantly. But in a number of countries, the laws now stipulated that municipalities (of a certain size) had to set up employment exchanges. In much of Europe, trade unions and employer organizations became involved in administering public employment exchanges. As a result, a clear distinction could not always (if ever) be made between state-­run and other placement activities. On the one hand, authorities acted by regulating, restricting and financing on the basis of certain principles, especially free placement and joint committees. They delegated intermediation to organizations and municipalities, or they integrated different forms of placement by setting up community or state-­based options. On the other hand, though, public placement did not simply impose its own rules. It also adopted – and adapted – principles of already existing placement services. Apart from the different ways state policy established public labour exchanges, this volume also highlights remarkable differences in the actual practices of public job placement within and between countries. The terms used to describe these exchanges already manifest some differences: ‘employment exchange’, ‘labour bureau’, ‘labour bourse’, ‘arbeidsbeurs’, ‘bureau de placement’, ‘Arbeitsamt’, ‘Arbeitsbörse’ and ‘Arbeitsnachweis’. Some of these facilities only provided information about vacancies, while others engaged more actively in the process of matching men with jobs. Even when the same terms were used to describe organizations, practices within a given country were not necessarily similar. Thomas Buchner’s chapter describes multiform placement techniques in early German public labour exchanges – practices representing not only the different functions of labour exchanges but also of labour markets. David Meskill highlights the considerable regional differences in the German system of vocational counselling. Anthony O’Donnell discusses the changing (and sometimes contradictory) regulatory rationales of Australian labour market policy, stressing how early public labour exchanges tended to disorganize the labour market there. Consequently, the work available – mainly temporary and casual – was divided up, placing all applicants (irrespective of their usual trade) on an equal footing.

The Principles, Rationales and Understanding of Public Labour Exchanges What were the aims and prospects of state policies on labour exchanges? When these policies were inaugurated – as the chapters of this volume

8

Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

illustrate – their objectives were defined rather broadly. Public employment exchanges were expected to organize the labour market(s) by reducing casual labour30 and identifying the ‘real unemployed’ so as to separate them from those deemed unemployable31 or work-­shy.32 The exchanges were intended as instruments that might increase national competitiveness by enabling more efficient use of human resources.33 They were further supposed to combat poverty and thereby relieve cities of the burden of supporting the poor.34 Their other perceived functions were to control migration, combat vagrancy and stabilize employment relations. Public employment exchanges promised to control labour movements while concurrently helping employers deal with labour shortages. They were additionally expected to assist in integrating former convicts or reservists, and to reduce the ‘malpractices’ that other placement services were accused of. In the context of the First World War, public employment offices were supposed to monitor the labour force, reintegrating war invalids and returnees while also helping to prevent social unrest. Although labour intermediation was chiefly a problem in larger cities, state policy did not exclusively focus on labour exchanges for urban economies. One of the primary aims of state bureaucracies – particularly in the early period before the First World War – was to gather information about placement services in their respective countries.35 Many attempted to get an overview of placement activities and the supply and demand of jobs. These surveys revealed not only how varied the organizations offering job placement were but also how unspecialized their activity was, even in the early twentieth century. Another related concern was how to identify and count those needing more organized job placement – in other words, the unemployed. This problem went unsolved for a long time, since what being unemployed meant was not clearly defined or identifiable. In this regard, the development of mathematical statistics proved its practical and administrative value: it redefined the problem and elaborated ways of measuring unemployment as a social fact. In doing so, it made use of various materials, such as monthly reports of union-­run labour exchanges (in Great Britain and Germany as well as France) and invented new statistical tools, such as rates and index numbers.36 In most cases, states that established systems of unemployment insurance assigned the task of administering those benefits to public labour offices, which in turn produced information that government statisticians used to construct barometers of their national labour markets.37

Introduction 9

The Impact of State Policy These public measures and placement services were not always welcomed or even accepted. Unions and labour movements on occasion mistrusted the state,38 inasmuch as job placement and benefits were of vital importance whenever there were strikes. A commonly heard criticism was that state intervention might lead to bureaucratization, or to standardized placement without any concern for an individual’s trade.39 For despite the public employment services, unregulated job seeking (like tramping or calling around) and other placement facilities persisted. Among these facilities were commercial agencies, as highlighted in the contributions of Jessica Richter, Nils Edling, Antony O’Donnell and Sigrid Wadauer. And, as confirmed in Irina Vana’s chapter, selective use was made of public labour intermediation, in line with individuals’ particular livelihoods. Nevertheless, public labour exchanges experienced considerable growth in the first decades of the twentieth century, especially since they could be deployed to serve different interests. The crucial step needed to establish the predominance of state employment exchanges for organizing national labour markets was to connect them with unemployment insurance. Up to the 1930s, almost every European country had made provisions for unemployed workers either by establishing nationwide unemployment relief or by subsidizing the unemployment funds of associations, trade unions or municipalities (in accordance with the Ghent model).40 Public employment exchanges varied according to the actual form these interventions took. But once unemployment insurance began to be administered, public placement achieved a hitherto unmatched effectiveness in defining unemployment to the extent that it identified and dealt with those who were (involuntarily) unemployed. Defining the unemployed by means of collective, bureaucratic administration was the only possible solution to the old problem of counting the ‘real unemployed’, which had haunted debates on unemployment from the outset.41 Unemployment insurance promised to separate the employable from the unemployable, the latter of which could then be turned over to other organizations or measures of the state, ranging from public welfare and the old age or disability pension to the penal system and psychiatry. In the process, policymakers and experts could rely upon earlier experiences like the tests that identified war invalids’ ability to work. Insurance was in effect dividing the old category of the poor into (1) stratifiable (and stratified) individuals within the national economy, and (2) those not considered part of the national economy.42 Unemployment insurance and benefits formally defined a status, permitting persons to understand their situation as unemployment, even if they were casually employed.43 This resulted

10

Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

in the emergence of ‘the unemployed’ as a phenomenon of the modern economic system and its cycles, thereby personifying a status beyond a person’s responsibility and reach.44 Public employment exchanges became progressively more specialized and – by extending their clientele – universalized. They were now able to relinquish other tasks they had performed earlier on (much like other organizations operating as placement services). In addition, these exchanges developed and formalized methods of placement, such as psychological tests for determining a client’s affinity or aptitude for particular occupations. This process of specialization and universalization demonstrates that the old regime of policing ‘the poor’ – a distinct class, nearly a world of its own – had lost its significance. Instead, a bureaucratic administration of increasingly unified national labour markets came to be favoured, with the aim of encompassing all employable citizens. Consequently, even more people experienced their situation of being out of work as ‘unemployment’.45 At the same time, the present volume also shows how this process was neither linear nor homogeneous. The categories involved evidently remained ambiguous and disputed. Whiteside’s contribution explains how important poor law traditions were in Great Britain for differentiating ‘paupers’ from ‘the unemployed’. Sigrid Wadauer’s account demonstrates the persistence of old categories and organizations (such as the Herbergen) in interwar Austria’s new labour market regime. Establishing unemployment ­insurance – as explained in Vana’s chapter – modified the clientele of labour exchanges so that more kinds of wage-­earners came to be addressed. However, people made selective use of public employment exchanges, as one of several methods of finding a livelihood throughout the course of life.46 Unemployment benefits did not treat people uniformly: sometimes they excluded agricultural labourers, domestic servants, the young, the elderly or others. In the interwar period, many Europeans were still not insured. Not all kinds of work were equally considered part of the labour market, and not all people without employment understood themselves as unemployed. Many approaches to earning a living did not fit neatly into the idea of gainful employment. In many cases, the ways women earned a livelihood did not coincide with what was considered legitimate. Yet the emerging official categories of ‘decent’ employment or unemployment would unavoidably become a point of reference. Even those who tried to avoid them were compelled to be concerned about them.

Introduction 11

Role Models and References On the whole, the present volume focuses on intermediation within countries rather than transnational intermediation. Yet it also recognizes that national developments in labour intermediation cannot be described adequately by looking exclusively at national frameworks. In the late nineteenth century, intensive debate took place in numerous contexts about existing and future potential for job placement as a remedy for social problems.47 Both within and between states, these discussions involved experts, scholars, social reformers, politicians and public servants48 as well as officials of trade unions, employers’ organizations and philanthropic associations. International conferences facilitated comparisons between different notions (and uses) of job placement49 while international urban exhibitions presented public employment exchanges. Commissions of social reformers, experts and policymakers organized inquiries and visited labour exchanges, both at home and abroad.50 They described their findings in several reports, articles and books, including some explicitly comparative studies.51 A broad range of societies and associations was founded at the local, national and international levels, ranging from philanthropic associations establishing local employment exchanges to the International Association on Unemployment that concentrated on job placement in its debates and publications.52 After the First World War, the International Labour Organization (ILO) became an important nexus for international exchange on the options for job placement. The ILO regularly organized comparative studies on the possibilities of job placement, and on related problems across the world.53 Besides assembling and providing information, the ILO developed standards for creating and regulating employment exchanges. These international transfers and references are highlighted in several chapters in this volume: Nils Edling, for instance, describes how late nineteenth-­century Swedish social reformers found German municipal labour exchanges an attractive option, although they soon turned their attention to the Oslo labour exchange opened in 1898.54 In the early twentieth-­century Netherlands, the British system was discussed as a model, but the German example of municipal labour exchanges was eventually deemed more appropriate.55 Anthony O’Donnell’s chapter shows how Australian social reformers were not only attracted by the British example but also by early attempts to establish public employment exchanges in New Zealand. Apart from national preferences, certain models were evidently more appealing to certain interest groups. Ad Knotter’s chapter describes the example of the French bourses du travail, which served as an important point of reference for European trade unions before the First World War.

12

Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

Particular systems of labour intermediation were therefore not the automatic outcome of particular socio-­ economic developments. After all, the German intermediation system was disseminated in countries with different political, social and economic conditions. It would thus be incorrect to regard the synchronic emergence of public employment policy or the international transfer of models as merely responses to a common challenge (such as globalization). In this context, Edling points to a ‘fashion’ of establishing public employment exchanges. However, the limitations of transfer can also be observed, as in the British example. As Noel Whiteside reveals, the implementation of a system orientated on the German model came to a standstill with the resistance of trade unions and employers.

Outline of Chapters The individual chapters of this volume are grouped according to geographical and thematic criteria. The first two focus on Germany as a role model. Thomas Buchner’s contribution proposes an understanding of labour offices that deviates from commonly held perceptions in research. His chapter argues that these offices were more instrumental in constructing than regulating labour markets. Hence the establishment of the labour market (Arbeitsmarkt) as an economic category in Germany was closely related to the establishment of public labour offices in the late nineteenth century. These offices both produced knowledge about the labour market and were shaped by notions of it. By referring to the example of placement officers, Buchner demonstrates how crucial their practices were in constructing new labour markets. At the same time, references to labour market knowledge were important for defining these officers’ tasks and their roles. This chapter thereby emphasizes the variety of persons and material devices (forms, architecture etc.) that played a role in this process. The assortment of persons and organizations involved in the constitution of public labour intermediation are also portrayed in David Meskill’s chapter. Meskill highlights the establishment of vocational counselling as a central objective of public labour exchanges in Germany. Especially after the First World War, vocational counselling was further developed to achieve the aim of total inclusion of all job seekers (Totalerfassung). That said, Meskill underscores the contentiousness of this process: schools resisted the labour offices’ attempts to monopolize vocational counselling; employers were sceptical about the offices’ apparently schematic mode of operations; and the financial and organizational security of vocational counselling remained precarious. Even in the

Introduction 13

1920s – a period when vocational counselling briskly expanded – interest in and practices of vocational counselling still depended greatly on local and regional peculiarities. Noel Whiteside and Nils Edling each discuss European examples of public labour intermediation inspired by the German model. Nonetheless, the outcomes of this transfer did not necessarily resemble their German counterpart. Applying a comparative perspective, Whiteside focuses on the principles underpinning the emergence of a national system of public labour intermediation in Great Britain. Unions there were much stronger than in Germany. And there was comparatively less autonomy for municipalities and less acceptance of official intervention, ultimately leading to mistrust of public labour exchanges. Furthermore, the aims of Beveridge and his fellow designers of the British system diverged from the intent of the German model. In the first instance, the British version attempted to organize the labour market as a way to fight poverty, thereby involving a separation of those who would work regularly from those who would not. This in turn opened the door for poor law criteria to be integrated into labour market organization, as Whiteside specifies in the case of Birmingham. Edling’s chapter describes the introduction of public labour exchanges in Sweden, a latecomer in the realm of Scandinavian social policy. When establishing labour exchanges, Swedish municipalities referred to German, Norwegian and Danish cities – all of which represented different economic, social and political experiences. The early history of Swedish labour exchanges can thus be described as a success story. Edling points out two conditions that played a part in this accomplishment: firstly, the system of public labour intermediation before the 1920s (decentralized and not linked to any form of unemployment benefit) complied with Sweden’s economic structure, in which unemployment was more or less a seasonal matter. Secondly, public labour exchanges were – despite some initial hesitation – soon accepted both by unions and employers as ‘neutral’ organizations. Seen from a comparative perspective, this remarkable early acceptance both signified and helped to create social trust between employers and unions. Ad Knotter’s overview of union-­ run labour exchanges in Central, Western and Northern Europe around 1900 further elucidates the role of unions and their use of placement services. Although union-­run exchanges proved successful, particularly in small-­and medium-­sized trades, they were ultimately abandoned in most European countries. Knotter identifies a major reason why unions were unable to realize a monopoly on labour exchanges in their respective trades. They used unemployment insurance as a method of preventing a decline in wages. On financial grounds, however, unions were forced to

14

Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

cooperate with employers and authorities in monitoring the unemployed. In the process, these exchanges were transformed from an instrument of wage control to a means of controlling those without work. Malcolm Mansfield elaborates on the French bourses du travail, which served as a point of reference for unions all over Europe. The bourses were both union-­managed and semi-­public institutions offering an array of services, including labour intermediation. As such, they were attractive to both reformers and socialists since they promised to combat unemployment and vagrancy while reining in commercial placement agencies. Mansfield describes what they achieved for the labour movement when a major crisis hit the Paris building industry and contributed to the growing irrelevance of mechanisms put into place to defend trade standards. While the bourses provided premises for the new unions and contributed to the strike waves of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, their placement mechanisms never managed to impose monopolies over entry into a given trade. The section on Austrian case studies opens with Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin’s chapter on the Austrian employment agency for disabled veterans during the First World War. The first labour exchanges to reintegrate disabled veterans in the Habsburg monarchy were opened in 1915. However, most of them could not meet policy expectations since employers were unwilling to employ disabled veterans. More successful was a law passed after the war that forced firms to employ disabled veterans. Although these exchanges more or less failed to reintegrate war invalids into the labour market, they are remarkable as a first attempt at establishing a system of state-­run labour exchanges covering the entire country. They furthermore signified the state’s acceptance that certain groups in society might make demands on it. The system of Austrian public labour exchanges after the First World War is described by Irina Vana. Her main focus is on job seekers’ changing use of these exchanges in the interwar period. With the introduction of unemployment insurance after the war, these became more attractive not only for job seekers in general, but for skilled male job seekers in particular. Public labour offices in Austria were now key for receiving unemployment benefits. That in turn was a factor in producing employment and unemployment and thus in enforcing an administrated labour market. With an analysis of life narratives, Vana extends her focus: public labour offices allowed particularly qualified male workers in Austria to organize a stable life course. To be unemployed came to be perceived as a problem of the labour market. For other groups of job seekers (servants, casual workers etc.), organizing a stable life course or an administrated labour market became less relevant – not least because those groups only

Introduction 15

received partial unemployment benefits. Yet public labour offices had a say in the implementation of a new understanding of an official labour market, thus becoming relevant even for those job seekers who rarely used or even avoided them. Jessica Richter’s chapter focuses on domestic servants as a group who only used public labour exchanges selectively, but who frequently changed posts. Service was a task mainly performed by women who usually lived in their master/mistress’s household. Changing one’s position, then, almost always implied changing one’s household. Richter indicates the mix of intermediaries that domestic servants consulted when searching for a position. She specifically addresses a Catholic and a social democratic association when examining different notions of service as a vocation. While the Catholic organization represented the idea of service as a vocation closely connected to family integration, its social democratic counterpart conceived of domestic servants as domestic workers. The servants’ change of positions was thereby perceived as resulting from poor training or from poor working (or living) conditions. In a further move, Richter analyses domestic servants’ life stories. In these narratives, service is described either as a vocation (for the good of a community or for individual advancement) or as a means to a livelihood. Changes of position were thus depicted as resulting from a desire to enhance one’s abilities, a wish to be integrated into a family, or poor working (or living) conditions. The usage and avoidance of organizations offering job placement is further discussed in Wadauer’s chapter. She maintains that tramping as a way to search for work did not disappear in the early twentieth century but was redefined and reorganized in the context of normalizing unemployment. Her focus is on relief stations and lodging houses for work-­seeking wayfarers in Austria from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s. These stations, which provided lodging and some form of labour intermediation, were established to enable ‘orderly’ tramping and differentiate work-­seeking wayfarers from work-­shy vagrants. In this sense, job seeking started to become normalized, but primarily for skilled workers. Although the latter were over-­represented among those using relief stations around 1900, that situation changed after the First World War when their proportion declined. Autobiographical accounts are particularly valuable, indicating a variety of reasons why people hit the road in addition to representing their attitudes towards lodging houses (ranging from selective usage to avoidance). Nonetheless, work could still be found by calling at workshops and farmhouses rather than relying on the ­intermediation of the lodging houses. The importance of mobility as a way of finding work is elaborated further in the next chapters. Piet Lourens and Jan Lucassen discuss the

16

Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

long history of brickmakers’ temporary migration from the Lippe region of Germany to northwest Europe, particularly the Netherlands. This system of seasonal migration involved Ziegelboten, who offered a range of services: they negotiated the size of the gangs needed with the factory owners; they visited the gangs during the season; and they were responsible for mutual illness (and funeral) funds. However, the main focus of this chapter is on the changing composition of the brickmakers’ gangs. Drawing on rich source material, the authors argue that the individual brickmaker’s switch from one gang to another was an indicator of individual careers. They further identify work experience as particularly decisive for upward mobility. Success in making a career as a brickmaker enabled one to be successful in one’s overall life course. Amit Kumar Mishra’s chapter discusses the Indian labour diaspora in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a special emphasis on the multiplicity of services offered by labour intermediaries. Mishra focuses on three groups of intermediaries: sardars, kanganies and maistries. After the abolition of slavery, planters introduced a contract system and turned to India as a source of labour. The sardars operated as appointed agents who recruited workers (on an individual basis) and also supervized them. But since that system proved unsuccessful in some colonies, the system of kanganies and/or maistries was also introduced. These intermediaries were men of high status, able to recruit workers from their own caste (or kinship group) and to serve as financiers. The systems developed even proved appropriate in transforming the plantation economy when there was an increased demand for credit and new kinds of labour because of heightened competition from other sugar-­ growing regions. From a different perspective, the last chapter of this volume also explicates the transformation of systems of labour intermediation. Anthony O’Donnell discusses public employment services in Australia from the late nineteenth century to the post-­Second World War period. Public labour exchanges were established there as early as the late nineteenth century. Yet surprisingly, until the 1920s, they did not follow British attempts to decasualize the labour market, but rather operated as a headquarters for a mobile reserve of casual labour, mainly provisioning government departments with unskilled labour. This would change during the Second World War when public labour exchanges became centralized and gained a privileged position against private agencies. However, at the end of the war, the Commonwealth Employment Service was newly established to administer unemployment benefits and to reduce labour market frictions within a macroeconomic framework. O’Donnell argues that their long history of changing functions shows how such public employment

Introduction 17

s­ervices operated as sites of contesting – and frequently conflicting – regulatory rationales. In the concluding section to this volume, we suggest some additional questions, discuss research gaps, and outline some perspectives for future research.

Notes The editors’ research has received funding from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, Project Y367-­G14) and the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) / ERC grant agreement no. 200918. The project ‘The Production of Work’ is hosted by the University of Vienna. We would like to thank Irina Vana, Jessica Richter, Marcel van der Linden and the anonymous reviewers for their comments.   1 P. Bourdieu. 1997. Méditations pascaliennes, Paris: Seuil.   2. D.H. Autor. 2009. ‘Studies of Labor Market Intermediation. Introduction’, in idem (ed.), Studies of Labor Market Intermediation, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1. Similarily Bosma et al. write: ‘In the labour historiography, mediators constitute an intriguing category, operating in the interstices between labour and capital.’ U. Bosma, E. van Nederveen Meerkerk and A. Sarkar. 2012. ‘Mediating Labour: An Introduction’, International Review of Social History. Special Issue 20, 2.   3. See also S. Wadauer, T. Buchner and A. Mejstrik. 2012. ‘The Making of Public Labour Intermediation: Job Search, Job Placement, and the State in Europe, 1880–1940’, International Review of Social History. Special Issue 20, 161–189.   4. International Labour Conference. 1932. Abolition of Fee Charging Employment Agencies. Sixteenth Session 1932, Geneva: ILO, 12ff. In nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century Europe, a bewildering multiplicity of terms were used to describe organizations and facilities that offered placement services. National and international statistics, surveys and studies that were conducted in the first decades of the twentieth century faced the problem of answering which designations implied different or similar services – even within the same country. For example, two labour exchanges could offer quite different services, while an employment exchange and a labour registry might offer similar ones. For this reason, this introduction avoids the temptation of deducing a clearly distinguishable typology of placement services from the terminology used in late nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century Europe. For clarity and readability, we will differentiate terms very simply. The term ‘(job) placement’ is used to denote all kinds of placement services provided by states, associations, commercial businesses, or other kinds of organizations. Job placement facilities are called ‘labour exchanges’, ‘employment exchanges’ or ‘exchanges’, these terms being used interchangeably. In cases where such a facility was run by a municipality, a province or a central state, ‘public labour (or employment) exchange (or office)’ is used in distinction to private exchanges. Yet there were some differences in how the term ‘public’ was deployed between countries. In general, a ‘public’ labour exchange around 1900 offered different services from such an exchange around 1930. In some cases, this was paralleled by a change of terms (for example in Germany, from Arbeitsnachweis to Arbeitsamt). In many others, however, the terminology did not change. Finally, the term ‘public labour intermediation’ is used to describe not only public labour exchanges but all measures enacted and facilities established by states with respect to the ways of searching for jobs or placing and recruiting workers.   5. See G. Hannsen. 1846. ‘Über öffentliche Arbeitsnachweisanstalten’, Archiv der politischen Ökonomie und Polizeiwissenschaft, N.F. 4, 296–323.

18

Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

  6. Walter Licht’s study on Philadelphia describes a similar spectrum of job placement possibilities. W. Licht. 1999. Getting Work: Philadelphia, 1840–1950, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 34ff.  7. The importance of ‘weak ties’ for job seeking, although difficult to trace in a historical setting, should not be underestimated. M. Granovetter. 1995. Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers, 2nd ed., Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.  8. J.L. Rosenbloom. 2002. Looking for Work, Searching for Workers: American Labor Markets During Industrialization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; on foremen, see P. van den Eeckhout (ed.). 2009. Supervision and Authority in Industry: Western European Experiences 1830–1939, New York/Oxford: Berghahn; A. Rees. 1966. ‘Information Networks in Labor Markets’, The American Economic Review 56, 559–566.  9. See Knotter in this volume; W. Beveridge. 1909. Unemployment: A Problem of History, London/New York/Bombay/Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Co, 262ff. 10. F. Ludwig. 1906. Der gewerbsmäßige Arbeitsnachweis, Berlin: Carl Heymanns; W. Lee, ‘Private Deception and the Rise of Public Employment Offices in the United States, 1890– 1930’, in Autor, Studies of Labor Market Intermediation, 166ff. 11. Statistisches Departement im k.k. Handelsministerium. 1898. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich, Vienna: A. Hölder, 85ff. (hereafter Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich). 12. Some examples are recorded for Berlin, Vienna, Prague and Amsterdam. See R. von Fürer. 1911. Die Gestaltung des Arbeitsmarktes, Vienna/Leipzig: A. Hölder, 127; O. Uhlig. 1970. Arbeit amtlich angeboten. Der Mensch auf seinem Markt, Stuttgart etc.: Kohlhammer, 81ff.; and R. van Bekkum. 1996. Tussen Vraag en Aanbod. Op zoek naar de identiteit van de arbeidsvoorzieningsorganisatie, The Hague: Sdu Uitgevers, 166, 181. 13. See Knotter in this volume. However, Edling points to the remarkable exception of Sweden where employers consciously decided not to establish exchanges. 14. O. Becker and E. Bernhard. 1913. Die gesetzliche Regelung der Arbeitsvermittlung in den wichtigsten Ländern der Erde. Berlin: Carl Heymanns, 48–51. 15. In the 1930s, some organizations of the German Nazi Party (particularly the SA) offered job placement. 16. See also P. Schöttler. 1982. Die Entstehung der ‘Bourses du Travail’. Sozialpolitik und Syndikalismus am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus; C.K. Ansell. 1997. ‘Symbolic Networks: The Realignment of the French Working Class, 1887– 1894’, The American Journal of Sociology 103(2), 360ff. 17. William Beveridge, for example, described hawking of labour as being ‘wasteful’ and as indicator of unorganized labour markets. Beveridge, Unemployment, 197–200. 18. Becker and Bernhard, Gesetzliche Regelung, 2ff, 69–140; International Labour Conference, Abolition, 14. 19. See also B.H. Warner, Jr. 1903. Die Organisation und Bedeutung der freien öffentlichen Arbeitsnachweisämter in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika, Leipzig: Jäh und Sohunke, 5–14; Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich, 69. 20. Becker and Bernhard, Gesetzliche Regelung, 69–77. 21. Ibid., 12ff. 22. Ibid., 4, 25, 31, 40f. 23. E. Gruner. 1991. ‘Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung. Das Beispiel der Schweiz’, in H.-­P. Benöhr (ed.). Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in der neueren deutschen Rechtsgeschichte. Tübingen: Mohr, 237–256. 24. Van Bekkum, Tussen Vraag en Aanbod. 25. E. Deslé. 1991. Arbeidsbemiddeling en/of werklozencontrole. Het voorbeeld van de Gentse arbeidsbeurs (1891–1914), Brussels: Gemeentekrediet; Becker and Bernhard, Gesetzliche Regelung, 23.

Introduction 19

26. H. Hülber. 1965. Weg und Ziel der Arbeitsvermittlung. Studie über das Arbeitsmarktgeschehen in Österreich von 1848 bis 1934, Vienna: Verlag des österreichischen Gewerkschaftsbundes, 19, 39. 27. Becker and Bernhard, Gesetzliche Regelung, 44. 28. R. Boleslawski von der Trenck. n.d. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Oesterreich, n.p.: n.publ.; Becker and Bernhard, Gesetzliche Regelung, 46. 29. Becker and Bernhard, Gesetzliche Regelung, 33; E.P. Hennock. 2007. The Origin of the Welfare State in England and Germany 1850–1914. Social Policies Compared, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 298ff. 30. This was of particular importance in the British context. See Whiteside’s chapter in this volume. 31. J. Welshman. 2006. ‘The Concept of the Unemployable’, Economic History Review LIX, 578–606; C. Topalov. 1994. Naissance du chômeur. 1880–1910, Paris: Albin Michel. 32. ‘Labor exchanges became mechanisms through which American and British governments could enforce a division between worthy and unworthy supplicants for assistance’. D. King. 1995. Actively Seeking Work? The Politics of Unemployment and Welfare Policy in the United States and Great Britain, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 19. 33. N. Whiteside. 1991. Bad Times: Unemployment in British Social and Political History, London: Faber and Faber, 56; D. Meskill. 2010. Optimizing the German Workforce: Labor Administration from Bismarck to the Economic Miracle, New York/ Oxford: Berghahn. 34. A. Faust. 1986. Arbeitsmarktpolitik im Deutschen Kaiserreich. Arbeitsvermittlung, Arbeitsbeschaffung und Arbeitslosenunterstützung 1890–1918, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 71, 73. 35. See, for example, the survey on the possibilities of job placements within the Cisleithanian part of the Habsburg monarchy: Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich. For the domestic German comparison, see Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt. 1906. Die Versicherung gegen die Folgen der Arbeitslosigkeit im Ausland und im Deutschen Reich, Berlin: Carl Heymanns, part II. 36. Topalov, Naissance du chômeur, 375–406; R. Davidson. 1995. ‘Official Labour Statistics: A Historical Perspective’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (Statistics in Society) 158, 165–173; D.G. Maier. 2004. Anfänge und Brüche der Arbeitsverwaltung bis 1952. Zugleich ein kaum bekanntes Kapitel der deutsch-­jüdischen Geschichte, Brühl: FBV, 31ff. 37. W.R. Garside. 1980. The Measurement of Unemployment in Great Britain, 1850–1979. Methods and Sources, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 38. See, for example, Hülber, Weg und Ziel, 39. 39. Particularly employers but also unions used these arguments. See M. Mansfield. 2001. ‘Flying to the Moon: Reconsidering the British Labour Exchange System in the Early Twentieth Century’, Labour History Review 66, 24, 29, 34; Faust, Arbeitsmarktpolitik im Deutschen Kaiserreich, 92, 97. 40. International Labour Conference. 1933. Unemployment Insurance and Various Forms of Relief for the Unemployed. Seventeenth Session, Geneva: ILO, 1f. 41. Topalov, Naissance du chômeur, 269–350. 42. A. Desrosières. 2000. La politique des grands nombres. Histoire de la raison statistique. Postface inédité de l'auteur, Paris: La Découverte, 318f. 43. See Vana in this volume. 44. Topalov, Naissance du chômeur, 407. 45. See M. Cole. 2007. ‘From Employment Exchange to Jobcentre Plus: The Changing Institutional Context of Unemployment’, History of the Human Sciences 20, 129–146. 46. Walter Licht’s study on Philadelphia shows that the usage of different methods of finding work varied over the life course. Licht, Getting Work.

20

Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

47. See N. Edling. 2008. ‘Regulating Unemployment the Continental Way: The Transfer of Municipal Labour Exchanges to Scandinavia, 1890–1914’, European Review of History – Revue Européenne d'Histoire 15, 23–40; van Bekkum. Tussen Vraag en Aanbod, 151, 173f, 249, 251f. 48. See E. Frie. 1993. Wohlfahrtsstaat und Provinz. Fürsorgepolitik des Provinzialverbandes Westfalen und des Landes Sachsen 1880–1930, Paderborn: Schöningh, 48; W. Booth. 1890. In Darkest England and the Way Out, London: Diggory Press, 110. 49. An early example of an international conference including a focus on job placement was the International Conference on Unemployment (Paris, 1910). See Garraty, Unemployment in History, 139; Topalov, Naissance du chômeur, 59–115; S. Rudischhauser and B. Zimmermann. 1995. ‘“Öffentliche Arbeitsvermittlung” und “placement public” (1890–1914). Kategorien der Intervention der öffentlichen Hand – Reflexionen zu einem Vergleich’, Comparativ 5, 93–120. 50. See, for example, Beveridge’s report on his visit to Germany: W. Beveridge. 1908. ‘Public Labour Exchanges in Germany’, The Economic Journal 18(69), 1–18. 51. See for example, D.F. Schloss. 1904. Report to the Board of Trade on Agencies and Methods for Dealing with the Unemployed in Certain Foreign Countries, London: Darling; O. Becker and E. Bernhard, Gesetzliche Regelung; N.N. 1895. ‘Die Arbeitsvermittlung im Deutschen Reich’, Austria. Archiv für Gesetzgebung und Statistik auf den Gebieten der Gewerbe, des Handels und der Schiffahrt X, 1008–1012. 52. This association edited the Quarterly Journal of the International Association on Unemployment. 53. See for example, International Labour Office. 1933. Employment Exchanges: An International Study of Placing Activities, Geneva: ILO; International Labour Conference, Unemployment Insurance; International Labour Conference, Abolition. 54. See also Edling, ‘Regulating Unemployment’. 55. However, in discussions of unemployment insurance, the Danish model appeared to be attractive for the Netherlands. See van Bekkum, Tussen Vraag en Aanbod, 257. According to Daniel Levine, Danish social reform was likewise interested in model solutions abroad but was strongly inclined to opt for solutions perceived to adhere to existing institutions of the country. D. Levine. 1978. ‘Conservatism and Tradition in Danish Social Welfare Legislation, 1890–1933: A Comparative View’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 20, 54–69.

Bibliography Ansell, C.K. 1997. ‘Symbolic Networks: The Realignment of the French Working Class, 1887– 1894’, The American Journal of Sociology 103(2), 359–390. Autor, D.H. 2009. ‘Studies of Labor Market Intermediation. Introduction’, in idem (ed.), Studies of Labor Market Intermediation, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Becker, O. and E. Bernhard. 1913. Die gesetzliche Regelung der Arbeitsvermittlung in den wichtigsten Ländern der Erde. Berlin: Carl Heymanns. Bekkum, R. van. 1996. Tussen Vraag en Aanbod. Op zoek naar de identiteit van de arbeidsvoorzieningsorganisatie, The Hague: SdU Uitgevers. Beveridge, W. 1908. ‘Public Labour Exchanges in Germany’, The Economic Journal 18(69), 1–18. Beveridge, W. 1909. Unemployment: A Problem of History, London/New York/Bombay/ Calcutta: Longmans, Green and Co. Boleslawski von der Trenck, R. n.d. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Oesterreich, n.p., n.publ.

Introduction 21

Booth, W. 1890. In Darkest England and the Way Out, London: Diggory Press. Bourdieu, P. 1997. Méditations pascaliennes, Paris: Seuil. Bosma, U., E. van Nederveen Meerkerk and A. Sarkar. 2012. ‘Mediating Labour: An Introduction’, International Review of Social History. Special Issue 20, 1–15. Cole, M. 2007. ‘From Employment Exchange to Jobcentre Plus: The Changing Institutional Context of Unemployment’, History of the Human Sciences 20, 129–146. Davidson, R. 1995. ‘Official Labour Statistics: A Historical Perspective’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (Statistics in Society) 158, 165–173. Deslé, E. 1991. Arbeidsbemiddeling en/of werklozencontrole. Het voorbeeld van de Gentse arbeidsbeurs (1891–1914), Brussels: Gemeentekrediet. Desrosières, A. 2000. La politique des grands nombres. Histoire de la raison statistique. Postface inédité de l'auteur, Paris: La Découverte. Edling, N. 2008. ‘Regulating Unemployment the Continental Way: The Transfer of Municipal Labour Exchanges to Scandinavia, 1890–1914’, European Review of History – Revue Européenne d'Histoire 15, 23–40. Eeckhout, P. van den. (ed.). 2009. Supervision and Authority in Industry: Western European Experiences 1830–1939, New York/Oxford: Berghahn. Faust, A. 1986. Arbeitsmarktpolitik im Deutschen Kaiserreich. Arbeitsvermittlung, Arbeitsbeschaffung und Arbeitslosenunterstützung 1890–1918, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Frie, E. 1993. Wohlfahrtsstaat und Provinz. Fürsorgepolitik des Provinzialverbandes Westfalen und des Landes Sachsen 1880–1930, Paderborn: Schöningh. Fürer, R. von. 1911. Die Gestaltung des Arbeitsmarktes, Vienna/Leipzig: A. Hölder. Garside, W.R. 1980. The Measurement of Unemployment in Great Britain, 1850–1979: Methods and Sources, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Garraty, J.A. 1978. Unemployment in History: Economic Thought and Public Policy, New York/ Hagestown/San Francisco/London: Harper and Row. Granovetter, M. 1995. Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers, 2nd ed, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Gruner, E. 1991. ‘Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung. Das Beispiel der Schweiz’, in H.-­P. Benöhr (ed.). Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in der neueren deutschen Rechtsgeschichte. Tübingen: Mohr, 237–256. Hannsen, G. 1846. ‘Über öffentliche Arbeitsnachweisanstalten’, Archiv der politischen Ökonomie und Polizeiwissenschaft, N.F. 4, 296–323. Hennock, E.P. 2007. The Origin of the Welfare State in England and Germany 1850–1914: Social Policies Compared, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hülber, H. 1965. Weg und Ziel der Arbeitsvermittlung. Studie über das Arbeitsmarktgeschehen in Österreich von 1848 bis 1934, Vienna: Verlag des österreichischen Gewerkschaftsbundes. International Labour Conference. 1932. Abolition of Fee Charging Employment Agencies. Sixteenth Session 1932, Geneva: ILO. International Labour Conference. 1933. Unemployment Insurance and Various Forms of Relief for the Unemployed. Seventeenth Session, Geneva: ILO. International Labour Office. 1933. Employment Exchanges: An International Study of Placing Activities, Geneva: ILO. Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt. 1906. Die Versicherung gegen die Folgen der Arbeitslosigkeit im Ausland und im Deutschen Reich, part II, Berlin: Carl Heymanns. King, D. 1995. Actively Seeking Work? The Politics of Unemployment and Welfare Policy in the United States and Great Britain, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Lee, W. 2009. ‘Private Deception and the Rise of Public Employment Offices in the United States, 1890–1930’, in Autor, Studies of Labor Market Intermediation, 155–181. Levine, D. 1978. ‘Conservatism and Tradition in Danish Social Welfare Legislation, 1890–1933: A Comparative View’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 20, 54–69.

22

Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik

Licht, W. 1999. Getting Work: Philadelphia, 1840–1950, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Ludwig, F. 1906. Der gewerbsmäßige Arbeitsnachweis, Berlin: Carl Heymanns. Maier, D.G. 2004. Anfänge und Brüche der Arbeitsverwaltung bis 1952. Zugleich ein kaum bekanntes Kapitel der deutsch-­jüdischen Geschichte, Brühl: FBV. Mansfield, M. 2001. ‘Flying to the Moon: Reconsidering the British Labour Exchange System in the Early Twentieth Century’, Labour History Review 66, 24–40. Meskill, D. 2010. Optimizing the German Workforce: Labor Administration from Bismarck to the Economic Miracle, New York/Oxford: Berghahn. N., N. 1895. ‘Die Arbeitsvermittlung im Deutschen Reich’, Austria. Archiv für Gesetzgebung und Statistik auf den Gebieten der Gewerbe, des Handels und der Schiffahrt X, 1008–1012. Rees, A. 1966. ‘Information Networks in Labor Markets’, The American Economic Review 56, 559–566. Rosenbloom, J.L. 2002. Looking for Work, Searching for Workers: American Labor Markets During Industrialization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rudischhauser S. and B. Zimmermann. 1995. ‘“Öffentliche Arbeitsvermittlung” und “placement public” (1890–1914). Kategorien der Intervention der öffentlichen Hand – Reflexionen zu einem Vergleich’, Comparativ 5, 93–120. Schloss, D.F. 1904. Report to the Board of Trade on Agencies and Methods for Dealing with the Unemployed in Certain Foreign Countries, London: Darling. Schöttler, P. 1982. Die Entstehung der ‘Bourses du Travail’. Sozialpolitik und Syndikalismus am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus. Statistisches Departement im k.k. Handelsministerium. 1898. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich, Vienna: A. Hölder. Topalov, C. 1994. Naissance du chômeur. 1880–1910, Paris: Albin Michel. Uhlig, O. 1970. Arbeit amtlich angeboten. Der Mensch auf seinem Markt, Stuttgart etc.: Kohlhammer. Wadauer, S., T. Buchner and A. Mejstrik. 2012. ‘The Making of Public Labour Intermediation: Job Search, Job Placement, and the State in Europe, 1880–1940’, International Review of Social History. Special Issue 20, 161–189. Warner, B.H. Jr. 1903. Die Organisation und Bedeutung der freien öffentlichen Arbeitsnachweisämter in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika, Leipzig: Jäh und Sohunke. Welshman, J. 2006. ‘The Concept of the Unemployable’, Economic History Review LIX, 578–606. Whiteside, N. 1991. Bad Times: Unemployment in British Social and Political History, London: Faber and Faber.

Chapter 1

Organizing the Market?

Labour Offices and Labour Markets in Germany, 1890–1933

Thomas Buchner

Between the 1890s and the 1930s, most European countries established networks of public labour exchanges. With its first offices established in 1894, Germany was one of the earliest players in the history of public labour exchanges.1 In 1900, there were already fifty active public labour exchanges, most of them municipal organizations. These were only integrated into the administrative and legal framework of the Reich later on.2 One of the basic reasons they were established and received support was the assumption that they might serve as a tool for regulating labour markets.3 This referred to contemporary perceptions of Germany as an industrializing economy with an increasingly mobile workforce, unstable labour relations and a growing problem with unemployment. Although municipal policymakers were enacting different measures such as emergency works, labour intermediation – an institution previously known as a way of preventing poverty – was now identified as the crucial tool for coping with labour markets. However, from the perspective of contemporary experts, including economists, jurists and public servants in municipal administrations, only public exchanges promised to serve this purpose. Alternative forms of job seeking and labour intermediation were perceived as representing ­traditional – and therefore inappropriate – answers to the problems of modern labour markets. Or they were thought to serve as weapons in political struggles between employers and unions, while commercial

24

Thomas Buchner

agencies were deemed to have negative effects on job seekers and the stability of labour relations. These experts regarded the regulatory function of public labour offices as developing in a number of ways. Labour exchanges were expected to prevent at least certain forms of unemployment and to reduce the duration of unemployment in a majority of cases. Furthermore, it was assumed that they would optimize matchings (‘the right man in the right job’), thereby contributing to the stabilization of labour relationships. Moreover, they promised to differentiate between those willing to work and those deemed work-­shy. Apart from that, public labour exchanges were also conceived as a way of ‘neutralizing’ job placement as a potential weapon in political and class struggles.4 These perceptions remained crucial over the first decades of public labour exchange history although political and economic circumstances changed dramatically. The linking of labour exchanges with new tasks – such as the administration of unemployment benefits (Erwerbslosenfürsorge) (in 1918), unemployment insurance (in 1927), or vocational counselling – underlined the contemporary political and scientific perception of labour exchanges as a crucial tool for regulating labour markets. After all, there seems to be an obvious relationship involved: There are labour markets, and labour exchanges are organizations that intervene in these markets.5 However, the present chapter takes an alternative approach. It is important to consider the establishment of the labour market as a category of inquiry that is closely related to the development of public labour exchanges (as will be outlined in the next chapter). It was not only the pioneering public labour offices’ movement that established the term Arbeitsmarkt (labour market) in Germany, but scientific labour market descriptions and interpretations were at least partially based upon the data that labour offices produced. What actually happened in labour offices therefore not only referred to some kind of labour market knowledge but was also transformed into labour market statistics and ultimately into more sophisticated labour market knowledge in form of models and theories. Hence, from a constructivist perspective, it is not possible to clearly separate labour offices from labour markets. Nor is it possible to start from a priori definitions. The findings of my research on labour intermediation question an ontological view,6 i.e. the idea that markets as ahistorical entities might be altered but are basically predefined and given.7 Public labour offices, I assume, are instead to be regarded as places where labour markets were constructed and where the inverse applies. In other words: changing labour exchanges’ practices meant changing labour markets themselves (and not only labour market outcomes), while changing perceptions of the market likewise included changing labour offices.

Organizing the Market? 25

On the one hand, these offices produced data and rough interpretations of the labour market, and in the process contributed to the establishment of market actors, market activities and market outcomes. Furthermore, they were particularly important for public perceptions of the labour market in the early decades of twentieth-­century Germany, since newspapers frequently referred to the offices’ reports when writing about the labour market. On the other hand, perceptions of labour markets were used to shape labour exchanges by defining actors and expectations about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ interactions. These perceptions were both informed by and involved with the practices of people in the offices (clients, personnel, visitors). The labour market was thus determined not only by formal regulations and scientific knowledge but also – in a very material sense – by the offices’ technical facilities and architectural design, as well as the people using, shaping and referring to these facilities. The present chapter attempts to explore central aspects in the histories of public labour offices and labour markets by highlighting some examples. To start with, I will provide a more detailed account of the relationship between labour markets and labour offices in Imperial and Weimar Germany. Then I will highlight the role of labour offices as both producing and referring to (labour market) knowledge. Finally, the construction and positioning of actors in the labour offices will be outlined using the example of placement officers. The arguments in this chapter, while partially based on the example of the Bavarian capital city of Munich, attempt nonetheless to put forward some general ideas. The Munich public labour office was founded in 1895, and was therefore among the first public exchanges in the Kaiserreich. It was soon renowned not only as one of the biggest offices8 (if measured by the number of placements) but also one of the most innovative in Germany.9 It was active in developing the fields of job placement, vocational counselling and ‘apprenticeship placement’ (Lehrstellenvermittlung)10 as well as in the administration of unemployment benefits in the Weimar Republic.11

Labour Exchanges and the Labour Market In nineteenth-­ century Germany, the range of labour exchanges was known to serve various purposes: commercial agencies grew quickly both in terms of numbers and placements after the liberalization of trade regulations in 1869. Craft-­run exchanges were still important for matching small-­scale handicraft businesses with qualified workers; they also frequently supported wandering journeymen. Philanthropic and c­ onfessional

26

Thomas Buchner

organizations established labour exchanges as tools to relieve cities of the burden of supporting the poor, at the same time intending to save migrants from the moral dangers of big cities.12 To be sure, the projects of liberal economists were not unknown, such as that of the Belgian Gustave de Molinari who conceptualized labour exchanges as neutral platforms where job seekers and employers might find information on available workers and/or jobs.13 However, German social reformers regarded the potential development of labour exchanges to be a preventive measure, deeply rooted in the context of poor relief. This perception would change in the 1890s. Against the backdrop of an emerging interest in unemployment and its causes, social reformers began an intensive debate, conceptualizing labour exchanges as distinctive apparatuses with the potential for describing and controlling something called ‘the labour market’. This potential, most experts agreed, could be tapped only if labour exchanges followed similar principles and were closely linked. This revised perception suggested some form of public intervention. It not only included the cities as highly innovative agents of social policy in Imperial Germany,14 calling on them to become more involved in the administration of job placement, but more importantly, it required the connection of labour exchanges with the labour market as a new category of description and intervention. Although labour as a factor of production and a commodity was a focus of discussion in nineteenth-­century economics, there were generally no references to a labour market. Consequently, the term was rarely used and found only scarce attention in scholarly overviews on economics. Its introduction in the German context can be traced back to some of the pioneering figures of public labour offices, primarily to the Berlin economist Ignaz Jastrow, then editor of the leading reform journal Sociale Praxis (Social Practice). In 1897 he started to compile and publish as labour market overviews data from public labour exchanges on requests, offers and placements in a new journal named Der Arbeitsmarkt (The Labour Market). Jastrow’s project referred to British examples like the Labour Gazette, but indicated a new approach by broadly using the term Arbeitsmarkt. Furthermore, his project also reflected the ‘discovery’ of unemployment and the first attempts to produce empirical evidence on the extent of unemployment in the 1890s.15 Apart from the obvious difference of price formation, Jastrow regarded the labour market as a phenomenon similar to capital and product markets. However, this comparison entailed a description of labour markets as deficient since they were lacking well-­established organizations like bourses (or stock exchanges) that both organized the market and offered a means of describing them. As an economist and a Social-­Liberal city councillor, Jastrow assumed

Organizing the Market? 27

labour exchanges could potentially play a similar role if: (1) they were run by municipalities; (2) they built up a dense national network reaching beyond local offices; and (3) they followed the same guiding principles. Then, and only then, cities might have a tool at hand that would permit a scientifically sound description of labour markets, one that would also allow them to be regulated. Jastrow soon had to admit that his reports lacked the data necessary to produce an all-­encompassing representation of labour markets. Consequently in the following years, the data from labour exchanges were complemented by reports on (un)employment rates among union members and data from medical insurance companies on their number of insured members. However, some of the basic ideas that Jastrow proposed remained important, both on a theoretical and a practical level. He made considerable efforts to put his ideas on the development of municipal labour offices into practice. Above all, in 1897 he organized the first in a series of conferences on public labour offices, resulting in the creation of the Association of German Labour Exchanges (Verband deutscher Arbeitsnachweise) one year later.16 Both the conferences and the association were established to promote the idea of municipal labour offices and to homogenize the different structures and placement principles, thus enabling comparisons between local labour markets.17 Furthermore, Jastrow’s project not only profited from the practice of (at least the larger) labour exchanges that kept records, but it suggested that all labour exchanges should keep records of their placement activities according to similar principles. As early as 1895, the Munich labour office’s bylaws identified reporting on the ‘movements of demand and supply’ to be one of the office’s most important tasks.18 However, the fact that small offices and non-­public exchanges complemented the data produced by large offices like the one in Munich was not least due to the fact that legal regulations were appropriating Jastrow’s basic ideas.19 Not surprisingly, labour exchange experts would remember Jastrow as one of ‘the scientific leaders of the public labour exchange’,20 as he was described by Karl Hartmann, a pioneering figure in the Bavarian public labour exchanges, on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the Munich labour office. On a more theoretical level, some of the ideas central to Jastrow’s projects remained important. Even though labour markets were subject to change – differentiated as they were according to region, sex, age and occupational groups – they were perceived as phenomena that rested on a stable relationship between supply and demand.21 Yet for Jastrow, this relationship was characterized by misinformation, disorganization and the circumstance that the traded good (work capacity) was less mobile than goods in other markets, thus disrupting the balance of supply and demand.

28

Thomas Buchner

Although such accounts perceived labour markets as deficient, it likewise put them in the same framework as goods or capital markets.22 This in turn allowed for specific characteristics of the respective markets to be identified while enabling economists (especially after the First World War) to include labour markets in business cycle analysis.23 Furthermore, such a view privileged a description of labour markets based upon quantitative data, making labour market statistics one of the crucial scientific tools for labour market analysis. In the framework of German labour market statistics, public labour offices thus remained important sources of data to be transformed into scientific knowledge. In 1902, the Reich’s Statistical Office established a labour statistics department with the objective of centralizing those labour market reports which had previously been privately or locally arranged.24 German states like Bavaria followed a few years later, particularly owing to the interest shown by the director of the Bavarian statistical office, Friedrich Zahn, who had already contributed to the establishment of the Reich’s labour market statistics.25 Labour market statistics were now part of the Reich’s and the states’ regular statistical work, something which in turn facilitated the identification of long-­term trends and the differentiation of unemployment into seasonal and/or cyclical forms.26 However, these attempts to establish public labour market statistics and to publish labour market overviews not only used the data that the offices themselves had produced, but also referred to those offices’ descriptions of the market. As early as 1900, the Munich labour office included an overview of the labour market in Munich27 in its annual report, thereby picking up on Jastrow’s basic ideas. This overview combined requests, offers and placements in most Munich labour exchanges (public, philanthropic, commercial, and from unions and employers) and therefore predated similar attempts made on the local level by the Bavarian or Imperial statistical offices.28 It is therefore misleading to regard labour offices as organizations that simply provided rough data but left the production of scientific labour market knowledge to other statisticians and economists on the outside. The Munich overview was, even from the perspective of its authors, far from complete. For, according to them, the labour offices did not control the labour market completely.29 However, it demonstrated the conviction that labour markets were describable entities and that these descriptions would have to be based upon labour offices’ material. This conviction was affirmed by the fact that the Labour Exchanges Law of 1922 transferred the task of labour market statistics from the Reich’s Statistical Office to the Reich’s Labour Administration (Reichsarbeitsverwaltung).30 The production of labour market knowledge and the question of labour market regulation came to be mutually dependent in the context of late

Organizing the Market? 29

nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century Germany. Especially due to pioneering attempts by Jastrow and others, their interrelation also became intimately linked to the establishment and development of public labour offices. As a result, the regulative framework concerning labour exchanges developed in the late nineteenth century aimed at improving the quality of labour market reporting by extending the labour market control of labour offices, and vice versa. The first measures taken by German states consisted of facilitating the establishment of public offices, connections between them and the homogenization of their guiding principles. Bavaria was among the first German states to actively support municipal labour offices and to develop plans for a statewide network of labour offices. This included the establishment of Hauptvermittlungsstellen in 1897, major public labour exchanges that were supposed to both oversee and coordinate the activities of the public exchanges in their respective regions. Munich became not only the Hauptvermittlungsstelle for Upper Bavaria but also housed the Association of Bavarian Labour Offices (Verband Bayerischer Arbeitsnachweise) founded in 1899. In this way, hierarchies were established between public exchanges in Bavaria and other public labour offices and non-­municipal exchanges. All of them were ultimately forced to report to the Munich office, where a library and an archive were established and regular reports were produced, on Munich and on Bavaria as a whole. Similar structures emerged in most other German states before the First World War. The war in turn resulted in a surge of public offices inasmuch as these turned out to be one of the few tools available to deal with unemployment in its early phase and the scarcity of labour in its final years. Apart from an apparent centralization of labour administration, the introduction of unemployment benefits was another legacy of the war and the demobilization following it.31 These benefits would be transformed into unemployment insurance by 1927, thereby ushering in major changes both to labour offices and to their relationship to labour markets. Although the number of job placements increased in the 1920s, the administration of unemployment benefits was to become an increasingly important task of the offices. The global economic crisis of the 1930s led to a situation in which countless job seekers had no prospects of being placed by a labour office. However, unemployment benefits forced people to register at the offices as job seekers so as to receive material support. In the process, people who had not previously used labour offices for job seeking were induced to register.32 One effect of these developments was that labour offices registered people as job seekers who were virtually unemployable. Those unemployed who were not eligible for unemployment insurance ­ (anymore) could receive municipal support, but they had to register at

30

Thomas Buchner

the labour office, which was also responsible for monitoring their willingness to work. During the world economic crisis, both municipalities and the long-­term unemployed receiving municipal welfare benefits regularly accused the labour offices of discriminating against the ‘welfare unemployed’ (the Wohlfahrtserwerbslosen), maintaining that these offices preferred ‘regular’ job seekers when openings were to be filled.33 This was a consequence of the law on labour intermediation and unemployment insurance, which had transferred labour offices from municipal administration to the newly founded Reich Agency for Job Placement and Unemployment Insurance (Reichsanstalt für Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversicherung). It likewise points to the increasing importance of (assumed) employability as a way of differentiating between job seekers. In the eyes of many contemporaries, the administration and monitoring by the labour offices of this group of (nearly unemployable) unemployed had led to a close association of these offices with poor relief. In this situation, the Munich labour office made considerable efforts to highlight its role as an organization related to the labour market.34 The market now served as an important legitimizing resource for claiming certain responsibilities and rejecting others.35 In the course of an ongoing conflict between the Munich labour office and the municipal welfare office, the director of the former, Robert Adam, made it clear that his office was an ‘institution of the free market economy’. It was therefore not responsible for ‘asocial persons’ such as the clients of communal poor-­relief institutions. The placement of job seekers would instead follow a ‘principle of selection’.36 Another effect of the introduction of unemployment benefits was employers’ perceptions that labour offices were more attractive options, improving the quality of placement as well. Due to the system of unemployment benefits, ‘all available workers of a certain branch [Berufszweig] gather at the respective counters in the office, which allows the best to be selected’,37 as the Munich city councillor Schmidt explained to journalists in 1927. On the one hand, having more people registered as job seekers not only introduced people as clients whom the offices would potentially have rejected before the war, but it also provoked fears that the offices would be transformed into poor-­relief institutions. On the other hand, it also promised to provide a nearly all-­encompassing description (or Totalerfassung) of the labour market.38 Labour offices thus represent an example of the complex process involved in constructing the ‘labour market’. While matching people with jobs, they concurrently described and intervened in that market. These tasks went hand in hand with one another, for they were intrinsically tied to a notion of labour markets as comparable to capital and goods markets,

Organizing the Market? 31

thereby separating the provision of labour from poor relief. Yet after the First World War, with the advent of unemployment benefits, these tasks became linked. Labour offices became paradoxically related to welfare, while at the same time sharing the objective of depicting and monitoring the entire labour market.

Referring to Knowledge, Producing Knowledge From the Kaiserreich to the Weimar Republic, the Reich, states and cities worked to improve labour market reporting. As a consequence, an increasing number of labour exchanges had to report on their activities on a regular basis. The goal was to follow the same guiding principles so as to guarantee the comparability of the data gathered and in the process allow a German labour market to be constructed. The Labour Exchanges Law of 1922 regulated the reporting of all non-­commercial exchanges, while the Law on Job Placement and Unemployment Insurance (of 1927) identified the mission of the new Reich Agency for Job Placement and Unemployment Insurance as including investigations on the labour market. Basic terms like ‘job offer’, ‘job request’, ‘job seeker’, ‘placement’ or ‘unemployed’ had formerly been used quite differently by labour offices. The process of homogenization therefore demanded an ongoing definition of terms and a search for answers to countless questions: was it sufficient to provide a job seeker with information on an available job in order to categorize this practice as placement? Or would former job seekers have to prove that they had found employment with the assistance of the respective labour office? Was a stonemason still a stonemason even if he had been unemployed for more than five years? How should someone be categorized if he had dozens of different jobs in his work life? And when was a job to be defined as a job? The regulations that emerged out of the attempts to answer these basic questions for statistical (and related) purposes were clearly a factor in the labour offices’ practices of categorizing persons and matching them with jobs. They can hence be interpreted as attempts to establish legitimate and illegitimate forms of job seeking as well as being unemployed. Ultimately they were instrumental in constructing and describing a person’s work biography. Such official attempts, however, also relied upon or were confronted with practices of job seekers, employers, placement officers and other persons interacting in these offices. The offices’ production of labour market knowledge therefore referred to scientific labour market knowledge and to the practical knowledge of how to search for work or how to practice labour intermediation.39

32

Thomas Buchner

The basic decision on how to organize job placement serves as an example of the role played by different forms of knowledge – and their production – within the labour offices themselves. One alternative featured in the literature of the time was the bourse model. The shaping of labour offices as ‘labour bourses’ (Arbeitsbörsen) consciously referred to the notion of labour markets as comparable to capital and goods markets.40 The ‘labour bourse’ implied that job seekers had to be present in the office, waiting for incoming job offers to be called out and waiting to be selected for them by placement officers and/or employers. Apart from analogies with other market models, this model displayed similarities with the open air labour markets that could still be found in many German regions in the early decades of the twentieth century.41 However, the labour bourse included aspects that were usually associated with poor relief as well, since those offices implementing the bourse model usually provided cheap meals, bathing facilities and the services of tailors and shoemakers for having one’s clothes mended.42 Moreover, this system promised to concentrate a potentially dangerous group of people in a place where they could be monitored more effectively. Most German offices practised the calling out of job openings in at least some branches. Modified versions of it were used most prominently in the domestic servants’ departments, but it was also applied to short-­ term employees and day labourers. It was assumed to represent a flexible non-­bureaucratic procedure, one that enabled employers to select directly from the workers present while also producing limited comparability between those job seekers present. Furthermore, this system was portrayed as enabling job seekers and employers to immediately bargain on the conditions of the labour contract, which was assumed to be a suitable practice for the placement of short-­ term and/or unqualified labour. The second model assigned a crucial role to technical facilities, above all to card indexes. Each German labour office in the Kaiserreich used lists where requests and offers were noted. Yet this system proved insufficient for meeting the challenges of differentiated job placement. In particular, the placement of qualified workers seemed to demand a more sophisticated framework than making lists of job offers or simply calling them out in public. Card indexes promised to provide a solution, since they were expected to contain more information on available jobs as well as on job seekers, their respective qualifications and their work biographies. This system appeared to guarantee finding the ‘right man for the right job’, even if there were hundreds of available workers for each available job. Both labour exchange experts and the Reich’s Labour Administration privileged this system, at least following the First World War. For it

Organizing the Market? 33

appeared to be more objective, more rational and more effective than listing or calling out jobs, particularly in times of high unemployment.43 In practice, nonetheless, most labour offices made parallel use of both models. When the Munich labour office was founded in 1895, it was discussed whether its design should follow the model of the bourse. However the city council decided that this was inappropriate, since the necessity that job seekers wait in the office until they were selected for a vacant job would eventually exclude those who were not unemployed. Instead, the city council opted for a placement system based upon lists, which were later replaced by card indexes.44 However, the Munich office called out openings but concurrently deployed postcards, card indexes and telephones in order to make the constant presence of job seekers in the labour office superfluous.45 At first sight, the alternative bourse model or devices such as card indexes simply represented the decision that needed to be made, between modern and traditional placement procedures. However, this decision was also informed by and contributed to representations of the nature of labour markets and labour offices. After all, labour market experts in Imperial Germany saw these questions as related. In 1909, Rudolf Meerwarth (an economist at the Imperial Statistical Service) described the term ‘labour market’ as having two meanings. In one sense, it was a concrete site that enabled those seeking jobs and those offering them to meet. In another (more abstract) sense, it constituted the totality of conditions of exchange between labour supply and demand. Labour markets in the first sense might be dargestellt46 (or ‘represented’) by labour offices, while labour markets in the second sense extended far beyond the scope of individual labour offices. Some years later, Jastrow would define ‘labour market’ similarly, while underscoring the connection between the concrete and abstract forms. Like Meerwarth, he identified similar connotations for the labour market, both as a concrete place and an abstract totality of relationships between supply and demand. He further added that labour market also implied yet another meaning: it designated that organization which has been created for the market as a concrete place for the purposes of producing the abstract market.47 According to Jastrow, a labour market in the first and third senses would be identical with a labour office. The idea that labour offices were identical with labour markets and served as a tool of market intervention was widespread among scholars and in the offices,48 particularly in Imperial Germany. But it began to lose significance in the Weimar Republic, in the course of which the labour market and labour office became distinct entities.49 This transformation was paralleled by attempts on the part of the German labour administration to finally abandon the bourse model,

34

Thomas Buchner

since it was not only regarded as outdated, but also as disadvantageous. In many cases employers preferred a placement procedure where they were not forced to be present in labour offices. For their part, the unions were displeased with a system that clearly displayed parallels with poor-­relief institutions. In the revolution of 1918/19, the concentration of unemployed persons in labour offices was perceived to be dangerous, while the new system of unemployment benefits led to the circumstance that more people than ever before were showing up in offices that had not been built to accommodate so many. Further reasons included the practices of job seekers themselves: many workers were discontent with the bourse system since it eventually hindered alternative forms of job seeking, such as the time-­consuming but important practice of Umschau. In practice, however, it proved difficult to enforce or implement card indexes in all job placement departments. The president of the recently founded Bavarian Office for Job Placement had to admit in December 1929 that ‘countless’ offices had been working without the use of card files.50 Some months later, the Reich Savings Commissioner (Reichssparkommissar) noted that even the Munich labour office did not use card files in all departments.51 In May 1932, an inspection by the Reich Agency for Job Placement and Unemployment Insurance revealed that only a few departments had implemented a comprehensive card index, while others used them only selectively. Older placement officers in particular continued to avoid using the indexes. Rather, they claimed to have all relevant job seekers in mind, even when they were selecting from the unemployed present in the office at any given time.52 Both the attempts of the labour administration to abandon the calling out of job openings and the practice in most labour offices of combining different models of placement were informed by a scientific understanding of labour markets – or at least a practical knowledge of job seeking and placement. The bourse model drew on notions of the market as a concrete place, assigning a central role to the placement officer and demanding the permanent presence of job seekers. But this approach hindered alternative forms of job seeking. The card index model relied on an understanding of the labour market as an abstract phenomenon that could be regulated by scientific means. Yet more systematic use of such techniques – while it might relativize the placement officers’ experience and lead to a more formalized classification of job seekers, their qualifications and work ­biographies – did not succeed in keeping job seekers from using alternative strategies. To replace the bourse system with card indexes ultimately maintained an image of the labour market as an entity that, for all its proximity to labour offices, was nevertheless located outside them.53 Moreover, the

Organizing the Market? 35

use of different placement procedures in the offices’ departments practically affirmed the perception of the labour market as a deeply segmented market. Furthermore, this influenced the production of labour market knowledge inasmuch as different placement principles also represented different modes of data production. Admittedly, a broad range of persons contributed to the production and use of knowledge about and the construction of labour markets from within the labour offices. However, it was a matter of controversy just who in the context of the offices could legitimately claim to be a labour market actor – and precisely how these actors were positioned.

Placement Officers as Labour Market Actors Labour market theories do not usually consider placement officers as labour market actors, but they clearly played a potentially essential role. By matching people and jobs, such officers actually performed the task that experts regarded as representing the core of labour markets and the very function of labour offices. It was these officers who decided who would get a job and who might fill a vacant position. Once unemployment benefits (Erwerbslosenfürsorge) were introduced at the end of the First World War, the officers’ decisions not only contributed to job seekers’ chances of getting a job, but also had wide-­ranging implications for their material well-­being. The decisions made were critical in the construction of categories such as ‘employers’, ‘job seekers’ and ‘unemployed’. For the officers were responsible for how clients were registered and how they filled out their registration forms. As a result, they played a primary role in translating clients’ accounts (of their qualifications, work biographies and employment objectives) into classifiable and quantifiable accounts of job requests and offers. Lastly, placement officers represented the labour office as an organization. What they did was thus monitored by clients. Any misbehaviour could be reported in the press, thereby affecting the reputation of the offices and their attractiveness to job seekers and potential employers. Placement officers intervened in and regulated the labour market by contributing to the everyday construction of labour markets. They not only matched people with jobs, but also produced data that could be translated into statistics. At the same time, they were themselves deeply affected by scientific and administrative perceptions of the market. A striking expression of this can be found in the Weimar Republic. There, public labour offices were shaped as flexible organizations that were supposed to adhere to ‘the tidal movements of the business cycle’.54 The

36

Thomas Buchner

Munich office, for instance, had grown remarkably in size from seven employees in 1895 to 97 in 1920, not least due to the war. Now the German Army was demobilized, unemployment rates were moderate and public administration was forced to save on personnel expenditure.55 The municipal labour offices were not only confronted with reductions in staff and attempts to rationalize personnel planning. In keeping with labour market theory, it was assumed that unemployment rates both expressed and followed economic cycles; this notion became particularly important for labour offices once jobless benefits were instituted in the 1920s. These cycles were expected to cause additional fluctuations for the workload in public labour exchanges – fluctuations that were supposed to be accommodated both by the architecture and the personnel in the offices. When the Munich labour office building was erected between 1912 and 1914, the municipal administration instructed the architect, Hans Grässel, to include elements that might allow for quick cost-­saving modifications.56 This instruction then became one of the basic principles for all labour office buildings in the Weimar Republic. The personnel structure, too, was fundamentally altered in the context of the Labour Exchanges Law of 1922. This legislation reinforced the connection between labour offices and the administration of jobless benefits. Now the labour administration was compelled to differentiate between core personnel, additional staff (Zusatzkräfte) and temporary employees (Verstärkungskräfte).57 The number of employees comprising the core staff was based upon an annual prediction of the unemployment rate, while additional and temporary staff were hired to meet potential increases in unemployment. Since the predicted unemployment rate was usually far behind actual developments, most changes in the personnel structure affected additional staff and temporary employees. This circumstance enforced a further distinction: one group of employees and public servants had secure jobs and were eligible for a broad range of social benefits. Another group was employed only temporarily, and regularly risked becoming unemployed themselves; they in turn only partially profited from social insurance benefits. All this contributed to a bad working atmosphere, as stressed in a report by the works council of the Munich office.58 Particularly during the world economic crisis, the labour administration’s prognosis models turned out to be completely unrealistic: the personnel planning of the Munich labour office for 1930 was based upon an estimated daily unemployment figure of 12,000 – whereas the lowest figure for that year ended up at 25,500.59 This not only created an increased workload for employees,60 but likewise increased the number of temporary workers in the Munich labour office, particularly in the unemployment insurance division.

Organizing the Market? 37

The scientific prognosis of labour market developments, representing a modern notion of the market, therefore had far-­reaching impacts on labour office employees. However, the offices themselves constituted a form of labour relations and recruitment that seemed to be excluded from this modern notion. Not all the tasks performed in the offices were, in fact, defined as occupations (in the sense of gainful employment). In the early years, public labour offices frequently had to rely upon volunteers from welfare institutions. Some of these employees, particularly in the women’s division, were doing unpaid work. Their activity was identified as a form of social welfare, not as commodified labour dependent on the market. Some of this volunteer labour even continued into the Weimar Republic, a period when the labour administration (ironically) boasted that it was a highly professionalized organization. Moreover, labour office employees were themselves only partially affected by the labour market organization they were obliged to represent and implement. Surprisingly, they were only partially recruited by means of public labour intermediation. Instead, vacancies in labour offices were filled by candidates who were first proposed by unions’ and employers’ delegates to the governing boards, and who were then selected by their respective municipalities.61 Employers and unions were equally represented in these councils, which in turn assured their support of the public labour offices. Consequently, these councils were a precondition for the success of public labour offices, yet that success came at the cost of decisively influencing which personnel were appointed. Not surprisingly, the filling of vacant positions was frequently depicted as clientelism and patronage – forms of labour market transactions that these offices had been founded to replace.62 The relation between labour offices and markets was equally a factor in the job description of the placement officer. Experts regarded the placement officer as a (politically) neutral actor who would mediate supply and demand and whose position was comparable to that of an auctioneer in goods or capital markets. One of the basic principles of public job placement, therefore, was to treat employers and job seekers on an equal basis. This circumstance was supported by the architecture of labour exchanges. The offices devoted to job placement were usually located between the strictly separated rooms for job seekers and employers, thereby positioning placement officers as crucial links between the supply and demand of labour. However, the practice of job placement did not proceed according to logic. For the practice of governing boards – initially established to secure the neutrality of public labour offices – was to promote candidates for vacant positions. This in fact served to cast doubt on the assumed

38

Thomas Buchner

neutrality of the placement officers. Furthermore, particularly in times of high unemployment when job opportunities were scarce and masses of unemployed populated the offices, many job seekers desperately tried to influence the officers’ decisions. Job placement, then, was a highly interpersonal process that did not allow one to take a neutral position.63 However, the perception of labour offices as organizations that regulated and described labour markets (thereby representing them as well) was a factor resulting in ambiguities with respect to the job description, tasks, expectations and ultimate positioning of a placement officer. Here again, the bourse and the card index models represented the major points of reference in Imperial and Weimar Germany. The bourse model usually expected this outcome: placement officers would pre-­select from the job seekers present in the waiting rooms a number of candidates who potentially matched an employer’s expectations. Nonetheless, the use of technical devices like card indexes did not position placement officers much differently. According to such a model, they were likewise expected to pre-­select candidates with the difference being that their decisions were based upon the information provided by card indexes. At the same time, however, the differences between the models should not be underestimated. The calling out of openings included a less formalized, public selection and implied more personal interaction. In the process, the job seekers in the waiting rooms could monitor, comment on and even question the placement officer’s decisions.64 Although the bourse model also implied the use of lists and should not be misunderstood as dissimilar to the first model, the selection process per se represented an interactive process including an active role for job seekers. By contrast, the use of card indexes made an interactive identification of potential candidates superfluous since the information necessary to match people and jobs was supposed to be included in the files that were produced when job seekers were registered. Consequently, the card index model in its purest form would have largely entailed the absence of job seekers in the labour offices. In both models, placement officers served as actors in the labour market. However, for the card index model as designed by the labour administration, one can speak of a ‘distributed agency’65 between placement officers and technical methods. For the labour administration assumed the interplay of both officers and card indexes as constituting rational job placement. Although the use of card indexes became more prevalent in the Weimar Republic, the calling out of openings continued as did the officers’ personal selection of candidates – not least due to the permanent presence of countless job seekers in the offices by the early 1930s. The world economic crisis as such changed the placement

Organizing the Market? 39

officers’ role observably: although the Reich Agency stressed that placing job seekers was still the prime task of labour offices,66 many placement officers were assigned other duties, such as dispensing certifying stamps to the unemployed.67 Yet when the labour offices shared the work in the unemployment insurance departments,68 the other divisions frequently had to assist them. All this rendered moot the decision between different models of job placement. Furthermore, the lack of space meant that the ‘architectural’ backing of the placement officers’ distinct position was no longer available. Thus from the late 1920s on, the Munich labour office even used the basement, where rooms had to be shared with a soup kitchen.69 By no means, however, did placement officers hold a marginal position. At a time when job openings came to be regarded as a scarce good – in lieu of being perceived as an offer on a free market – officers functioned more like almsgivers than mediators. This situation challenged the neutrality expected of placement officers even further. Employees in some labour offices were accused not only of stealing money from unemployment benefits accounts but also of selling job offers to the unemployed70 – something the fiercely opposed commercial agencies were alleged to have done. Finally, labour offices became arenas of partisan dispute, thereby undermining the notion of labour offices as apolitical zones and the assumption that placement officers exercised political neutrality. The Munich office reported that employees were wearing uniforms and other expressions of political preference. Furthermore, ‘black lists’ circulated in the office, including the names of employees who were to be removed after a regime change had taken place.71 In March of 1932, the labour office administration was forced to reiterate the ban on political discussions or talking about other employees’ views while at the workplace.72 The ambiguity of the officers’ basic tasks was consistent with the failure of all attempts to clearly define the necessary qualifications required by the job.73 Likewise, while the Association of German Labour Agencies and the Reich Agency for Job Placement and Unemployment Insurance offered advanced professional courses, no formalized basic training could be established throughout the Imperial and Weimar periods.74 Apart from the obvious obstacles to reaching a political consensus in a highly disputed field of interests, the heterogeneity of the offices’ clients was perceived as impeding the establishment of any consistent profile for officers’ qualification. However, there were some basic job requirements placement officers were expected to have. These were not altered substantially, no matter how much labour offices were transformed. In general, it was assumed that officers had acquired practical knowledge of the vocations and branches

40

Thomas Buchner

they were responsible for. It was hoped that this might ultimately improve the quality of placement and create a better understanding of the challenges and characteristics of the relevant occupations. This remained an important requirement throughout Imperial and Weimar Germany, although it was reformulated by the Reich’s Labour Administration from time to time. In the late 1920s, for example, the Munich labour office described the main requirement for placement officers as having ‘themselves experienced the distress of struggle for survival and thus acquired the ability to treat their comrades [Volksgenossen] properly’.75 Hence many placement officers’ work biographies included experiences in the types of occupation they became responsible for in the labour office. As far as we can conclude from the available sources, the Munich labour office mostly complied with this expectation. A list from 1922 that included information on the placement officers reveals that nearly all of them had been working in the occupation(s) they were responsible for in the labour office.76 Clearly, this meant that the placement officers also had remarkably heterogeneous professional backgrounds. Apart from the practical knowledge placement officers (especially the male ones) were expected to have acquired,77 the requirements as described both in legal regulations and in administrative correspondence remained rather vague.78 However, they usually included the ‘knowledge of human nature’79 and the capacity for patience with the labour office clients, for the Munich labour offices were repeatedly described as serving job seekers who were ‘difficult to handle’.80 In the Weimar Republic, the tasks performed in labour offices became highly differentiated due to increased unemployment, not to speak of attempts to rationalize public administration generally. The result was more desk work than ever before.81 As jobs in the offices became more specified, good schooling gained importance as one of the basic requirements. However, practical knowledge and particularly some form of social competence were still highly esteemed. Although the ability to recognize the right person for an opening was now partially delegated to psycho-­technical tests and new experts like vocational counsellors or psychologists,82 the capacity to evaluate the ‘whole person’ was now more frequently assumed to define a good placement officer. This capacity was thus perceived to be rooted in character – an assessment that once again hindered the establishment of formalized basic training. German placement officers, in the end, were confronted with divergent and frequently conflicting expectations. On the one hand, the labour administration expected them to be a type of labour market ‘auctioneer’, maintaining strict neutrality while at the same time being constantly involved in personal interactions deemed ‘particularly exhausting’.83 They

Organizing the Market? 41

were additionally expected to perform a specialized task that nonetheless allowed only rudimentary preparation in the form of training or schooling. Hence, the labour administration – an organization engaged in promoting the notion of ‘vocation’ – faced major difficulties in constructing the vocation of ‘placement officer’.

Conclusion The establishment of the category ‘Arbeitsmarkt’ (labour market) in Germany in the 1890s was closely related to the establishment of public labour offices. This article has argued that it is misleading to conceive of labour offices as mere tools for regulating labour markets. Rather, labour offices both contributed to the construction of labour markets and were themselves shaped by notions of those markets. Contemporary experts perceived the labour offices as representing something called the ‘labour market’, and as something that regulated this market and allowed it to be described. At the same time, the development of labour offices was based upon (and referenced) notions of the labour market and knowledge about job seeking. While the idea that labour offices were identical with labour markets and served as a tool of market intervention was widespread in Imperial Germany, it began to lose significance in the Weimar Republic: market and labour offices had become distinct entities, the offices now being reduced to tools of market intervention and description. The examples given of personnel structure and placement principles show how labour offices were constituted according to knowledge of labour markets. This chapter has further portrayed placement officers as agents actively involved in the construction of labour markets. For it was they who actually produced and regulated the market, and their employment relations were deeply affected by labour market prognoses, a method that in turn depicted the modern notion of the market which they helped to produce. Yet at the same time, the occupation of placement officer did not constitute a distinct vocation, i.e., a category the labour administration regarded to be a crucial part of modern labour markets. There was no standardized training for the officers, and their professional backgrounds were not uniform. In addition, their jobs were not always conducted as gainful employment, and their recruitment was a far cry from what labour administration regarded as constituting modern job placement. The cases outlined here confirm how labour offices were sites where different forms of work, of labour intermediation and of labour market perceptions contributed to the construction of labour markets.

42

Thomas Buchner

Consequently, the construction of labour markets in late nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­ century Germany involved non-­ market phenomena as well.

Notes The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) / ERC grant agreement no. 200918 (project ‘The Production of Work’ at the University of Vienna, principal investigator: Dr. Sigrid Wadauer). For comments on earlier versions of this chapter, I would like to thank Sigrid Wadauer, Alexander Mejstrik and Irina Vana.  1. There are divergent accounts of when the first public labour exchanges were established in Germany. However, the establishment of municipal labour exchanges, administered by governing boards where employers and unions were equally represented was the basis for the success story of public labour exchanges in the following decades. The first of these exchanges was established in Esslingen (1894). See H.-­W. Schmuhl. 2003. Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung in Deutschland 1871–2002. Zwischen Fürsorge, Hoheit und Markt, Nuremberg: Institut für Arbeitsmarkt-­und Berufsforschung der Bundesanstalt für Arbeit, 33.   2. On the early history of public labour offices in Germany see Schmuhl, Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung; A. Faust. 1986. Arbeitsmarktpolitik im Deutschen Kaiserreich. Arbeitsvermittlung, Arbeitsbeschaffung und Arbeitslosenunterstützung 1890–1918, Stuttgart: Steiner; W.R. Krabbe. 1981. ‘Die Gründung städtischer Arbeiterschutz-­ Anstalten in Deutschland: Arbeitsnachweis, Arbeitslosenfürsorge, Gewerbegericht und Rechtsauskunftsstelle’, in W. Conze and U. Engelhardt (eds), Arbeiterexistenz im 19. Jahrhundert. Lebensstandard und Lebensgestaltung deutscher Arbeiter und Handwerker, Stuttgart: Klett-­Cotta, 427–434; O. Uhlig. 1970. Arbeit amtlich angeboten. Der Mensch auf seinem Markt. Stuttgart/Berlin/Cologne/Mainz: Kohlhammer.   3. See for example, G. Adler. 1909. ‘Arbeitsnachweis und Arbeitsbörsen’, in J. Conrad et al. (eds), Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 3rd revised edition, vol.1, Jena: G. Fischer, 1130, 1135. The establishment of public labour exchanges was also supported at an international level: The ILO Washington agreement on unemployment (issued November 28, 1919) included an obligation for all states to establish a system of noncommercial public labour exchanges with a central office and an administration representing workers and employers. D.G. Maier. 2004. Anfänge und Brüche der Arbeitsverwaltung bis 1952. Zugleich ein kaum bekanntes Kapitel der deutsch-­jüdischen Geschichte (= Schriftenreihe der Fachhochschule des Bundes für öffentliche Verwaltung 43), Brühl: Fachhochschule des Bundes für Öffentliche Verwaltung, 28.   4. An overview on contemporaneous conceptions of public labour offices is provided by W. Lins. 1923. ‘Arbeitsmarkt und Arbeitsnachweis’, in L. Elster (ed.), Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 4th revised ed., vol.1, Jena: G. Fischer, 824–839 and T. Buchner. 2011. ‘Orte der Produktion von Arbeitsmarkt. Arbeitsämter in Deutschland, 1890–1933’, in P. Becker (ed.), Sprachvollzug im Amt. Kommunikation und Verwaltung im Europa des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 305–334.  5. Within an economic framework, public labour intermediaries are described as institutions optimizing labour market outcomes by lowering transaction costs and solving the problem of adverse selection that arises when uninformed job seekers are not able to distinguish between high and low quality (private) agencies. For an example, see W. Lee.

Organizing the Market? 43

 6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

2009. ‘Private Deception and the Rise of Public Employment Offices in the United States, 1890–1930’, in D.H. Autor (ed.), Studies of Labor Market Intermediation (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 155–182. J. Lie. 1997. ‘Sociology of Markets’, Annual Review of Sociology 23, 342f. See, for a similar argument, R. Dilley. 1992. ‘Contesting Markets: A General Introduction to Market Ideology, Imagery and Discourse’, in idem (ed.), Contesting Markets: Analyses of Ideology, Discourse and Practice, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 12. This argument is based upon contributions from the New Economic Sociology. See for example, J. Beckert. 2002. ‘Vertrauen und die performative Konstruktion von Märkten’, Zeitschrift für Soziologie 31(1), 27–43; M. Callon (ed.). 1998. The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Blackwell; D. MacKenzie (ed.). 2007. Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics, Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press; K. Knorr-­ Cetina. 2009. ‘What is a Financial Market?’, in J. Beckert and C. Deutschmann (eds), Wirtschaftssoziologie, Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 326–343. In 1896, the first regular year of activity, the Munich office registered 47,008 requests, 30,057 job offers, and 25,586 placements. In 1929, these numbers had risen to 265,335 requests, 127,827 job offers and 110,009 placements. See Städtisches Arbeitsamt München. 1897. Erster Geschäftsbericht 1895/96, Munich, 18; Bayerisches Statistisches Landesamt (ed.) 1930. Statistisches Jahrbuch für den Freistaat Bayern 1930, Munich: J. Lindauersche Universitäts-­Buchhandlung, 193. During the period when German labour offices were integrated into municipal administration (before 1928), at least the major offices published annual reports. However after 1928, reports on the activities of single labour offices are only sometimes available, which constitutes one of the difficulties in tracing the impact of the crisis on single offices. On contemporary experts’ perceptions of the Munich office, see for example, I. Jastrow. 1902. ‘Die Leistungen des öffentlichen Arbeitsnachweises in Deutschland’, in idem Sozialpolitik und Verwaltungswissenschaft. Aufsätze und Abhandlungen, vol.I, Berlin: G. Reimer, 161f; E. Graack. 1926. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Deutschland. Entstehung – Formen – Wirksamkeit, Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 28ff. The Munich labour office appears to be among the first German labour offices to coordinate youth apprenticeship placement centrally (1902). D. Meskill. 2010. Optimizing the German Workforce: Labor Administration from Bismarck to the Economic Miracle, New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 46. Apart from Munich, other Bavarian labour offices were established early on for placing apprentices. See for example, on Augsburg: N.N. 2000. 100 Jahre Arbeitsamt Augsburg. Oktober 1900 – September 2000. Vom Arbeitsnachweis zum Dienstleister. Station und Wandel einer 'Behörde', Augsburg: Agentur für Arbeit, 10. Experts from all over the world, interested in the German labour offices, usually also visited the Munich office, including William Beveridge. See W.H. Beveridge. 1953. Power and Influence, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 56. In 1900, an American visitor described the Munich office ‘which is admittedly the best managed and which has served as a model for many of the others’. He further noted: ‘The work of the office is administered with typical German thoroughness’. E.L. Bogart. 1900. ‘Public Employment Offices in the United States and Germany’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 14(3), 372. On the variety of labour intermediaries in Münster, see S. Brockfeld. 1995. ‘Vom “Arbeitsnachweis-­ Bureau” zum “Arbeitsnachweisamt”. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Münster vom Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg’, in F.-­J. Jakobi (ed.), Stadtgesellschaft im Wandel. Untersuchungen zur Sozialgeschichte Münsters im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Münster: Regensberg, 69–84. On Gustave de Molinari and his ideas on labour intermediation, see E. Deslé. 1991. Arbeidsbemiddeling en/of werklozencontrole. Het voorbeeld van de Gents arbeidsbeurs

44

14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

Thomas Buchner

(1891–1914), Gent: Gemeentekrediet, 39ff; G. de Molinari. 1893. Les Bourses du Travail, Paris: Guillaumin and Cie. B. Zimmermann. 2003. ‘Municipal Innovations Versus National Wait-­and-­See Attitudes: Unemployment Politics in Kaiserreich Germany (1871–1918)’, in M. Dagenais, I. Maver and P.-­Y. Saunier (eds), Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City: New Historical Approaches, Aldershot: Ashgate, 84–102; G. Steinmetz. 1993. Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany, Princeton: Princeton University Press. On the ‘discovery of unemployment’ in the German context see B. Zimmermann. 2006. Arbeitslosigkeit in Deutschland. Zur Entstehung einer sozialen Kategorie, Frankfurt/M. and New York: Campus Verlag. D.G. Maier. 2010. Ignaz Jastrow. Sozialliberale Positionen in Wissenschaft und Politik (= Jüdische Miniaturen 103), Berlin: Hentrich and Hentrich, 55. However, the homogenization of public labour offices, as promoted by the Association of German Labour Exchanges, was not uncontested. Before the First World War, the Association of Westphalian Labour Exchanges, for example, resisted the clear separation between job placement and poor relief that was promoted by the national association. See K.H. Pohl. 1991. Zwischen protestantischer Ethik, Unternehmerinteresse und organisierter Arbeiterbewegung. Zur Geschichte der Arbeitsvermittlung in Bielefeld (Bielefelder Beiträge zur Stadt-­und Regionalgeschichte, Bd. 8), Bielefeld: Verlag des Stadtarchivs, 154. Apart from job placement and reporting on its activities, the Munich office was responsible for advising on all questions regarding workers and labour relationships; Staatsarchiv München, Arbeitsämter nr. 1015, Statut für das städtische Arbeitsamt (Munich, 15.6.1895). See also the first report on the activities of the Munich labour office with its description of the major tasks of public labour offices: Städtisches Arbeitsamt München. Erster Geschäftsbericht, 3. In the Weimar Republic, these tasks remained important but were supplemented by vocational counselling and relief by providing work (produktive Erwerbslosenfürsorge). See Stadtarchiv München, Arbeitsamt Nr. 2, letter from Munich city council, department XI, to the directorate (2 February 1922), 3. Small offices in particular faced difficulties when producing reports on their activities. The small Bavarian city of Passau, for example, established a municipal labour exchange in 1897 but was unable (or unwilling) to report on offers, requests and placements even some years after it had been founded. See H. Rottenecker. 1981. ‘Geschichte, Arbeitsmarkt – Arbeitsamt’, in idem (ed.), Arbeitsamt Passau – Arbeitsmarkt gestern und heute (= Festschrift zur Einweihung des neuen Dienstgebäudes des Arbeitsamtes Passau am 14. Januar 1981), Passau: Neue Presse, 36. Öffentlicher Arbeitsnachweis. Arbeitsamt München. 1926. Geschäftsbericht 1925, Munich: Carl Gerber, 10. See I. Jastrow. 1918. ‘Arbeitsmarkt’, in Josef Brix et al. (eds), Handwörterbuch der Kommunalwissenschaften, vol.I: Abdeckerei – Filtration des Wassers, Jena: G. Fischer, 126–131. ‘The very abstraction of the market – its ontological indeterminacy – allows for its universal applicability’. Lie, ‘Sociology of Markets’, 342. See, for example, B. Gleitze. 1928. ‘Die deutsche Arbeitsmarktstatistik. Ihre Entwicklung und Methode’, Die Arbeit 5(I), 171. Accordingly, the Institute for Business Cycle Research (Institut für Konjunkturforschung) included labour market statistics in its business cycle analysis. See also J.A. Tooze. 2001. Statistics and the German State, 1900–1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 129. Apart from Jastrow’s project, there were other attempts to establish regular labour market reporting in Germany. Richard Calwer, an economist and Social Democrat, published annual reports on the economy as of 1901, including reports on the labour market. However, Calwer was relying upon Jastrow’s data and figures. See, for example, R. Calwer

Organizing the Market? 45

(ed.). 1901. Handel und Wandel. Jahresberichte über den Wirtschafts-­und Arbeitsmarkt, Berlin/Bern: Edelheim Verlag. 25. Bayerisches Statistisches Landesamt. 1933. Hundert Jahre Bayerisches Statistisches Landesamt, Munich: Carl Gerber, 129f. See for example, F. Zahn. 1903. ‘Die deutsche Arbeiterstatistik’, Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich N.F. 27(4), 1501–1518. On Zahn’s importance for statistics in Wilhelmine Germany, see J.A. Tooze, Statistics, 45. 26. From 1909, these statistics were published in the journal Reichsarbeitsblatt. 27. Städtisches Arbeitsamt München. 1901. Fünfter Geschäftsbericht. 1900, Munich: Carl Gerber, 28. 28. These reports were daily business in labour offices; in the large offices they were frequently conducted and/or supervised by officers who had studied economics. Although in general the reports became more differentiated, their structure showed no clear development. For example, in 1915 the labour office’s annual report introduced ‘male’ and ‘female’ labour market as the main differentiation, each divided into a number of branches. However, the reports in the following years only partially stressed this differentiation. Städtisches Arbeitsamt München. 1916. 20. Geschäftsbericht. 1915, Munich: Carl Gerber, 12f. 29. Städtisches Arbeitsamt München. 1905. Neunter Geschäftsbericht. 1904, Munich: Carl Gerber, 8. 30. See D. Puppe. 1923. ‘Die neuere Entwicklung der amtlichen Statistik des Arbeitsmarkts, insbesondere der Arbeitsnachweisstatistik in Deutschland’, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik 3.F. 66, 161f. 31. On demobilization in Munich (as compared to Manchester) see A. Seipp. 2009. The Ordeal of Peace: Demobilization and the Urban Experience in Britain and Germany, 1917–1921, Burlington/Farnham/London: Ashgate. 32. Before the First World War, some German cities had introduced systems of unemployment benefits following the example of the Ghent system, which usually stipulated that those unemployed seeking assistance had to register as job seekers at the municipal labour exchange. However, this measure was restricted to union members. On the best known example of Strasbourg, see N. Whiteside. 2007. ‘Unemployment Revisited in Comparative Perspective: Labour Market Policy in Strasbourg and Liverpool, 1890–1914’, International Review of Social History 52(I), 35–56. On the example of Mannheim, see W. Förster. 1994. Arbeitsamt Mannheim 1893–1993. Institution – Wirtschaft – Bevölkerung – Politik. Eine Jahrhundertbetrachtung, Mannheim: Pylon, 37f. In Bavaria, only the city of Erlangen introduced the Ghent system, while in several other cities, including Munich, similar solutions were discussed but in the end not introduced. See C. Brunner. 1992. Arbeitslosigkeit in München 1927 bis 1933. Kommunalpolitik in der Krise (= Miscellanea Bavarica Monacensia Bd. 162), Munich: Kommissionsverlag Uni-­Druck München, 27ff. 33. See, for example, Stadtarchiv München, Wohlfahrtsamt nr. 4262 (letter from Ulrich Roth to the mayor of Munich) (29 May 1929); ibid., circular of the Munich welfare office (10 July 1929), 3. On the Munich welfare politics during the crisis see W. Rudloff. 1998. Die Wohlfahrtsstadt. Kommunale Ernährungs-­, Fürsorge-­und Wohnungspolitik am Beispiel Münchens 1910–1933, vol.2, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 885–949. 34. H. Jülich. 1927. Öffentlicher Arbeitsnachweis und Wirtschaft. Eine kritische Betrachtung aktueller Arbeitsnachweisfragen, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 33. 35. However, this view did not go unchallenged, even in the offices. In 1922, the works council described the labour office’s main task to be a social one: those workers who could not be placed by commercial exchanges or by philanthropic, union or employer exchanges should get work through the help of the labour office in order to make them ‘useful parts of mankind’ again. Stadtarchiv München, Arbeitsamt nr. 2, letter from the works council to the management of the municipal labour office (4 September 1922), 1.

46

Thomas Buchner

36. Stadtarchiv München, Wohlfahrtsamt nr. 4262. Minutes of the meeting between the directors of the labour and welfare offices (6 November 1928); letter from the Munich labour office to the city’s welfare office (24 November 1928); see also Brunner, Arbeitslosigkeit in München, 136ff. 37. Stadtarchiv München, Arbeitsamt nr. 1, report on a meeting with journalists (21 January 1927), 8f. 38. On Totalerfassung as the aim of German labour administration, see Meskill, Optimizing the German Workforce. In 1928, Gerhard Mackenroth’s account of the public labour exchange in Halle from 1928 concluded that before the First World War, the public labour office ‘only’ represented a ‘selection’ of female, unorganized and unqualified workers, while in the 1920s the office better ‘mirrored’ the labour market. G. Mackenroth. 1928. Die Entwicklung des öffentlichen Arbeitsnachweises unter der Verwaltung der Stadt Halle 1914–1928 (= Beiträge zur mitteldeutschen Wirtschaftsgeschichte und Wirtschaftskunde Beiträge zur mitteldeutschen Wirtschaftsgeschichte 9), Halberstedt: H. Meyer, 10f. 39. Job seeking knowledge can be regarded as one of those ‘popular economic representations’ which Philippe Steiner describes as a form of economic knowledge. See P. Steiner. 2001. ‘The Sociology of Economic Knowledge’, European Journal of Social Theory 4(4), 444. 40. This designation obviously referred to the French term bourses du travail as well. Yet although they were intensively discussed in late nineteenth-­century Germany, the French labour bourses did not serve as an example for public offices. In other languages as well, the term bourse was frequently used to designate labour exchanges, for example in the Netherlands, where they were featured as arbeidsbeurzen. See Malcolm Mansfield’s chapter in this volume, and P. Schöttler. 1982. Die Entstehung der ‘Bourses du Travail’. Sozialpolitik und Syndikalismus am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus; R. van Bekkum. 1996. Tussen Vraag en Aanbod. Op zoek naar de identiteit van de arbeidsvoorzieningsorganisatie, The Hague: Sdu Uitgevers. 41. Open air labour markets were still active in the first years of the twentieth century, not only in the countryside for the placement of farm workers and servants, but also in big cities like Munich on the Marienplatz (one of the central plazas of the city with the town hall as its dominant building). On Munich, see C. Rädlinger. 1995. 100 Jahre Arbeitsamt München 1895–1995. Von der Arbeitsvermittlung zur Arbeitsförderung, Munich: Verlag des Arbeitsamtes, 28. On Bavarian open air labour markets in general, see G. Kapfhammer. 1968. ‘Gesindemärkte in Bayern’, Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde, 145–147. 42. Many labour offices provided these services. See for example, on Berlin, C. Mattiesson. 2007. Die Rationalisierung des Menschen. Architektur und Kultur der deutschen Arbeitsämter, 1890–1945, Berlin: G. Reimer, 73. 43. See F. Lauer. 1908. Die Praxis des öffentlichen Arbeitsnachweises, Berlin: G. Reimer, 11–16. See also H. Jülich. 1927. Beiträge zur Technik der Arbeitsvermittlung. 2. Teil: Die bürotechnischen Grundlagen der Arbeitsvermittlung, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer; idem, 1930. Arbeitsvermittlung als Dienst am Menschen. Berlin: Verlag des Zentralverbandes der Angestellten, 11ff; O. Nerschmann. 1926. ‘Vom Wesen der öffentlichen Arbeitsvermittlung’, in idem (ed.), Der Neubau des öffentlichen Arbeitsnachweises Dresden und Umgebung. Eine Werbeschrift anlässlich der Eröffnung des neuen Gebäudes Oktober 1926, Dresden: Volkmann, 12ff. 44. Städtisches Arbeitsamt München, Erster Geschäftsbericht, 11. 45. Rädlinger, 100 Jahre Arbeitsamt München 1895–1995, 22f. 46. R. Meerwarth. 1909. ‘Der Arbeitsmarkt und seine Statistik’, Deutsches Statistisches Zentralblatt I(4), 97f. 47. Jastrow, Arbeitsmarkt, 126. 48. A number of documents produced by the Munich labour office assume similarities between labour offices and labour markets. See for example, Staatsarchiv München, Arbeitsämter nr.

Organizing the Market? 47

1013, memorandum ‘Wie soll sich das Arbeitsamt München im Falle eines Streiks verhalten?’ (1903). 49. See, for example, the article of Wilhelm Lins in the third edition of the leading Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, in which he restricted the definition of ‘labour market’ to a relationship between job offers and demands. In this account, he defined labour exchanges as a regulated form of market exchange. Lins, Arbeitsmarkt und Arbeitsnachweis. 50. See Stadtarchiv München, Wohlfahrt Nr. 4189, report by the president of the Bavarian labour office (Landesarbeitsamt) at a meeting with the governing board (13–14 December 1929 in Nuremberg), 4. 51. Stadtarchiv München, Wohlfahrt Nr. 4235, report by the Reich Savings Commissioner (Reichssparkommissar) on his inspection of the Munich labour office, 6–19 January 1931 (30 June 1931). 52. Stadtarchiv München, Bürgermeister und Rat nr. 1469, excerpt from the report by the Reich Agency for Job Placement and Unemployment Insurance on an inspection of the Munich labour office, 18 April – 12 May 1932, 5f; ibid., response to the report by the management of the labour office (n.d.), 30. However, the labour office also mentioned that the abolition of the so-­called Anwesenheitsvermittlung (the calling out of openings) would be counterproductive, for example, in the department for domestic servants, since employers wished to choose from a number of women present at the office. Ibid., 41. 53. See, for example, Friedrich Syrup, president of the Reich Labour Administration, who described labour offices exclusively as tools of labour market policy. F. Syrup. 1927. ‘Arbeitsmarkt und Arbeitsmarktpolitik in Deutschland’, in Reichsarbeitsverwaltung (ed.), Arbeitsrecht, Arbeitsmarkt und Arbeitsschutz. Ausgewählte Vorträge aus einem Ausbildungskursus der Reichsarbeitsverwaltung (= Sonderheft zum Reichsarbeitsblatt 38), Berlin: Verlag des Reichsarbeitsblattes (R. Hobbing), 7–26. As a parallel development, the German Historical School of Economics lost significance while labour markets increasingly attracted economists who eventually rejected institutionalist and historical perceptions of markets as concrete places. 54. This expression was used by the administrative department responsible for the Munich municipal labour office in a report to the city council. Staatsarchiv München, Arbeitsämter nr. 1020, Munich city council, department XI to the magistrate’s directorate (20 February 1922). 55. A report from early October 1922 estimated that the number of employees in the labour office had been reduced by 30 per cent since January 1921. See Staatsarchiv München, Arbeitsämter nr. 1021, report of department XI (2 October 1922). 56. See H. Grässel. 1916. Das städtische Verwaltungsgebäude für Arbeiterangelegenheiten in München, Munich: Seyfried. 57. In 1923 the number of core personnel was based upon an assumed number of unemployed of 3,000. See Öffentlicher Arbeitsnachweis Arbeitsamt München. 1925. Geschäftsbericht 1922–1924, Munich: Carl Gerber, 7. In 1925, this was reduced to an assumed number of 1,500 unemployed. Öffentlicher Arbeitsnachweis Arbeitsamt München. 1926. Geschäftsbericht 1925, Munich: Carl Gerber, 14. 58. Stadtarchiv München, Arbeitsamt nr. 2, letter from the works council to the directorate of the labour office (4 September 1922), 1f. 59. Stadtarchiv München, Wohlfahrt 4235, 14th meeting of the governing board, proceedings (17 September 1930), 5. During peak times, the ratio of officers to unemployed was much worse: on August 4th 1930, more than 30,000 unemployed were counted. Due to holidays and illness, 65 employed were out of the office. Therefore, only seven employees were available to deal with the cases of more than 14,000 unemployed. 60. In 1932, when the crisis reached its peak, the Munich labour offices’ works council complained bitterly about the catastrophic working conditions in the office. A growing number

48

61. 62.

63.

64. 65. 66. 67.

68.

69. 70.

71.

Thomas Buchner

of employees were said to be ill from nervous disorders. The entire office was seen to be characterized by an Antreibersystem. See Stadtarchiv München, Wohlfahrt nr. 4235, works council of the Munich labour office (2 October 1932), 1–3. Starting in 1927, the director of the provincial labour office chose from the proposed candidates. (AVAVG 1927, RGBl. § 36 (1)). Conflicts between labour offices’ clients and employees frequently resulted in job seekers describing the labour offices as institutions governed by nepotism and officers as profiteers of political intervention. For some examples from Munich, see Staatsarchiv München, Amtsgericht nr. 43365 (the case of Anna Feldhofer who made allegations against two placement officers). This was also stressed by the Reichsverband der Beamten und Angestellten der öffentlichen Arbeitsnachweise, Berufsberatungs-­und Wohlfahrtsämter und ähnlicher sozialer Einrichtungen Deutschlands. It not only pointed at the marginal position of the placement officers in the municipal administrations, but also complained about the political background of the personnel’s recruitment owing to interventions by the labour offices’ governing boards. See Staatsarchiv München, Regierung von Oberbayern 61709 (2 August 1920). The topic was even discussed in the governing board and the executive governing board of the Munich labour office. See for example, Stadtarchiv München, Bürgermeister und Rat nr. 1469, 31st meeting of the executive governing board, proceedings (20 June 1932), 7; ibid., 24th meeting of the governing board, proceedings (1 July 1932), 3ff. See for example, the letter from (the long-­term unemployed) Fritz Geiger describing such a situation. Stadtarchiv München, Bürgermeister und Rat nr. 1472, letter Fritz Geiger, 1. For examples in the Munich office, see Staatsarchiv München, Arbeitsämter Nr. 1013. On the notion of distributed agency see M. Callon and F. Muniesa. 2005. ‘Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices’, Organization Studies 26(8), 1236. Bundesarchiv (BArch) Berlin, R 3903/66, official note 54/29, 5. During the Weimar Republic, labour offices’ experts regular discussed the problem of how often unemployed had to receive certifying stamps. Each change, i.e. from dispensing certifying stamps three times a week to daily control, had considerable effects not only on the unemployed but also on the workload of officers, the use of buildings, and on providing security. See for example, Stadtarchiv München, Wohlfahrt Nr. 4235, 9th meeting of the governing board, proceedings (7 May 1930). On the placement officers and the increasing burden of dispensing certifying stamps, see the report of the Reichssparkommissar on his inspection of the Munich labour office, 6–19 January 1931 (30 June 1931). Stadtarchiv München, Wohlfahrt nr. 4235, 3. During the world economic crisis, the employees at the Munich labour offices’ insurance departments were differentiated into five groups, each of them responsible for a clearly defined task (Vorschreiber, Berechner, Überprüfer, Kartenzieher, Auszahler). See Stadtarchiv München, Bürgermeister und Rat nr. 1469, letter from the Munich labour office to the Bavarian Office for Job Placement AA (12 May 1930), 2; Staatsarchiv München, Arbeitsämter nr. 1001, guidelines for the organization of unemployment insurance in the labour offices, Berlin 1930 (ed. by the Reichsanstalt für Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversicherung). Stadtarchiv München, Wohlfahrt nr. 4235, 14th meeting of the governing board, proceedings (17 September 1930). Stadtarchiv München, Wohlfahrt nr. 4235, 18th meeting of the executive governing board, proceedings (25 November 1930), 19th meeting of the executive governing board, proceedings (15 January 1931); Stadtarchiv München, Bürgermeister und Rat nr. 1469, 15th meeting of the executive governing board (15 May 1930) (case of Otto Schmitt, accused of embezzlement). On blacklists in the Munich office, see Stadtarchiv München, Wohlfahrt Nr. 4235, 24th meeting of the governing board (1 July 1932), 3.

Organizing the Market? 49

72. Stadtarchiv München, Bürgermeister und Rat nr. 1469, Munich labour office circular nr. 524 (7 March 1932). 73. The labour exchanges law from 1922 included some very general requirements for appointing labour offices’ directors and the employment of female placement officers, but remarkably did not assign any requirements for male placement officers. The Bavarian Office for Job Placement even decided as a result that the hiring of employees who were unsuitable for the job of placement officer was not against the law. See Stadtrat Dr. K.H. Fischer. 1926. Das Recht des ANPersonals. Darstellung der gesamten Rechtsverhältnisse des Personals der Arbeitsnachweisämter, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 19. 74. On these attempts, see Maier, Anfänge und Brüche, 56f. 75. Arbeitsamt München. 1928. Geschäftsbericht 1927/28, Munich: Carl Gerber, 8. 76. Staatsarchiv München, Arbeitsämter nr. 1021, list from 1 September 1922. 77. Female officers were expected to be particularly sensitive and patient. See Lauer, Praxis des öffentlichen Arbeitsnachweises, 9. 78. Not surprisingly, some contemporaries were convinced that placement officers were recruited ‘more or less by chance’. M. Ehlert. 1924. ‘Arbeitsnachweis’, in O. Karstedt et al. (eds), Handwörterbuch der Wohlfahrtspflege, Berlin: Heymann, 45. 79. Jülich, Arbeitsvermittlung als Dienst am Menschen, 23. 80. See, for example, Staatsarchiv München, Arbeitsämter nr. 1015, proposals by Dr. Konrad concerning the development of the labour office (13 November 1918). 81. On rationalization in German public administration, see P. Collin. 2009. ‘Ökonomisierung durch Bürokratisierung. Leitkonzepte und Umsetzungsstrategien in der tayloristisch beeinflußten Verwaltungsreformdebatte der Weimarer Republik’, in idem (ed.), Eine intelligente Maschine? Handlungsorientierungen moderner Verwaltung (19./20.Jh.), Baden-­Baden: Nomos, 217–232. 82. See Meskill, Optimizing the German Workforce; R. Rosenberger. 2008. Experten für Humankapital. Die Entdeckung des Personalmanagements in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Munich: Oldenburg, 59. 83. Stadtarchiv München, Arbeitsamt nr. 2, department XI of the Munich city council, memorandum concerning the re-­organization of the Munich labour office (9 April 1923), 3.

Bibliography Adler, G. 1909. ‘Arbeitsnachweis und Arbeitsbörsen’, in J. Conrad et al. (eds), Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, Jena: G. Fischer, 1130–1140. Bayerisches Statistisches Landesamt (ed.). 1930. Statistisches Jahrbuch für den Freistaat Bayern 1930, Munich: J. Lindauersche Universitäts-­Buchhandlung. Bayerisches Statistisches Landesamt. 1933. Hundert Jahre Bayerisches Statistisches Landesamt, Munich: Carl Gerber. Beckert, J. 2002. ‘Vertrauen und die performative Konstruktion von Märkten’, Zeitschrift für Soziologie 31(1), 27–43. Bekkum, R. van. 1996. Tussen Vraag en Aanbod. Op zoek naar de identiteit van de arbeidsvoorzieningsorganisatie, The Hague: Sdu Uitgevers. Beveridge, W.H. 1953. Power and Influence, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Bogart, E.L. 1900. ‘Public Employment Offices in the United States and Germany’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 14(3), 341–377. Brockfeld, S. 1995. ‘Vom “Arbeitsnachweis-­ Bureau” zum “Arbeitsnachweisamt”. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Münster vom Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg’, in F.-­ J. Jakobi (ed.), Stadtgesellschaft im Wandel. Untersuchungen zur Sozialgeschichte Münsters im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Münster: Regensberg, 69–84.

50

Thomas Buchner

Brunner, C. 1992. Arbeitslosigkeit in München 1927 bis 1933. Kommunalpolitik in der Krise (= Miscellanea Bavarica Monacensia Bd. 162), Munich: Kommissionsverlag Uni-­Druck München. Buchner, T. 2011. ‘Orte der Produktion von Arbeitsmarkt. Arbeitsämter in Deutschland, 1890–1933’, in P. Becker (ed.), Sprachvollzug im Amt. Kommunikation und Verwaltung im Europa des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 305–334. Callon, M. (ed.). 1998. The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Blackwell. Callon, M. and F. Muniesa. 2005. ‘Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices’, Organization Studies 26(8), 1229–1250. Calwer, R. (ed.). 1901. Handel und Wandel. Jahresberichte über den Wirtschafts-­und Arbeitsmarkt, Berlin/Bern: Edelheim Verlag. Collin, P. 2009. ‘Ökonomisierung durch Bürokratisierung. Leitkonzepte und Umsetzungsstrategien in der tayloristisch beeinflußten Verwaltungsreformdebatte der Weimarer Republik’, in idem (ed.), Eine intelligente Maschine? Handlungsorientierungen moderner Verwaltung (19./20.Jh.), Baden-­Baden: Nomos, 217–232. de Molinari, G. 1893. Les Bourses du Travail, Paris: Guillaumin & Cie. Deslé, E. 1991. Arbeidsbemiddeling en/of werklozencontrole. Het voorbeeld van de Gents arbeidsbeurs (1891–1914), Gent: Gemeentekrediet. Dilley, R. 1992. ‘Contesting Markets: A General Introduction to Market Ideology, Imagery and Discourse’, in idem (ed.), Contesting Markets: Analyses of Ideology, Discourse and Practice, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1–36. Ehlert, M. 1924. ‘Arbeitsnachweis’, in O. Karstedt et al. (eds), Handwörterbuch der Wohlfahrtspflege, Berlin: Heymann. Faust, A. 1986. Arbeitsmarktpolitik im Deutschen Kaiserreich. Arbeitsvermittlung, Arbeitsbeschaffung und Arbeitslosenunterstützung 1890–1918, Stuttgart: Steiner. Fischer, K.H. 1926. Das Recht des ANPersonals. Darstellung der gesamten Rechtsverhältnisse des Personals der Arbeitsnachweisämter, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Förster, W. 1994. Arbeitsamt Mannheim 1893–1993. Institution – Wirtschaft – Bevölkerung – Politik. Eine Jahrhundertbetrachtung, Mannheim: Pylon. Gleitze, B. 1928. ‘Die deutsche Arbeitsmarktstatistik. Ihre Entwicklung und Methode’, Die Arbeit 5(I), 171–182. Graack, E. 1926. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Deutschland. Entstehung – Formen – Wirksamkeit, Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Grässel, H. 1916. Das städtische Verwaltungsgebäude für Arbeiterangelegenheiten in München, Munich: Seyfried. Jastrow, I. 1902. ‘Die Leistungen des öffentlichen Arbeitsnachweises in Deutschland’, in idem, Sozialpolitik und Verwaltungswissenschaft. Aufsätze und Abhandlungen, vol.I, Berlin: G. Reimer, 158–168. Jastrow, I. 1918. ‘Arbeitsmarkt’, in Josef Brix et al. (eds), Handwörterbuch der Kommunal­ wissenschaften, vol.I: Abdeckerei – Filtration des Wassers, Jena: G. Fischer, 126–131. Jülich, H. 1927. Öffentlicher Arbeitsnachweis und Wirtschaft. Eine kritische Betrachtung aktueller Arbeitsnachweisfragen, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Jülich, H. 1927. Beiträge zur Technik der Arbeitsvermittlung. 2. Teil: Die bürotechnischen Grundlagen der Arbeitsvermittlung, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Jülich, H. 1930. Arbeitsvermittlung als Dienst am Menschen. Berlin: Verlag des Zentralverbandes der Angestellten. Kapfhammer, G. 1968. ‘Gesindemärkte in Bayern’, Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde, 145–147. Knorr-­Cetina, K. 2009. ‘What is a Financial Market?’, in J. Beckert and C. Deutschmann (eds), Wirtschaftssoziologie, Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 326–343. Krabbe, W.R. 1981. ‘Die Gründung städtischer Arbeiterschutz-­ Anstalten in Deutschland: Arbeitsnachweis, Arbeitslosenfürsorge, Gewerbegericht und Rechtsauskunftsstelle’, in

Organizing the Market? 51

W. Conze and U. Engelhardt (eds), Arbeiterexistenz im 19. Jahrhundert. Lebensstandard und Lebensgestaltung deutscher Arbeiter und Handwerker, Stuttgart: Klett-­Cotta, 425–445. Lauer, F. 1908. Die Praxis des öffentlichen Arbeitsnachweises, Berlin: G. Reimer. Lee, W. 2009. ‘Private Deception and the Rise of Public Employment Offices in the United States, 1890–1930’, in D.H. Autor (ed.), Studies of Labor Market Intermediation (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 155–182. Lie, J. 1997. ‘Sociology of Markets’, Annual Review of Sociology 23, 341–360. Lins, W. 1923. ‘Arbeitsmarkt und Arbeitsnachweis’, in L. Elster (ed.), Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, Jena: G. Fischer, 824–839. Mackenroth, G. 1928. Die Entwicklung des öffentlichen Arbeitsnachweises unter der Verwaltung der Stadt Halle 1914–1928 (= Beiträge zur mitteldeutschen Wirtschaftsgeschichte und Wirtschaftskunde Beiträge zur mitteldeutschen Wirtschaftsgeschichte 9), Halberstedt: H. Meyer. MacKenzie, D. (ed.). 2007. Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics, Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press. Maier, D.G. 2004. Anfänge und Brüche der Arbeitsverwaltung bis 1952. Zugleich ein kaum bekanntes Kapitel der deutsch-­jüdischen Geschichte (= Schriftenreihe der Fachhochschule des Bundes für öffentliche Verwaltung 43), Brühl: Fachhochschule des Bundes für Öffentliche Verwaltung. Maier, D.G. 2010. Ignaz Jastrow. Sozialliberale Positionen in Wissenschaft und Politik (= Jüdische Miniaturen 103), Berlin: Hentrich and Hentrich. Mattiesson, C. 2007. Die Rationalisierung des Menschen. Architektur und Kultur der deutschen Arbeitsämter, 1890–1945, Berlin: G. Reimer. Meerwarth, R. 1909. ‘Der Arbeitsmarkt und seine Statistik’, Deutsches Statistisches Zentralblatt I(4), 97–102, 129–132. Meskill, D. 2010. Optimizing the German Workforce: Labor Administration from Bismarck to the Economic Miracle, New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books. Nerschmann, O. 1926. ‘Vom Wesen der öffentlichen Arbeitsvermittlung’, in idem (ed.), Der Neubau des öffentlichen Arbeitsnachweises Dresden und Umgebung. Eine Werbeschrift anlässlich der Eröffnung des neuen Gebäudes Oktober 1926, Dresden: Volkmann, 11–18. N.N. 2000. 100 Jahre Arbeitsamt Augsburg. Oktober 1900 – September 2000. Vom Arbeitsnachweis zum Dienstleister. Station und Wandel einer 'Behörde', Augsburg: Agentur für Arbeit. Öffentlicher Arbeitsnachweis Arbeitsamt München. 1925. Geschäftsbericht 1922–1924, Munich: Carl Gerber. Öffentlicher Arbeitsnachweis Arbeitsamt München. 1926. Geschäftsbericht 1925, Munich: Carl Gerber. Pohl, K.H. 1991. Zwischen protestantischer Ethik, Unternehmerinteresse und organisierter Arbeiterbewegung. Zur Geschichte der Arbeitsvermittlung in Bielefeld (Bielefelder Beiträge zur Stadt-­und Regionalgeschichte, Bd. 8), Bielefeld: Verlag des Stadtarchivs. Puppe, D. 1923. ‘Die neuere Entwicklung der amtlichen Statistik des Arbeitsmarkts, insbesondere der Arbeitsnachweisstatistik in Deutschland’, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik 3.F. 66, 161–177. Rädlinger, C. 1995. 100 Jahre Arbeitsamt München 1895–1995. Von der Arbeitsvermittlung zur Arbeitsförderung, Munich: Verlag des Arbeitsamtes. Rosenberger, R. 2008. Experten für Humankapital. Die Entdeckung des Personalmanagements in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Munich: Oldenburg. Rottenecker, H. 1981. ‘Geschichte, Arbeitsmarkt – Arbeitsamt’, in idem (ed.), Arbeitsamt Passau – Arbeitsmarkt gestern und heute (= Festschrift zur Einweihung des neuen Dienstgebäudes des Arbeitsamtes Passau am 14. Januar 1981), Passau: Neue Presse, 9–40.

52

Thomas Buchner

Rudloff, W. 1998. Die Wohlfahrtsstadt. Kommunale Ernährungs-­, Fürsorge-­und Wohnungspolitik am Beispiel Münchens 1910–1933, vol.2, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Schmuhl, H.-­ W. 2003. Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung in Deutschland 1871– 2002. Zwischen Fürsorge, Hoheit und Markt, Nuremberg: Institut für Arbeitsmarkt-­und Berufsforschung der Bundesanstalt für Arbeit. Schöttler, P. 1982. Die Entstehung der ‘Bourses du Travail’. Sozialpolitik und Syndikalismus am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus Verlag. Seipp, A. 2009. The Ordeal of Peace: Demobilization and the Urban Experience in Britain and Germany, 1917–1921, Burlington/Farnham/London: Ashgate. Steiner, P. 2001. ‘The Sociology of Economic Knowledge’, European Journal of Social Theory 4(4), 443–458. Steinmetz, G. 1993. Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Syrup, F. 1927. ‘Arbeitsmarkt und Arbeitsmarktpolitik in Deutschland’, in Reichsarbeitsverwaltung (ed.), Arbeitsrecht, Arbeitsmarkt und Arbeitsschutz. Ausgewählte Vorträge aus einem Ausbildungskursus der Reichsarbeitsverwaltung (= Sonderheft zum Reichsarbeitsblatt 38), Berlin: Verlag des Reichsarbeitsblattes (R. Hobbing), 7–26. Tooze, J.A. 2001. Statistics and the German State, 1900–1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Uhlig, O. 1970. Arbeit amtlich angeboten. Der Mensch auf seinem Markt. Stuttgart/Berlin/ Cologne/Mainz: Kohlhammer. Whiteside, N. 2007. ‘Unemployment Revisited in Comparative Perspective: Labour Market Policy in Strasbourg and Liverpool, 1890–1914’, International Review of Social History 52(I), 35–56. Zahn, F. 1903. ‘Die deutsche Arbeiterstatistik’, Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich, N.F. 27(4), 1501–1518. Zimmermann, B. 2003. ‘Municipal Innovations Versus National Wait-­ and-­ See Atitudes: Unemployment Politics in Kaiserreich Germany (1871–1918)’, in M. Dagenais, I. Maver and P.-­Y. Saunier (eds), Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City: New Historical Approaches, Aldershot: Ashgate, 84–102. Zimmermann, B. 2006. Arbeitslosigkeit in Deutschland. Zur Entstehung einer sozialen Kategorie, Frankfurt/M. and New York: Campus Verlag.

Chapter 2

Between Labour Market Constituencies

The Struggles to Establish Vocational Counselling in Weimar Germany

David Meskill

After its devastating loss in the First World War, Germany established the most ambitious labour administration in the world – on paper. Not only were the main rivals to public job placement (employer and commercial offices) banned; the administration aimed at the ‘total inclusion’ (Totalerfassung) of all job seekers. As many young people as possible were to be steered, not merely into a job, but into appropriate skilled work. In the war-­damaged and depleted country, it was widely held that no resource, especially no human capital, could be wasted, or as a ubiquitous slogan put it, ‘the right man in the right job’. The reality, however, was far more modest and variegated, especially when it came to the creation of a successful programme of universal vocational counselling. In order even to have a chance of guiding young people into skilled work, the labour administration’s local offices first needed to establish themselves vis-­à-­vis the various constituencies shaping the labour market. Potential institutional rivals remained – in particular, the schools, but also other offices of Weimar’s burgeoning welfare state. And crucially there was no legal mandate compelling the use of vocational counselling, either by job seekers or employers. Hence, the labour offices needed to win the trust of the public, the schools, current and future workers and, most importantly, the local employers. Many of these constituents remained sceptical of the labour administration, especially its

54

David Meskill

alleged bureaucratism and politicization. The first section of this chapter thus examines what one might call the outer face of the vocational counselling offices: their political appeals and manoeuvrings with regard to their rivals and constituencies, from other welfare offices to the general public, from parents to employers. But such outward steps would not suffice to overcome the challenges facing the new labour offices without simultaneous work on the inner face of vocational counselling. In order to be successful – and thus allay the above-­mentioned suspicions – vocational counselling needed tools to match young workers to appropriate jobs. For the purposes of this labour mediation, the labour administration and its local offices had to integrate solutions to several problems: they needed to understand the job seeker – ‘the right man’ – and hence they worked on a standardized school questionnaire, which was to become the most important source of information about the youth. In addition, they adopted the burgeoning field of applied psychology for their own purposes. They also needed to identify ‘the right job’, and hence sought to build up a systematic knowledge of the major vocations and their requirements. Finally, the labour offices needed men (and a few women) who could competently and convincingly combine these two streams of knowledge. Accordingly, they developed procedures to train – one might even say to create – a new kind of professional: the vocational counsellor. This inner face of vocational counselling is the subject of the second section of the chapter. Progress on neither the outer nor the inner face of vocational counselling would come easy. As the influential head of vocational counselling in Brandenburg glumly observed in late 1921, ‘The numbers of extant vocational counselling and apprenticeship-­placement centres leave the impression that vocational counselling has already accomplished much. If one looks more closely, however, one notices that in many cases one can hardly speak of real vocational counselling.’1 Often tension arose between the two faces, between the urgency to be effective and influential on the one hand, and to be comprehensive and even scientific on the other. Related conflicts existed between local offices determined to establish effective monopolies, and the central authorities, which often exhibited more caution. If vocational counselling involved intermediation between young job seekers and employers and the jobs they offered, its establishment as an effective national institution – something not fully achieved in the first decade after its launch – also required compromises between different aspirations and between various interests.

Between Labour Market Constituencies 55

The Outer Face: A New Bureaucracy and Its Constituencies Particularly between 1919 and 1921, and again after 1924, vocational counselling briskly expanded. The Reichsarbeitsblatt reported with satisfaction that in 1924/25, the number of vocational counselling offices and of advice-­seekers had ‘increased considerably’. While in the first two years after implementation of the Labour Exchange Law, 1922/23 and 1923/24, the number of offices had remained constant at roughly 380, in the third year it jumped by more than 30 per cent to a total of 518, though the agency acknowledged that some of the increase could be due simply to more complete reporting. The number of school-­leavers who came to vocational counselling rose from 140,000 in 1923/24 to 194,000 a year later, a jump of nearly 40 per cent.2 Yet the quantitative growth fell far short of the ‘total inclusion’ for which the national authorities aimed. Despite the absolute rise in cases, because the number of school graduates rose even faster, the percentage of school graduates ‘covered’ by the offices actually fell slightly, from 33.3 to 32.2 per cent.3 From their inception, the vocational counselling offices suffered from the devaluation of money. By 1922, when inflation accelerated dramatically, provincial offices in Prussia warned the central authorities that they faced collapse. The ‘continually increasing internal frictions’ in the labour offices arose principally from ‘unresolved financial questions’.4 In its appeal to the Reich Labour Ministry, the Prussian Ministry of Trade explained that the financial ‘means of the cost-­bearers, that is the provinces and the municipalities, are exhausted; and the legal situation is so dubious that real pressure cannot be exerted on the provinces and municipalities’.5 The end of inflation in late 1923 finally created a clear and stable monetary environment, but, in the eyes of the central labour administration, provincial governments continued to practise ‘excessive cut-­backs’ of vocational counselling personnel even a year after the end of the inflation.6 The 1922 Labour Exchange Law, which many had hoped would create a clear and binding legal situation, had not resolved the financial question any more satisfactorily. The fact that local authorities bore a third of the costs of the local labour offices and sat on the local administrative boards meant that local priorities – and often these favoured saving money over funding a new, and as yet unproven, service – gave little support to vocational counselling.7 Provincial authorities granted numerous requests by local authorities, particularly those in more rural areas, to exempt them from Prussia’s requirement that vocational counselling be established universally.8 Given the organizational and financial structures

56

David Meskill

of the labour administration and its offices, even after the 1922 Labour Exchange Law, interest in vocational counselling still depended to a great degree on the particularities of the local and regional offices, political forces and economies. The directors of the local offices, who were usually in charge of job placement at the same time, often devoted the most attention to the immediately obvious tasks of administering unemployment aid9 and job placement for older workers who had lost their jobs. As the Ministry of Trade had feared, when vocational counselling was paired with job placement, the former got short shrift. Maintaining public order had priority. Even in Prussia, where vocational counselling had preserved greater autonomy within the labour offices, such complaints were common. At a meeting of the state vocational offices in March 1924, the first of its kind in three years and hence also since the implementation of the Labour Exchange Law, all representatives emphasized ‘with great force’ that vocational counselling could only flourish if it were placed on an equal footing with job placement.10 By the end of 1924, vocational counselling presented a mixed countenance. On the one hand, in the last year other states had followed Prussia in making vocational counselling offices mandatory, or were about to do so: Wurttemberg (January 1924), Thuringia (June 1924), Bavaria (in preparation).11 The number of vocational counselling offices and the proportion of school graduates visiting them had grown considerably over the previous years; the system of public vocational counselling had assumed, in the words of its most important bureaucratic proponent, the Prussian Trade Ministry’s Ernst Schindler, ‘very considerable proportions’.12 On the other hand, the labour administration’s first national survey of the vocational counselling system painted a generally gloomier picture. ‘The development of the local vocational counselling offices varies greatly from state office to state office. It depends in part on the total structure of the district (population density, size of the city, degree of industrialization) and in part on the energy with which the state office . . . takes on the matter’.13 This vigour, the report continued, was sorely lacking: The activity of the state offices in the area of vocational counselling has suffered quite considerably due to the loss of personnel . . . Open positions were often not filled again. Even where the vocational counsellors themselves remained, they were so occupied by other work for the state office that their actual responsibilities had to take a back seat. This applies especially in the Rhine Province, Westphalia-­Lippe, Lower Saxony, Saxony-­Anhalt. Especially the reduction in number of female vocational counsellors or their being heavily burdened with other tasks makes itself felt (Saxony, Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, Münster,

Between Labour Market Constituencies 57

the Rhine Province, Schleswig-­Holstein). No vocational counsellors whatsoever exist in: the Free State Saxony, Hessen, Hessen-­Nassau and Waldeck, Baden, Mecklenburg-­Lübeck, Oldenburg, the Border Region.14

If vocational counselling’s financing and organizational security remained precarious and varied from district to district in the first years of the labour administration, its relations to key actors in the labour world were at least as important for its success – and at least as fragile. Vocational counselling’s most important relationships were with the parents of school graduates, the general public, schools and employers. Even if the abstract idea of vocational counselling for the sake of optimizing the workforce, or Menschenökonomie,15 enjoyed support from nearly all political parties and much of the population, the vocational counselling offices that sprang up in the years 1918 to 1924 were themselves, in the eyes of many, unfamiliar and unproven institutions. Without a legal means to compel all graduating students and job seekers to use the offices, vocational counsellors had to earn the public’s and, especially, parents’ confidence. It was not accidental that, in the early years, a considerable portion of the vocational offices’ efforts went into propaganda.16 In a situation in which the vocational offices were still coming into being and defining their roles, the particularly active counsellor in Offenbach recommended, ‘it is first necessary to propose to the public, and in particular the interested circles, as clear a picture as possible of our tasks’.17 Even when the public knew what vocational counselling offices did, parents were often indifferent or sceptical. In the Rhine district, for example, school authorities reported on the slow progress in convincing parents and students of the importance of vocational counselling: along with a certain reticence about seeking advice and the parents’ knowledge of good apprenticeship positions, the need to earn money quickly (and hence to enter unskilled work) militated against getting advice.18 Such short-­term calculations were, of course, precisely what the advocates of vocational counselling were trying to forestall. A persistent, and for the labour administration particularly serious, source of the public’s caution vis-­à-­vis vocational counselling offices was their reputation for bureaucratism. This was the criticism most frequently levelled against their offices in the press. Occasionally the charge could implicate the ostensible (and indeed quite real) attempt of the labour administration to gain a monopoly on job placements.19 Far more frequently, however, the ultimate goal of total inclusion of the labour market met with widespread, and often impassioned, support.20 A far more prevalent complaint objected to the bureaucratic methods of the vocational

58

David Meskill

counselling offices. As the Prussian Trade Ministry had feared, vocational counselling suffered from its close association with the labour offices, whose ‘bureaucratic schematism’ one paper characterized as ‘to some extent the unavoidable fate of a public entity committed to mass operations’.21 A vocational counsellor visiting a school, another paper lamented in an article entitled ‘False and correct vocational counselling’, lectured to the school children for an hour and a half and left almost no time for questions at the end.22 What these parents and the critics of the bureaucratic aspects of vocational counselling explicitly or implicitly demanded was that the vocational counselling offices become able to judge ‘the individual distinctiveness of the young people’.23 Both the central ministries concerned with vocational counselling as well as the local offices responded to these criticisms in a number of ways. Each time a critique of vocational counselling appeared in the press, the central authorities were quick to offer a rebuttal in kind. From 1925, favourable ‘propaganda for the ideas of vocational counselling’ was also made by the new medium of radio.24 At least the most engaged vocational offices – and here, as in many other areas, local variety was the norm – used regular ‘parent evenings’ to gain the support of this important group.25 In addition to these forms of advertising, vocational counsellors, initially at the local and state levels, and later nationally, sought to address the most serious critiques of the current practices. In particular, in order to gain the support of the public and especially of parents, they wanted to combat the impression that vocational counselling offices were bureaucratic institutions that treated school graduates as faceless numbers and were incapable of recognizing their ‘individual distinctiveness’. At least as significant as the support of the general public and of parents was the cooperation of schools. Thus the vocational counsellor in Offenbach began his review of the office’s highest priority, ‘propaganda’, by noting: ‘First, we had to win the teachers for active participation’.26 The schools’ importance to vocational counselling derived from three factors: the former’s proclivity to do counselling itself had to be eliminated; in the absence of a legal requirement that students visit vocational counsellors, the schools would play a key role in delivering graduates to the labour offices; finally, the teachers’ observations of their students – which, as was often emphasized, were based on a much longer acquaintance than the vocational counselling offices ever could achieve – ought to be an important element in the vocational office’s matching of ‘the right man and the right job’. Even when the central ministries made promises to the contrary, schools remained real, or at least potential, rivals to the vocational counselling offices. The existence of a comprehensive network of schools,

Between Labour Market Constituencies 59

teachers’ often intimate understanding of their students’ personalities and parents’ generally high regard for teachers – all of which had made the schools the basis for vocational counselling in most other Western countries – meant that schools enjoyed significant advantages over the nascent labour administration. While the labour administration could boast that even before the Labour Exchange Law (1922) gave the labour offices (primary) responsibility for vocational counselling, only 2.4 per cent of vocational offices had been affiliated with schools (and, by contrast, 67 per cent with labour offices),27 numerous school teachers practised unofficial counselling with their pupils. As the provincial office of the Prussian Education Ministry in the Rhineland reported in 1921, ‘[s]ince the vocational offices for the most part are still failing or because the parents and students stay away from them and prefer to turn to the teachers, the schools undertake, in fairly large number, the vocational instruction of their charges’.28 For their part, many teachers objected to what they perceived as the labour office’s attempt ‘to deprive them of the right and the duty to concern themselves with the future of their departing students’.29 Even after promulgation of the Labour Exchange Law, and despite considerable efforts on the part of the labour offices to gain the unstinting support of schools, teachers and school directors continued to counsel students and to place them with employers.30 Beyond tamping down the brushfires of teacher counselling, the labour offices also sought more positive contributions from schools, especially pivotal assistance in achieving ‘total inclusion’. An early dispute in Kassel between school authorities and the vocational counselling office raised the issue of how schools should report on their children to the latter office. When the Kassel schools decided not to automatically send evaluations for all children, but only when their parents requested it, only eight children came to vocational counselling ‘of their own accord’.31 In response, the Trade Ministry insisted that providing school reports ‘for, if possible, all graduating students’ remained necessary, for experience had shown that ‘if one made the filling-­out of the questionnaires purely voluntary, vocational counselling would remain ineffective’.32 By February 1920, the Trade Ministry’s insistence on this point had resulted in the Education Ministry instructing school authorities that ‘[g]raduating students should be urged at every suitable occasion to visit these vocational counselling offices. If the school is sent questionnaires from the vocational office, the school director is to supervise the thorough response and to provide, for example, in accordance with his best knowledge and conscience, requested information on the probable vocational suitability of students’.33 Of course, a directive from the central authorities was often insufficient to guarantee compliance by the local authorities. In the

60

David Meskill

absence of a legal mandate for ‘total inclusion’, the schools’ role in delivering their students to the labour offices would become the labour offices’ prime instrument for achieving ‘total inclusion’ for much of the next four decades. A third sphere of interaction between vocational office and school, in addition to efforts to end teacher counselling and to enlist schools in the delivery of students to vocational offices, was the design of the aforementioned vocational questionnaires. I will restrict myself here to noting a significant constraint on the school form. The cooperation of teachers and school directors in answering the vocational office’s questions often remained half-­hearted and (to the latter) unsatisfactory. Teachers – often nonplussed since they were now expected to aid the very institution that had usurped their role – complained repeatedly about the time-­and energy-­consuming ‘burden’ of filling out the forms,34 and about being ‘flooded’ with demands for ‘bureaucratic writing and listing tasks’.35 Their refractoriness moved the labour administration to warn that the questionnaires ‘should not be too long or go beyond the most necessary aspects’.36 While cooperation with schools would become smoother over time, the tensions over the school questionnaire contributed to new attitudes within vocational counselling about the schools’ role and its own in evaluating job seekers. More vital still to the practical success of vocational counselling than its relations with parents or schools was its standing with employers, who crucially retained ultimate control over the hiring of workers and were not obliged to use the labour office’s services. As the office in Offenbach succinctly explained the necessity of good relations with employers, ‘If we control the apprenticeship positions, the youths and their parents will follow’.37 While the responses of employers to the current state of vocational counselling, like so many aspects of the labour administration, varied according to local circumstances, the general tenor in the years 1918 to 1924 was one of mistrust. Most employers did not condemn vocational counselling per se, but rather condemned its close link to the bureaucratic, socialist-­tinged labour offices. In December 1922, the employers’ organization, by now feeling less and less bound by its prior pact with the unions, had condemned the Labour Exchange Law’s subordination of vocational counselling to the labour offices in the harshest of terms: a ‘suitable vocational policy’, which required among other things ‘precise knowledge of the individual vocational qualities and necessities’, never could be achieved by the labour offices with their ‘extreme mass operations’.38 At the local level, many employers’ mistrust of the ‘bureaucratic’ labour offices persisted. The vocational counsellor in Offenbach reported:

Between Labour Market Constituencies 61

The dislike of public job-­placement has been transferred in many places from the labour exchanges to the vocational offices as well, particularly where the vocational counselling is handled in a section of the labour office [precisely the prescription of the 1922 Labour Exchange Law]. One can say – without wanting to diminish the valuable work of the labour offices – that many employers only turn to the labour office if contracts with unions compel them to or if they can find workers nowhere else . . . As we know from experience, the vocational office is often regarded and treated like a ‘labour office for youths’.39

While the vocational office in Lubeck expressed a certain self-­satisfaction a year later over the proportion of apprenticeships it helped bring about, it indirectly admitted to frustrations similar to those in Offenbach: its ‘task’ was ‘more and more to gain the trust of the employers’.40 The handicraft sector, in particular, which during the war was the inspiration for Prussia’s pioneering vocational counselling edict, but now had a surfeit of applicants and felt antipathy towards what it perceived to be Weimar’s socialist ethos, regarded public vocational counselling and apprenticeship placement with ‘great mistrust’ and expanded its own placement systems ‘by all available means’.41 As with parents and the public, the work of gaining employers’ trust consisted, in part, of active propaganda: letters to companies and visits to owners and even shop foremen, who often made the ultimate decision on engaging apprentices. ‘We consider especially the personal contact with the companies’, the office in Offenbach emphasized, ‘to be very important’.42 These appeals, however, would have been ineffective, had the vocational offices not simultaneously addressed the criticisms made by their most important constituencies. Parents and, even more importantly, employers regarded the vocational offices with indifference or even suspicion and hostility for similar reasons: both criticized the offices for being bureaucratic, that is, for caring more about the number of visitors they advised than about the quality of the counsel, in particular in matching the individual qualities of each job seeker to the requirements of particular vocations. The programme to promote skilled work was still caught between two goals that were difficult to reconcile: being comprehensive and being effective.

The Inner Face: Building the Personnel and Substance of Vocational Counselling In his sobering assessment of the state of vocational counselling in December 1921, Counsellor Knoff had emphasized problems with the

62

David Meskill

quality and training of personnel, knowledge of the different vocations, and the school questionnaire, which was the most important source of information on the youth. We now look at vocational counselling’s efforts to improve in these areas, as well as at another subject that Knoff might have mentioned but did not: applied psychology. Well before Knoff’s critiques, local authorities had in fact begun to train their vocational counsellors. The latter, whose very position was, of course, a new creation, had until recently been teachers, trade instructors and civil servants. Of the roughly 600 vocational counsellors in 1925,43 a survey revealed, 5 per cent had had a profession requiring university training; nearly a quarter had been teachers of one sort or another; 55 per cent had worked previously in other welfare offices; and 7 and 8 per cent, respectively, had been civil servants and business-­or tradesmen.44 Their knowledge of particular vocations was thus often circumstantial, unsystematic and limited in scope. The earliest local and state-­level courses for vocational counsellors were of quite modest scale. In December 1919, the state labour office in Westphalia-­Lippe offered one of the first.45 Over four days, labour exchange officials and vocational counsellors from the North Rhine area, as well as interested others, heard lectures on a variety of topics, including ‘the development and tasks of vocational counselling, with special regard to the conditions created by the war’ (by the Trade Ministry’s Schindler), ‘vocational counselling for women’, and ‘the collection of vocational information’. In the next years, numerous towns and state offices put on conferences of similar length and subject matter.46 On a more permanent basis, the Prussian Trade and the Reich Labour Ministries contributed funds to the Seminar for Job Placement and Vocational Counselling at the University of Munster, which began instruction in May 1920, but remained too theoretical to be of practical use.47 At the Reich Labour Office’s first major meeting on vocational counselling, held in November 1920, participants emphasized the importance of the training of the counsellors and the ‘decisive significance’ of attracting ‘suitable personages to this office of high responsibility’. Currently, it was generally agreed, their training was ‘deficient’.48 By late 1921, concerns about the state of vocational counselling49 had mounted to such an extent that ‘numerous and various sides’ urged the Brandenburg office, which had taken a lead in reform efforts, to call a meeting of Land labour and vocational offices,50 at which Knoff would make the pessimistic assessment cited earlier. In his ‘theses’ for the meeting, Knoff was even more damning: ‘Dilettantish occupation with vocational counselling, interest in the relevant questions, and good will alone cannot be regarded as sufficient prerequisites for vocational counselling’. In their place, he proposed

Between Labour Market Constituencies 63

the creation of a ‘well-­ordered course of instruction’ that would last – ‘for the time-­being’ – a year and a half, and conclude with a final exam. But the proposal failed to gain broader backing as current circumstances made it financially untenable. The municipal jurisdiction over vocational counselling meant that the Reich could not even promulgate unified standards for counsellor training. It was precisely such circumstances that would make the advocates of a comprehensive system of vocational counselling anticipate the salutary effects of the Labour Exchange Law – and experience disappointment over its equivocations in this regard. In the end, the Trade Ministry’s Schindler could only promise to publish an essay on the matter in the journal Work and Vocation (Arbeit und Beruf), and ‘hope that through the public discussion the matter would be further clarified’.51 The Trade Ministry founded Work and Vocation in 1921, and the journal immediately became the flagship of the vocational counselling movement, providing a forum for discussion, disseminating ideas and best practices, and boosting the esprit de corps of the tyro counsellors. By the late summer of 1923, a survey revealed that ‘despite the best of intentions, which many vocational counsellors demonstrate, success remains elusive due to insufficient training’. Numerous state and municipal offices offered some form of training, but ‘the cost issue’ had so far prevented extensive courses, and quality varied greatly, from Wurttemberg, where the part-­time counsellors received books to read and later discussed them in Stuttgart, to the four-­week course in Dusseldorf.52 The complement to the training of vocational counsellors and the second, often closely linked, area of reform was the systematic development of knowledge about the vocations. Efforts to improve vocational knowledge followed a path somewhat similar to that of training reform, though in the former case the impediments lay less in the pragmatic realm of financing and jurisdiction, and more in the task itself. What was most important to know about a line of work? How should one find it out? Even among backers of vocational counselling, there was disagreement about how precisely one could and should try to match a young person and a vocation. As with the counsellors’ training, the initiative to gain a better understanding of the various vocations came not from Berlin, but from those closer to the actual practice, from the provincial and state offices. Two approaches vied for support. Brandenburg’s plan encompassed gathering information widely: on vocational training, and its regulation by public offices, organizations, etc.; on the development of vocations; on wages and contracts; on vocational statistics; on the practice of vocational counselling; and on the relevant literature.53 Saxony-­Anhalt’s model, which would become the standard for the labour administration’s ‘vocational

64

David Meskill

profiles’ for the next four decades, focused more narrowly on personal characteristics relevant for each vocation: those ‘necessary’, ‘excluding’, ‘particularly useful’, and ‘not excluding’.54 When a compromise between the two was reached, the central authorities, increasingly anxious not only about the financial straits, but also about the poor quality and reputation of the vocational offices, sought to develop national standards. At a meeting attended not only by representatives of the central and state offices, but also by labour and business leaders, the Prussian Trade Ministry’s Schindler underlined the urgency of the matter: [along with the lack of suitable personnel for vocational counselling] ‘there is a lack of content to be poured into a definite form. To that end, what is above all necessary is the creation of vocation-­ informational material and the completion of vocational research’.55 The work, launched in late 1922, stalled for reasons both practical and theoretical. Hyperinflation meant printing costs had just begun to soar. The desire to produce ‘scientific’ vocational profiles conflicted with practical considerations of timeliness and general accessibility. The question of how specific vocational profiles – and recommendations – should be also reflected the underlying debate over visions for optimizing the German workforce: what role would centralized distribution play? Since the war, the Trade Ministry had certainly incorporated this style of thought more fully into its own proposals. Yet compared to the most eager advocates of comprehensive knowledge and control, the Prussian ministry remained sceptical. Schindler, in commenting on demands to apply psychotechnics to vocational choice, dampened hopes for a precise distribution of workers: The significance of ‘vocational suitability’ is exaggerated to a considerable degree among . . . psychotechnicians; one often overlooks the fact that most people are suited to several vocations and that the ‘suitability’ will never allow itself to be measured as one measures height. I believe that the focus of vocational counselling lies largely in the areas of knowledgeable information on the vocations, their prospects, essence, and demands; such information is for the most part lacking. That at the same time a serious test of the vocational aspirant himself must occur – this seems to me self-­evident; but the test will never have the result that with mathematical certainty ‘the’ vocation can be determined.56

A third area of reform in the early years of vocational counselling – the school questionnaire – remained, despite its widely acknowledged importance, less tractable. More than in the other two realms, in matters of the school questionnaire, local and state-­level initiatives set the agenda; the central authorities remained exceptionally cautious.

Between Labour Market Constituencies 65

Undoubtedly, the main reasons for the central authorities’ reserve were the simultaneous dependence of vocational counselling on schools and the rivalry between schools and vocational counselling: unlike in the cases of counsellors’ training and vocational profiles, if authorities wanted to improve the vocational questionnaires, they would need the cooperation of another, at times ill-­willed, institution. And yet, at least in this first period, the labour administration perceived the teacher’s evaluation as potentially the most valuable source of insight into the applicant. In a memo to the Labour Ministry, the Labour Office justified school questionnaires: ‘If vocational counselling is to take not only the economic aspect into account, then the counsellor must try to gain insight into the personality of the advice-­seeker. Opportunity for thorough personal observation will only present itself to the counsellor in the rarest of cases; he therefore needs to rely on the observations of a third party [i.e. the school]’.57 If the central authorities’ concern about fostering good relations with schools made them wary of precipitous reforms, local and state vocational offices were less cautious. In the first years of the vocational offices, nearly all of the state offices had developed questionnaires that they expected the teachers to fill out,58 as had the larger cities such as Berlin, Breslau, Hamburg, Leipzig and Munich.59 Though some offices reported a fruitful cooperation between schools and counselling offices in this regard,60 in most the results were inconclusive or disappointing.61 The most determined and ambitious effort to implement a uniform questionnaire, that of Saxony-­Anhalt, and the Labour Office’s ambivalent reaction illustrate the thorny substantive and tactical questions involved. The early experience in Saxony-­Anhalt pointed to two fundamental constraints on the school questionnaire: on the one hand, the first questionnaire introduced, which required the teacher to make a single evaluation at the end of the students’ school career, had soon proven to be inadequate and to require replacement by an evaluation of the pupils ‘through time’. On the other hand, all previous attempts at such ‘continual questionnaires’ seemed to be too extensive. A year later, after further consideration, Saxony-­Anhalt proposed to implement its revised school questionnaire throughout the entire state. In addition to asking about the students’ grades and physical health, the questionnaire solicited reports on the children’s ‘character and work habits’ for each of their years in school. It provided a framework for the teachers’ comments, but encouraged them to expatiate: the first subsection, entitled ‘general abilities’, asked about the student’s ‘general behaviour’, ‘interests’, ‘particular achievements’, and ‘other’. The second subsection, ‘work abilities’, required the teacher’s comments on the pupil’s ‘intellectual vigour’,

66

David Meskill

‘memory’, ­ ‘independence’, ‘resilience’, ‘attentiveness’, ‘speediness’, ‘steadiness’, ‘adaptability’, ‘resistance to fatigue’, and ‘other’. By the end of their schooling, each student’s teachers – assuming they had dutifully fulfilled their obligations – would have amassed comments on these qualities for each of eight or ten years.62 In its commentary to the Labour Ministry, the Reich Labour Office, while expressing gratitude for the general interest of the state offices in school questionnaires, emphasized caution and criticized Saxony-­Anhalt’s proposal, about which it ‘must raise objections’. The first attempt to introduce a questionnaire on a large scale ‘ought not to involve such an extensive form’. If the public vocational counselling offices did not proceed ‘quite gradually’ on these matters, the teachers would not cooperate; before one could proceed with a wide-­ scale introduction, one would have to ascertain in smaller trials that the procedure was feasible and worthwhile, and also that the vocational counselling offices could make use of them. While Saxony-­Anhalt’s effort was perhaps the most ambitious, it was not the only one. In the same period, other states attempted, or at least considered, the introduction of similar uniform questionnaires.63 The central authorities continued to be cautious: in light of the resistance of many teachers, evaluations of students should be kept ‘as brief as possible and only retain that which is absolutely necessary for the purpose of vocational counselling’. Specifically, experience had shown that such questionnaires had been introduced most successfully, ‘the more they restricted themselves to the capture of externally clearly identifiable things and, in addition, the more they encouraged the teacher to express himself freely’.64 Each of these two qualifications, however, might conflict with important goals of vocational counselling: the first, because vocational counselling was particularly interested, not in external, but in inner qualities such as motivation and conscientiousness; the second, because ‘free expression’ made systematization all but impossible. Thus, in the first years of vocational counselling, the incorporation of schools remained a particularly vexing and largely unresolved problem. The advocates of universal vocational counselling had for some time expressed interest, however cautiously, in another way to improve their service: by turning to the emerging field of applied psychology. The wartime successes of applied psychology, especially in selecting people who needed special, usually sensory motor skills (airplane pilots, truck drivers, battlefield spotters, etc.), had helped to fuel a post-­war wave of enthusiasm for ‘psychotechnics’.65 Universities devoted chairs and institutes to applied psychology; numerous new journals covered the field; along with public authorities such as the railroad and armed forces,

Between Labour Market Constituencies 67

i­ndustrial giants like AEG, MAN, Vereinigte Stahlwerke and Zeiss all had their own testing stations to select workers.66 Soon, however, controversy and conflict began to cast shadows on the rapid growth of psychotechnics. In both theoretical and applied psychology, methodological and substantive debates – among other things, about the role of quantitative testing, the relationship between ‘elementary’ attributes and human ‘wholes’, and the relative importance of abilities on the one hand and motivation or personality on the other – pitted schools against each other. In the rapid proliferation of psychotechnics stations, the influx of non-­psychologists threatened more serious damage. The overwhelming enthusiasm for psychological testing, the labour administration and government ministries noted with alarm, had inspired ‘dilettantes and quacks’ to try their hand at testing, whose extravagant claims and meagre results would greatly harm legitimate psychotechnics.67 The Prussian Trade Ministry and the Reich Labour Administration, in particular, remained torn over applied vocational psychology. Especially for the Prussian Trade Ministry, applied psychology appeared to be a double-­ edged sword as a practical-­ political instrument of vocational counselling: useful in providing individualized services and combating the offices’ reputation for bureaucratism, but potentially harmful if the unproven techniques and practitioners tainted vocational counselling itself. Such concerns framed the central authorities’ cautious policies toward applied psychology. Reports from state and local labour offices revealed an array of attitudes toward applied psychology, depending on personal conviction, but even more so on the local economic conditions. In the early 1920s, the great majority of labour offices abstained from using psychological tests or evaluations, whether because they were still engaged in establishing more basic services, because austerity did not permit, or because they viewed psychotechnics with scepticism. Of those that did, many seem to have been motivated by genuine enthusiasm for the possibilities. In January 1923, the labour and vocation office of the Rhine Province informed the central authorities that, despite the fact that ‘in many places the endeavours of psychotechnics encounter resistance and that doubt is cast on its successes’, it would proceed to establish psychotechnical facilities. They could draw on ‘good preparations and rich experiences’, and their programme would be limited to narrow bounds.68 At nearly the same time, the Silesian vocational office expressed its determination even more forcefully. Since organizational matters could be regarded as nearly completed, the office wrote, it believed it was now ‘urgently necessary’ to devote ‘special attention’ to psychotechnical vocational counselling.69

68

David Meskill

Further reports, in particular from local labour offices, shed light on the reasons for vocational counselling’s interest in applied psychology, in particular the close correlation between industry and psychological testing. In August 1923, the Offenbach office explained that it ‘performed the great majority of examinations spontaneously, but in part also in commission of companies or wavering parents’. It highlighted the role of psychological testing in the office’s relations with local firms: ‘The preceding remarks have already revealed the importance we accord psychology, but also especially which successes the vocational office has achieved with industry thanks to psychology. Without exaggerating it can be said that we have won large industry primarily through our institute.’70 After describing companies’ initial mistrust of the new bureaucracy, the Offenbach report explained their change of heart: Some sceptical employers were only won over, when we explained our methods – through personal exchanges, numerous slide shows, and tours of our institute. From this moment on, we are more capable than he, we are acknowledged experts. As ‘a man of practice’ he can choose apprentices on the basis of school reports and external appearances better ‘than any bureaucrat’ – now, however, he recognizes that the scientific method is better than his own, which is based on feelings, and he acknowledges the scientific method all the more when he, despite everything, retains freedom of choice in the final ­selection.71

The Breslau vocational office reported a similar process of appeal to the local business community and an even more positive response. In the summer of 1922, the director of the office had given a lecture with slides at a conference of Silesian employers, whereupon ‘funds were given to the vocational office for the purchase of a simple apparatus’. In the year since then, ‘personal appeals’ by the director had moved numerous employers to donate further sums and equipment; with the help of the Silesian Central Employers’ Association, the Breslau office had set up a psychotechnical institute for testing.72 In these and other cases, the role of the vocational office’s psychological testing had evolved in a similar direction: in the absence of a legal mandate, psychological testing proved to be a useful tool for binding the local employers to the labour offices. A meeting of vocational counselling leaders in 1924 confirmed the strategic utility of testing: ‘Almost without exception [the directors of vocational counselling] expressed the conviction that vocational counselling must support vocational psychology in a determined way, if only for the reason that industry and crafts are placing more and more weight on it’.73

Between Labour Market Constituencies 69

Even as the legal and institutional framework for a national labour administration and for state-­wide systems of vocational counselling was being set up, then, advocates of a comprehensive vocational counselling were at work on the substance of vocational counselling. In addition to their no doubt sincere desire to make vocational counselling a more effective tool for matching youths and jobs, the vocational counsellors were responding to two challenges. While the 1922 Labour Exchange Law gave a de facto monopoly on public vocational counselling to the network of labour offices, other institutional rivals remained – in particular, schools, but also other offices of Weimar’s burgeoning welfare state. The efforts to improve vocational counselling’s procedures were, in part, efforts to outperform such rivals. At the same time, the Labour Exchange Law failed to make mandatory the use of the vocational offices either for job seekers or for employers (as many had demanded). Thus the vocational offices had not only to overcome institutional rivals, but also, crucially, to convince their potential constituents of their worth. These considerable pressures to improve vocational counselling encountered limits due to the strapped financial situation of Germany at the time and to the challenges inherent to the tasks. In each area of reform – counsellor training, vocational knowledge, the school questionnaire, and psychological evaluations – a common theme was also the tension between the desire, on the one hand, to apply scientific and exhaustive knowledge and, on the other hand, to achieve immediate, practical success. Little would change in vocational counselling for the next three decades. As late as 1955, the practice of vocational counselling – as opposed to the policies – still varied significantly from one local office to the next. From the Weimar Republic to the early Bonn Republic, the financial and political preconditions for systematic reform were simply lacking. In these straitened times there was insufficient money to improve vocational counselling. The Great Depression and the Second World War meant that immediate tasks – for example, simply finding work, any work, for the unemployed – often took priority over the longer term. Perhaps more importantly, with the brief exception of labour shortages in the late 1930s, there was a buyer’s market for labour during the entire period. Employers called the shots, and meeting their local needs was the most important concern of the labour and vocational offices. Only between 1955 and 1970 did these underlying economic and political conditions, and with them vocational counselling, begin to change. The economic miracle created a seller’s market for labour: workers, common people, could now demand more and afford to be more ambitious. Companies, in their scramble in the tight labour market, began to bypass the labour administration. A more assertive public

70

David Meskill

questioned the necessity and prerogatives of the labour administration. For all these reasons, ‘total inclusion’ seemed increasingly anachronistic. At the same time that these challenges to the labour administration mounted, the booming economy brought it unprecedented financial resources. Ironically, it was in the very years when the labour administration painfully abandoned its once grand ambitions that vocational counselling finally succeeded in imposing uniform standards and best practices.

Notes Parts of this chapter originally appeared in chapter 4 of D. Meskill. 2010. Optimizing the German Workforce: Labor Administration from Bismarck to the Economic Miracle, New York: Berghahn Books.   1. GStA PK (= Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz), I. HA, Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, vol. 3, protocol of meeting on 7 and 8 December 1921.  2. Reichsarbeitsblatt, Nr. 21, 1926, 367–369. The total number of visitors, including older people, was higher: 251,000 and 307,000, respectively.  3. Ibid., 369. Roughly 60 per cent of the visitors were male and 40 per cent female. Reichsarbeitsverwaltung (ed.). 1926. Berufsberatung, Berufsauslese, Berufsausbildung, Berlin: Hobbing, 25. The figures are from 1922/1923.   4. BAB (= Bundesarchiv Berlin), R3901/861, 1 February 1922.   5. GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez, Fach 1, Nr. 61, vol. 3, 16 February 1922.   6. BAB, R3901/935, 29 January 1925.  7. On Wurttemberg, which was typical of the whole country, see O. Uhlig. 1970. A ­ rbeit – amtlich angeboten: der Mensch auf seinem Markt. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 244– 245.  8. See numerous such reports in GStA PK, I HA Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez, Fach 1, Nr. 61, vol. 5.   9. See K. Fuehrer. 1990. Arbeitslosigkeit und die Entstehung der Arbeitslosenversicherung in Deutschland, 1902–1927 (= Beiträge zu Inflation und Wiederaufbau in Deutschland und Europa 1914–1924/Einzelveröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission zu Berlin vol. 73), Berlin: Colloquium-­Verlag, 119–251. 10. BAB, R3901/935, 3 and 4 March 1924. 11. GStA PK, I. HA. Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, E I Spez, Fach 1, Nr. 61, vol. 5, 8 January 1925. 12. GStA PK, I. HA. Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, Adhib 1, vol. 1, 22 January 1925. 13. GStA PK, I. HA. Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, vol. 5, 8 January 1925. 14. Ibid., 8 January 1925. 15. Rudolf Goldscheid had coined the phrase in the title of his 1908 book Entwicklungswerttheorie, Entwicklungsökonomie, Menschenökonomie, in which the reform-­minded sociologist had argued against the use of human labour for maximal short-­term gains, and instead pleaded for a broader and longer-­term conception of productivity and human well-­being. For the use of Menschenökonomie and cognate phrases in the Weimar period see, for example, the Prussian Trade Ministry’s ‘fundamental consideration’ on vocational counselling from

Between Labour Market Constituencies 71

16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

January 1918, in GStA PK, I. HA Rep 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, E I Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, Bd. 1, 21 January 1918; the Labour Office’s widely disseminated position paper in support of an early draft of the Arbeitsnachweisgesetz, in BAB, R 3901/689, December 1920; and Young-­Sun Hong. 1998. Welfare, Modernity, and the Weimar State, 1919–1933. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 34, on the leading welfare advocate Wilhelm Polligkeit. The first activity report of the office in Offenbach, for example, begins with a category under this heading. See BAB, R3901/935, August 1923. Ibid., August 1923. GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, adhib 3, vol. 1, 22 June 1921; see also, for example, the annual report of the labour office in Lubeck, in BAB, R 3901/870, 11 October 1924. See, for example, the article on 15 November 1922 in the Berliner Börsen-­Courier, ‘Berufsamt und Berufszwang’, excerpted by the Imperial Ministry of Economics, in BAB, R 3101/10277; also the article in Der Rote Tag from 3 June 1922, ‘Berufsvermittlung und Schülersteckbriefe des Berufsamtes der Stadt Berlin’ in BAB, R3901/934. See, for example, the comment of Königsberg Hartungssche Zeitung on 7 September 1922, that successful vocational counselling ‘[probably] will become a matter of life and death in a country in which the correct utilisation of all economic possibilities, itself partly determined by a purposive distribution of workers, decides over being and not being’. The article ‘Berufsberatung und Wiederaufbau’ is excerpted in BAB, R3901/934. BAB, R3901/690, Vossische Zeitung, 3 January 1922. BAB, R3901/935, Der Tag, 23 May 1924. This is how the provincial Vocational Office in Pomerania characterized the dissatisfactions and the desires of parents, see GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, adhib 3, vol. 3, 2 August 1922. BAB, R3901/936, ‘Bericht über die Entwicklung der Berufsberatung in der Zeit vom 1. April bis 1. Oktober 1925’. See, for example, the report by the vocational counsellor in Offenbach, who reported turnouts of between 80 and 90 per cent of parents, in BAB, R3901/935, August 1923. Also, see the urgent appeals by the Frankfurt office to local parents to consult with the former on their children’s future, in BAB, R3901/934, 1 August 1921. BAB, R3901/935, August 1923. See the article ‘Wer soll Berufsberatung treiben?’ by K. Gäbel, in Der Tag, on 16 July 1924, in BAB, R3901/935. GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, adhib 3, vol. 1, 22 June 1921. The report of the Pomeranian Provincial Vocational Office to the Prussian Ministry of Trade, in: GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, adhib 3, vol. 1, 2 August 1922. See the complaints to this effect, in 1925, from the Imperial Labour Office to the Prussian Minister of Education, in BAB, R3901/936, 1925. GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez, Fach 1, Nr 61, adhib 3, vol. 1, 17 October 1919. Ibid., 17 October 1919, letter from the State Commercial Office to its superiors in the Ministry of Trade, 14 February 1920, and on 22 March 1920 from Trade to the Prussian Ministry of Education. Ibid., 26 February 1920. Such complaints are legion. See, for example, BAB, R3901/934, 5 November 1920; ibid., 31 January 1921; ibid., 29 June 1922. GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, adhib 3, vol. 1, 2 August 1922. In this report, the juxtaposition of increased demands on

72

David Meskill

teachers in a supporting role and the lost ability to help students directly emerges as particularly galling to the teachers. 36. BAB, R3901/934, 29 June 1922. 37. BAB, R3901/934, annual report of the vocational office in Offenbach, August 1923. 38. GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, vol. 4, 9 December 1922. 39. BAB, R3901/934, report of the vocational office in Offenbach, August 1923. 40. BAB, R3901/870, 11 October 1924. 41. GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez, Fach 1, Nr. 61, vol. 3, protocol of meeting of Land Vocational Offices, 7/8 December 1921. 42. BAB, R3901/934, report of the vocational office in Offenbach, August 1923. 43. Reichsarbeitsblatt, Nr. 8, 1926, 133ff. 44. Reichsarbeitsverwaltung, Berufsberatung, 51. 45. BAB, R3901/687, brochure of the Land Office, 1 November 1919. 46. See, for example, the description of the course in Chemnitz, in BAB, R3901/934, November 1920, or that in the course in Frankfurt in June/July 1921, in ibid., report on the Labour Administration’s visit to Frankfurt, 15 August 1922. 47. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61p, Ministry of Trade to the Labour Exchange Union in Magdeburg, 4 April 1920; see the numerous documents pertaining to the financial support of the Imperial Labour Office for the Seminar, in BAB, R3901/891. BAB, R3901/934, protocol of meeting of representatives of the Prussian Provincial Vocational Offices, 11 March 1921. 48. BAB, R3101/10277, letter of Imperial Labour Minister to Imperial Economics Minister containing the protocol of the November meeting, 30 December 1920. 49. The concerns pertained to more than just the training of the counsellors, but also to vocational profiles (to be treated below) and other topics. 50. GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez, Fach 1, Nr. 61, vol. 3, letter of Provincial Vocational Office in Brandenburg to Land Labour Offices and Vocational Offices, 22 November 1921. 51. Ibid., 22 November 1921. 52. GStA PK, I. HA Rep 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, E I Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, vol. 4, 23 August 1923. 53. BAB, R3101/10277, protocol of meeting in the Labour Office on vocational counselling on 3/4 November 1920, 30 December 1920. 54. GStA PK I. HA Rep 120 Ministerium fuer Handel und Gewerbe, E I Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, vol. 2, 7 December 1921. 55. See the protocol of the 26 April 1922 meeting in the Imperial Labour Office, in BAB, R3901/934, 26 April 1922. 56. See the article ‘Berufsberatung’ in Der Deutsche from 30 June 1922, and the handwritten commentaries in the margin, in BAB, R3101/10277. 57. BAB, R3901/934, letter of the Labour Office to the Labour Ministry, 29 June 1922. 58. BAB, R3901/934, Letter from Reich Labour Office to the Imperial Labour Ministry, 29 June 1922. 59. Ibid., 29 June 1922. According to the Land Vocational Office, Saxony-­Anhalt, in its letter to the Imperial Labour Ministry, 31 January 1921. 60. See, for example the reports from Offenbach (BAB, R3901/935, August 1923); Harburg (BAB, R3901/935, 6 August 1923). 61. BAB, R3901/934, Letter from the Imperial Labour Office to the Reich Labour Ministry, 29 July 1922; also ibid., Letter from the Vocational Office in Saxony-­Anhalt to the Reich Labour Ministry, 31 January 1921. 62. Ibid., protocol of Committee meeting on 9 December 1921, sent by Reich Labour Ministry to the Reich Labour Office on 10 December 1921 for evaluation.

Between Labour Market Constituencies 73

63. Ibid., for the case of Berlin, see the letter of the Labour Ministry to the Labour Office, 29 June 1922; for Silesia, see the letter of the Labour Office to the Prussian Trade Ministry, in GStA PK, I. HA., Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, E I Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, adhib. 4, 24 February 1923. 64. GStA PK, I. HA., Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, E I Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, adhib. 4, 24 February 1923. 65. On this and generally for a more detailed account of the role of applied psychology in workforce optimization projects, and for further references, see D. Meskill. 2003. Human Economies: Labor Administration, Vocational Training and Psychological Testing in Germany, 1914–1964, Cambridge, Massachusetts: PhD diss., Harvard University. 66. F. Dorsch. 1963. Geschichte und Probleme der angewandten Psychologie, Bern: H. Huber, 85. 67. See, for example the comments by a representative of the Prussian Education Ministry at a meeting on 8 July 1920, in GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, E I Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, adhib 4; also, the letter of the Prussian Ministry for Popular Welfare to the President of the Prussian Parliament on 24 May 1922 in ibid.; also the letter of the President of the Labour Office to the State Labour Offices, on 4 July 1923, in BAB, R3901/893. 68. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 120 Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe, EI Spez., Fach 1, Nr. 61, adhib 4, letter from the Office in the Rhine Province to the Trade Ministry, 12 January 1923. 69. Ibid., letter from the Silesian Office to the Trade Ministry, 7 December 1922. 70. BAB, R3901/935, report from Berufsamt Offenbach, August 1923 (italics in original). 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid., report of the vocational office in Breslau, 20 August 1923. 73. BAB, R3901/935, 3 and 4 March 1924.

Bibliography Dorsch, F. 1963. Geschichte und Probleme der angewandten Psychologie, Bern: H. Huber. Fuehrer, K. 1990. Arbeitslosigkeit und die Entstehung der Arbeitslosenversicherung in Deutschland, 1902–1927 (= Beiträge zu Inflation und Wiederaufbau in Deutschland und Europa 1914– 1924/Einzelveröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission zu Berlin vol. 73), Berlin: Colloquium-­Verlag. Goldscheid, R. 1908. Entwicklungswerttheorie, Entwicklungsökonomie, Menschenökonomie: eine Programmschrift, Leipzig: Dr. Werner Klinkhardt. Hong, Y.-­S. 1998. Welfare, Modernity, and the Weimar State, 1919–1933. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Meskill, D. 2003. Human Economies: Labor Administration, Vocational Training and Psychological Testing in Germany, 1914–1964, Cambridge, Massachusetts: PhD diss., Harvard University. Meskill, D. 2010. Optimizing the German Workforce: Labor Administration from Bismarck to the Economic Miracle, New York: Berghahn Books. Reichsarbeitsverwaltung (ed.). 1926. Berufsberatung, Berufsauslese, Berufsausbildung, Berlin: Hobbing. Uhlig, O. 1970. Arbeit – amtlich angeboten: der Mensch auf seinem Markt. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.

Chapter 3

Organizing Labour Markets The British Experience

Noel Whiteside

A. . . . the British workman . . . hates being docketed or dragooned and he will not be drilled. He is not exactly dragooned when he comes to an institution of which he elects the committee and of which he is a member and which is a purely democratic institution; but he is dragooned the moment he goes to an Exchange which is a purely autocratic and bureaucratic institution. Q. I did not think there was so much Prussianism in this country. Do you really object to the organisation of the supply and demand of labour in the wool textile trade? A. No, of course not. We wish to do it to the last halfpenny but we want to do it for ourselves; we object to anybody doing it for us.

(Wool and Worsted Federation spokesman: Committee of Enquiry into the Work of the Employment Exchanges, 1919)

The emergence of labour market placement agencies of various types characterized urbanization and industrialization in much of late nineteenth-­ century Europe. The spread of such institutions offers an impression of uniformity and invites universal explanations for their appearance of a vaguely functional type: the need to facilitate links between employers seeking workers and those seeking jobs, the desire to improve the functioning of local economies and so forth. While such explanations are not without foundation, they tend to ignore the principles underpinning these initiatives, where more diversity can be observed: how labour markets should be organized, according to what criteria and with

Organizing Labour Markets 75

what ­objectives. For the creation of a functioning labour market rested on political assumptions concerning the principles of its operation. What factors should determine the selection of applicants? Who should undertake the selection? The answers to such questions were not straightforward, stimulating a range of responses; rival agencies responded to particular visions of how labour markets should operate. The role played by public authorities in creating their own agencies might seek to take control of the organization of the whole local labour market or to adopt a residual role designed solely to help those harder to place; official agencies might operate in opposition to or in collaboration with other institutions. The varied acceptability of public interventions in this area reflected wider assumptions concerning the operation of a modern industrial economy: the principles on which it functioned and the role government should play in sustaining performance. Such principles shaped debates around proper forms of social ordering – and the identification of these principles form the main object of this chapter. In this, the main objective is to expose how the British experience differed from that found in some major cities in Central and Northern Europe where official intervention generally proved more acceptable and the advent of labour exchange systems could initiate the creation of a modern labour market. It would, of course, be wrong to assume that, prior to official intervention, no agencies operated in the labour recruitment process. On the contrary, many major European cities boasted commercial exchanges where, in return for a fee, a worker could be supplied with a list of vacancies. Preventing the commercial exploitation of the vulnerable motivated some official interventions in the first place. Equally, the transition from guild to trade union organizations that sought to protect the trade and its hierarchies did not disappear in the course of the nineteenth century. On the contrary, the conventions derived from such earlier practices informed the rulebooks of skilled labour unions operating in industrial sectors (notably in Britain, but also in Germany). As I have argued elsewhere,1 union control over recruitment and placement, in tandem with union benefit systems, offered incentives to join and sustain membership, gave union hierarchies the means to discipline members while forcing employers, through elevated wage structures, to pay the costs of supporting men (and the organized skilled sector was overwhelmingly male) who refused work that did not comply with union rulebooks. In Britain, under such circumstances, distinctions between unemployment and putative strike action were virtually indistinguishable. Union branches placed ‘legal’ men (union members) in ‘legal’ shops (where union terms and conditions were observed), while offering support to members unable

76

Noel Whiteside

to find a vacancy that complied with these terms – and, in the U.K. at least, fining members who took jobs where the union was not recognized. Seen from this angle, then, we can understand how official interventions in what could be controversial circumstances might be viewed less as a blessing to the working man than as a threat to his livelihood and that of his colleagues. This is not to argue either that official interventions were designed to break union controls, or that (thanks to union placement schemes) there was no need to supplement union placement activities. This was far from the case. In both Britain and Germany efforts were made to negotiate compromise – not least to prevent official placement agencies being used by employers to break strikes. Trade union provision of social protection was officially well regarded,2 but its association with industrial dispute was not. Major employers in heavy industry in the Ruhr or on the Clyde looked askance at any measure designed to promote union membership by the extension of state subsidies to union funds.3 Led by Strasbourg, some fifteen German cities had adopted the Ghent system by 1914 (so named after the town that initiated the policy in 1901) of offering municipal subsidies to union benefit funds. Frankfurt also created a contributory municipal fund for non-­unionists seeking protection, but this fund did not become active before 1914.4 Local subvention of voluntary unemployment insurance was more widespread in Belgium and the Netherlands but unknown in Britain. Its adoption on the Continent reflects official aims to recalibrate trade union systems of classification, to distinguish those unemployed due to circumstances beyond their control from those directly or indirectly involved in industrial dispute. In Britain at least, debates on a national scheme for the unemployed addressed this problem more directly, provoking dissent within the union movement and opposition to state intervention as a result.5 By way of introduction to this chapter I will start by outlining some pertinent key differences between British municipalities and their Continental counterparts. First we can consider the labour market itself. The advent of social insurance in the 1880s enabled the boundaries of the labour market to become defined in Germany in a manner that was not the case in Britain before 1913. The loss of employment in German cities translated into the loss of social benefit rights (threatening pensions as well as sickness benefits), of direct concern to municipalities charged with local poor law administration. In Britain, prevailing liberal ethics, reinforced by a highly punitive poor law, dictated that individuals should be responsible for their own well-­being. Begging, drunkenness and homelessness were punishable by the local magistracy in Germany (commonly

Organizing Labour Markets 77

through institutional treatment), but not in Britain – where such behaviour only attracted official attention if a felony was committed or public support requested under the poor laws. The result in Britain’s major cities was a highly porous labour market that made it very difficult for official labour exchanges, introduced from 1909, to distinguish the ‘real’ unemployed from the massed pauper host who swamped inner city areas, all ostensibly desperate for work. The second major difference can be observed in the degree of central control over local powers. Contrary to what we might expect for a nation steeped in the ethics of political liberalism, British municipalities enjoyed far less autonomy than their Continental counterparts. Thanks to the relatively recent foundation of the Kaiserreich, the Imperial government in Berlin had little desire to provoke local opposition by encroaching on long-­established municipal hegemony. Most municipalities in Northern Europe retained far greater and more far-­reaching powers than in the U.K., where Parliamentary legislation was required to extend the functions of local government. The non-­interventionist British state of the nineteenth century is somewhat belied by the enormous number of local bills and acts that litter the statute book during the Victorian age, empowering city authorities of varied political complexions to raise a local rate (tax) to fund waterworks, highway maintenance, a wide range of sanitation arrangements or municipal ownership of power supply. That said, the main area absent from such local empowerment was the labour market. With the exception of the poor law and the introduction of distress committees to provide local public works for the unemployed in 1905 (discussed below), local authorities had little to do with labour market organization, except to provide basic education to ensure numeracy and literacy. Again in contrast to Germany where such education was compulsory, technical education was confined to tertiary colleges where attendance was voluntary. The assumptions underpinning British liberal traditions (that labour arrangements should be the subject of voluntary agreement, not legislative intervention) illustrate the different governing philosophies that framed the operation of labour exchanges from their very inception. German municipalities were charged with basic responsibilities for safeguarding technical standards and the establishment of social order. Laws governing conditions of employment were enforced by an inspectorate closely associated with agencies that placed labour, fostering the growth of a technically highly informed bureaucracy capable of coordinating labour market operations across the board. In the U.K., by contrast, faith in the merits of laissez-­faire economics and individual freedom as twin sources of innovation and prosperity undermined the development of a coordinated

78

Noel Whiteside

approach. Health and safety legislation was enforced by a central inspectorate under the Home Office that had nothing to do with municipal government or the poor laws and, outside the Labour Department of the Board of Trade, little technical expertise was found inside central government before the First World War. This piecemeal approach undermined further any coordinated analysis of labour market operations. Such different bureaucratic structures indicate why local perceptions of the remit within which labour exchanges were to operate differed. In German municipalities, official labour bureaux commonly aimed to secure the total coordination of labour markets (albeit under varied political guises). To achieve this, they might incorporate trade unions into their own systems of placement (as in Strasbourg) or supplement (rather than replace) existing schemes (as in Frankfurt) – or seek to attract job seekers away from the facilities run by the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) (as in Berlin). Within a post-­Bismarckean agenda of accommodating (as opposed to legally repressing) the SPD and the ‘free’ unions, labour exchanges were employed in a variety of ways to promote new strategies. Where the local franchise enabled the SPD to gain a presence on the municipal council, placement policies accommodated union demands. Elsewhere (as in Leipzig) official labour market policies could be more repressive. Local politics mattered. In the Kaiserreich, unlike in Britain, the strong traditions of municipal independence, coupled with the disinclination of the Imperial government to become embroiled in the unemployment issue, allowed local authorities to develop initiatives in accordance with local circumstance: political as well as economic. In Britain, by contrast, policy was less concerned with the more immediate impact of industrialization and the consequences for labour market order than with issues of poverty, growing pauperism (reliance of the destitute on public funds) and the threat social degeneration posed in terms of national economic decline which might, ultimately, spell the end of Empire. In this context, the organization of the labour market emerged as a national rather than a local problem. Normative policy solutions were developed centrally and were imposed top-­down rather than locally deliberated. Within the Board of Trade, the state department primarily charged with the promotion of British industry and commerce and, thereby, with labour market issues, social statisticians analysed national dimensions of unemployment, substandard wages, industrial unrest and so forth. Results for both the U.K. and some overseas enquiries were published in the Labour Gazette which was distributed in Europe and throughout the Empire. Such identification of the national dimensions of the ‘social question’ provided the foundations for legislative action.

Organizing Labour Markets 79

Like its German counterpart, British unemployment presented a strong economic identity. However, this was a national response to what was perceived as a national crisis, involving more normative definitions of the problem and how it should be cured. Attention focused on the relationship between chronic poverty, physical incapacity and irregular (or casual) employment as causes of pauperism which burdened the communities where such problems occurred. In this context, labour exchanges were introduced less to facilitate proper technical standards in the placement process than to sort the sheep (who would work regularly) from the goats (who could not or would not) – a form of social ordering focused in part on moral judgement of personal character and less on technical qualifications and aptitudes, as will be argued below. The following section will outline the general debate on labour market reform in Britain that took place in the early twentieth century, within which the promotion of a national system of labour exchanges has to be located. The third section uses a case study to illustrate how these new agencies operated, the principles they embodied and the strategies they pursued. The final section draws some conclusions. Throughout, emphasis is placed on the politics of labour market organization and the ways in which this shaped the nature of classification and treatment of those seeking work. For, unlike Continental schemes that successfully integrated official schemes of labour market placement into local economies, in Britain labour exchanges remained marginal to shaping access to employment opportunities.

Organizing Labour Markets: The National Agenda in Britain In Britain, the late nineteenth century witnessed growing national concern over the state of urban labour markets: in a reversal of liberal tradition, this eventually created a national unemployment policy. Official and unofficial investigations had revealed how poverty damaged industrial efficiency and threatened economic (and imperial) decline. Pauperism was a drain on the resources of inner cities where poor law authorities were increasingly forced to rely on loans from the national Exchequer rather than raise local taxation. Such practices excited official concern and informed discussion of social reform.6 The situation appeared almost perverse. Statistics showed that wages were rising in the late nineteenth century, yet social unrest in major conurbations during economic recessions indicated an apparent failure by the poor to save and the damage done by intermittent, casual (‘precarious’) employment in major commercial centres.7

80

Noel Whiteside

Initial attempts to address the inner city problem focused on the extension of publically subsidized voluntary initiatives. In 1885, the Local Government Board issued a circular to municipal authorities, urging them to raise voluntary funds for public works, to provide work for those with none in a period of extreme economic severity. This appeal, reissued sporadically in ensuing years, had somewhat patchy results. It was reinforced in 1905 by legislation that now required local authorities to create labour registries, or exchanges, to identify bona fide job seekers and to separate the ‘genuine’ unemployed from the rest of the pauper host in order to offer them work on municipal projects. At the same time, the government initiated a major enquiry into the problems of poor relief: the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws sat for over four years, taking evidence from all concerned with issues of poverty, poor relief, labour market problems and so on. In the evidence presented, the germ of a reform agenda began to take root. Moral imperatives about rising rates of pauperism allied to fears for Britain’s economic future: workers had to be taught to manage their lives: to work regularly, to invest in skills and to save against the risk of job loss, illness and declining earning power in old age. This agenda and the political strategies it promoted identified the unemployed as that part of the pauper host capable of self-­protection, whose work habits and skills were essential to future prosperity. Attention focused on the relationship between chronic poverty, physical incapacity and irregular employment as fundamental causes of rising rates of social dependency. Social scientific investigations offered impartial evidence on the dimension of the issue and professional expertise would prescribe the cure. The supply and demand of labour had to be rationalized in accordance with a definition of the prescribed working week. Municipal or charitable help sustained, even rewarded, irregular working habits, reformers argued: this countermanded the programme of decasualization on which the government should embark. ‘The line between independence and dependence, between the efficient and the unemployable, must be made clearer’ the young William Beveridge wrote in 1907. ‘Every place in “free” industry, carrying with it the rights of citizenship – civil liberty, fatherhood, conduct of one’s own life and government of a family – should be a “whole” place involving full employment and earnings up to a definite minimum.’8 Underemployment bred unemployability: if treated like a pauper, the unemployed regular man would eventually end up as another casual labourer, incapable of holding down a permanent job, blurring distinctions between the active worker and the habitual pauper. To break this cycle, reformers argued, required the regular man’s protection; his

Organizing Labour Markets 81

treatment must distinguish him from the pauper, the casual, the vagrant, the drunkard and the petty criminal: the sources of the British dimension of the ‘social question’. The solution lay in the introduction of a national labour exchange complex, which would remove the inefficient, the idle, the vagrant and habitually irregular, and concentrate work in the hands of the most efficient, containing the spread of pauperism while improving economic performance. Far from seeking to destroy the problem of unemployment, therefore, policy appears to have been designed to create it.9 This logic underpinned the well known reform programme introduced by Liberal governments in Britain: specifically, the Labour Exchanges Act (1908), the National Insurance Act (1911) and the introduction of old age pensions (1908). Unlike their municipal counterparts in Continental Europe, labour exchanges in Britain were introduced as a national network, designed to promote total labour mobility between as well as within different professions and towns. New information technologies (the telephone) facilitated the immediate exchange of information about vacancies and applicants; state officials would send the most efficient to where their services were required. Networks of official surveillance would allow the easy identification of applicants of good character, skill and sound working habits, in whose capable hands all available work should be concentrated, facilitating the elimination of the less efficient and promoting industrial prosperity while guaranteeing good service to employers seeking workers.10 Contributory National Insurance (1911) reinforced this strategy. It was in the employer’s interest to avoid hiring day labourers: each required a weekly contribution for health insurance purposes, a payment that was doubled if the worker was also a member of the unemployment scheme.11 Access to unemployment benefit, based on actuarial calculation, would separate the regular contributor from the rest (the ‘morality of mathematics’, according to the young Winston Churchill). A stipulated annual number of contributions and benefits limited to fifteen weeks maximum each year identified unemployed claimants as those temporarily jobless who were previously in regular employment. Long-­ term unemployment was not officially recognized: once benefit rights were exhausted, the claimant left the scheme and re-­entered the pauper class. From the small print found in the legislation, the British unemployed emerge: a select group of regularly employed men whose services were temporarily surplus to immediate requirements, in a scheme initially confined to trades known to suffer from seasonal fluctuations in demand. Impressive as the reforming initiative seems, it was planted in unpromising soil. First, this programme represented a sharp break with earlier

82

Noel Whiteside

government attitudes about official intervention in industrial ­employment – that this was best left to voluntary mediation and regulation by employers and employed.12 Opposition to new initiatives was visible from the start. Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, William Beveridge, Llewellyn Smith, the Webbs and their friends, partly influenced by Continental examples, might have been converted to the merits of various forms of state intervention in employment – but others in the political establishment remained less enthusiastic. Within Whitehall, even within the Board of Trade itself, many senior administrators remained convinced that industry should continue to govern its own affairs. And the principles of laissez faire remained firmly embedded within both major political parties. Even members of the Liberal Cabinet found the prospect of national insurance and labour exchanges distasteful. ‘The new helotry of the servile state run by archivists of the London School of Economics’ John Burns (President of the Local Government Board) wrote to a friend, referring to the new labour reforms, ‘means a race of paupers in a grovelling community ruled by uniformed prigs’.13 Burns’s opinion was hardly unique. Even so, his views (as an ex-­trade unionist) illustrate the opposition to a reform agenda that threatened to remove labour market organization from the hands of industry, to vest authority in the hands of professional social scientists backed by the state. Second, we should note the reformers’ main focus was less on labour market operations per se than on the question of pauperism: on the burdens imposed by a malfunctioning system of employment on local ratepayers. The object of official labour exchanges was less to organize the whole labour market than to identify its margins: to reject those incapable of regular work in order to secure both better workmanship and a decent standard of life for the rest, thereby containing the spread of destitution. In terms of practical knowledge, however, neither municipal nor central government could point to much experience. On the other hand, poor law guardians could point to a great deal, for the poor law authorities had been sole arbitrators of access to public help for the destitute for generations. In consequence, we find them extensively represented on local committees that had, following the Local Government Board circular of 1885, tried to select ‘deserving’ cases for public works in periods of hardship. As administrators of a relief system that assumed the guilt of the applicant by virtue of his application, poor law guardians brought to the table a long history of classifying categories of pauper in terms of personal inadequacies and failings – and this infected the operation of early municipal labour exchanges as the following case study shows.

Organizing Labour Markets 83

Organizing Labour Markets: The Case of Birmingham Birmingham is above all else a business city, run by business men on business principles.

(A. Briggs, History of Birmingham)

In the course of the nineteenth century Birmingham expanded from 102,000 (1821) to over 300,000 (1861), to reach half a million by 1900, acquiring a further 320,000 in 1911, on the formal extension of the city boundary.14 By 1914 this was Britain’s second largest city, its economy originating in the manufacture of small metal wares (from bathroom accessories to jewellery, small arms, saucepans, screws and nails) in multiple small quasi-­artisanal workshops. The mark ‘Made in Birmingham’ was globally famous, making the city a major trading centre, with active interests in imperial affairs. By the late nineteenth century, the foundation of Austin automobiles signalled the first large factories and a supply chain focused on the mass production of standardized components. New production systems (based on imported American machine tools) employed not tens but thousands, divided masters from men and further marginalized the outworkers and casual employees who had long absorbed fluctuating labour demand. By 1914, small workshops, although still numerous, no longer dominated Birmingham’s industrial structure: Austin, Dunlop and Cadbury were becoming increasingly prominent. The small workshop legacy founded traditions of production flexibility and social mobility; skilled journeymen became small masters, retaining membership of unions that recruited masters and men alike and offered trade benefits (for sick or unemployed members) rather than organizing industrial action. The arrival of compulsory social insurance in 1911 caused not a ripple of dissent in Birmingham (unlike the furore it provoked on the Clyde) as the reform represented little more than a consolidation of established voluntary practice. Equally, trade societies (over eighty by 1914)15 alleviated trade depressions by sharing work and fixing prices. Reputation and profit here were founded not on unbridled market competition but on the consolidation of – and cooperation between – similar manufacturing ventures. In Birmingham’s politics, both sides of industry united successfully in the 1870s to overthrow Conservative landed interests. A Liberal Caucus, in power from that decade until 1914, embodied a politics of religious dissent (a Quaker heritage standing in opposition to Anglican hierarchies) that promoted the mutual obligation of employer and employed as the foundation of collective prosperity and social harmony.

84

Noel Whiteside

The city council (aptly called the Corporation) was controlled by men who adapted business methods to public service. The object of both voluntary institution and local authority was the same: an alliance between dissenting churches and local council representatives to promote philanthropy and achieve the domestic mission of prevention (of disease, ignorance, crime, social disaffection) and reclamation of the downfallen. Here, the city council was central. ‘All private effort, all individual philanthropy’, the Liberal Mayor of Birmingham said in 1875, ‘sinks into insignificance compared with the organized power of a great representative assembly such as this.’16 The benefits of prosperity would reach all orders of society; the civic mission was to offer opportunities to enable the community to develop the talents of all its members. This was a clarion call to business to take up its social responsibilities as part of a moral duty to the community on which its wealth depended. Birmingham earned itself the sobriquet of ‘the best governed city in the world’.17 Its MPs pioneered the cause of national education and its Corporation redeveloped the city centre (to attract customers for Birmingham’s wares), created one of the first civic universities and spread the advantages of gas (later electric) lighting and public transport throughout the city and into surrounding urban areas. Achievement was grounded on municipal trading. The Corporation was the majority shareholder in the urban gas company and used profits from this venture to fund the city art gallery, a large public library as well as the urban improvement project, a majority shareholding in the local electricity company and a major investment in water supply. Selling gas and, later, electricity to neighbouring local authorities who had not the means to manufacture their own allowed cross-­subsidy to protect the rates (local taxes) while improving Birmingham’s amenities and cultural facilities to promote the city as a desirable place to do business. Creative as these initiatives proved, the labour market remained strictly off-­limits for the Corporation. Birmingham could boast a world class patent library, but it also had some of the worst slum housing whose inhabitants, casual and unskilled workers, were among the poorest in the U.K. The politics of dissent favoured offering opportunities for all, but drew a line at stepping outside commercial practice to usurp what it saw as the proper province of charitable endeavour. Voluntary action for deserving cases would help the unemployed. Employers claimed that labour management was their private business; trade unions repudiated any intervention that interfered with their control over access to key skills and jobs. The Liberal Caucus relied on electoral support from both. More fundamentally, for dissenters personal responsibility remained a moral duty: public authority could offer opportunities to secure advancement,

Organizing Labour Markets 85

but the individual had to be capable of taking them, of achieving salvation through personal effort. Those seeking public help were thereby doubly condemned as commercially inept and morally corrupt. Birmingham’s poor law authorities remained among the strictest in the country. This moral environment underpinned Birmingham’s response to the national labour market reforms described in the previous section. As a business-­based city, the City Corporation tended to agree with local poor law authorities, arguing that it was not in the interest of the city or its ratepayers to offer public works to the unemployed. Workers from the pauper classes represented poor value for money: their labour was substandard and they were simply not reliable enough to turn up when required. Until 1905, when legislation forced a change of approach, the provision of help for this sector remained firmly lodged in the voluntary sector. In 1905, Birmingham’s Distress Committee was created to implement the Unemployed Workmen’s Act. It remained, however, dominated by its poor law representatives and the poor law ethos. The new municipal labour exchange was only to accept clients recommended by the Distress Committee, which established an agenda of classificatory indicators to determine who should be so referred for placement. Criteria closely reflected poor law priorities. Evidence of need (only married male applicants with family dependants) combined with sound moral character (a clean and tidy house, well cared-­for children and religious observance) and proper market behaviour (a history of previous regular employment and thrift, reflected in past friendly society or trade union membership) identified the worthy from the pauperized common herd.18 In addition, Birmingham’s Guardians set up a labour test yard on land adjoining the workhouse in 1909 and employed applicants who managed to pass the initial assessment on work in stone-­breaking, wood-­chopping and bundling; the manufacture of briquettes from coke and coal dust and making mortar from ashes and refuse collected from the workhouse and its infirmary. The test yard and its regime of hard labour were deemed a success and its graduates were recommended to the municipal exchange for placement on city works or in privately registered vacancies.19 This punitive approach, designed to deter all but the most desperate, meant that the operation of official placement remained associated with the poor law and its treatments. In consequence, recourse to the Distress Committee and the municipal exchange were shunned by respectable employers and workers alike. Birmingham Trades Council, set up to facilitate the entry of skilled men into the rank of small master, was happy to see public works provided for the worthy unskilled destitute in this way, but did not for a moment associate such provision with its members.20 The introduction of national labour exchanges in 1909–1910 did nothing

86

Noel Whiteside

to change the situation as the clientele of the municipal exchange simply moved to the new agency. Certainly before the war, no respectable union man would have had anything to do with such an institution. Nor would their employers: a survey of 3,000 firms attached to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce carried out in 1918 found only 170 able to say anything favourable about labour exchanges at all.21 In this way, we observe how poor law mentalities bit deep into Birmingham’s labour exchange practices. The information collected about putative applicants involves an individualized appraisal of ‘good character’, reflected partly in record of previous work and willingness to undertake even the dirtiest and hardest of labour tasks, but overwhelmingly in judgement about the moral worth of the applicant and his wife (as reflected in the inspection of household cleanliness, the state of the children and the record of church attendance). Here we find no effort to appraise the candidate in terms of professional skill or qualification (although the line of work is noted). In evidence to the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, moreover, one of Birmingham’s spokesmen illustrated how distinctions could be drawn not merely between deserving and undeserving candidates, but also in categories of degradation. Here those of ‘unblemished’ character, deemed worthy of charitable help, were distinguished from those whose record was not ‘unimpeachable’, who might receive outdoor relief on penalty of disenfranchisement, from the ‘thriftless and lazy’, who should be subject to institutional correction and the ‘drunken and vicious’ who were proper clients for penal servitude.22 A man’s unemployment is assumed to reflect his domestic circumstances or moral behaviour; this required punitive correction. Such criteria of assessment differed to the social scientific appraisals advocated by the Webbs and their acolytes that, reflecting more closely practices on the Continent, tended to favour appraisals based on work history, medical condition, age and period out of work. These criteria also bore little resemblance to those used by the labour exchanges in Ghent, Strasbourg or Liege, where trade union representation allowed alternative assessment to be used and efforts were made to lure skilled – even white collar – job seekers to the labour exchange for placement purposes.23 The implications of this for structures of power in labour market placement are further developed in the conclusions below.

Conclusions Late nineteenth-­century city environments and the multiple demands of industrial work placed specific requirements on different sectors of the

Organizing Labour Markets 87

labour force, not least in Birmingham where larger industrial firms were coming into increasing prominence. New technical developments and an increased pace of production required tighter discipline, greater coordination and gave rise to new specializations and expertise that shaped employer preferences. The appearance of municipally-­run labour market agencies to coordinate supply and demand necessarily created debate over how job seekers should be categorized and who should be given priority in filling vacancies. Multiple indicators of merit – standardized qualifications, ‘good character’ (thrift, cleanliness, sobriety), obedience, physical fitness, good citizenship, experience born of seniority – all might be used to justify a social ordering that reflected specific types of public authority and particular views of how social economies should work. Initially at least, public debate in the U.K. in particular was informed by established categorizations of the indigent derived from established poor law practices. Here, municipal authorities confronted multiple priorities, such as the degree of need (the family man taking precedence over the celibate) and the single opportunity for the long-­term claimant (e.g. a sedentary position for a lame person). During this period ‘scientific’ standards (derived from economic or medical research) compromised with moral judgements (based on religious precepts or civic codes) to create complex classifications of job seekers that presaged their treatment.24 Moral criteria eventually became translated into social scientific terms, amenable to professional judgement and statistical appraisal: claimants were judged by state of health, genetic disposition, work record, domestic circumstances and religious practices – signs used to distinguish between the respectable tramping artisan and the itinerant beggar: the respectable worker and the indolent layabout. As indicated above, on entering the field of labour market placement, Britain’s municipal authorities were not venturing into virgin territory, but invading a land partly colonized by employers and employed. This was a sensitive business. The problem lay not only in the introduction of new systems of labour market coordination, but in negotiating criteria to be used in determining priorities of access to job vacancies and, more importantly, who had the authority to decide what these criteria might be. Here we witness confrontations not simply between different interests but also between different orders of judgement concerning, ultimately, how the local political economy was expected to operate. Trade unions in both Britain and Germany wanted to guarantee the wages and working conditions of members: for this, they required secure controls over access to their specific professional sectors.25 Within trade union priorities, therefore, jobs should be offered to senior members and those with most experience (and long union membership) in the trade. On the other hand,

88

Noel Whiteside

market-­oriented commercial imperatives dictated that work should be given to the most efficient and, as principle investors, employers argued that they were best informed as to how efficient workers might be identified. The two sets of criteria did not automatically overlap. Compromise was not always forthcoming: employers refused to recognize trade unions and created labour registries to ‘weed out’ union men;26 unions could run their own registries and placement agencies separate from either municipal or employer organizations.27 The politics of labour market organization shaped varied employment policy agendas and selection criteria differed according to who undertook the selection. Prior to the reforms initiated in 1905, voluntary arrangements negotiated between employers and employed dominated labour market organization in the U.K. To take an example, the Boilermakers’ union on the Clyde controlled access to employment: shipbuilders required men with specific skills at specific times and the local union secretary knew both members and their capabilities in a manner that later state-­run labour exchanges never could. In Britain, unions controlled apprenticeships, qualifications and training schedules in skilled sectors of engineering, metal working, construction, textiles, printing as well as a myriad of artisanal trades. Employment remained legally enshrined in an eighteenth-­century statute governing masters and servants until the 1911 National Insurance Act clarified the worker’s contractual position.28 The state, in short, remained absent from processes of labour market coordination, except to offer voluntary conciliation machinery in the event of industrial dispute. The remit of official intervention rested on the poor laws and on the reform of those flawed characters whose personal failings had led to their destitution – and these were not British citizens with political rights, but paupers with none. This judgement reflects the assumptions and presuppositions on which labour market performance was grounded. In Britain, liberal notions concerning the merits of free competition between entrepreneurial actors as the foundations for economic growth, the creation of collective well-­ being and the common good effectively undermined the legitimacy of any state involvement. The transfer of German labour exchanges (and it was the German systems that essentially informed the 1908 Labour Exchange Act) onto British soil was resisted by organized labour from the start, primarily as a source of ‘blackleg’ labour in the event of industrial action.29 In 1920, the Treasury seriously considered closing the network down: neither employers nor unions supported its retention.30 In Germany, strong traditions of municipal self-­government aligned to a faith in the modernizing capacities of technical competences, scientific investigation and the application of the findings by public authorities. A more technocratic approach fostered a professionally qualified bureaucracy and

Organizing Labour Markets 89

the spread of professional evaluations and treatments. Such professional assessment encouraged ever more precise scrutiny of client groups and the development of more detailed categories and criteria to modify official appraisals. Here the client (the worker) may become simply the object of scientific investigation and have no deliberating rights in deciding assessment processes. It is essentially this transfer of authority, the power to exercise judgement, from the democratic to the scientific (illustrated by the quote at the head of this chapter) that stimulated opposition from both sides of industry in the U.K.

Notes This chapter derives from research carried out as part of the CAPRIGHT FP6 project funded by the EC (2007–2011). I owe a debt of gratitude to other researchers employed on the project, notably Dr Alice Mah, Dr Simon Constantine, Dr Juergen Schmidt and Dr Roland Atzmuller, whose work informs the analysis here. However, the argument employed here is my own, with all its shortcomings.   1. N. Whiteside. 1994. ‘Definir le chomage’, in M. Mansfield, R. Salais and N. Whiteside (eds), Aux sources du chomage, Paris: Editions Belin, 381–412.   2. See, in the U.K. for example, reports of Royal Commission on Labour (1892) and the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws (1908–1909).   3. ‘How do you know it (union unemployment benefit) is not being paid to men who should not be paid it? The question comes up then What is a strike? What is a trade dispute? Do you know? I do not know. I maintain that a particular man is out on a trade dispute and the union say he is not, but he is out of employment and they use my money to help him.’ Henderson, Shipbuilding Employers Federation deputation to the Board of Trade, 14 June 1911, 56: MSS 237/B/1/144: Modern Record Centre (MRC) Warwick. For Germany see G. Steinmetz. 1993. Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 203–213.  4. A. Faust. 1983. ‘State and Unemployment in Germany, 1880–1914’, in W. Mommsen (ed.), The Emergence of the Welfare State in Britain and Germany, London: Croom Helm, 159. See also E.P. Hennock. 2006. The Origins of the Welfare State in Germany and Britain, 1850–1914: Social Policies Compared, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, chapter 17.  5. N. Whiteside. 1980. ‘Welfare Legislation and the Unions during the First World War’, Historical Journal 23, 857–874.   6. J. Harris. 1972. Unemployment and Politics, Oxford: Clarendon Press.  7. H. Barkai. 1983. ‘Travail, emploi et salaires dans l’economie neoclassique: les conceptions marshalliennes au tournant du siecle’ in Mansfield, Salais and Whiteside, Aux sources, 153–183.   8. W.H. Beveridge. 1907. ‘The Problem of the Unemployed’, Sociological Papers 3, 327.   9. M. Mansfield. 1983. ‘Naissance d’une definition institutionnelle du chomage en Grande Bretagne’ in Mansfield, Salais and Whiteside, Aux sources, 281–295. 10. Ibid. 11. Part II of the 1911 National Insurance Act offered unemployment insurance that covered a restricted number of trades – largely those with skilled unions offering unemployment benefits, i.e. shipbuilding, engineering, construction and metal working. The Act was extended to all manual workers earning less than £250 p.a. in 1920.

90

Noel Whiteside

12. See, for example, Royal Commission on Labour, Final Report C.7421/1894; Parliamentary Papers (P.P.) XXXV. 13. Letter to H.G. Wells, 16 May 1910. Cited in: Harris, Unemployment, 267 (fn). Sydney and Beatrice Webb were co-­founders of the London School of Economics, established to promote the social sciences and their application to public administration. 14. Ibid., chapter 5. 15. Ibid., 50–52. 16. Cited in E.P. Hennock. 1973. Fit and Proper Person: Ideal and Reality in Nineteenth-­ Century Urban Government, London: Edward Arnold, 143. 17. J. Ralph. 1890. ‘The Best-­Governed City in the World’, Harper’s Monthly 81, 99–110. 18. C.A. Vince. 1923. History of the Corporation of Birmingham Vol. IV – 1900–1915, Birmingham: Cornish for the Corporation (of Birmingham), 494–495. 19. 1908–1909 ‘Special Committee to Investigate the System of Indoor and Outdoor Relief, GP/B/2/7/5/1’ Birmingham Union, Birmingham. 20. J. Corbett. 1966. Birmingham Trades Council, 1866–1966, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 47, 79. 21. Evidence of Homer (West Midlands Division: Ministry of Labour) to Committee of Enquiry into the Work of the Employment Exchanges: Evidence (Barnes) Cmd. 1140 / 1921 P.P.XI. 3rd August 1920, 333 q. 5883 and 338–339 qs. 6009–6016. 22. Evidence of Best to Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress, Minutes of Evidence, Cd. 4835 / 1909, 741. 23. See N. Whiteside. 2007. ‘Unemployment Revisited in Comparative Perspective’, International Review of Social History 52, 35–56 for an account of the Strasbourg scheme. 24. C. Topolov. 1994. Naissance du chomeur, Paris: Albin Michel, chapter 13. 25. R. Jay. 1892. Une corporation modern. La Fédération des brodeurs de la Suisse orientale et du Vorarlberg, Grenoble: Allier. Chronicles how a confederation of embroiderers in the St Gall region of Switzerland managed to gain legal recognition to regulate their trade, implying that employers could only employ on specific terms and conditions. 26. One of the better known examples in the U.K. was the Shipping Federation: an alliance of shipowners who, before 1914, used a network of labour registries to prevent the hiring of any seafarer or dock worker who was a union member. This network was also employed for strike-­breaking purposes. 27. N. Whiteside. 1993. ’La protection du metier’, Les Cahiers d’Histoire de l’Institut de Recherches Marxistes 51, 29–51. 28. See S. Deakin. 1998. ‘The Evolution of the Contract of Employment, 1900–1950: The Influence of the Welfare State’, in N. Whiteside and R. Salais (eds), Governance, Industry and Labour Markets in Britain and France, London: Taylor and Francis Group, 212–230. 29. Trade Union Congress. 1910. Annual Report, 160–163. 30. In the event that the labour exchanges, renamed employment exchanges, were retained because of the need to administer job search checks in accordance with the regulations of the unemployment insurance scheme, universalized in 1920. Committee of Enquiry into the Work of the Employment Exchanges: Evidence (Barnes) Cmd. 1140 / 1921 P.P.XI.

Bibliography Beveridge, W.H. 1907. ‘The Problem of the Unemployed’, Sociological Papers 3, 323–331. Barkai, H. 1983. ‘Travail, emploi et salaires dans l’economie neoclassique: les conceptions marshalliennes au tournant du siecle’ in Mansfield, Salais and Whiteside, Aux sources du chomage, Paris: Editions Belin, 153–183. Briggs, A. 1952. History of Birmingham, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Organizing Labour Markets 91

Corbett, J. 1966. Birmingham Trades Council, 1866–1966, London: Lawrence and Wishart. Deakin, S. 1998. ‘The Evolution of the Contract of Employment, 1900–1950: The Influence of the Welfare State’, in N. Whiteside and R. Salais (eds), Governance, Industry and Labour Markets in Britain and France, London: Taylor and Francis Group, 212–230. Faust, A. 1983. State and Unemployment in Germany, 1880–1914’, in W. Mommsen (ed.), The Emergence of the Welfare State in Britain and Germany, London: Croom Helm, 150–166. Harris, J. 1972. Unemployment and Politics, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hennock, E.P. 1973. Fit and Proper Person: Ideal and Reality in Nineteenth-­Century Urban Government, London: Edward Arnold. Hennock, E.P. 2006. The Origins of the Welfare State in Germany and Britain, 1850–1914: Social Policies Compared, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jay, R. 1892. Une corporation moderne: La Fédération des brodeurs de la Suisse orientale et du Vorarlberg, Grenoble: Allier. Mansfield, M. 1983. ‘Naissance d’une definition institutionnelle du chomage en Grande Bretagne’ in Mansfield, Salais and Whiteside, Aux sources du chomage, Paris: Editions Belin, 281–295. Ralph, J. 1890. ‘The Best-­Governed City in the World’, Harper’s Monthly 81, 99–110. Steinmetz, G. 1993. Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Topolov, C. 1994. Naissance du chomeur, Paris: Albin Michel. Trade Union Congress. 1910. Annual Report. Vince, C.A. 1923. History of the Corporation of Birmingham Vol. IV – 1900–1915, Birmingham: Cornish for the Corporation (of Birmingham). Whiteside, N. 1980. ‘Welfare Legislation and the Unions during the First World War’, Historical Journal 23, 857–874. Whiteside, N. 1993. ‘La protection du metier’, Les Cahiers d’Histoire de l’Institut de Recherches Marxistes 51, 29–51. Whiteside, N. 1994. ‘Definir le chomage’, in M. Mansfield, R. Salais and N. Whiteside (eds), Aux sources du chomage, Paris: Editions Belin, 381–412. Whiteside, N. 2007. ‘Unemployment Revisited in Comparative Perspective’, International Review of Social History 52, 35–56. Wool and Worsted Federation spokesman: Committee of Enquiry into the Work of the Employment Exchanges: Evidence (Barnes) Cmd.1140/1921, Parliamentary Papers (P.P.) XI, 634.

Chapter 4

Creating a National Labour Market

Public Labour Exchanges in Sweden, 1890–1920

Nils Edling

The public labour exchange played an important part in Swedish labour market policies a century ago. In 1902 the first municipal exchanges opened, and ten years later there were thirty-­two exchanges with sixty local branches. Two-­thirds of them were run by county councils and the others were local offices established and run by urban municipalities. Moreover, all of them were organized along similar lines and cooperated under the same official name: ‘Sweden’s Public Labour Exchange’ (Sveriges Offentliga Arbetsförmedling). This network continued to grow, and in 1922 it included exchanges in all twenty-­four counties and a dozen municipal exchanges. Altogether there were almost a hundred local offices and numerous local agents, supplemented by twenty-­five occupational offices catering to certain trades.1 The early and continuously expanding Swedish employment service constitutes a little-­known success story. Despite substantial bodies of literature on the histories of the Swedish labour movement and welfare state, there are no historical studies of labour intermediation. In addition, the topic of placement was absent in Swedish labour history until recently.2 A few social scientists have touched upon the subject, but their studies are marked by presentist views. In their research, the public initiatives of the early twentieth century are regarded as an inevitably inadequate predecessor – or at least by definition a less important one – to the active and comprehensive labour market policies

Creating a National Labour Market 93

of the post-­war era, the golden age of the celebrated Swedish mode. In this manner, the brief available history of the Swedish employment service contrasts the internationally highly competitive track record from the 1940s with the modest beginnings a few decades earlier. It merely reminds readers of the fact that Sweden has not always held the top position.3 However, my argument is that the first labour exchanges were actually quite successful, up to the depression of the early 1920s. I draw upon the much more productive interpretation forwarded by political scientist Bo Rothstein that stresses the significance of the public labour exchange in creating social trust through the cooperation of employers and workers in the exchanges’ governing boards. In his study, Rothstein also highlights an issue of primary significance: the question of the exchanges’ legitimacy in a society characterized by a very high level of industrial conflict.4 In addition, he correctly emphasizes the continuity in Swedish labour market policies. The present chapter examines the principles and practices of Sweden’s public labour exchanges from the 1890s until around 1920. It is divided into three sections: the first provides a background, introducing certain features of Swedish society and economy. The second covers the labour exchange as public policy; and the final section attempts to describe how the exchange operated, along with a few illustrations from Stockholm.

Certain Swedish Peculiarities When Norway and Denmark introduced voluntary unemployment insurance schemes on a national level in 1906 and 1907 – two of the first programmes in any country – Swedish economists and statisticians, who were definitely not uninterested in social reforms, recommended that it was better to wait and see before embarking on such a new and uncertain path. They did so for several reasons. Certainly, structural preconditions had an impact: Sweden was more rural than its neighbours and both Copenhagen and Oslo (Kristiania) held more dominant positions in their national economies than Stockholm did in the setting of Sweden. Not immune to recessions, the Swedish economy nonetheless did not experience anything like the Norwegian Crash of 1899 (Kristianiakrakket), which hit the building industry in the capital particularly hard. The minor downturns in the first years of the new century also had a deeper impact in Denmark than in Sweden. These differences were important but should not be exaggerated inasmuch as all three economies were ­changing rapidly.5

94

Nils Edling

In the 1890s, the portion of the Swedish population working in agriculture diminished at a pace that would not be experienced again until the 1950s. At the same time, Stockholm grew from 250,000 to 350,000 inhabitants between 1890 and 1910, and unionization literally exploded from a meagre 25,000 organized workers in 1896 to more than 200,000 a decade later. Sweden was ‘in a fast, continuous transition from agricultural society to industrial nation’, summarized the leading newspaper Aftonbladet on New Year’s Eve 1898.6 A high level of emigration, especially in the 1880s and early 1890s (with another peak in 1902–1903), contributed to make the shortage of work a relatively minor issue. In the first years of the twentieth century, emigration became a hot topic, and was given the status of a national problem elevated above partisan politics, and calls-­for reforms were heard, above all for improved conditions in rural and agricultural areas.7 This is because emigration caused a shortage of manpower. There were hardly any skilled workers to be found in engineering, and agriculture lacked labourers, according to the complaints. The fear of continuing emigration, causing further shortages, made the situation even graver. Clearly the interest in labour exchanges and the conviction that they were necessary to combat emigration, both dating from the same years, reinforced one another. They were symbolically united in the programme of the National Society Against Emigration (Nationalföreningen mot emigrationen), founded in 1907. This organization established its own placement offices with the mission of helping qualified Swedes on the other side of the Atlantic to return to the homeland. The impact of these anti-­emigration placement offices was not particularly impressive and their significance was mainly ideological and as a sign of national mobilization against ‘the loss of blood’ caused by ­transnational migration.8 The activities of the rapidly-­ growing Swedish labour movement also demonstrate the secondary importance of unemployment. Following the Danish example, the young Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen, founded in 1898) tried to piece together information gathered from the unions about members’ numbers and employment conditions. Ten years earlier, the Second Scandinavian Labour Congress had already urged the unions to collect statistics. The aim was clearly to justify claims made by the labour movement. The figures gathered would once and for all reveal the harsh conditions under which the workers lived. At the same time, they ‘gave a terrifying impression’ that could be used in political campaigns.9 Consequently, the Swedish Confederation in 1901 declared that statistics produced by the unions would be ‘an effective instrument for pressuring state and local authorities to take action’. Yet this utterly failed to attract interest from the unions. A year later,

Creating a National Labour Market 95

further efforts to evaluate the paucity of work among union members were cancelled due to lack of interest. The Landsorganisationen waited another decade before starting to collect unemployment figures in a more systematic manner in 1911. At that time, their Danish and Norwegian counterparts had been surveying the shortage of work for several years, and they were cooperating with their national statistical bureaux in this undertaking.10 From the late 1890s, Danish and Norwegian labour organizations – both unions and parties – campaigned for public support for the unemployed while also attempting to shift the responsibility for being out of work from the individual to society. Although organized labour did not design the unemployment insurance reforms of 1906– 1907, it contributed to them by drawing public attention to the issues involved. As a result, the demands of labour supported the reform proposals imported, redesigned and promoted by the new social economists and non-­Socialist social reformers. Swedish politics were different, too. Both Denmark and Norway had extended male suffrage, thus opening partisan competition for workers’ votes and politicizing issues relating to the working population’s living conditions. Conservatives and Liberals had to compete with the emerging Social Democrats for the working man’s vote. The outcome of this competition was by no means predetermined.11 The substantially more elitist Swedish Riksdag of the early twentieth century – ‘one of the most reactionary of European parliaments, surpassed only by the Prussian Landtag’ – still had highly influential conservative groups.12 They were successful in opposing expensive social policy experiments (in general) and reforms that could be disadvantageous to the rural population (in particular). Such opposition existed in the other countries, too, but the Norwegian and Danish Liberals (Venstre), both with strongholds in the countryside, were able to reconcile (at least provisionally) conflicting urban and rural interests. The Swedish Liberals (Liberala Samlingspartiet), in power in 1905–1906 and 1911–1914, tried to bridge that gap but had limited success. Their efforts to introduce an unemployment insurance bill during their second term in office were halted by lengthy and heated conflicts over defence spending and parliamentary power – issues that finally forced them out of office in the spring of 1914. In the previous fifteen years, the occasional private bills proposing national labour exchange legislation (1900–1902) and unemployment insurance (starting in 1908–1910 when interest in the new social problem increased) had been quashed by shifting rural Conservative majorities in the Riksdag. The argument was usually that shortage of work was a seasonal and local issue best handled as such.13 Although Sweden lagged behind in the field of social reform, its backwardness should not be exaggerated. Certainly, Denmark led the field

96

Nils Edling

following the introduction of a new old-­age insurance scheme and a revised poor law (1891), as well as successful sickness insurance (1892) and industrial accident legislation (1898). While the Swedish Riksdag had passed laws on sickness insurance in 1891 and industrial accidents ten years later, both reforms were substantially limited and regarded as inadequate by contemporaries. As Norwegian political scientist Rune Ervik noted in a comparative study on unemployment policies in the early twentieth century, the context of poor-­relief and poor-­law reform played a central part in the Swedish discussions on unemployment, whereas the Norwegian and Danish discussions centred on the insurance.14 This confirms the image of Sweden as a latecomer, yet it is important to underline that this was not all negative. It was not just the effect of a lack of interest in social reform but also a positive choice based on a certain view of the Swedish labour market, a view with prominent proponents. In his book Socialpolitik, first published in 1902, the economist Gustav Cassel (1861– 1945) provided the principal justification for this position. Cassel, who viewed social policy as an instrument for economic growth and efficient deployment of resources, had a fundamentally positive view of unions and their self-­help activities. At the same time, he devoted a great deal of energy to a critical evaluation of Socialist economic doctrines and policies. However, he did not support unemployment insurance, or at least not a publicly organized and subsidized system. According to him, insurance could only be meaningfully applied to a certain type of unemployment: a shortage of work due to unforeseen changes in the economy, but never to seasonal or cyclical unemployment: It seems that insurance against normal or regularly occurring unemployment is rather unnecessary, if not useless. People insure themselves against events that are uncertain to happen, whereas they prepare themselves for events that they know will happen. Normal unemployment in seasonal professions is not a risk that needs to be spread across many people to compensate for the damage that a few of them suffer. . . . The right kind of insurance against regularly occurring unemployment is a [mutual] savings and loan association.15

Seasonal shortages, the dominant form of joblessness in Sweden, were not involuntary unemployment per se and were therefore non-­insurable, he concluded in this influential book.16 Other leading economists shared this macroeconomic perspective, which was also generally accepted among the political parties and which laid the theoretical foundations for Swedish labour market policy up to the 1930s. As a result, it provided the underpinnings for the workfare programme introduced in 1914, where wages were set far below union rates to test the willingness to work among those unemployed applying for assistance. This programme

Creating a National Labour Market 97

constituted the main characteristic of Swedish unemployment policies from the 1910s to the 1930s.17 It is usually regarded as the only labour market policy before the era of Social Democratic welfare reform. The extensive network of public labour exchanges formed the other salient characteristic.

The New Labour Exchange Policy In the early 1890s, the magistrate and governor in Stockholm initiated the first inquiry into the new and nebulous problem of unemployment, in response to the social unrest in the bad winters of the preceding years. The commission of inquiry devoted some attention to the labour exchange as an instrument to combat seasonal imbalances in labour supply and demand. It argued for some kind of organization. Yet it also stressed it should be completely unnecessary for a municipality to intervene inasmuch as job seekers and employers were perfectly able to handle hiring and placement in the traditional way: through advertisements and personal contacts. A public intervention would also violate important political principles. All forms of labour intermediation would therefore have to be referred to the private and philanthropic sectors, at best with support from and supervision of the poor-­relief authorities.18 That report of 1895 noted the new labour exchanges introduced in certain Swiss and German towns. But it did not make any specific recommendations for Stockholm based on these foreign developments. A few years later, all this had changed through a process of transfer and emulation in which German labour exchanges set the example for all countries. In 1898, the first municipal labour exchange opened in Oslo (Kristiania) and close at hand, the Norwegian labour office came to represent the obvious and familiar point of reference. It figured prominently in the deliberations of the city councils in Copenhagen in 1899–1900, Gothenburg in 1901–1902, Helsinki in 1902–1903 and Stockholm from 1902 to 1905.19 Soon the Norwegian capital replaced the towns of southwest and southern Germany as the model, although the German example still exercised a strong influence on theoretical discussions on the significance of public regulation of placement. In the autumn of 1902, the first Swedish exchanges opened in Helsingborg, a town with a population of only circa 25,000 (located along the Sound with Denmark), as well as in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest town with 135,000 inhabitants. Both were modelled on foreign examples nearby, i.e. Oslo and Copenhagen, and both came about through local initiatives where prominent industrialists played an important role. Within three years, seven

98

Nils Edling

other Swedish towns had established labour exchanges. In this process of diffusion and emulation, the novelty and popularity of the exchanges became an argument in itself for reform, alongside the limited costs and positive effects on seasonal changes in the labour market. It is safe to say that the public labour exchange, a sign of social progress, was highly fashionable and that this popularity, certainly not unique to Northern Europe, demonstrates the transnational character of social reform. Although the Riksdag-proposals of 1900–1902 for a national labour exchange policy were turned down, they had a lasting influence of an indirect kind. Above all, the Liberal Edvard Wavrinsky’s private bill of 1900 (consisting of upwards of 150 pages and meticulously well-­documented) demonstrated the first-­hand knowledge he had acquired on location in Germany, Norway and elsewhere.20 Wavrinsky’s bill provided an archive of updated information for all those interested in the new innovation and his account resonated in many of the local proposals. It was later supplemented by new surveys in all the Nordic countries, such as those conducted by parliamentary and government commissions in Norway in 1903 and Finland a few years later.21 Needless to say, the labour statisticians in the new Bureau of Labour Statistics at the Board of Trade (Kommerskollegi Afdelning för Arbetsstatistik) in Stockholm shared this interest and compiled their own reports on the latest developments abroad.22 Collecting, arranging and publishing of all kinds of labour statistics – on occupations, wages, working hours, yearly incomes, food and lodging, accidents, self-­ help funds, strikes, lockouts and so on – were the main tasks of the new Bureau, established in 1902–1903. Starting in 1903 it published a quarterly (later bimonthly) gazette in the same way labour offices did in every country; the journal provided updated reports and notices on significant reforms abroad according to the well-­known pattern. Collecting and publishing data from the gradually increasing number of labour exchanges comprised another task, but the promotion of the labour exchange as the chief instrument for modernizing and organizing employment was not among those initial tasks.23 Instead, the transfer of foreign models and perceived domestic needs made the exchange a top priority for the young academics who worked in the Bureau. This small group was headed by Henning Elmquist (1871–1933), who had completed his doctoral dissertation in statistics (in 1899) on the working conditions in the tobacco industry. His friend from his years at Uppsala University, Gunnar Huss (1871–1939), who earned a PhD in economic statistics (in 1902), was his second in command. Both possessed the specialized knowledge that was in demand. Their recognized expertise gave them a platform to work from and room to manoeuvre. As civil servants, their formal position was quite different from that of

Creating a National Labour Market 99

the university professors and politicians. They were experts within the state bureaucracy and in charge of the continuous monitoring of the labour market. But as Hugh Heclo demonstrates in his seminal study, their position did not diminish their freedom to formulate and promote new policies. On the contrary, these young men from the Bureau exacted a long-­lasting influence over labour market policies and went on to have distinguished careers right at the centre of Sweden’s social administration.24 The labour statisticians were not just civil servants but also social reformers who consciously defined the Bureau as an association for social reform and a partner in both national and transnational reform networks. They had close ties to the Liberal Party and to the Central Association for Social Work (Centralförbundet för Socialt Arbete). The Association for Social Work was a new organization for all those interested in social reform, yet it was closely allied with the Liberals and published the leading reform journal, Social Tidskrift (which debuted in 1901). Elmquist and Huss figured quite frequently in these reformist circles, spreading the gospel of the labour exchange and publishing articles about the new developments abroad and the principal issues involved.25 As already mentioned, unemployment insurance was a central focus for the labour statisticians. They did not reject this form of insurance as such, but argued from principles and practical considerations that labour statistics and labour exchanges were far more important. Any insurance system was dependent on reliable data about the labour market and on having a public employment service. This meant that the public labour exchange had to be the top priority. It must be stressed that this was an active choice based on a certain view of the Swedish labour market where seasonal changes in the supply and demand of labour, migration from rural to urban industries and an increase in emigration were substantial factors. The labour exchange, then, was not merely a second best option, produced by obstacles to more comprehensive reforms. The best example of this position is found in the Bureau’s report of August 1907 on unemployment insurance. Compiled by Huss, it was a survey of the different programmes adopted abroad – a survey of the kind produced all over Europe by policymaking social scientists. Naturally, the new programmes in Norway and Denmark were covered in the report.26 Huss discerned seven types of unemployment, each with its special causes and remedies. Without hesitation, he singled out an effective and all-­ encompassing system of exchanges as the most important treatment for most forms of the problem. It was subsequently to provide the basis for all other measures such as relief work programmes and perhaps even insurance reform. Referring to the Ghent model of insurance, recently introduced in Norway and Denmark, he cautioned that voluntary state-­subsidized insurance

100

Nils Edling

might unduly favour organized labour and the Social Democrats while concurrently failing to help those most needing protection from poverty and labour shortages. Consequently, the insurance experiments required further study. Thus, Huss supported the request for a government commission on unemployment insurance in 1906 by the national conference on poor-­relief and poor-­law reform. In the meantime, he concluded that it was necessary to develop the labour exchanges – an assessment made just as Sweden was embarking on a more systematic labour exchange policy.27 In 1905, the government commissioned the Board of Trade to draw up a national programme in response to requests from some MPs in towns with public labour exchanges. These parliamentarians called for state policies that might further the cooperation between offices. The report from the Bureau established the principles that would govern the Swedish labour exchanges into the 1930s. On the one hand, the initiative to establish exchanges and the responsibility for their operation would remain at the local level. On the other, a common set of guidelines agreed upon at the national level was to govern the way the exchanges conducted their placement activities.28 A national policy was created once the Riksdag supported this programme and when, in 1907, the government decided to allocate an annual state grant to the labour exchanges. The annually renewed subsidy was limited and covered only certain specified administrative costs, yet introduced a common set of rules for all public exchanges. It likewise gave the Bureau a supervising role, which was further formalized in 1910 when Huss was appointed national labour exchange inspector.29 Two factors help to explain the wide support for this new policy. The first was the limited size of the state contributions, inasmuch as the state imposed its control and authority on the public labour exchanges without funding more than 10–15 per cent of their total budget. Second (and equally important), the national labour exchange policy explicitly included the agricultural sector. Right from the start, the leading labour statisticians stressed that a main purpose of networking exchanges was to cater to the needs of agricultural employers and satisfy their demand for labourers. This was to become a central principle of the new policy.30 Cooperation and uniformity became the catchwords as the Bureau’s work gained momentum. In December 1906 the first national labour exchange conference – clearly a meeting inspired by the German conferences on the Reich level as of 1898 – convened in Stockholm with representatives from the exchanges, employers and unions and different urban and rural trades. Those present unanimously agreed that public placement covering the entire nation and all trades needed the authority

Creating a National Labour Market 101

of state control and regulation. At the same time, it would have to be based upon cooperation between central authorities, county councils, agricultural societies and municipalities. Subsequent meetings were held in 1907, 1909, 1912 and 1919 in which administrative procedures, occupational classifications and statistical forms, routines for regional and interregional cooperation, including the introduction of a national list of vacancies to assist job seekers, were among the topics discussed and agreed upon. Clearly the labour statisticians played a leading role at these meetings. They chaired them, and their agenda for coordination and regulation guided the proceedings. Consequently, in 1907, the conference fully supported the general guidelines for public exchanges that the Board of Trade had drawn up.31 Each municipal labour exchange to apply for financial support from the state had to follow these administrative guidelines and set up its business in accordance with three core principles, familiar from the foreign models: 1) the labour exchange would service all trades and occupations without any fees for hiring employers or job-­ seeking men and women; 2) the exchange was to provide the employer with the best workers and the job seeker with the position he or she was best suited for; 3) the labour exchange would be directed by a board with a non-­partisan chairman and an equal number of employer and labour representatives.32 This was the classic formula: a service free of charge provided by the municipality or county council in the best interest of the labour market and society as a whole. The service was to adhere to strict neutrality during industrial conflicts. Its non-­partisanship was guaranteed through the parity representation of employers and workers on the board, which was chaired by a representative of the local or regional authorities. All public exchanges in Sweden shared this design, which was not a domestic innovation but an integral part of the foreign model adopted.33 The modernization and reorganization of hiring procedures through public intervention were the rationale underpinnings that governed the labour exchanges. A changing economy was thought to need this new service, which would be superior to all existing – and (almost by definition) inadequate – forms of placement. Such arguments were repeated often and in multiple settings from the 1890s onwards. Compared to the impartial and efficient municipal service, established hiring procedures were inferior: Workers wandering around (omskådning, in German Umschau) from employer to employer looking for labour entailed an enormous waste of resources as well as certain moral dangers (loitering). In the best case, private placement agencies could be regarded as a necessary evil.34 Such private fee-­based services – which were regulated for the first time in 1884 to prevent the trafficking of female domestic servants to Germany and Denmark – constituted the arch-­enemy of the public

102

Nils Edling

exchanges from the start. They preyed on innocent job seekers and did not operate in the best interest of the labour market taken as a whole. Other forms of placement, such as offices run by unions or employers, tended to lack the confidence of the opposite party. Although they did their best, the handful of employment bureaux run by certain philanthropic organizations could simply not meet the demands of modern industrial society. Consequently, publicly organized placement, free of charge to both job seekers and hiring employers, was needed to rescue the individual from the perils of unemployment. At the same time, it would benefit the entire national economy and increase its productive resources. Promoting industrial peace through cooperation was the other central objective and quite an important one for the social reformers at the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Public exchanges were constantly contrasted with the services run by employers and unions, which more or less covertly competed to control placement and use it as a weapon in labour market disputes. According to the commission that drew up the plan for the new exchange in Stockholm, such competition could be found especially in Germany, which in this respect provided a negative example of the dangers of class struggle. The argument was that any public employment service had to be neutral in relation to the parties in the labour market and only a public exchange could be guaranteed to stay neutral. Public placement was in this line of thinking linked to arbitration and industrial safety, and the principle of parity representation on the labour exchange’s board became central, inherited from the German labour courts (Gewerbegerichte). Both contracting parties in the labour market could use the free municipal service, supervised by a board on which they were both represented in equal numbers. It was hoped this would reduce the level of conflict in the labour market. Public labour exchanges embodied impartiality and neutrality, thereby making them superior to all other forms of placement. The parity representation on the board stands at the centre of Rothstein’s argument about social trust created through local corporative arrangements. It ranked high among contemporaries as well.35 For the Bureau’s director Elmquist, Sweden’s leading arbitrator who served in numerous industrial disputes, a reduced level of conflict in the ongoing social war remained an overarching objective.36 A publicly organized employment service was not a mere charity assisting ‘inferior and unskilled workers’ or part of the poor-­relief system, but a vehicle of social and economic progress.37 The public labour exchange had two other aims besides the fundamental one of providing an efficient and strictly neutral service to all employers and all workers. One of them was to survey the local labour market and collect basic information about supply and demand, information that

Creating a National Labour Market 103

both workers and employers needed, and to supply the Bureau of Labour Statistics with reliable monthly figures. A second task was to test the ability and willingness to work among job seekers while simultaneously acquiring detailed data about them. ‘The labour exchange must also individualize – taking individual needs into account, the job seekers’ special applications – and therefore make complete and detailed records of the workers’ skills, characteristics, appearance and conduct.’ That was the reasoning of social reformers in Stockholm in their 1901 petition to city officials about the need for a municipal exchange.38 This second objective (of assessing and classifying the job-­seekers) gained importance with the introduction of state-­financed public works programmes from 1914 onwards. There are hardly any traces of such tests from the period before the war years and they belong more to the 1920s when the w ­ orkfare ­programme was expanded.39

The Labour Exchange and the Labour Market The public labour exchange was consciously conceived as an instrument for modernizing and regulating the labour market. Old forms of placement were to be replaced by an efficient public employment service, and closed local labour markets were to be opened up through regional and national cooperation. It was a new policy, designed at the national level, but dependent on cooperating local and regional authorities for its implementation. If it was not to fail, this new form of intervention had to be accepted by employers and job seekers, as well as their respective organizations, an absolute necessity if the public exchange was to succeed in improving industrial relations. Consequently, the legitimacy of the new policy and its institutions became a key issue. Public intervention in placement practices was not the alternative preferred by the nascent organizations of workers and employers. Both had incentives to manage access to trades and workplaces in order to control wages and working conditions according to their interests. Early on, the labour movement favoured the bourses du travail-solution, with placement offices controlled by the unions. When the public exchange was later discussed in the Riksdag, the Social Democrats’ party leader, Hjalmar Branting, warned that the exchanges would be used by employers to recruit strike-­breakers.40 The unions could also use their own placement services and unemployment provisions to recruit new members and protect current members through bad times. Efforts of this kind were standard union procedure carried out with a varying degree of success in different trades. For the obstacles were considerable

104

Nils Edling

in low-­skilled or seasonal trades such as road construction, and in parts of the building industry where the supply of workers was almost inexhaustible even though demand followed a seasonal rhythm. Skilled workers had it easier; printers, bookbinders and bakery-­workers were the only trades with successful union-­run placement offices, which employers accepted as legitimate.41 Many unions included placement and work control clauses in their statutes but only a limited number managed to put them into practice.42 Generally speaking, union-­run placement seems to have been of a limited size. Hence, the Metal Workers’ Union (Järn-­och Metallindustriarbetarförundet) branches tried to help their members find new jobs, and in 1902 the union in Stockholm directly assisted 25 of 1,525 registered jobless members. More than 1,000 of these unemployed workers found new employment that year but not through organized union placement. The union’s address register, listing good employers, was definitely more important for job-­seeking metalworkers. This informal version of placement disseminated information such as ‘where to go and which towns and employers to avoid’. Such up-­ to-­ date news about the labour market, together with an outlook for the next few months in circulars and journals, was the dominant form of union-­run placement in Sweden before the 1920s. The public labour exchange nonetheless represented an attractive complement to the union lists. After some initial hesitation, organized labour soon came to endorse the public intervention on two principal grounds: it remained neutral in conflicts and it provided an alternative to the profit-­seeking private employment agencies.43 Starting from the opposite position, the employers’ federations gradually reached a similar conclusion. The two major organizations, the Engineering Employers’ Association (Verkstadsföreningen, established in 1896) and the Swedish Employers’ Association (Svenska Arbetsgivareföreningen, founded in 1902) both seriously considered following the example set by German heavy industries, which had established their own placement offices. High-­ranking officials visited Denmark and Germany, and certain employers also supported the non-­ Socialist union and its placement agency (the latter was called Hero). A 1904 pamphlet of the Employers’ Association argued for the policy adopted by German employers simply because public labour exchanges were mainly intended to reduce unemployment, whereas employer-­run placement was all about controlling the supply of labour and recruiting the best workers.44 The main issues at stake for the employers were the freedom to work, and the managerial prerogatives concerning hiring, firing and supervising work. Yet these principles, codified in Paragraph 23 of the statutes of the Swedish Employers’ Association from 1905, which

Creating a National Labour Market 105

prohibited members from signing closed-­ shop agreements, did not bring about regular employer-­controlled placement offices. Instead, the Employers’ Association at that time supported the municipal exchange. The reasons given in 1907 are noteworthy: the Association’s managing director Hjalmar von Sydow (1862–1932) explained that employers could take on and defeat the unions in order to win control over placement, but that would seriously damage industrial relations, even if it furthered employers’ interests. Employer-­controlled placement, where the workers were deployed and moved around as pawns on the chessboard, was therefore ruled out as being ‘offensive’.45 That same year, the Engineering Employers’ Association began encouraging its members to use the municipal labour exchange to ‘the greatest possible’ extent, instead of continuing to recruit workers from other employers in the same branch. The organized employers seem to have associated managerial control over placement with the rule of the benevolent patriarch over his subjects. However, welfare capitalism of that kind was not part of the new policy. Over the following decades, employers continued to support the public labour exchange and argued for its expansion.46 These parallel decisions of unions and employers in favour of the municipal labour exchange were made during years marked by numerous industrial conflicts, large and small. As Rothstein points out, their endorsements provided institutional legitimacy for a new form of public intervention. It held great importance for both parties at the same time as the exchange was institutionalizing cooperation between the parties in the labour market.47 This support does not indicate that a high level of social trust already existed. On the contrary, employers wanted to impose managerial control and they used lockouts to tame the unions (but not to crush them). For their part, unionists used strikes to drive up wages, strengthen their bargaining position, and to establish the closed shop – albeit without much success.48 Placement and rules of priority were vital issues for employers and unions. Each mobilized to defend their positions and stop the other party from gaining full control over labour. These issues, objects of intense struggle, formed an essential background to the multi-­industry lockouts and the August 1909 general strike – the major conflict of the period. Although 300,000 workers participated in the walkout, it ended in the labour movement’s defeat. With strikes and lockouts proliferating, both parties came to the decision that a neutral public service was an acceptable solution. As the second-­best alternative, it was certainly much better than conceding control over placement to the other party. As demonstrated by the case of Stockholm, providing a neutral and efficient labour exchange was indeed a key factor. The introduction of

106

Nils Edling

this service in the capital was a protracted process over three years; the initial committee report, which embraced the labour exchange as the tool needed to modernize the urban labour market, was turned over to the municipal machinery where different offices made opposite recommendations, requested additional inquiries or wanted to shelve the report for the time being. In 1904, when a decision was reached, a number of city councillors found the new exchange unnecessary or opposed the idea of offering the service for free. The debate went on for a couple of days and was unusually polarized, at least compared to the discussions in other Nordic cities.49 The exchange opened in August 1905 during the engineering lockout, the first culmination of a series of conflicts since 1902, and it had Stockholm as its centre, which made the neutrality of the exchange a pertinent issue. Total impartiality during industrial disputes was the key principle, and in practice this meant that the exchange continued its services and provided information to employers and job seekers about ongoing conflicts. This policy proved successful, both employers and workers accepted it, and in the annual reports from the exchange the pride shone through, with the events of 1909 as the best example. Defending its impartiality, the exchange refused to cave in when non-­socialist free corps (borgerliga skyddskårer) approached and requested that it advertise that the corps would protect all those willing to work during the conflict. All requests of that type were turned down and the board decided to conduct business as usual, said the annual report, which even gave the conflict a neutral and unusual label, ‘the complete break from work’ (den fullständiga arbetsvilan).50 The general strike and the preceding economic downturn seem to have strengthened the exchange’s position in the labour market; its services were in higher demand and skilled workers, who earlier regarded a service free of charge provided by the local authorities with some suspicion, now used it to find new jobs. The expansion year after year with increasing numbers of job seekers and higher percentages of successful placements made up the other half of the success story, as told by the annual reports. Step by step, the municipal exchange conquered terrain from the private agencies, and this was always, with a few exceptions granted to the privately run philanthropic bureaux, described in negative terms. A growing share of the estimated total number of placements being handled by the exchange, from 32 per cent in 1906 to 41 per cent in 1911 and 58 per cent in 1915, was depicted as another cause of pride. Slowly, the arch-­enemy – the private commission-­based agencies – was being defeated, and according to the exchange, this was a sign of social progress and of course a main theme of the annual reports.51 However, the public exchange failed

Creating a National Labour Market 107

to completely stop the governor of Stockholm from granting licences to new private agencies and their numbers actually grew even after the introduction of the municipal exchange – there were around sixty agencies in Stockholm in the early 1910s, about twenty more than ten years earlier, with a high yearly turnover. The national figures from 1917 count 237 private employment agencies, most of them specializing in sectors like retail, office work, hotels and restaurants, nursing and, above all, domestic services. Women looking for jobs were the agencies’ prime clients, and the gendered character of their businesses remained unchanged up to the 1930s when the public employment service was redesigned and expanded.52 The makeup of the expanding urban labour market set its mark on the municipal labour exchange. However, the exchange mainly serviced a limited number of trades: in 1912 it assisted in filling 24,000 positions and roughly 13,500 of those were in manual labour and delivery services (for men), and cleaning and washing (for women). Three years later, 60 per cent of the 33,500 filled positions were in those sectors.53 But the number of vacancies and job seekers in other trades was growing year by year, and the increasing demand for the exchange’s services was yet another cause of pride in annual reports. In 1915, industry and manufacturing represented 44 per cent of all applications to the exchange, 16 per cent of all vacancies and 17 per cent of all filled positions.54 A year later the slightly higher figures were interpreted as a pleasant sign of the trust placed by industrial employers in the municipal service. A final feature worth attention is the inter-­local cooperation between exchanges. This was part of the programme for an efficient national labour market laid out by the labour statisticians, and ‘long distance’ placement, though numerically relatively insignificant, was on the repertoire right from the start. It gained some momentum in 1913 with the introduction of state-­subsidized travel grants for unemployed workers, a reform designed and promoted by the statisticians and officials from the exchanges at the national labour exchange conference in 1909, mainly in order to satisfy demands from rural employers.55 The exchange in Stockholm saw interregional cooperation as a means to ‘liberate the capital from redundant workers’ at the same time as helping to even out mismatches in supply and demand all over the country. Its scale and scope grew during the first half of the war, years marked by a growing demand for workers, when the exchange in the capital functioned as a regulator working closely together with public exchanges near and far.56

108

Nils Edling

Concluding Remarks ‘Undisturbed by the storms affecting public life it has gradually continued to grow according to its own inherent principles’, read the celebratory summary in 1915 of the fate of the public labour exchange over the preceding decade by the labour statistician Otto Järte (1881–1961), a junior colleague of Elmquist and Huss.57 Järte, a Social Democrat who during the war years switched to the Conservatives, had in 1911 been appointed to draw up the Liberal government’s later cancelled proposal for voluntary unemployment insurance. This task gradually convinced him that the real issue was not a shortage of work but deficient organization of the labour market. His views in 1914–1915, well in line with positions taken by his senior colleagues ten years earlier, focused on the shortage of manpower in agriculture (the catchphrase being ‘depopulation of the countryside’). These included a negative assessment of the Ghent model of insurance, which at the time was gaining popularity within the labour movement. Järte’s other important findings were that the wartime unemployment relief programme (introduced in 1914) was inadequate and – based on his close study of the new literature from abroad – that there was a more or less unemployable substratum in the labour force.58 For all these reasons, he concluded that a reinforced national labour exchange policy and more detailed and individualized labour statistics would prove the best way forward. He also vigorously stressed the significance of the public labour exchange as an institutionalized form of cooperation between the main organizational interests in the Swedish labour market. In this respect, Järte anticipated well what was to come and provided full support for Rothstein’s argument that parity representation on the board of the exchange was an important source of social trust: Despite the sharp social and political antagonism, which in other areas of social life would cause the representatives of employers and workers to oppose each other forcefully, the same people on the board of the labour exchange always worked together loyally and objectively on the issue at hand.59

The public labour exchange remained at the centre of Swedish labour market policies in the 1910s. This system, along with independent regional and local exchanges cooperating under a common regulatory umbrella, continued to receive political support. It combined uniformity and flexibility in the highest degree and enjoyed the full confidence of employers and workers. The Board of Social Affairs (Socialstyrelsen), the new government authority under Elmquist also responsible for labour market issues, claimed there was no need to transform the overall design.

Creating a National Labour Market 109

The Board’s 1916 report asked for an increased number of specialized employment services for different trades and a larger financial contribution from the state. Improved organization of the labour market would be far more effective than any insurance programme, it concluded in a manner that sounds equally like William Beveridge and the familiar views of the Swedish labour statisticians.60 Subsequently, trade-­ specialized labour exchanges were established (for painters, tinplate workers, bakery employees and sailors), and efforts continued to satisfy the demand for more labourers among agricultural employers. Up to the 1920s, the decentralized Swedish model of national employment service functioned well. The public labour exchange, clearly aligned with economic doctrines stressing market efficiency and the view of unemployment as a seasonal problem, was politically uncontroversial and accepted by both employers and workers. This social policy innovation (imported from abroad) was characterized by low costs and low levels of controversy. It was promoted as a technical reform that met the highest standards of the day, an advance necessary to make hiring procedures modern, efficient and rational. Its depoliticized character and gradual expansion, relying on local initiative but controlled by the government, help explain its relative success. By means of this exchange, more and more available positions outside of manual labour and domestic services were able to be filled by new workers. The change was gradual but clearly discernible.61 The severe depression of the early 1920s changed the Swedish labour market dramatically. Unemployment skyrocketed from four or five per cent to twenty-­five per cent on average in 1921–1922, and it remained at a high level throughout the decade. Both the public labour exchanges and the workfare programme, directed by the National Unemployment Commission (Statens Arbetslöshetskommission) and its municipal committees, proved ineffective when mass unemployment hit vital sectors of the economy. This does not mean that the exchanges became less efficient but that the character and magnitude of the problem relegated them to second position. The new focus on unemployment relief and workfare made the labour exchanges’ task of controlling and testing job seekers – first introduced with the relief work programme in 1914 – far more important. The earlier separation of unemployment relief and placement became somewhat blurred. For the sheer number of new job seekers put significant stress on the organization, which consisted of many small labour exchange offices and part-­time officials lacking sufficient knowledge about techniques of placement and the functioning of the labour market. Another drawback was the uneven geographical coverage produced by the voluntary character of the state-­sponsored labour exchange programme. This in turn became a crucial argument for the 1934 reform

110

Nils Edling

that made the employment service mandatory for all counties and municipalities of a certain size. Public placement changed in other ways, too. In particular, many unions in manufacturing and construction successfully expanded their own placement services at the expense of the public labour exchanges. Union-­run placement offices and union-­run unemployment provision funds, both of which mainly catered to workers in better paid trades, became the preferred union alternative. They were an integrated part of the strategy aiming to minimize low-­wage competition among workers and maximize public support for union-­run provision schemes. Clearly, placement gained in importance within organized labour when unemployment surged and unions found themselves in a more favourable position to promote their own employment services.62 At the same time, the priority given by the public exchanges to certain trades (the primary example being shipping) and categories of job seekers (particularly the young), help explain this development where manufacturing and construction’s share of the total public placement shrunk from fifteen to six per cent between 1913 and 1929. In the same period, agriculture and domestic services kept their shares stable whereas transportation (shipping) and commerce grew at a faster pace.63 In other words, the public employment service lost significance within the key sectors of the economy at the same time the problem of unemployment was receiving more and more attention. The economic crisis of the early 1920s made unemployment and unemployment provision a major political problem for the first time. It would make and break governments throughout the decade. For later labour market reformers, this inherited decentralized model of public employment services, which catered to certain branches of the economy, had itself became part of the problem. It would thus have to be addressed and rectified through more comprehensive reforms. In this process of change, which included the introduction in 1934 of voluntary unemployment insurance and the passing of a new law on labour exchanges, followed by the subsequent nationalization of all local and regional exchanges as part of wartime economic mobilization in 1940, the old intermediation-­ centred labour market policy came to be forgotten.

Notes  1. Data from N.N. 1923. Den offentliga arbetsförmedlingen i Sverige 1913–1922 av K. Socialstyrelsen. Stockholm: K. Socialstyrelsen, 3–5. Most of these offices were called labour exchanges (arbetsförmedling) from the beginning; a few of the first ones were

Creating a National Labour Market 111

  2.  3.

 4.

 5.

 6.

  7.

 8.  9. 10. 11.



12. 13.

named labour registrars (arbetskontor). Soon arbetsförmedling became the standard name. ‘Employment service’ is the usual English translation today for the government agency Arbetsförmedlingen. A recent exception is B. Bengtsson. 2006. Kampen mot §23. Facklig makt vid anställning och avsked i Sverige före 1940, Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, esp. chapter 5. E.g. B. Öhman. 1970. Svensk arbetsmarknadspolitik 1900–1947, Stockholm: Prisma, 38–39, 41–42, 101; R. Axelsson, K.-­G. Löfgren and L.-­G. Nilsson. 1987. Den svenska arbetsmarknadspolitiken under 1900-­talet, 4th ed., Stockholm: Prisma, 45–46; L. Delander, R. Thoursie and E. Wadensjö. 1991. Arbetsförmedlingens historia, Stockholm: Allmänna förlaget, 17–32, quote 24 (Thoursie’s contribution covers the period 1902–1940). Öhman’s study provides much of the foundation for the later books and is the historically most informed. B. Rothstein. 2005. Social Traps and the Problem of Trust, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 191–194. Rothstein has since the 1980s published extensively on Swedish labour market policies, see B. Rothstein. 1982. ‘Från ’Det svenska systemet’ till ’Den svenska modellen’ eller Fanns det en arbetsmarknadspolitik före AMS’, Arkiv för studier i arbetarrörelsens historia 23–24, and idem, Social Traps, chapter 8. It is notoriously difficult to compare economic performance. For Sweden, see L. Schön. 2010. Sweden’s Road to Modernity: An Economic History, Stockholm: SNS förlag, chapter 4. For some statistical data, N.F. Christiansen et al. (eds). 2006. The Nordic Model of Welfare – A Historical Reappraisal, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 355–363. Quoted from N. Edling. 1996. Det fosterländska hemmet. Egnahemspolitik, småbruk och hemideologi kring sekelskiftet 1900, Stockholm: Carlsson förlag, 29. The phrase ‘från ett jordbruksland till en industristat’ echoes the German debate about ‘Agrarstaat’ and ‘Industriestaat’, K.D. Barkin. 1970. The Controversy over German Industrialization, 1890– 1902, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. On the crucial ideological and discursive importance of emigration, see B. Stråth. 1996. The Organisation of Labour Markets: Modernity, Culture and Governance in Germany, Sweden, Britain and Japan, London and New York: Routledge, 72–78, and more detailed, Edling, Det fosterländska hemmet, chapters 7–10. A. Lindkvist. 2007. Jorden åt folket. Nationalföreningen mot emigrationen 1907–1925, Umeå: Umeå universitet, 114–119. Cf. N. Edling. 2005. ‘Statistik och arbetslöshetspolitik i skandinavisk arbetarrörelse omkring år 1900’, Arbeiderhistorie. Årbok for Arbeiderbevegelsens historie, 117–139. Edling, ‘Statistik’, quote from Landsorganisationen’s statistical inquiry of 1901. E.g. J. Toftgaard. 2008. Kampen om København. Magt og demokrati i byens rum 1870– 1901, Copenhagen: Selskabet til Forskning i Arbejderbevægelsens Historie, 59–96; E. Terjesen. 1991. ‘Arbeiderbevegelse og politikk i 1890-­åren’, Arbeiderhistorie. Årbok for Arbeiderbevegelsens historie, 27–47. In 1900, roughly 85 per cent of all male Danes over thirty years of age held the right to vote; Norway had universal male suffrage since 1898 (for those over twenty-­five years of age). Several restrictions excluded poor-­relief recipients, servants and all those with outstanding taxes, in practice reducing the number of voters. Nevertheless, Swedish figures were still considerably lower: three out of four men over the age of twenty-­one lacked voting rights in 1900. B. Schiller. 1975. ‘Years of Crisis 1906–1914’, in S. Koblik (ed.), Sweden’s Development from Poverty to Affluence 1750–1970, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 199. N. Edling. 2006. ‘Limited Universalism: Unemployment Insurance in Northern Europe 1900–2000’, in Christiansen et al., The Nordic Model of Welfare, 102. Cf. N. Edling. 2010. ‘The Making of Nordic Unemployment. Experts and Public Policy in Denmark and Sweden, 1890–1910’, in Å. Lundqvist and K. Petersen (eds), 2010. In Experts We Trust.

112

Nils Edling

Knowledge, Politics and Bureaucracy in Nordic Welfare States, Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 119–148. 14. R. Ervik. 1993. ‘Kunnskap og sosialpolitikk: Arbeidsløyse som sosial risiko i Noreg og Sverig’, in R. Ervik and S. Kuhnle (eds), Kunnskap, risiko og sosialpolitikk. Institusjonelle perspektiver på skandinavisk utvikling, Bergen: Alma Mater, 192–198. 15. G. Cassel. 1902. Socialpolitik, Stockholm: Kulturbiblioteket, 103, quoted from M. Boianovsky and H.-­M. Trautwein. 2003. ‘Wicksell, Cassel and the Idea of Involuntary Unemployment’, History of Political Economy 35(3), 408 (with a few minor changes of their translation and Cassel’s original italics added). 16. According to Heclo, Cassel’s book was ‘extremely influential’, H. Heclo. 1974. Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden: From Relief to Income Maintenance, New Haven: Yale University Press, 67, 76 (quote); K.J. Höjer. 1952. Svensk socialpolitisk historia, Stockholm: Norstedt, 55, cautiously states that Cassel’s book probably had some effects on – the non-­ Socialist – public opinion on social policy. B. Carlson. 1990. ‘Gustav Cassel’, in C. Jonung and A.-­C. Ståhlberg (eds), Ekonomporträtt. Svenska ekonomer under 300 år, Stockholm: SNS förlag, 155, claims that Cassel was instrumental in shaping the new non-­Socialist interest in social policy. 17. There is a substantial literature on the nature of Swedish labour market policies before the 1930s and above all on the genesis of the new policies of the 1930s, for references Edling, ‘Limited Universalism’, 115–117, 120–123. 18. Appendix 27 (1895) Beredningsutskottets utlåtanden och memorial för år 1895. Särskilde kommitterades betänkande angående arbetslösheten i Stockholm, Stockholm, 157–163. 19. N. Edling. 2008. ‘Regulating Unemployment the Continental Way: The Transfer of Municipal Labour Exchanges to Scandinavia 1890–1914’, European Review of History 15(1), 23–40. 20. Ibid., 30–31. 21. Norway: ‘Forslag til lov om arbeidsformlding med motiver 1903’, in Bihang til Odelstingets protokol 1905–06, vol. 2 (propositioner), with an extensive international survey 23–71; Finland: L. Enrooth. 1907. Betänkande jämte förslag till lag angående arbetsförmedling afgifvet af föredraganden för arbetarefrågor, Helsinki, with a similar survey, 14–36. 22. E.g. N.N. 1904. ‘Den offentliga arbetsförmedlingen i de nordiska länderna’, Meddelanden från K. Kommerskollegii Afdelning för Arbetsstatistik 2:1, 43–70. Much of the material gathered by the Bureau was presented in government bill 1906:116, Bihang till Riksdagens protokoll 1906, 1st coll., vol. 4, 2–46. 23. Svensk författningssamling [Code of Statutes] 1902:132 § 8; for the detailed instructions, N.N. 1903. ‘Den officiella arbetsstatistiken i Sverige. Särskilda kommitterades utlåtande angående det arbetsstatistiska arbetets anordnande under år 1903’, Meddelanden från K. Kommerskollegii afdelning för Arbetsstatistik 1:1, 15–17. 24. Heclo, Modern Social Politics, 74, 301–304. Elmquist was in charge of the Bureau of Labour Statistics from 1898 to 1912, headed the Board of Social Affairs (Socialstyrelsen, established in 1912) from 1912 to 1919 and became Minister of Social Affairs in 1920– 1921. For many years, he also acted as an arbitrator in industrial conflicts. In addition, he co-­chaired the labour exchange in Stockholm and became the city’s governor in 1928. Huss became national inspector of the labour exchanges in 1910, led the Board of Social Affairs 1921–1937 and was from its foundation in 1914 subsequently secretary, co-­ chairman and (as of 1931) chairman of the National Unemployment Commission (Statens Arbetslöshetskommission). 25. D. Östlund. 2003. Det sociala kriget och kapitalets ansvar. Social ingenjörskonst mellan affärsintresse och samhällsreform i USA och Sverige 1899–1914, Stockholm: Stockholms universitet, 282–292, 321–335, esp. 287 note 523 and 289 note 530; Edling, ‘Regulating Unemployment’, 33–34. For their contributions, e.g. H. Elmquist. 1903. ‘Staten och arbetsförmedlingen’, Social Tidskrift 3(11), 327–329; H. Elmquist. 1904. Offentlig

Creating a National Labour Market 113

arbetsförmedling, Stockholm; G. Huss. 1906 ‘Offentlig arbetsförmedling i Sverige’, Social Tidskrift 6(3), 77–82; idem. 1906. ‘Arbetsförmedling för barn vid utträdet ur folkskolan’, Social Tidskrift 6(10), 317–320; idem. 1907 ‘Arbetsförmedlingskonferensen i Stockholm. Dess förutsättningar och resultat’, Social Tidskrift. 7, 25–28; idem. 1908. ‘“Arbetsförmedling” and “Arbetslöshet”’, in G.H. von Koch (ed.), Social Handbok. På uppdrag av Centralförbundet för Socialt Arbete under medverkan av flera författare utgiven av G.H. von Koch, Stockholm, 36–44, 52–59. Elmquist also co-­authored the lengthy entries on labour exchanges and labour statistics in the new Swedish encyclopaedia Nordisk Familjebok, vol. 1 (1904), Stockholm: Nordisk familjeboks förlags aktiebolag. 26. G. Huss. 1907. P.M. angående arbetslöshetsförsäkring, Stockholm, 27–32 on Norway and Denmark. The report also covers Britain, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy and Germany, 9–27. 27. Huss, P.M., 3–4, 34–35. 28. ‘Utlåtande angående statsåtgärder för den offentliga arbetsförmedlingens befrämjande och organiserande’; dated 14 March 1905, this report from the Bureau of Labour Statistics at the Board of Trade was reproduced in extenso in the government bill 1906:116, 8–14. 29. For a detailed overview, Den offentliga arbetsförmedlingen i Sverige 1902–1912 av K. Socialstyrelsen. 1915. Stockholm: K. Socialstyrelsen, 9–36. 30. Elmquist, ‘Staten och arbetsförmedlingen’, 328–329; idem, Offentlig arbetsförmedling, 2; see also government bill 1906:116, 37–38; G. Huss ‘Arbetsförmedlingskonferensen’, 27. 31. Short summaries of the meetings in Den offentliga arbetsförmedlingen 1902–1912, 14–19, 21–23, 33–36; Den offentliga arbetsförmedlingen i Sverige 1913–1922 (1923), 3. 32. Svensk författningssamling 1907:97. 33. A. Faust. 1986. Arbeitsmarktpolitik im deutschen Kaiserreich. Arbeitsvermittlung, Arbeitsbeschaffung und Arbeitslosenunterstützung 1890–1918, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 62–69. 34. Edling, ‘Regulating Unemployment’, 27–28, 31–32. 35. Rothstein, Social Traps, 192–194. On the German background, E.P. Hennock. 2007. The Origin of the Welfare State in England and Germany 1850–1914: Social Policies Compared, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 127 note 18, 311–312. 36. ‘Social war’, Östlund, Det sociala kriget, passim. 37. E.g. Elmquist, Offentlig arbetsförmedling; Huss, ‘Offentlig arbetsförmedling i Sverige’, 78–80; idem, Arbetsförmedlingskonferensen, 27 (quote). 38. ‘Handlingar till frågan om inrättande af ett kommunalt arbetsförmedlingskontor i Stockholm’, Bihang till Beredningsutskottets utlåtanden och memorial. Stockholms stadsfullmäktiges handlingar 1902 vol. 10, 6. 39. S. Skogh. 1963. Arbetets marknad, Uppsala and Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 179– 187. The annual reports from the labour exchanges usually included a section called ‘individual statistics’ (personstatitik) with data on sex, age, place of birth etc among the job seekers. 40. Edling, ‘Regulating Unemployment’, 31; Rothstein, Social Traps, 193. 41. N.N. 1955. Arbetsförmedling och arbetsmarknad i Stockholm 1905–1955, Stockholm: Nämnden, 10–12. 42. Bengtsson, Kampen, figures 5.1–2 list numerous unions with such clauses but it is not, in my opinion, possible to draw any general conclusions about the unions’ actual placement activities from ‘the volitional statements’ in statutes as Bengtsson tends to do. Data about the Metal Workers’ Union, Arbetsförmedling 1905–1955, 11. 43. E.g. ‘Den kommunala arbetsförmedlingen inom den mekaniska verkstadsindustrien’, Järnarbetaren 1907 no. 31 (30 November); “Arbetslöshetsproblemet”, Grovarbetaren 1916 no. 3, 33–35. See N.N. 1955. Arbetsförmedlingen i Malmö 1905–1955, Malmö: Nämnden, 10, for the endorsement, dated August 1905, from the Social Democratic daily

114

Nils Edling

Arbetet of the exchange in Malmö. I have not found any official statements about the municipal exchanges emanating from Trade Union Confederation, Landsorganisationen. 44. B. Schiller. 1967. Storstrejken 1909. Förhistoria och orsaker, Göteborg: Scandinavian university books, 12–14, 31–33, 66–68; Y. Myhrman. 1973. Maktkampen på arbetsmarknaden 1905–1907. En studie av de icke-­socialistiska arbetarna som faktor i arbetsgivarpolitiken, Stockholm: Stockholms universitet, 28–32. See G. Falkenström. 1904. Redogörelse för arbetsförmedling Särskildt den af arbetsgifvareorganisationerna i Tyskland och i Amerika bedrifna, Stockholm: Svenska arbetsgifvareföreningen, 11–12. 45. Schiller, Storstrejken, 66. For the contacts between a leading industrialist and the labour statistician Elmquist on this topic, see J.O. Berg. 2011. På spaning efter en svensk modell. Idéer och vägval i arbetsgivarpolitiken 1897–1909, Stockholm: Berg Bild Rum and Färg Förlag, 227–230. For the original statement, see H. von Sydow. 1907. Om arbetarestatistik och arbetsförmedling inom arbetsgifvareorganisationer. Föredrag hållet vid möte med delegerade för Svenska Arbetsgifvareföreningens yrkes-­och ortförbund i Stockholm den 24 augusti 1907, Stockholm: Svenska arbetsgifvareföreningen, 14. 46. P. Swenson. 2002. Capitalists against Markets: The Making of Labor Markets and Welfare States in the United States and Sweden, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 80 (quote), 82–83, 89, 259–260. 47. Rothstein, Social Traps, 191–196. 48. Swenson, Capitalists, 71–90. 49. Edling, ‘Regulating Unemployment’, 30–31. 50. N.N. 1910. Berättelse angående Stockholms stads arbetsförmedling jämte statistisk öfversikt rörande verksamheten under år 1909, Stockholm, 22–23. 51. See the annual report, Berättelse angående Stockholms stads arbetsförmedling 1907–1916; see also Arbetsförmedling 1905–1955, 35–36. The national campaign against the private agencies was a coordinated initiative of the labour statisticians at the Board of Trade and it resulted in a new national regulation in 1916. The exchange in Stockholm promoted this policy from 1909. 52. Delander, Thoursie and Wadensjö, Arbetsförmedlingens historia, 147–148. 53. Berättelse angående Stockholms stads arbetsförmedling 1912, table 2. 54. Berättelse angående Stockholms stads arbetsförmedling 1915, 27. 55. Den offentliga arbetsförmedlingen 1902–1912 (1915), 22–23. 56. Berättelse angående Stockholms stads arbetsförmedling 1915, 26–27. 57. O. Järte. 1915. ‘Ett steg mot arbetsmarknadens organisering’, Svensk Tidskrift 5, 562. 58. P.-­ G. Edebalk. 1975. Arbetslöshetsförsäkringsdebatten. En studie i svensk socialpolitik 1892–1934, Lund: Skrifter utgivna av Ekonomisk-­historiska föreningen, 91–97. 59. Järte, ‘Ett steg’, 564. 60. Utlåtande angående Sveriges offentliga arbetsförmedlings fortsatta utveckling av Kungl. Socialstyrelsen (Stockholm, 1916). 61. The decentralized organization of the labour exchanges received full support from the parliamentary social insurance commission in 1922, SOU (Statens Offentliga Utredning/ Official Reports of the Swedish Government) 1922:59, 32–35. 62. N. Unga. 1976. Socialdemokratin och arbetslöshetsfrågan 1912–34. Framväxten av den 'nya' arbetslöshetspolitiken, Lund: Arkiv förlag, 84–85; Bengtsson, Kampen, 195–200. 63. SOU 1931:20, 339–400.

Bibliography Axelsson, R., K.-­G. Löfgren and L.-­G. Nilsson. 1987. Den svenska arbetsmarknadspolitiken under 1900-­talet, Stockholm: Prisma.

Creating a National Labour Market 115

Barkin, K.D. 1970. The Controversy over German Industrialization, 1890–1902, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bengtsson, B. 2006. Kampen mot §23. Facklig makt vid anställning och avsked i Sverige före 1940, Uppsala: Uppsala universitet. Berg, J.O. 2011. På spaning efter en svensk modell. Idéer och vägval i arbetsgivarpolitiken 1897– 1909, Stockholm: Berg Bild Rum and Färg Förlag. Boianovsky, M. and H.-­M. Trautwein. 2003. ‘Wicksell, Cassel and the Idea of Involuntary Unemployment’, History of Political Economy 35(3), 385–436. Carlson, B. 1990. ‘Gustav Cassel’, in C. Jonung and A.-­C. Ståhlberg (eds), Ekonomporträtt. Svenska ekonomer under 300 år, Stockholm: SNS förlag. Cassel, G. 1902. Socialpolitik, Stockholm: Kulturbiblioteket. Christiansen, N.F. et al. (eds). 2006. The Nordic Model of Welfare – A Historical Reappraisal, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Delander, L., R. Thoursie and E. Wadensjö. 1991. Arbetsförmedlingens historia, Stockholm: Allmänna förlaget. Edebalk, P.-­G. 1975. Arbetslöshetsförsäkringsdebatten. En studie i svensk socialpolitik 1892–1934, Lund: Skrifter utgivna av Ekonomisk-­historiska föreningen. Edling, N. 1996. Det fosterländska hemmet. Egnahemspolitik, småbruk och hemideologi kring sekelskiftet 1900, Stockholm: Carlsson förlag. Edling, N. 2005. ‘Statistik och arbetslöshetspolitik i skandinavisk arbetarrörelse omkring år 1900’, Arbeiderhistorie. Årbok for Arbeiderbevegelsens historie, 117–139. Edling, N. 2006. ‘Limited Universalism: Unemployment Insurance in Northern Europe 1900– 2000’, in Christiansen, N.F. et al. (eds). 2006. The Nordic Model of Welfare – A Historical Reappraisal, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 99–144. Edling, N. 2008. ‘Regulating Unemployment the Continental Way: The Transfer of Municipal Labour Exchanges to Scandinavia 1890–1914’, European Review of History 15(1), 23–40. Edling, N. 2010. ‘The Making of Nordic Unemployment. Experts and Public Policy in Denmark and Sweden, 1890–1910’, in Å. Lundqvist and K. Petersen (eds), In Experts We Trust. Knowledge, Politics and Bureaucracy in Nordic Welfare States, Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 119–148. Elmquist, H. 1903. ‘Staten och arbetsförmedlingen’, Social Tidskrift 3(11), 327–329. Elmquist, H. 1904. Offentlig arbetsförmedling, Stockholm. Enrooth, L. 1907. Betänkande jämte förslag till lag angående arbetsförmedling afgifvet af föredraganden för arbetarefrågor, Helsinki. Ervik, R. 1993. ‘Kunnskap og sosialpolitikk: Arbeidsløyse som sosial risiko i Noreg og Sverig’, in R. Ervik and S. Kuhnle (eds), Kunnskap, risiko og sosialpolitikk. Institusjonelle perspektiver på skandinavisk utvikling, Bergen: Alma Mater, 149–213. Falkenström, G. 1904. Redogörelse för arbetsförmedling Särskildt den af arbetsgifvareorganisationerna i Tyskland och i Amerika bedrifna, Stockholm: Svenska arbetsgifvareföreningen. Faust, A. 1986. Arbeitsmarktpolitik im deutschen Kaiserreich. Arbeitsvermittlung, Arbeitsbeschaffung und Arbeitslosenunterstützung 1890–1918, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Heclo, H. 1974. Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden: From Relief to Income Maintenance, New Haven: Yale University Press. Hennock, E.P. 2007. The Origin of the Welfare State in England and Germany 1850–1914: Social Policies Compared, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Höjer, K.J. 1952. Svensk socialpolitisk historia, Stockholm: Norstedt. Huss, G. 1906 ‘Offentlig arbetsförmedling i Sverige’, Social Tidskrift 6(3), 77–82. Huss, G. 1906. ‘Arbetsförmedling för barn vid utträdet ur folkskolan’, Social Tidskrift 6(10), 317–320. Huss, G. 1907. P.M. angående arbetslöshetsförsäkring, Stockholm.

116

Nils Edling

Huss, G. 1907. ‘Arbetsförmedlingskonferensen i Stockholm. Dess förutsättningar och resultat’, Social Tidskrift 7, 25–28. Huss, G. 1908. ‘“Arbetsförmedling” and “Arbetslöshet”’, in G.H. von Koch (ed.), Social Handbok. På uppdrag av Centralförbundet för Socialt Arbete under medverkan av flera författare utgiven av G.H. von Koch, Stockholm, 36–44, 52–59. Järte, O. 1915. ‘Ett steg mot arbetsmarknadens organisering’, Svensk Tidskrift 5. Lindkvist, A. 2007. Jorden åt folket. Nationalföreningen mot emigrationen 1907–1925, Umeå: Umeå universitet. Myhrman, Y. 1973. Maktkampen på arbetsmarknaden 1905–1907. En studie av de icke-­ socialistiska arbetarna som faktor i arbetsgivarpolitiken, Stockholm: Stockholms universitet. N.N. 1903. ‘Den officiella arbetsstatistiken i Sverige. Särskilda kommitterades utlåtande angående det arbetsstatistiska arbetets anordnande under år 1903’, Meddelanden från K. Kommerskollegii afdelning för Arbetsstatistik 1:1, 15–17. N.N. 1904. ‘Den offentliga arbetsförmedlingen i de nordiska länderna’, Meddelanden från K. Kommerskollegii Afdelning för Arbetsstatistik 2:1, 43–70. N.N. 1910. Berättelse angående Stockholms stads arbetsförmedling jämte statistisk öfversikt rörande verksamheten under år 1909, Stockholm. N.N. 1923. Den offentliga arbetsförmedlingen i Sverige 1913–1922 av K. Socialstyrelsen. Stockholm: K. Socialstyrelsen. N.N. 1955. Arbetsförmedling och arbetsmarknad i Stockholm 1905–1955, Stockholm: Nämnden. N.N. 1955. Arbetsförmedlingen i Malmö 1905–1955, Malmö: Arbetsförmedlingen. Nordisk Familjebok, vol. 1 (1904), Stockholm: Nordisk familjeboks förlags aktiebolag. Öhman, B. 1970. Svensk arbetsmarknadspolitik 1900–1947, Stockholm: Prisma. Östlund, D. 2003. Det sociala kriget och kapitalets ansvar. Social ingenjörskonst mellan affärsintresse och samhällsreform i USA och Sverige 1899–1914, Stockholm: Stockholms universitet. Rothstein, B. 1982. ‘Från ’Det svenska systemet’ till ’Den svenska modellen’ eller Fanns det en arbetsmarknadspolitik före AMS’, Arkiv för studier i arbetarrörelsens historia 23–24, 3–29. Rothstein, B. 2005. Social Traps and the Problem of Trust, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schiller, B. 1967. Storstrejken 1909. Förhistoria och orsaker, Göteborg: Scandinavian university books. Schiller, B. 1975. ‘Years of Crisis 1906–1914’, in S. Koblik (ed.), Sweden’s Development from Poverty to Affluence 1750–1970, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 197–228. Schön, L. 2010. Sweden’s Road to Modernity: An Economic History, Stockholm: SNS förlag. Skogh, S. 1963. Arbetets marknad, Uppsala and Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. Stråth, B. 1996. The Organisation of Labour Markets: Modernity, Culture and Governance in Germany, Sweden, Britain and Japan, London and New York: Routledge. Swenson, P. 2002. Capitalists against Markets: The Making of Labor Markets and Welfare States in the United States and Sweden, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sydow, H. von. 1907. Om arbetarestatistik och arbetsförmedling inom arbetsgifvareorganisationer. Föredrag hållet vid möte med delegerade för Svenska Arbetsgifvareföreningens yrkes-­och ortförbund i Stockholm den 24 augusti 1907, Stockholm: Svenska arbetsgifvareföreningen. Terjesen, E. 1991. ‘Arbeiderbevegelse og politikk i 1890-­ åren’, Arbeiderhistorie. Årbok for Arbeiderbevegelsens historie, 27–47. Toftgaard, J. 2008. Kampen om København. Magt og demokrati i byens rum 1870–1901, Copenhagen: Selskabet til Forskning i Arbejderbevægelsens Historie. Unga, N. 1976. Socialdemokratin och arbetslöshetsfrågan 1912–34. Framväxten av den ’nya' arbetslöshetspolitiken, Lund: Arkiv förlag.

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed

Chapter 5

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed

Trade Unions and Labour Market Intermediation in Western Europe in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Ad Knotter

According to the 1815 statutes of the Vienna hatters’ guild, each Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday between 2.00 and 4.00 p.m. masters in need of help and journeymen in need of a job were to meet in the guild’s lodging house (Herberge).1 As late as 1870, Vienna hatters (Hutmacher) still had their own labour exchange in this Herberge, where members of the hatters’ union spent their free time, and non-­Viennese hatters had to present themselves. When there were hands needed in a workshop, the master sent one of his older workmen to the lodging house to find one, or he went there himself. By centralizing the local exchange of supply and demand of labour in the Herberge, the hatters’ journeymen were able to control the labour supply, as well as maintain their standard wage rate. Conflicts with employers on this issue, or between workers themselves, were settled in the lodging house, and there was no mercy with journeymen accepting work below the traditional standard.2 Everywhere in pre-­industrial Europe journeymen and day labourers matched the demand of their bosses in actual marketplaces, public houses or public squares. There they tried to use these labour exchanges as instruments to regulate labour supply and wage standards. By means of placement control, competition for jobs could be limited, and employers or

118

Ad Knotter

fellow journeymen could be forced to comply with wage rates.3 London tailors had used pubs as ‘houses of call’ or labour exchanges since at least the eighteenth century.4 In 1747 a house of call was described as ‘an ale-­house, where they generally use, the landlord knows where to find them, and the masters go there to enquire when they want hands’. As of 1811, ‘in large concerns it is very common for the master to send to a house [of call] for a “squad” of 10 men and a captain, and to another for 6 men and a captain, and so on’. The houses of call were also the ‘very basis and foundation’ of the journeymen’s association, and ‘in all parts of the metropolis these houses are established and every journeyman is compelled to belong and resort to a Society there formed’. Here was where the union organized strikes and regulated the labour supply, as an eighteenth-­century account makes clear: About the beginning of the year 1763, we looked upon it that Mr. Dove, Mr. Fell, and Mr. Mason, three masters, were stirring up strife against us: so we fixed upon them that they should not be served. We insisted upon the men that worked for them to come away and leave them: it was a general resolution they should have no men work for them. The master of the House of Call sends the men, and if he sent any there, the body of men in that house would be fined.5

In seventeenth-­century Amsterdam – to give another example – the unruly cloth shearers controlled the admission of outsiders to their trade by obliging them to wait their turn to be employed at the Oude Brug (‘Old Bridge’), which functioned as a regular openair labour exchange. The shearers also held meetings there during their frequent strikes.6 It is easy to imagine that in such places, where the effects of changing market forces were clearly visible, pressure on wages provoked immediate action. The most famous example of a labour exchange developing into an instrument of wage control is the Place de Grève in Paris, which lent its name to the French word for strike (grève). Situated between the Hôtel de Ville and the river Seine (grève also means ‘sandy riverbank’), this square provided daily opportunities for workers in the building trades to present themselves to employers, masters and contractors, who then selected those they could use. It was the regular labour market for migratory masons from the Limousin area.7 By organizing themselves and withholding labour supply (se mettre en grève) workers could counteract the effects of oversupply.8 In 1621 there was already a city ordinance requiring all carpenters, masons, roofers and plumbers to assemble periodically at the square to agree upon a citywide wage scale (tarif).9 Negotiated wages at the Place de Grève (prix fait en place de grève) could also be

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 119

enforced in court, as Alain Cottereau has shown using a case from 1791.10 The Place de Grève was the most visible place of labour market intermediation in eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Paris, amid a variety of smaller stations d’embauchage and bureaux de placements,11 where, as Steven Kaplan has demonstrated, journeymen in all kind of corporations in the eighteenth century struggled with their masters to win control of job placement.12 The above mentioned examples of collective action to control wages by labour exchanges indicate how inadequate it is to consider these as neutral institutions that only facilitated the labour market by bringing together (information on) supply and demand. Rather, they were also instruments of market control. To cite a German historian of Arbeitsvermittlung in the eighteenth century: Historically, labour market intermediation proved to be not just an effective instrument of allocation, but also a first class instrument of power, because it enabled participants to influence the entrance to the labour market. Whoever was able to control the institution of labour exchange, could also influence the price of labour.13

This was not only true of eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century forms of labour market intermediation, but also of the public labour exchanges that were established all over Western Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Their implicit and explicit aim was to bring order to the labour market by regulating and controlling supply. In spite of the liberal ideology that market actors might profit equally from exchanging (information on) supply and demand, the uncertainties of the labour market forced those involved to organize the outcome of the process themselves. This chapter focuses on the changing role of trade unions in organizing labour intermediation in several European countries around 1900. Their changing role will be illustrated by developments in Germany, Austria, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries. My aim is to show that from the end of the nineteenth century trade union intermediation was incorporated in government-­led labour exchanges everywhere, be it locally or nationally, and that in this process mediation was transformed from an instrument of wage control by trade unions into an instrument of control of the unemployed by public labour exchanges. In all of these countries, trade unions originally claimed a monopoly on the organization of intermediation to prevent oversupply in the market and downward pressure on wages. However, a trade union monopoly on labour exchange was never realized anywhere. Trade

120

Ad Knotter

unions therefore had to employ another method to prevent a decline in wages in bad times: unemployment insurance. In the end, the moral hazards associated with this type of insurance forced unions to cooperate with employers and authorities to control the unemployed. Those out of work were now required to register at public labour exchanges to confirm their willingness to work. In this way the labour supply was in effect split into ‘fit’ and ‘unfit’ workers. Supported by unemployment benefits, the former group could be held ‘in reserve’ for the next upturn (assuming there would be one soon); the latter was relegated outside the labour market, or to an ‘external’ market of informal or second-­rate jobs. One of the major effects of this change was to reorganize labour market intermediation on a territorial instead of a craft basis. While these developments can be recognized all over Europe, there were clear national variations, both in the way trade unions were incorporated in public labour exchanges and in the timing of these changes. These variations can be related to political differences, like the strength of liberal reformers (for instance in Belgium and Great Britain), social-­ democracy (for instance in Germany), or syndicalism (in France), but also to developments in the labour markets themselves (artisan labour markets in France, where developments lagged behind, vs. industrial labour markets in Britain, where a centralized system of labour exchanges was established at a relatively early date). In this respect it is also interesting to study the international transfer of ideas and concepts on labour exchange, and the institutional setting of these transfers, for instance in international conferences of social reformers and statisticians in the beginning of the twentieth century, of which the one in Paris in 1910 is specifically relevant because it was devoted to the issue of control of the unemployed. To begin with, however, I will provide an overview of the organization of the labour market before labour market intermediation was institutionalized in public exchanges.

Before the Public Labour Exchanges Tramping Forms of labour recruitment or intermediation before there were public labour exchanges were based primarily on personal, face-­to-­face contact between employers and workers at the moment of selection and hiring. Contacts were made on a relatively small scale (as the examples above make clear). In pre-­industrial Europe – far into the nineteenth century – supply and demand in urban artisan trades were balanced by peculiar institutions

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 121

such as the French compagnonnages (journeymen’s associations), which organized the traditional touring through France.14 The labour market intermediation of the compagnonnages also served to maintain a standard wage. They regulated labour mobility in the country, advised their members about places where labour was remunerated best, while prohibiting access to cities where masters were demanding and paid badly. The compagnon was not allowed to look for a job himself or to accept work for a lower tariff than his fellow journeymen.15 The English ‘tramping artisan’ based his job search as an organized tradesman on ‘vacant lists’. These were maintained by a network of ‘houses of call’, often public houses that served both as centres of trade union activity and sites to organize the mobility of union members out of work. Unions supported tramping with a travelling relief, which later developed into an unemployment benefit. For the tramp, the house of call was first and foremost a labour exchange. ‘Vacant books’ were kept in public houses right up to the time of the introduction of public labour exchanges in the early 1900s.16 However, in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century ‘travelling’ was declining as a feature of union ­activity.17 The tradition of Gesellenwanderung in the German-­speaking countries was based on a comparable system of meeting places. The Herberge was the equivalent of the British house of call. A travelling journeyman did not try to make contact with an individual master but rather sought out the lodging house for his craft.18 In nineteenth-­century Germany and Austria, corporatist and trade union exchanges in public houses (and so-­called Innungen) were functioning as networks of agencies for artisan labour. In the Austrian Empire in 1898 it was reported: ‘The Herberge still is . . . into the present . . . the common market place for supply and demand of workers in small businesses’.19 As Sigrid Wadauer argues: ‘Labour market mediation and support meant influencing wages and working conditions and therefore were of primary importance for working men’s associations and trade unions’.20 In earlier times, journeymen also tried to organize supply this way: The regulation of labour supply was one of the first goals in the programme of journeymen associations, as they soon became aware how important it was to keep the exchange of labour in their own hands in their struggle with the masters.21

Reminiscences of the Gesellenwanderung could be found in the travel funds (viaticum) of the early German trade unions.22 The travel funds later developed into trade union unemployment insurance.23

122

Ad Knotter

‘Places de grève’ and ‘Gesindemärkte’ Apart from these urban institutions, there were concrete ‘markets’ for labourers in public places, where demand and supply met quite literally. In France these were named places de grève, after the Parisian model.24 Yet they could be found all over Europe, in towns as well as in rural areas. The great French ethnologist Arnold Van Gennep thus described such a market as follows: Those who are looking for employment come together in a location fixed by tradition: the church square, a market place, a designated place at a street or cross-­roads . . . The future masters examine the boys and the girls, the men and the women, as if they are selecting draught animals.25

In rural areas in German-­ speaking countries there were so-­ called Gesindemärkte, and I have found indications that these also functioned as wage regulators, at least in the eyes of observers in Bitburg (in the western German Eifel) in 1877: ‘Many shortsighted employers are against this institution, which, however, is crucial to prevent downward pressure on servants’ wages’.26 Concentrating the market in one place and at one moment in time made it transparent and helped to maintain customary hiring conditions. Yet in Germany, from medieval times, the unifying effect of local markets for rural labour was undermined by Gesindemäkler, private agents (or brokers) for the recruitment of labourers.27

Calling Around Another, and at the end of the nineteenth century perhaps more common, way to find work was just looking around. Jobseekers would ask at factory gates, building sites, port entrances, mines (Zechenlaufen in Germany) and so forth. Under different names this practice can be observed all over Europe. In Norway the phenomenon was described as omskådning (‘looking around’),28 and in the Netherlands it was called leuren om werk (‘hawking for work’).29 In England it was known as the ‘calling-­round system’,30 and also as ‘hawking’: At the close of the nineteenth century the phrase ‘hawking labour’ was commonly invoked to describe the process whereby workers roamed from employer to employer seeking work. It was time-­consuming, costly, and demoralizing.31

The German term for this method was Umschau. A Prussian observer remarked in 1894:

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 123

The whole area, which until now has not been regulated by labour exchanges, is still – apart from the Gesindemärkten [‘peoples’ markets’ or ‘peoples’ exchanges’] in some towns in the East and in rural areas of Schleswig-­ Holstein – covered by the Umschau in its different forms.32

Although the practice of Umschauen was already known in the context of urban crafts whenever journeymen helped each other looking for work, in the nineteenth century it became associated with unorganized labour markets in manufacturing, construction, mining and port industries.33 In 1902 it was disparaged as the ‘evermore downgrading power of the Umschau’.34 The Austrian bookbinders union was also quite negative regarding this practice: In that period [1890], the labour market was characterized by a sinister freedom. The employer could choose whoever he liked, and pay him whatever he wanted; also the hand had to accept whatever was offered to him. The most common way to find work was Anklopfengehen [knocking on doors]. Most of the time, the unemployed waited at the factory gates from early in the morning; when it was believed that here or there was some work to do, and people hoped to get a job in one way or another, they went hawking their labour from shop to shop, just like a street whore.35

In the light of the foregoing argument, it is no surprise that trade unions opposed the Umschau or other individual ways of finding work because it enabled, and easily led to Lohndrückerei (‘wage cutting’).36 Attempts by unions to establish their own labour exchanges were intended to counteract this effect.37 Consequently in 1895 the German union of kid glove makers (Glacéhandschuhmacher) wanted to maintain their own agency so as to prevent the loss of control brought on by the extension of the Umschau system: [T]o avoid any oversupply of labour as much as possible; in this way our members can be freed from the degrading Umschauen, which often resembles begging for work, and also opportunities will be created to withhold supply to employers who distinguish themselves by exploiting their workers, or sharply oppose their just demands.38

To circumvent both the relative arbitrariness of the ‘calling round system’ and trade union control on job placements, employers often made use of informal recruitment methods. Hence, they relied upon workers’ recommendations of acquaintances, family members, personal contacts, or other sources of information.39 In the case of the Parisian metal trades, it was said (in 1895) that the majority of people in workshops were hired

124

Ad Knotter

by acquaintance (connaissance) or by comrades.40 In many nineteenth-­ century industries, workers were subcontracted in teams. The contractors or foremen who hired them were thus acting as brokers in the labour market.41 Contractors as intermediaries were also quite common in mobilizing migratory labour in seasonal trades such as construction and agriculture. Just one example is the yearly recruitment of masons and other construction workers from northern Italy for the Vienna labour market ‘by the mediation of so-­called Capi (contractors, team chefs)’. Brickmakers from northern Italy were also mobilized by Ziegelmeister as Accordgruppen-­Führer.42

Private Agencies In the last decades of the nineteenth century, urban workers in specific branches became more dependent on commercial employment agencies. According to Faust, these were responsible for two-­thirds of all placements in Prussia and Bavaria in the 1890s. At the same time, they had a bad reputation.43 In 1894, 632 out of a total of 5,216 Prussian Stellenvermittler (job agencies) were prosecuted 761 times, and 345 were the object of complaints of malpractice filed with the police.44 All parties involved agreed ‘that because of the personal financial interests of the agent, he was easily tempted at unrealistic intermediations’.45 Commercial agencies were active in sectors with a low trade union density, such as agriculture, domestic services, seafaring and the catering industry.46 In Kristiania (today’s Oslo), a public labour exchange was established in 1894 after private placement agencies had come under attack following a number of scandals.47 In Britain at the start of the twentieth century, fraud and malpractice in private bureaux was one of William Beveridge’s arguments in favour of public labour exchanges.48 In Paris, trade unions initiated a Ligue pour la suppression des bureaux de placement, and in 1886 they launched massive protests (including petitions and demonstrations) against fraudulent practices of private bureaux de placement. A trade union-­ dominated municipal Bourse du Travail (see below) was established in response to these protests. However, the bureaux de placements continued to be popular among specific employers in branches where trade unions were weak, particularly in the food and catering industries.49 In 1910, their role was still being hotly debated by French social reformers.50

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 125

Trade Union Attitudes Trade Union Agencies and the Parisian Bourse du Travail In the nineteenth century trade unions claimed a monopoly on the organization of labour supply. Their aim was to prevent downward pressure on wages from the entrance of low-­paid outsiders. Union exchanges were part of a system to regulate the conditions of access to a craft.51 The Parisian Bourse du Travail was established for this reason in 1886. It was a trade union initiative to centralize labour market intermediation, which was backed by municipal authorities.52 The Bourse was a combination of a local labour exchange and a gathering place for trade unions and their members; it also coordinated strikes. This Parisian concept was rapidly adopted throughout France: in 1900, there were bourses du travail in seventy-­ seven large-­and medium-­ sized French towns.53 Significantly, although the bourses competed with the (by then) old-­ fashioned and rather conservative compagnonnages, they were often established in cities where compagnonnages had strong roots. In fact, the idea of a bourse as a place where workers could find both a job and a professional community had much in common with the corporatist traditions of the compagnonnages.54 Trade unions elsewhere in Europe – I know of Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries – tried to follow the French model.55 In Italy comparative institutions were established around 1900 under the name Camere del lavoro, building upon earlier initiatives of individual trade unions.56 An 1888 Scandinavian labour congress, held in Copenhagen, called for the establishment of union-­led labour offices that were to be publicly funded. In Denmark, Sweden and Norway unions demanded bourses du travail (arbejderbørs), ‘like the one in Paris’, because these ‘would . . . strengthen existing union-­run placement activities which aimed at protecting the trade by limiting competition’.57 Especially in Denmark union-­linked placement activities achieved relative strength; many unions, particularly those organizing skilled workers, had well-­functioning services of this kind.58

In Germany, Austria, and Great Britain In Germany, trade unions also favoured trade union control over mediation, as Anselm Faust has argued in his study on German labour exchanges: From the intention to act as a price cartel on the labour market by limiting the supply of labour, regulating the supply side of the labour market should be of primary importance to the trade unions.59

126

Ad Knotter

The Socialist Freie Gewerkschaften had established their own exchanges from the 1860s and 1870s onwards. Rapid growth, especially in the 1880s, meant that there were 967 union exchanges organized locally for individual crafts by 1904.60 Union members receiving benefits were required to use the union agencies, and looking around for work individually was prohibited.61 Until the end of the nineteenth century, German trade unions held the position that ‘those who sell their labour power have a right to decide about how to bring it to the market’.62 In 1896 the Congress of the Freie Gewerkschaften promoted a system like the French bourses du travail: ‘The state can provide buildings, like it builds exchanges for merchants, but everything else can be left to the trade unions . . . The exchange of labour itself should be the task of the unions’.63 An Austrian trade union congress, also held in 1896, likewise argued against bipartite and state or municipal exchanges. The congress ‘called it a duty for every trade union to work seriously towards the establishment of their own labour exchanges, and to energetically oppose any further experiment to organize labour market intermediation by the state or the municipalities without the exclusive control of the trade unions’.64 An Austrian report of 1898 substantiated ‘the progress of the organization of workers in trade unions that everywhere try to draw the exchange of labour towards themselves’.65 It counted 249 trade union exchanges in the Austrian empire as a whole.66 In most cases members looking for work were obliged to use the union’s exchange. The aim was to protect local wage standards: ‘the permission [to accept a job] can be refused, as soon as the position concerned does not comply to local customs, or agreed conditions of labour’.67 British trade unionists originally appear to have had a comparable attitude toward public exchanges. Like their Continental counterparts, they wanted exchanges to be administered wholly by the unions for the benefit of their members.68 In addition, they were suspicious of public exchanges, and not without reason. In 1906, Beveridge, the liberal proponent of central labour exchanges ‘refused to concede that exchanges should only advertise situations which paid either trade-­union rates or the local standard wage’.69 Winston Churchill, then President of the Board of Trade and a leading official in the debate on public labour exchanges, was equally ‘uncompromising about the use of the exchange to enforce standard rates in wages’.70 Trade unions in 1906 stipulated that they should be permitted to maintain their own ‘vacant books’ (as in the houses of call mentioned above) at each public exchange and, ‘with the exception of the place of registration . . . be allowed to continue their present methods’. Furthermore, they

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 127

demanded that ‘where an organized system of registration [like in the houses of call] is already in existence, covering any trade, such registration shall be accepted . . . in the locality [of the public exchange] as sufficient for the purposes of that trade’.71 The first public London labour exchanges combined their operations in 1906. Unions were indeed allowed to deposit their own ‘vacant book’ at each exchange. They were allowed to use its facilities, while at the same time retaining their own rules and systems of information.72

An Artisan Approach Trade-­based exchanges were more a system of the artisan past than of the industrial future, however. In Germany, labour union intermediation was only able to exert some influence ‘in small or medium-­sized firms, with many skilled and highly organized occupations’.73 In the Swiss case, the limitations were also apparent, as documented by Erich Gruner: The higher the degree of organization became, the less trade unions were willing to abstain from a monopoly in labour exchange . . . Their chances to succeed were best in branches where labour markets were less transparent, with small firms dominating, and loose ties between employers. The chances for trade unions to dominate the exchange of labour were highest in artisan trades.74

The explicit aim of Swiss unions was to combat the Umschau: ‘Their strategy started with a ban by the union board on the Umschau by their members’.75 Trade union agencies were well represented in the Brussels luxury trades. Especially among the bronze workers, compositors, typographers, coach makers, hatters and glove makers, the workers tried to dominate the labour market by developing labour exchanges managed by the trade unions.76 On account of this development, it has been argued that the concept of trade union control in labour exchanges arose at a specific moment when corporatist institutions in small-­scale industry – such as the urban luxury trades – were declining but still functioning.77 In this respect, a parallel might be located in the programme of productive associations in the early labour movement.78 It is thus interesting to note that the independent French bourses du travail were dominated by trade unions of small-­scale artisans (or semi-­artisan craftsmen) and that industrial unions were underrepresented.79 Likewise, small employers seem to have favoured union control. According to one observer in Saint-­Etienne small masters were in favour of the union exchanges, and turned to them

128

Ad Knotter

to look for labourers, but the large ones were against and combatted them.80

British Trade Unions at the End of the Nineteenth Century Trade Union Agencies The British Board on Trade’s Report on Agencies and Methods for Dealing with the Unemployed (1893) illustrates trade union practices in these matters.81 Craft unions, mainly in artisan trades, such as the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, the Typographical Association and the Alliance Cabinet Makers’ Association, but also in manufacturing, such as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers or the Boiler Makers’ and Iron Shipbuilders’ Society combined unemployment insurance with forms of registering unemployed members in ‘vacant books’ at the meeting house of the branch, usually a public house. Sometimes there were also ‘vacant offices’ where the unemployed members of all local branches had to sign in every day. On this basis, an intricate system of supra-­local intermediation was maintained, as in the case of the well-­organized engineers.82 In many cases, nonetheless, allocation of unemployed members by the union was only one possible way to get a job, and for employers it could be a last resort, as reported by the Steam Engine Makers’ Society: Employers requiring men, or foremen acting on their behalf, may send there [the branch club-­house] for men if they are unable to obtain them in the usual way from among the applicants at the shop gate, or through other members working in their shop.83

In this and other craft unions, ‘hawking’ labour was as common as the allocation of jobs by the union. Although in the case of the pattern makers it was ‘a very common thing for employers to apply to the society for men in times of good trade’, members out of work would also ‘visit such workshops as they may think most likely to need men, and make application to the foremen’.84 For instance, firms often sent representatives to the headquarters of the National Society of Amalgamated Brass Workers in Birmingham to ‘take artisans on the recommendation of the general secretary . . . the men themselves, however, often make personal applications for work’.85 In the case of shipwrights, the manner of seeking a job also varied: ‘Employers or their agents frequently apply to the society for men . . . No objection, however, is offered to men applying to employers

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 129

direct, provided they do so in the manner customary in the district’. Yet in places like Dundee and Liverpool, ‘[t]he method generally adopted is for members to congregate at the gates or starting places of such firms as are thought likely to require assistance. In addition to this, members visit the various docks and yards, and thus frequently obtain casual ­employment’.86 With respect to bricklayers, ‘employers seldom apply to the union for men, work being usually obtained by personal application or by the cooperation and assistance of other members’.87 At the Typographical Association, ‘employers requiring assistance apply to the secretary at the society house for a list of members signing the call-­book, selecting those they require, but members also apply to employers and overseers for employment at their respective offices’.88 In the textile industry, the ‘calling round system’ was even more widespread. Unemployed members of the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners ‘usually go round to the various mills inquiring for situations, it being customary for the foreman either to take their names and addresses or to communicate with them through some friend employed in the same mill. This system obviates the necessity of ­employers having to apply to the union’.89 The mode of obtaining employment in the Amalgamated Association of Card and Blowing Room Operatives was ‘by personal application at the mills, which is supplemented to some extent by information given and received by the branch secretaries at the society houses’.90 At the West Riding of Yorkshire Power Loom Weavers’ Association ‘no vacant book is kept, nor does the union attempt to find employment for its members . . . Except in rare cases, employers do not apply to the union for men, but members make application to the employers or their representatives for work’.91 In the mining industry and for waterside labour, no provisions were made for out-­of-­work benefits nor for the placement of unemployed union members.92 As for factory workers more generally, it was reported that they ‘usually introduce one another, that they answer advertisements, and very frequently find work through notices posted up outside the factories’.93 A reader is compelled to conclude from this 1893 report that union-­based exchanges were in no way able to impose a monopoly (anymore?), and that unorganized forms of job seeking had become at least as important. Along with Beveridge, we may conclude from the report that ‘even in the most highly organized trades the use of the union office as a labour bureau is hardly ever exclusive of other methods of seeking employment or obtaining workpeople’.94 In its conclusion, the report itself avers that ‘the bulk of the work of hiring labour and seeking employment will in most trades continue

130

Ad Knotter

to be done directly between workmen and employers’.95 British employers were also rather outspoken about the secondary role played by trade unions, observing in 1909 that the most common hiring methods were: First, the foremen have usually in their possession a list of men out of work with whose capacity and character they are acquainted. Second, recommendations of other workmen on whose opinion the foremen can rely. Third, trade union and other organizations. And, fourth, the public press.96

On the basis of this source alone we cannot be sure about the extent of market control by craft unions earlier in the century. The information available on London trades at the first half of the nineteenth century provides a mixed picture. While there was close control in tailoring and printing, it was less pronounced in the building trades (e.g. carpentry).97 Nevertheless, it is tempting to conclude that processes of industrialization and casualization of labour markets in the last decades of the nineteenth century were responsible for undermining union regulation of labour market intermediation. Customary trade union controls were under threat from changing patterns of industrial relations. Among these were the rise of general unions, which lacked the close control over conditions and terms of employment that was typical of the skilled trades.98 It is at least clear by the end of the century that British unions could not prevent members from individually calling around for work. Perhaps we can also relate this development to the demise of craft-­related systems of subcontracting in industry and the ‘rise of the foreman’, who recruited workers on an individual basis.99

Unemployment Insurance and Union Control of the Unemployed Close reading of the report cited above explains how the efforts of British trade unions to seek job placements for their members were related to another union method for preventing downward pressure on wages: unemployment insurance. In Britain, perhaps more than in France,100 union systems of trade regulation and control combined both features: trade unions offered help to out-­of-­work members in the form of placement and benefits.101 For the unions, the issue centred on wage control. In combination with benefits, placement by the union enabled members to refuse work below the wage standards set by the unions, or withhold supply in case of strikes. In this way a dilemma could be solved: if a worker refused to accept a lower rate than the union had set, should he be called ‘unemployed’ or ‘striking’?102 Unemployment

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 131

benefits prevented members from being forced to accept work on non-­ union terms. In the case of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers it was argued that: the unemployed benefit of the trade union acts as a regulator of the labour market. Practically, the trade union of this class is in a position to minimize the competition of the individuals composing it, by using this benefit for the purpose of lessening pressure upon the labour market.103

Sidney and Beatrice Webb, theorists of British trade unionism at the time, contended that unemployment benefits were primarily designed to deter unemployed workmen from undermining the level of wages and only secondarily to relieve distress.104 In many unions the out-­of-­work benefits were therefore not clearly distinguished from payments because of strikes.105 The demand for union control of labour market intermediation can therefore be seen as a part of the whole endeavour to keep wage rates up. However, the report cited above suggests that the mechanism of ‘vacant books’ served a further goal: the signing of the book by the unemployed member allowed the union branch secretary to verify that a man was really unemployed.106 The labour market intermediation of the Society of Engineers, for example, was meant to relieve the burden on the unemployment fund. Daily registration in the ‘vacant book’ in that society’s houses of call was necessary ‘to secure that the member would be easily available in the event of his services being required by an employer’.107 The unions in the printing industries explicitly stated that ‘any one refusing to go when called upon to do so forfeits that week’s out-­of-­work pay’, and ‘those failing to answer a call are ineligible for out-­ of-­work allowance for six days’.108 As the benefit had to be raised by the members themselves, it was important to get the unemployed working as soon as possible and to control for applications without justification. To cite Beveridge once more: Unions come nearer than any other bodies to possessing a direct test of unemployment by which to protect their funds against abuse. They have . . . at least the beginnings of a Labour Exchange system.109

All this explains why union intermediation was meant only for unemployed members, not for employed members wanting to change jobs. In this sense the unions’ labour exchanges acquired the function of controlling unemployed members at least as much as they controlled mobility in the labour market in general.

132

Ad Knotter

The Ghent System: Incorporation of Trade Unions in Public Labour Exchanges The Ghent System At this stage of the argument, I wish to redirect attention to the Continent, to the city of Ghent in Belgium. The Ghent system, designed by the prominent liberal reformer Louis Varlez, provided municipal financial supplements to individual out-­of-­work benefits distributed by trade unions. It was a pioneering device and was soon adopted all over Europe.110 Trade unions in Ghent had cooperated with the municipal authorities in the administration of an Unemployment Fund (established in 1900), proving highly severe in monitoring the willingness of unemployed members to accept work. In the process, they were also compelled to separate their unemployment and strike funds. These were, of course, two of the reasons why liberal reformers embraced this system. Unions participating in the municipal Unemployment Fund had a strong interest in requiring that their unemployed members registered daily at their office to determine whether individual applications were justified.111 In due time, however, most of the Ghent unions agreed that it would be better for monitoring purposes if unemployed members were registered at the existing public labour exchange. As a result, Varlez managed to convince the unions in 1909 to participate in a municipal Labour Exchange, to be administered on a bipartite basis (by both employers and workers). A cooperation between the Unemployment Fund and the Labour Exchange was thereby forged, resulting in the transfer of union intermediation and control, as well as a sudden rise of union members applying at the Exchange in 1910.112 The Ghent unions had demanded that the bipartite municipal exchange would not accept job offers below standard rates or in the event of strikes or lockouts.113 Yet in fact, they had to give up any independent role in the area of intermediation, as had been the original intention of Varlez, who considered trade union control of the labour supply something detrimental.114

In Great Britain and Germany Elsewhere in Europe as well, this combining of compulsory registration of the unemployed at labour exchanges with unemployment insurance schemes modelled on the Ghent system persuaded trade unions to participate in bipartite administration of existing or newly established public labour exchanges. In Britain, trade unionists did not fully support public exchanges, fearing ‘blacklegging’ and ‘wage cutting’, until these could be

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 133

reinforced by a system of unemployment insurance in 1912.115 According to José Harris in her study on English unemployment politics, some kind of incentive was necessary to persuade the better class of workmen to register at an exchange; and it was not until the payment of benefits came into operation in 1913 that the prejudice [against public exchanges] of organized workmen, at least in insured industries, was to a certain extent broken down.116

However, this was only after attempts by representatives of organized workers to use labour exchanges to improve their members’ power in the labour market had failed. Once unemployment compensation was enacted by the government, the aim of controlling the unemployed competed with the earlier (opposing) aim of controlling the labour supply.117 The linkage between the placement of job seekers and the distribution of benefits became a defining feature of the organization of the labour market, as Beveridge had prescribed in his Unemployment: A Problem of Industry: ‘No scheme of insurance . . . can be safe from abuse unless backed by an efficient organization of the labour market [i.e. an adequate system of labour exchanges]’.118 Public labour exchanges became mechanisms through which the government could impose a division between unemployed workers into those worthy or unworthy of receiving ­unemployment assistance.119 Nonetheless, it is a remarkable circumstance that in 1927 only 77 per cent of British union members claiming unemployment benefits signed in at public labour exchanges. Of the remaining 23 per cent ‘considerably more than half prove their unemployment by signing vacant books kept under the supervision of whole-­time officers of their associations’, while the remainder signed vacant books ‘kept at such places as the branch secretary’s residence, or a shop or a public house’.120 A 1920 public enquiry into the work of the employment agencies, as analysed by Malcolm Mansfield, revealed that trade unionists perceived public labour exchanges as of little use to skilled and organized workers. They were especially condemned for their tendency to impose a uniform job search across a diversity of existing, tailor-­made employment practices, including recruitment via foremen, union branches and personal contacts. In the eyes of both employers and craft unions, public labour exchanges were only of use to unproductive workers. Not surprisingly, such individuals found more support in the growing general unions for unskilled workers.121 In Germany, trade unions were also in favour of unemployment insurance, for the same reasons as their British counterparts. For them,

134

Ad Knotter

the insurance should not only relieve the individual fate of the unemployed, but, by lessening the pressure on the labour market, also protect the terms of employment by preventing downward pressure on wages by the suffering of those looking for work. Labour exchanges that are only aimed at allocating labour should not annul this goal.122

Fanny Imle, socialist expert in this field, claimed: The awareness that one never again has to subject oneself starving being unemployed to the terms of the employer, who shortly before was fought courageously, has done more to raise the consciousness of the working class than a quickly won strike, whose results can be robbed piece by piece if the organization is weakened.123

The number of trade union unemployment funds in Germany grew from ten in 1891 to forty-­four just before the First World War.124 As in Britain, unions organized their own labour exchanges, both to control unemployed members and to prevent them from accepting jobs below the standard wage rate.125 Starting in the late nineteenth century, urban authorities began to recognize the need for measures to reorganize the labour market. By 1914 some fifteen German cities had adopted the Ghent system.126 Other ideas combining unemployment insurance and public labour exchanges were developed in German municipalities before the First World War.127 In the same period, trade unions gave up their resistance to cooperating in public labour exchanges, thereby abandoning the model of the French bourses du travail.128 In 1908 the trade unions’ congress opted for bipartite municipal exchanges, and in 1913 it advised all associated unions to transfer their own placement bureaux to public exchanges.129 Strasbourg (at that time a German city) was the first to integrate a scheme of unemployment insurance with a central labour exchange managed by a joint bipartite committee. Trade union agencies and municipally subsidized schemes of unemployment benefits were absorbed by the municipal labour bureau in 1906. By contrast, in the same period Ghent continued to leave supervision of the unemployed to the trade unions themselves – as we have seen above. According to Beveridge, who in his book Unemployment: A Problem of Industry (1908) devoted an appendix of some fifteen pages to describing the German public labour exchanges, in Strasbourg there had ‘been in force since the beginning of 1907 a scheme of augmenting from a municipal fund unemployed benefits paid by trade unions to their members; one of the conditions for the receipt of this municipal subsidy is regular registration at the Labour Office’.130

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 135

Like Ghent, Strasbourg became one of the classic models for labour market reformers both inside and outside Germany.131 The combination of public labour exchange with the administration of unemployment benefits was then adopted by other municipalities. Beveridge was able to refer to a German ‘movement to absorb competing institutions such as guild and trade union registries, and thus to centralize and unify the whole labour market’. By 1906, all the larger trade unions in Stuttgart had: closed their own registries in favour of the municipal Labour Office . . . The unions of woodworkers, metalworkers, saddlers, paperhangers, glaziers, bookbinders, brewers’ operatives, millers, and factory workers compel their unemployed members to register daily at the Labour Office as the condition of receiving out-­of-­work pay.132

At first, the combination of public labour exchange with the registration of the unemployed by the trade unions themselves seems to have been delicate, however. In Strasbourg as well as in Erlangen, Freiburg and Mulhouse, municipal allowances according to the Ghent system were refused to certain individuals whom the trade unions had otherwise granted benefits to (in the case of strikes, or a sojourn elsewhere). Municipal authorities in these cities found a way to exclude such individuals from those who were ‘genuinely’ unemployed by monitoring the registry lists of the trade unions. While those unemployed were to be allowed a municipal subsidy based on their union benefits, they were now also required to register at the municipal labour exchange. This was ­considered an advance over the Ghent system, for: the advantage of the Strasbourg institute above the system of the town of Ghent consists in the fact that one is not content any more with the control by trade unions alone, but that a system of control has been installed whereby unemployed receiving benefit from the municipality have to present themselves at certain hours, in case of suspicion even two or three times a day.133

In France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian Countries The German example of combining unemployment insurance and public labour exchanges under supervision of bipartite councils of employers and workers played an important role in the British debate on these issues, and went on to be adopted by many other European countries.134 However, at the large Conférence Internationale du Chômage, held in Paris on 18–21 September 1910, where the question of control of the unemployed receiving benefit was a major topic, it appeared that France was lagging

136

Ad Knotter

behind.135 A 1905 law prescribing the establishment of municipal labour bureaux (not be confused with the bourses du travail mentioned earlier) in towns with a populations over 10,000 was only followed by some. Control of the unemployed on benefits was still an exclusive affair of the trade unions. The French expert at the conference could only note as an oeuvre à faire to constitute employment agencies everywhere, combined with unemployment funds, to control the unemployed continuously by obliging them to present themselves at their bureaux.136 This proposal was realized in laws dating from 1910 and 1911, which required unemployed receiving benefits to register at the labour exchanges.137 In the case of Belgium, the assessment at the Paris conference was mixed. As indicated above, several trade unions in Ghent had handed over the daily supervision of their out-­of-­work members to the municipal exchange. Other places in Belgium had followed the example of Ghent. However, there were still unions that required their unemployed members to register daily at the office of the society itself. At that time, daily visits to the Municipal Exchange were only necessary for unemployed members of the unions who had handed over their registration.138 In the Netherlands, the Ghent system was introduced in several municipalities from 1906 onwards. At the 1910 Paris conference it was reported that it was ‘in fact the associations themselves that most often verify the unemployed status of their members, generally by mandating that they present themselves daily at a determined hour and place’.139 Yet the majority of the municipal funds had reserved the right of controlling the statements of the associations. A certain number of funds insisted on the indemnified unemployed workman presenting himself every day at the municipal labour exchange, but in a city like Amsterdam the two services were kept separate until 1915. In 1916 registration at public labour exchanges by unemployed on benefits became mandated by national law.140 In the Scandinavian countries, the situation was somewhat different.141 The Ghent system was introduced in Norway in 1906, and in Denmark in 1907. In these countries, union control of unemployment insurance facilitated the creation of union-­administered placement services, with the same officials managing the unemployment fund and the union exchange. In Denmark, unions for skilled and semi-­skilled workers even retained control of placement services until the end of the 1960s. In such cases, trade unions took on the responsibility for administering work tests to their members seeking assistance. Municipal public exchanges were chiefly used by the unskilled and unorganized workforce. In Denmark there was only one public labour exchange before the First World War (in Copenhagen), while in 1914 there were already a hundred in Sweden and

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 137

twenty-­four in Norway.142 In these countries, public exchanges were not connected to the administration of union-­based unemployment insurance. In Norway, unions regulated placement and benefits under the Ghent system until 1936, at which time the union-­controlled unemployment insurance system was changed to a compulsory government-­administered one, and public exchanges were given responsibility for imposing work tests. In Sweden, there was no public unemployment insurance until 1935, when a union-­controlled Ghent system was introduced, resulting in union control of the work test. Labour exchanges were given no role in administering means-­tested benefits. For non-­union members, these tasks became the responsibility of a separate government organization.143

Conclusion: Reorganizing Labour Markets from ‘Craft’ to ‘Place’ The overview provided in the present chapter makes it clear that trade union methods for registering unemployed members for the purposes of mediation and control were only gradually and unevenly incorporated into public labour exchanges. If we accept the proposition made above that craft unions were incorporated into public institutions of labour exchange and unemployment control to protect the unemployment benefits of their members in expanding industrial and casual labour markets, organizational and temporal variations in different countries could perhaps be explained by national variations in labour market developments. From this perspective it comes as no surprise that Britain developed the most centralized system because of its advanced industrial and casual labour markets, that France lagged behind because of the endurance of artisanal relations of production, and that Germany, with a mixed and diversified economy, developed municipal exchanges adapted to local and regional labour markets. The specific developments in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries, where trade unions managed to keep control for much longer than elsewhere in Europe, could perhaps be explained by late industrialization. These differences can also be related to the relative strength of political currents inside and outside the labour movement, however, like reform liberalism Britain, of which William Beveridge was such an eloquent representative, social democracy in Germany and Scandinavia, or the influence of syndicalism in France, the driving force behind the artisan bourses du travail, which in itself can also be explained by the preponderance of artisan labour. Yet in the period prior to the First World War locally or nationally unified public institutions replaced the labour exchanges of individual

138

Ad Knotter

trade unions in almost all European countries. In a short text, the French economist Jean Luciani has provided a penetrating analysis of this development, starting from the tension between a logique professionnelle and a logique locale (or spatiale) of labour market intermediation.144 Craft-­ controlled job placements were meant to protect the skilled professions by relegating outsiders to unorganized ‘calling-­around’ or ‘subcontracting’ in finding work. In that way, a dual labour market was created. In the era of the ancien régime the contradiction between the local organization of the labour market by urban corporations and interurban labour mobility was resolved by craft-­centred, but non-­localized compagnonnages. The supra-­local organization of labour market intermediation by the British trade unions with the help of ‘vacant books’ and ‘houses of call’ may be considered a British variant of this solution. The establishment of the bourses du travail in Paris and elsewhere in France is described by Luciani as an intermediary stage to reduce the tension between ‘craft’ and ‘place’ while attempting to combine a professional with a local organization of job placement. The creation of Bureaux Municipal de Placement after 1905 and Offices Départementaux de Placement after 1915, combined with a system of subsidized unemployment benefits, undermined the intermediary function of the union-­dominated bourses du travail. And it signalled a definitive turn toward a spatial construction of the labour market. The theme has been elaborated by Bénédicte Zimmermann in the German case of unemployment construction entre professions et territoires. For in administering unemployment insurance, the two logics – professional and territorial – had to be reconciled. The communal subsidies in the Ghent system were only meant for residents of specific municipal territories, whereas trade unions in that epoch were organized as professional or craft communities. Zimmermann writes about the logique professionnelle de qualification du chômage [the professional logic to be qualified as unemployed] as against the logique territoriale d'identification des chômeurs [the territorial logic to identify the unemployed].145 The identification of ‘unemployed’ union members and municipal inhabitants did not necessarily coincide: for the union they were colleagues – and potential competitors – out of work; for the municipality, they were residents entitled to a benefit. The way municipal authorities tried to incorporate union registration of unemployed members for their own purposes while at the same time restricting the union’s criteria for allowing benefits (combining unemployment with travel or strike funds, as described above), illustrates how this tension could not be resolved without shifting the organization of the labour market from a professional to a spatial foundation. The Ghent system and the corresponding institutionalization

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 139

of unemployment control in centralized labour exchanges were implemented in order to organize a labour market hierarchy on a territorial basis. A spatial reconfiguration of labour market intermediation could make unemployment control more effective, as a German report averred in 1906, against the fragmentation of union-­controlled labour exchanges: Such a situation of fragmentation must considerably influence the performance of the labour exchange as an institution of unemployment control . . . The unification and centralisation of labour intermediation are a precondition for such a control to be effective.146

In the longer term, the ‘territorialization’ of labour exchanges and the concomitant work tests were a prerequisite for extending unemployment insurance from the skilled and organized trades to other types of labour. From a somewhat different perspective, Malcolm Mansfield has analysed the British case. There from an early stage, public labour exchanges were conceived as a national clearing system, as a ‘spatial transformation’ of the labour market associated with the rise of concepts of labour supply and unemployment as abstract categories.147 These concepts evolved from analyses of the growing unskilled casual labour markets, especially in London. To Beveridge, these appeared to be markets for unspecified (‘abstract’) labour without further qualification. Mansfield’s research demonstrates that concepts of abstract, interchangeable labour were at the core of the idea that labour supply could be regulated by a ‘catch-­all’ national network of labour exchanges. Why, then, had trade unions been prepared to give up the intermediary functions for their members, and hand them over to public exchanges? The answer has to be found in the character of nineteenth-­century trade unions as associations of skilled craftsmen. Union regulation of job placements and unemployment benefits were meant to enable members to uphold a standard wage rate and occupational status by excluding admission to others. Growing pressure from ‘outsiders’ in the labour market and intensified unemployment crises, such as that of 1908–1909, made it difficult to sustain this kind of protection. Urban and industrial development and related migration flows resulted in a larger and more fluctuating supply of labour. For the craft unions, the Ghent system was an attractive way to overcome these difficulties. As Zimmermann writes of the Strasbourg case: As an elitist system of support to the unemployed, the principle of supplementing trade union benefits could only be addressed to workers who already had some social means: essentially these were skilled artisans, reflecting the exclusive implantation of Strasbourg trade unionism in traditional crafts.148

140

Ad Knotter

In this light it is not surprising that the system was first introduced in cities with diversified economic structures, where artisan industries dominated (in southern Germany, for instance), and not in areas of large industry (like the Ruhr or Saxony in Germany).149 The authorities were prepared to support the unions because their members – able to save money for an insurance premium – represented a stable and regular part of the workforce in a growing casual labour market. In the eyes of liberal reformers, the growth of casual labour had led to a ‘disorganized labour market’. It tended to generalize ‘underemployment’ or ‘irregular employment’, and was considered a waste of productive labour power.150 In economic terms, trade union members were considered ‘efficient’ workers whose position had to be protected from unproductive (or ‘inefficient’) ones. The central objective of public labour exchanges was to concentrate labour on a restricted group of workers. Controlling the unemployed’s willingness and ability to work on a regular basis made the allocation of labour more selective. That way, the labour supply could be split into a ‘fit’ and an ‘unfit’ body of workers. The latter were then relegated to an ‘external’ market of informal and second-­rate jobs, or poor relief. Put differently, [b]y regularising employment the organization of the labour market shifts the unemployable out of the industrial world altogether . . . The work lost by these men – the unemployable on the fringe of industry – would go to make up a reasonable subsistence for others.151

Notes I wish to thank Sigrid Wadauer and Malcolm Mansfield for their valuable suggestions. Translations of citations from French and German are my own.    1. J. Ehmer. 2000. ‘Tramping Artisans in Nineteenth-­Century Vienna’, in D. Siddle (ed.), Migration, Mobility and Modernity, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 167.    2. K. Sekirnjak. 1904. Damals und heute. Kurzgefaßte Darstellung des Entwicklungsganges des Vereins für alle in der Hut-­und Filzwaren-­ Industrie beschäftigten Arbeiter und Arbeiterinnen Niederösterreich: aus Anlass des dreissigjährigen Gründungsfestes, Vienna: Im Selbstverlag des Vereins (Karl Flemisch), 25, cited by: J. Ehmer. 1994. Soziale Traditionen in Zeiten des Wandels. Arbeiter und Handwerker im 19. Jahrhundert (= Studien zur Historischen Sozialwissenschaft 20), Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, 282–283. On the importance of this kind of Herberge in the early Vienna trade union movement: ibid., 274, 278.    3. C. Lis and H. Soly. 1994. ‘“An Irresistible Phalanx”: Journeymen Associations in Western Europe, 1300–1800’, in C. Lis, H. Soly and J. Lucassen (eds), Before the Unions: Wage Earners and Collective Action in Europe, 1300–1850, International Review of Social History 39, Suppl. 2, 31; on the relationship between pubs as labour exchanges and

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 141

strike propensity: R. Reith. 2007. ‘Arbeitsmarkt und Gesellenstreiks vom 15. bis ins 19. Jahrhundert’, in A. Westermann and E. Westermann (eds), Streik im Revier. Unruhe, Protest und Ausstand vom 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert, St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae, 198, 212.    4. M. Schulte Beerbühl. 1991. Vom Gesellenverein zur Gewerkschaft. Entwicklung, Struktur und Politik der Londoner Gesellenorganisation 1550–1825 (= Göttinger Beiträge zur Wirtschafts-­und Sozialgeschichte 16), Göttingen: Schwartz, 185–191.    5. Citations in ibid., 185, 187 and 189; on ‘houses of call’ as centres of the tailors’ strike in 1763 also: 286.    6. A. Knotter and J.L. van Zanden. 1987. ‘Immigratie en arbeidsmarkt in Amsterdam in de 17e eeuw’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 13, 411; R. Dekker. 1990. ‘Labour Conflicts and Working-­Class Culture in Early Modern Holland’, International Review of Social History 35, 393.    7. C. Harison. 2000. ‘The Rise and Decline of a Revolutionary Space: Paris’ Place de Grève and the Stonemasons of Creuse, 1750–1900’, Journal of Social History 34, 403–436, with extensive references on the history of the Place de Grève.    8. See P. Schöttler. 1982. Die Entstehung der 'Bourses du Travail'. Sozialpolitik und französischer Syndikalismus am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts (= Campus Forschung 255), Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, 29. The waiting room in the Parisian Bourse du Travail was called salle de grève: ibid., 65. There was a labour market in the Place de Grève (now Place de l’Hôtel de Ville) until the Second World War: J. Luciani. 1990. ‘Logiques du placement ouvrier au XIXe siècle et construction du marché du travail’, Sociétés Contemporaines 3, 8.    9. Harison, ‘The Rise and Decline of a Revolutionary Space’, footnote 55.   10. A. Cottereau. 2002. ‘Droit et bon droit. Un droit des ouvriers instauré, puis évincé par le droit du travail (France, XIXe siècle)’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 57, 1528. I owe this reference to Malcolm Mansfield.   11. S.L. Kaplan. 1989. ‘La lutte pour le contrôle du marché du travail à Paris au XVIIIe siècle’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 36, 361–412. Next to the Place de Grève as a meeting place for building workers, Kaplan (363) mentions the rue Aubry-­le-­Boucher and the quai de Gesvres for masons, carpenters and painters; the rue de la Poterie and the rue des Écouffes for pastry bakers and woodworkers. Some nine other occupational stations d’embauchage in nineteenth-­century Paris are summed up by Luciani, ‘Logiques du placement’, 7 footnote 1.   12. Kaplan, ‘La lutte pour le contrôle du marché du travail’, 363. He gives several examples of journeymen struggling for placement control.  13. R. Schröder. 1991. ‘Arbeitslosenfürsorge und Arbeitsvermittlung im Zeitalter der Aufklärung’, in H.-­P. Benöhr (ed.), Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in der neueren deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, Tübingen: Mohr, 24.   14. See the most recent work on this subject: N. Adell-­Gombert. 2008. Des hommes de devoir. Les compagnons du Tour de France (XVIIIe–XXe siècle) (= Ethnologie de France 30), Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.   15. Luciani, ‘Logiques du placement ouvrier’, 9.   16. R. Leeson. 1980. Travelling Brothers: The Six Centuries’ Road from Craft Fellowship to Trade Unionism, London: Allen and Unwin, 132, 137. A classical study is: E.J. Hobsbawm. 1979. ‘The Tramping Artisan’, in idem, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour, 6th ed., London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 34–63; see also: H.R. Southall. 1991. ‘The Tramping Artisan Revisits: Labour Mobility and Economic Distress in Early Victorian England’, Economic History Review 44, 272–296.   17. M. Mansfield. 1992. ‘Labour Exchanges and the Labour Reserve in Turn of the Century Social Reform’, Journal of Social Policy 21, 455.   18. Ehmer, ‘Tramping Artisans’, 179–181.

142

Ad Knotter

  19. Statistisches Departement im k. k. Handelsministerium (ed.). 1898. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich. Verfasst und herausgegeben vom statistischen Departement im k. k. Handelsministerium. Vienna: A. Hölder, cited by: S. Wadauer. 2008. ‘Vazierende Gesellen und wandernde Arbeitslose (Österreich, ca. 1880–1938)’, in A. Steidl, T. Buchner, W. Lausecker, A. Pinwinkler, S. Wadauer and H. Zeitlhofer (eds), Übergänge und Schnittmengen. Arbeit, Migration, Bevölkerung und Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Diskussion, Vienna/Cologne/Weimar: Böhlau, 109.   20. Ibid., 109–110. On Innungen in Germany: H.-­W. Schmuhl. 2003. Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung in Deutschland 1871–2002 (= Beiträge zur Arbeitsmarkt-­und Berufsforschung 270), Nuremberg: Institut für Arbeitsmarkt-­und Berufsforschung, 26.  21. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich, 96. See also Schröder, ‘Arbeitslosenfürsorge und Arbeitsvermittlung’, 53.  22. A. Faust. 1986. Arbeitsmarktpolitik im deutschen Kaiserreich. Arbeitsvermittlung, Arbeitsbeschaffung und Arbeitslosenunterstützung 1890–1918 (= VSWG Beihefte 79), Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 137; idem. 1991. ‘Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in Deutschland von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ende des Kaiserreichs’, in Benöhr (ed.), Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung, 121.   23. B. Risch. 1981. ‘Gewerkschaftseigene Arbeitslosenversicherung vor 1914’, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 117, 518. On the British case: Schulte Beerbühl. Vom Gesellenverein zur Gewerkschaft, 227.  24. Luciani, ‘Logiques du placement ouvrier’, 7; S. Rudischhauser and B. Zimmermann. 1995. ‘“Öffentliche Arbeitsvermittlung” (1890–1914). Kategorien der Invention der öffentlichen Hand – Reflexionen zu einem Vergleich’, Comparativ – Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 5, 101.   25. A. Van Gennep. 1949. Manuel de folklore français contemporain I, 4, Paris: Picard, 2040, cited by Schöttler, Die Entstehung der ‘Bourses du Travail’, 198, footnote 30.   26. Cited by: P. Neu. 1968. ‘Die Gesindemärkte der Südeifel’, Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 32, 519.   27. Schröder, ‘Arbeitslosenfürsorge und Arbeitsvermittlung’, 68–69.  28. N. Edling. 2008. ‘Regulating Unemployment the Continental Way: The Transfer of Municipal Labour Exchanges to Scandinavia 1890–1914’, European Review of History/ Revue européenne d'Histoire, 15(1), 28.  29. A. Knotter. 1991. Economische transformatie en stedelijke arbeidsmarkt. Amsterdam in de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw, Zwolle/Amsterdam: Waanders, 117; see also B. Gewin. 1898. Arbeidsbeurzen, Utrecht: Van Huffel, 279.   30. N.B. Dearle. 1908. Problems of Unemployment in the London Building Trades, London: J. M. Dent, 82–96.   31. D. King. 1995. Actively Seeking Work? The Politics of Unemployment and Welfare Policy in the United States and Great Britain, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, xiii; for the term ‘hawking’ see also: Mansfield, ‘Labour Exchanges and the Labour Reserve’, 453; W.H. Beveridge. 1912. Unemployment: A Problem of Industry, 3rd ed., London: Longman, 197: ‘The prevailing method of selling labour is to hawk it from door to door’.   32. G. Evert. 1896. ‘Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Preußen während des Jahres 1894’, Ztschr. Des Kgl. Preußischen Stat. Bureaus 36, 13, cited by: Faust, Arbeitsmarktpolitik im deutschen Kaiserreich, 48.  33. Schröder, ‘Arbeitslosenfürsorge und Arbeitsvermittlung’, 53–54, refers to the term Umschau in the context of journeymen monopolies in labour intermediation; see also: Schmuhl, Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung, 21; for the Swiss case: E. Gruner. 1991. ‘Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung. Das Beispiel der Schweiz’, in Benöhr, Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung, 244.

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 143

  34. Ignatz Jastrow, cited in: Schmuhl, Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung, 21.   35. Cited by Wadauer, ‘Vazierende Gesellen’, 108. On the importance of Umschau in Austria, especially in manufacturing: Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich, 286–288.   36. Wadauer, ‘Vazierende Gesellen’, 110, 138.  37. Faust, Arbeitsmarktpolitik im deutschen Kaiserreich, 48.  38. Cited by ibid., 80, and Faust, ‘Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in Deutschland’, 115.  39. Rudischhauser and Zimmermann, ‘“Öffentliche Arbeitsvermittlung”’, 101; C. Ansell. 2001. Schism and Solidarity in Social Movements: The Politics of Labor in the French Third Republic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 65; Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich, 283–286.   40. Cited by Ansell, Schism and Solidarity, 65.  41. Luciani, ‘Logiques du placement’, 6; C. Topalov. 1994. Naissance du chômeur 1880–1910, Paris: Albin Michel, 44–45; P. Lefebvre. 2003. L'invention de la grande entreprise. Travail, hiérarchie, marché (France, fin XVIIIe–début XXe siècle), Paris: ­ Presses Universitaires de France. See also the latest overview on this issue: P. van den Eeckhout (ed.) 2009. Supervision and Authority in Industry – Western European Experiences, 1830–1939 (= International Studies in Social History 15) Oxford/New York: Berghahn.  42. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich, 291–293.  43. Faust, ‘Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in Deutschland’, 110. See also Schmuhl, Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung, 22–23.  44. Faust, Arbeitsmarktpolitik im deutschen Kaiserreich, 48.  45. Cited in: idem, ‘Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in Deutschland’, 111. See also: Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich, 77–93.  46. Faust, Arbeitsmarktpolitik im deutschen Kaiserreich, 49.   47. Edling, ‘Regulating Unemployment’, 28.  48. Beveridge, Unemployment: a Problem of Industry, 240.  49. Schöttler, Die Entstehung der ‘Bourses du Travail’, 60, 99.   50. Rudischhauser and Zimmermann, ‘“Öffentliche Arbeitsvermittlung”’, 102.   51. N. Whiteside. 1993. ‘La protection du métier: l’organisation industrielle et les services des syndicats dans l’Angleterre de la fin du XIXe siècle’, Cahiers d’Histoire de l’Institut de Recherches Marxistes 51, 29–51.  52. Schöttler, Die Entstehung der ‘Bourses du Travail’, passim; more recently: Ansell, Schism and Solidarity, 110–117, and Hamelin, Dossier: ‘Aux sources de l’histoire syndicale française’.   53. Rudischhauser and Zimmermann, ‘“Öffentliche Arbeitsvermittlung”’, 109.  54. Ansell, Schism and Solidarity, 115, 127. He computes a strong statistical correlation between bourses and cities with a tradition of compagnonnage. On the relationship between the concept of bourse du travail and compagnonnage also: Luciani, ‘Logiques du ­placement ouvrier’, 14.  55. Gewin, Arbeidsbeurzen, 249–250; W. Bevaart and S. Veen. 1986. De rechten man op de rechte plaats. De ontwikkeling van de openbare arbeidsbemiddeling in Amsterdam (1886– 1940), Amsterdam: Gewestelijk Arbeidsbureau, 21; R. van Bekkum. 1996. Tussen Vraag en Aanbod. Op zoek naar de identiteit van de arbeidsvoorzieningsorganisatie, The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 149–150.  56. Musso, La regole e l’elusione, 33–43.   57. Edling, ‘Regulating Unemployment’, 31.   58. Ibid., 32–33.  59. A. Faust. 1982. ‘Arbeitsmarktpolitik in Deutschland: Die Entstehung der öffentlichen Arbeitsvermittlung 1890–1927’, in T. Pierenkemper and R. Tilly (eds), Historische Arbeitsmarktforschung. Entstehung, Entwicklung und Probleme der Vermarktung von

144

Ad Knotter

Arbeitskraft (= Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft 49), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 262.  60. Schmuhl, Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung, 24.  61. C. Conrad. 1904. Die Organisation des Arbeitsnachweises in Deutschland, Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, 33–35, 49.   62. Cited by Faust, Arbeitsmarktpolitik in deutschen Kaiserreich, 224. See also: Conrad, Die Organisation, 27–28.  63. Protokoll der Verhandlungen des 2. Kongresses der Freien Gewerkschaften 1896, Berlin vom 4.–8. mai 1896. Hamburg: Verlag der Generalkommission der Gewerkschaften, cited by: Rudischhauser and Zimmermann, ‘“Öffentliche Arbeitsvermittlung”’, 112. On the Parisian Bourse du Travail as an example in Germany: Faust, Arbeitsmarktpolitik im deutschen Kaiserreich, 82 footnote 126.  64. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich, 215.   65. Ibid., 119.   66. Ibid., 219.   67. Ibid., 220.  68. King, Actively Seeking Work, 48.   69. J. Harris. 1972. Unemployment and Politics: A Study in English Social Policy 1886–1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 203.  70. King, Actively Seeking Work, 43; on this issue also: M. Mansfield. 2001. ‘Flying to the Moon: Reconsidering the British Labour Exchange System in the Early Twentieth Century’, Labour History Review 66, 29.   71. Cited by King, Actively Seeking Work, 34.  72. Harris, Unemployment and Politics, 203; see also: Beveridge, Unemployment, 185.  73. Schmuhl, Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung, 25.   74. Gruner, ‘Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung. Das Beispiel der Schweiz’, 247.   75. Ibid., 247.  76. Le placement d'utilité publique. La question du placement en Belgique par M. Louis Varlez (n.d., n.p.), 9, cited by E. Deslé. 1991. Arbeidsbemiddeling en/of werklozencontrole. Het voorbeeld van de Gentse arbeidsbeurs (1891–1914) (= Historische Uitgaven, 84), Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 35. It is no coincidence that most of the unemployment funds in Belgium in 1890 could be found precisely in these Brussels luxury trades: G. Vanthemsche. 1985. ‘De oorsprong van de werkloosheidsverzekering in België: vakbondskassen en gemeentelijke fondsen (1890–1914)’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 11, 131.  77. Deslé, Arbeidsbemiddeling, 56–57.   78. See F. Lenger. 1991. ‘Beyond Exceptionalism: Notes on the Artisanal Phase of the Labour Movement in France, England, Germany and the United States’, International Review of Social History 36, 1–23.  79. Schöttler, Die Entstehung der ‘Bourses du Travail’, 93–95.   80. Cited by ibid., 108. See for the British case: Whiteside, ‘La protection du métier’, 34.   81. Board of Trade. 1893. Report on Agencies and Methods for Dealing with the Unemployed, London (by H. Llewellyn Smith), retrieved 15 February 2011 from http://www.archive. org/details/reportonagencies00grearich; also as: Parliamentary Papers 1893–94, vol. 82. See also: Whiteside, ‘Définir le chômage’; Topalov, Naissance du chômeur, 63, 226–229. Beveridge, Unemployment, 257–261, Appendix B.3: ‘Trade Union Travelling Benefit and Registries’, cites extensively from the report.   82. Board of Trade, Report on Agencies, 24.   83. Ibid., 28.   84. Ibid., 29.   85. Ibid., 34.   86. Ibid., 38–39.

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 145

  87.   88.   89.   90.   91.   92.   93.  94.   95.   96.   97.   98.   99. 100.

Ibid., 43. Ibid., 62. Ibid., 69. Ibid., 70. Ibid., 72. Ibid., 82, 89. Ibid., 121. Beveridge, Unemployment, 260. Board of Trade, Report on Agencies, 113. Cited by: King, Actively Seeking Work, 37. Schulte Beerbühl, Vom Gesellenverein zur Gewerkschaft, 189–191. Mansfield, ‘Flying to the Moon’, 28. See Van den Eeckhout, Supervision and Authority in Industry. M. Dreyfus et al. 1997. ‘Les bases multiples du syndicalisme au XIXe siècle en Allemagne, France et Grande-­Bretagne’, in J.-­L. Robert, F. Boll and A. Prost, L'invention des syndicalismes. Le syndicalisme en Europe occidentale à la fin du XIXe siècle, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 269–284. See also: N. Whiteside. 2007. ‘Unemployment Revisited in Comparative Perspective: Labour Market Policy in Strasbourg and Liverpool, 1890– 1914’, International Review of Social History 52, 39. 101. Whiteside, ‘La protection du métier’; a short overview of unemployment insurance by British trade unions in Beveridge, Unemployment, 223–230. 102. N. Whiteside. 1994. ‘Définir le chômage: traditions syndicales et politiques nationale en Grande-­Bretagne avant la Première Guerre mondiale’ in M. Mansfield, R. Salais and N. Whiteside, Aux sources du chômage 1880–1914. Une comparaison interdisciplinaire entre la France et la Grande-­Bretagne, Paris: Belin, 381–411; see also Luciani, ‘Logiques du placement ouvrier’, 14: ‘. . . la définition syndicale du chômage, exprimée comme l’impossibilité pour un ouvrier d’une profession déterminée, de trouver un emploi dans son métier au tarif normal’. 103. Board of Trade, Report on Agencies, 21. 104. S. Webb and B. Webb. 1897. Industrial Democracy, London: Longman, 161–162. 105. Harris, Unemployment and Politics, 297. 106. Ibid., 296. 107. Board of Trade, Report on Agencies, 22. 108. Ibid., 56, 59, 62, 63. 109. Beveridge, Unemployment, 227. 110. Harris, Unemployment and Politics, 299; Schmuhl, Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung, 54–61; G. Steinmetz. 1993. Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 203–209. For the Swiss case: Gruner, ‘Arbeitsvermittlung’, 254; for the Dutch and Scandinavian cases: see below. 111. Vanthemsche, ‘De oorsprong van de werkloosheidsverzekering in België’, 145–146. 112. Deslé, Arbeidsbemiddeling, 180–189. 113. Ibid., 149. 114. Cited in ibid., 165. 115. Harris, Unemployment and Politics, 203–204; King, Actively Seeking Work, 34–36, 47–48. 116. Harris, Unemployment and Politics, 354. 117. King, Actively Seeking Work, 63. 118. Beveridge, Unemployment, 229. 119. King, Actively Seeking Work, 19. 120. Ministry of Labour circular E.D. 5117/3/1927, dated 22 February 1928, cited by: D. Lyddon. 1997. ‘From Unemployment Benefit to Redundancy Pay. Trade Unions, the State, and Unemployment in the British Car Industry, 1911–1965’, in A. Knotter,

146

Ad Knotter

B. Altena and D. Damsma (eds), Labour, Social Policy, and the Welfare State: Papers Presented to the Ninth British-­ Dutch Conference on Labour History, Bergen 1994, Amsterdam: IISH, 103. 121. Mansfield, ‘Flying to the Moon’, 29–34. 122. Faust, ‘Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in Deutschland’, 130. For the argument to set up unemployment insurance schemes by German trade unions to influence ‘das Angebot auf dem Arbeitsmarkt’, ‘zur Aufrechterhaltung des Standardlohnes, des errungenen Minimums der Arbeitsbedingungen überhaupt’ also: Faust, Arbeitsmarktpolitik in deutschen Kaiserreich, 134, 156. See also: B. Zimmermann. 2001. La constitution du chômage en Allemagne. Entre professions et territoires, Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 78–80. 123. F. Imle. 1902. ‘Die Ergebnisse der Gewerkschaftlichen Arbeitslosenunterstützung’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 6, 801, cited by: Risch, ‘Gewerkschaftseigene Arbeitslosenversicherung’, 525, footnote 1. 124. Schmuhl, Arbeitsmarktpolitik, 53; Risch, ‘Gewerkschaftseigene Arbeitslosenversicherung’, 518–520. 125. Risch, ‘Gewerkschaftseigene Arbeitslosenversicherung’, 526–527. 126. Whiteside, ‘Unemployment Revisited in Comparative Perspective’, 40–42. 127. Faust, Arbeitsmarktpolitik in deutschen Kaiserreich, 147, 149–150, 152; also: idem, ‘Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in Deutschland’, 129; Zimmermann, La constitution du chômage, 109, 119–135. 128. Zimmermann, La constitution du chômage, 120. 129. Schmuhl, Arbeitsmarktpolitik, 40. 130. Beveridge, Unemployment, 245; cf. on the Strasbourg case: Zimmermann, La constitution du chômage, 128: ‘Ce passage obligé par le bureau de placement . . . facilite le contrôle des déclarations de chômage et de l’attribution des subventions’. 131. Whiteside, ‘Unemployment Revisited’, 45–49; Mansfield, ‘Flying to the Moon’, 27; see also: Zimmermann, La constitution du chômage, 121–127. 132. Beveridge, Unemployment, 244–245. 133. O. Most. 1911. ‘Die Handhabung der Kontrolle in den Arbeitslosenversicherung­ seinrichtungen Deutschlands’, Rapport No. 4 in Compte rendu de la Conférence Internationale du Chômage, Paris 18–21 Septembre 1910, Tome deuxième III Rapports présentés à la Conférence par les sections nationales du Comité d'organisation (1re Partie), Paris, 6. See also Zimmermann, La constitution du chômage, 128–131. 134. On the influence of German ideas in these issues in Britain: Harris, Unemployment and Politics; in the Scandinavian countries: Edling, ‘Regulating Unemployment’; in the Netherlands: Van Bekkum, Tussen Vraag en Aanbod, 166. 135. Rudischhauser and Zimmermann, ‘“Öffentliche Arbeitsvermittlung”’, 101–102; see on this conference also: Topalov, Naissance du chômeur, 59–115. The initiator of the Ghent system on unemployment relief, Louis Varlez, was the driving force behind this conference: ibid., 69–71. 136. E. Fuster, ‘L’Assurance contre le chômage et le contrôle’, Rapport No. 23, in Compte rendu de la Conférence Internationale du Chômage… Tome deuxième III … (1re Partie), 15. 137. Luciani, ‘Logique du placement ouvrier’, 16; D. King and B. Rothstein. 1994, ‘Government Legitimacy and the Labour Market: A Comparative Analysis of Employment Agencies’, Public Administration 72, 294, 303. 138. R. De Bruyne and J. De Clerck, ‘Le contrôle des chômeurs dans les caisses de chômage en Belgique’, Rapport No. 10 in Compte rendu de la Conférence Internationale du Chômage… Tome deuxième III … (1re Partie), 14. 139. M.H.W. Methorst, ‘La lutte contre le chômage aux Pays-­Bas’, Rapport No. 41 in ibid., 40. 140. P. Schrage and E. Nijhof. 1992. ‘Een lange sisser en een late knal? De ontwikkeling van de Nederlandse werkloosheidsverzekering in Westeuropees perspectief;

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 147

een terreinverkenning’,­in W.P. Blockmans and L.A. van der Valk (eds), Van particuliere naar openbare zorg, en terug? Sociale politiek in Nederland sinds 1880, Amsterdam: NEHA, 35–36; Van Bekkum, Tussen Vraag en Aanbod, 222–223, 273; Bevaart and Veen, Den rechten man op de rechte plaats, 42, 50. 141. King and Rothstein, ‘Government Legitimacy’, 294, 300–303. On the Danish situation in 1910: T. Soerensen, ‘La question du chômage au Danemark’, Rapport No. 12 in Compte rendu de la Conférence Internationale du Chômage… Tome deuxième III … (1re Partie); on Norway see M. Ormestad, ‘Le contrôle des chomeurs en Norvège d’après la Loi du 12 Juin 1906’, Rapport No. 40 in ibid.; on Sweden: G. Huss, ‘La question du chômage en Suède’, Rapport No. 43 in ibid. 142. Edling, ‘Regulating Unemployment’, 34. 143. On the specificity of the Swedish case, see also: D. King and B. Rothstein. 1993. ‘Institutional Choices and Labour Market Policy: A British-­ Swedish Comparison’, Comparative Political Studies 26, 14–177. 144. Luciani, ‘Logique du placement ouvrier’. 145. B. Zimmermann, La constitution du chômage, 90, 114. 146. Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt. 1906. Die Versicherung gegen die Folgen der Arbeitslosigkeit im Ausland und im Deutschen Reich, Berlin: Carl Heymann, part II, 2, cited by: Risch, ‘Gewerkschaftseigene Arbeitslosenversicherung’, 516. 147. Mansfield, ‘Flying to the Moon’, passim. 148. Zimmermann, Constitution du chômage, 128. 149. Ibid., 127. 150. This is the central thesis of Beveridge, Unemployment; on this issue see also: Mansfield, ‘Labour Exchanges’. 151. Beveridge, Unemployment, 215.

Bibliography Adell-­Gombert, N. 2008. Des hommes de devoir. Les compagnons du Tour de France (XVIIIe–XXe siècle) (= Ethnologie de France 30), Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. Ansell, C. 2001. Schism and Solidarity in Social Movements: The Politics of Labor in the French Third Republic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bekkum, R. van. 1996. Tussen Vraag en Aanbod. Op zoek naar de identiteit van de arbeidsvoorzieningsorganisatie, The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij. Bevaart, W. and S. Veen. 1986. De rechten man op de rechte plaats. De ontwikkeling van de openbare arbeidsbemiddeling in Amsterdam (1886–1940), Amsterdam: Gewestelijk Arbeidsbureau. Beveridge, W.H. 1912. Unemployment: A Problem of Industry, London: Longman. Conrad, C. 1904. Die Organisation des Arbeitsnachweises in Deutschland, Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot. Cottereau, A. 2002. ‘Droit et bon droit. Un droit des ouvriers instauré, puis évincé par le droit du travail (France, XIXe siècle)’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 57, 1521–1557. Dearle, N.B. 1908. Problems of Unemployment in the London Building Trades, London: J.M. Dent. Dekker, R. 1990. ‘Labour Conflicts and Working-­Class Culture in Early Modern Holland’, International Review of Social History 35, 377–420. Deslé, E. 1991. Arbeidsbemiddeling en/of werklozencontrole. Het voorbeeld van de Gentse arbeidsbeurs (1891–1914) (= Historische Uitgaven, 84), Brussels: Gemeentekrediet. Dreyfus, M. et al. 1997. ‘Les bases multiples du syndicalisme au XIXe siècle en Allemagne, France et Grande-­Bretagne’, in J.-­L. Robert, F. Boll and A. Prost, L'invention des s­ yndicalismes. Le

148

Ad Knotter

syndicalisme en Europe occidentale à la fin du XIXe siècle, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 269–284. Edling, N. 2008. ‘Regulating Unemployment the Continental Way: The Transfer of Municipal Labour Exchanges to Scandinavia 1890–1914’, European Review of History/Revue européenne d'Histoire, 15(1), 23–40. Eeckhout, P. van den (ed.). 2009. Supervision and Authority in Industry – Western European Experiences, 1830–1939 (= International Studies in Social History 15) Oxford/New York: Berghahn. Ehmer, J. 1994. Soziale Traditionen in Zeiten des Wandels. Arbeiter und Handwerker im 19. Jahrhundert (= Studien zur Historischen Sozialwissenschaft 20), Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus. Ehmer, J. 2000. ‘Tramping Artisans in Nineteenth-­ Century Vienna’, in D. Siddle (ed.), Migration, Mobility and Modernity, Liverpool: University Press, 164–185. Evert, G. 1896. ‘Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Preußen während des Jahres 1894’, Ztschr. Des Kgl. Preußischen Stat. Bureaus 36, 1–87. Faust, A. 1982. ‘Arbeitsmarktpolitik in Deutschland: Die Entstehung der öffentlichen Arbeitsvermittlung 1890–1927’, in T. Pierenkemper and R. Tilly (eds), Historische Arbeitsmarktforschung. Entstehung, Entwicklung und Probleme der Vermarktung von Arbeitskraft (= Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft 49), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Faust, A. 1986. Arbeitsmarktpolitik im deutschen Kaiserreich. Arbeitsvermittlung, Arbeitsbeschaffung und Arbeitslosenunterstützung 1890–1918 (= VSWG Beihefte 79), Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Faust, A. 1991. ‘Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in Deutschland von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ende des Kaiserreichs’, in H.-­ P. Benöhr (ed.), Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in der neueren deutschen Rechtsgeschichte Tübingen: Mohr, 105–135. Gewin, B. 1898. Arbeidsbeurzen, Utrecht: Van Huffel. Gruner, E. 1991. ‘Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung. Das Beispiel der Schweiz’, in H.-­P. Benöhr (ed.), Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in der neueren deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, Tübingen: Mohr, 237–256. Hamelin, D. 2011. Dossier: ‘Aux sources de l’histoire syndicale française. Retour sur les Bourses du Travail’, Cahiers d’Histoire. Revue d’histoire critique 116–117, 11–162. Harison, C. 2000. ‘The Rise and Decline of a Revolutionary Space: Paris’ Place de Grève and the Stonemasons of Creuse, 1750–1900’, Journal of Social History 34, 403–436. Harris, J. 1972. Unemployment and Politics: A Study in English Social Policy 1886–1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobsbawm, E.J. 1979. ‘The Tramping Artisan’, in idem, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 34–63. Imle, F. 1902. ‘Die Ergebnisse der Gewerkschaftlichen Arbeitslosenunterstützung’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 6, 800–809. Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt. 1906. Die Versicherung gegen die Folgen der Arbeitslosigkeit im Ausland und im Deutschen Reich, Berlin: Carl Heymann, part II. Kaplan, S.L. 1989. ‘La lutte pour le contrôle du marché du travail à Paris au XVIIIe siècle’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 36, 361–412. King, D. and B. Rothstein. 1993. ‘Institutional Choices and Labour Market Policy: A British-­ Swedish Comparison’, Comparative Political Studies 26, 147–177. King, D. and B. Rothstein. 1994. ‘Government Legitimacy and the Labour Market: A Comparative Analysis of Employment Agencies’, Public Administration 72, 291–308. King, D. 1995. Actively Seeking Work? The Politics of Unemployment and Welfare Policy in the United States and Great Britain, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.

From Placement Control to Control of the Unemployed 149

Knotter, A. and J.L. van Zanden. 1987. ‘Immigratie en arbeidsmarkt in Amsterdam in de 17e eeuw’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 13, 403–431. Knotter, A. 1991. Economische transformatie en stedelijke arbeidsmarkt. Amsterdam in de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw, Zwolle/Amsterdam: Waanders. Leeson, R. 1980. Travelling Brothers: The Six Centuries’ Road from Craft Fellowship to Trade Unionism, London: Allen and Unwin. Lefebvre, P. 2003. L'invention de la grande entreprise. Travail, hiérarchie, marché (France, fin XVIIIe–début XXe siècle), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Lenger, F. 1991. ‘Beyond Exceptionalism: Notes on the Artisanal Phase of the Labour Movement in France, England, Germany and the United States’, International Review of Social History 36, 1–23. Lis, C. and H. Soly. 1994. ‘“An Irresistible Phalanx”: Journeymen Associations in Western Europe, 1300–1800’, in C. Lis, H. Soly and J. Lucassen (eds), Before the Unions: Wage Earners and Collective Action in Europe, 1300–1850, International Review of Social History 39, Suppl. 2, 11–52. Luciani, J. 1990. ‘Logiques du placement ouvrier au XIXe siècle et construction du marché du travail’, Sociétés Contemporaines 3, 5–18. Lyddon, D. 1997. ‘From Unemployment Benefit to Redundancy Pay: Trade Unions, the State, and Unemployment in the British Car Industry, 1911–1965’, in A. Knotter, B. Altena and D. Damsma (eds), Labour, Social Policy, and the Welfare State. Papers presented to the Ninth British-­Dutch Conference on Labour History, Bergen 1994, Amsterdam: IISH, 99–110. Mansfield, M. 1992. ‘Labour Exchanges and the Labour Reserve in Turn of the Century Social Reform’, Journal of Social Policy 21, 435–468. Mansfield, M. 2001. ‘Flying to the Moon: Reconsidering the British Labour Exchange System in the Early Twentieth Century’, Labour History Review 66, 24–40. Musso, S. 2004. La regole e l’elusione. Il governo del mercato del lavoro nell’indsutializzazione italiana (1888–2003), Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier. Neu, P. 1968. ‘Die Gesindemärkte der Südeifel’, Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 32, 498–522. Reith, R. 2007. ‘Arbeitsmarkt und Gesellenstreiks vom 15. bis ins 19. Jahrhundert’, in A. Westermann and E. Westermann (eds), Streik im Revier. Unruhe, Protest und Ausstand vom 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert, St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae, 177–219. Risch, B. 1981. ‘Gewerkschaftseigene Arbeitslosenversicherung vor 1914’, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 117, 513–545. Rudischhauser, S. and B. Zimmermann. 1995. ‘“Öffentliche Arbeitsvermittlung” (1890–1914). Kategorien der Invention der öffentlichen Hand – Reflexionen zu einem Vergleich’, Comparativ – Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 5, 93–120. Schmuhl, H.-­ W. 2003. Arbeitsmarktpolitik und Arbeitsverwaltung in Deutschland 1871– 2002 (= Beiträge zur Arbeitsmarkt-­und Berufsforschung 270), Nuremberg: Institut für Arbeitsmarkt-­und Berufsforschung. Schöttler, P. 1982. Die Entstehung der 'Bourses du Travail'. Sozialpolitik und französischer Syndikalismus am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts (= Campus Forschung 255), Frankfurt a.M./ New York: Campus. Schrage, P. and E. Nijhof. 1992. ‘Een lange sisser en een late knal? De ontwikkeling van de Nederlandse werkloosheidsverzekering in Westeuropees perspectief; een terreinverkenning’, in W.P. Blockmans and L.A. van der Valk (eds), Van particuliere naar openbare zorg, en terug? Sociale politiek in Nederland sinds 1880, Amsterdam: NEHA, 31–52. Schröder, R. 1991. ‘Arbeitslosenfürsorge und Arbeitsvermittlung im Zeitalter der Aufklärung’, in H.-­ P. Benöhr (ed.), Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversorgung in der neueren deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, Tübingen: Mohr, 7–76.

150

Ad Knotter

Schulte Beerbühl, M. 1991. Vom Gesellenverein zur Gewerkschaft. Entwicklung, Struktur und Politik der Londoner Gesellenorganisation 1550–1825 (= Göttinger Beiträge zur Wirtschafts-­ und Sozialgeschichte 16), Göttingen: Schwartz. Sekirnjak, K. 1904. Damals und heute. Kurzgefaßte Darstellung des Entwicklungsganges des Vereins für alle in der Hut-­und Filzwaren-­Industrie beschäftigten Arbeiter und Arbeiterinnen Niederösterreich: aus Anlass des dreissigjährigen Gründungsfestes, Vienna: Im Selbstverlag des Vereins (Karl Flemisch). Southall, H.R. 1991. ‘The Tramping Artisan Revisits: Labour Mobility and Economic Distress in Early Victorian England’, Economic History Review 44, 272–296. Statistisches Departement im k.k. Handelsministerium (ed). 1898. Die Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich, Vienna: A. Hölder. Steinmetz, G. 1993. Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany, Princeton: University Press. Topalov, C. 1994. Naissance du chômeur 1880–1910, Paris: Albin Michel. Van Gennep, A. 1949. Manuel de folklore français contemporain I, 4, Paris: Picard. Vanthemsche, G. 1985. ‘De oorsprong van de werkloosheidsverzekering in België: vakbondskassen en gemeentelijke fondsen (1890–1914)’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 11, 130–164. Wadauer, S. 2008. ‘Vazierende Gesellen und wandernde Arbeitslose (Österreich, ca. 1880–1938), in A. Steidl, T. Buchner, W. Lausecker, A. Pinwinkler, S. Wadauer and H. Zeitlhofer (eds), Übergänge und Schnittmengen. Arbeit, Migration, Bevölkerung und Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Diskussion, Vienna/Cologne/Weimar: Böhlau, 101–132. Webb, S. and B. Webb. 1897. Industrial Democracy, London: Longman. Whiteside, N. 1993. ‘La protection du métier: l’organisation industrielle et les services des syndicats dans l’Angleterre de la fin du XIXe siècle’, Cahiers d’Histoire de l’Institut de Recherches Marxistes 51, 29–51. Whiteside, N. 1994. ‘Définir le chômage: traditions syndicales et politiques nationale en Grande-­ Bretagne avant la Première Guerre mondiale’ in M. Mansfield, R. Salais and N. Whiteside, Aux sources du chômage 1880–1914. Une comparaison interdisciplinaire entre la France et la Grande-­Bretagne, Paris: Belin, 381–411. Whiteside, N. 2007. ‘Unemployment Revisited in Comparative Perspective: Labour Market Policy in Strasbourg and Liverpool, 1890–1914’, International Review of Social History 52, 35–56. Zimmermann, B. 2001. La constitution du chômage en Allemagne. Entre professions et territoires, Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.

Chapter 6

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail in Late Nineteenth-­Century France Malcolm Mansfield

As a mechanism of labour intermediation the French network of bourses du travail can be usefully compared with any one of the various placement systems established by the end of the nineteenth century. The network was one of the first serious attempts to wrestle with the problem of placement of the unemployed on a national scale, and it had a real, if limited, international influence.1 In France as elsewhere in Europe workers’ experience of unemployment was often acute but relatively indeterminate. The situation of many workers was confused by a series of intermediate situations that were often neither understandable as regular employment in the modern sense nor recognizable as unemployment. The growing stabilization of workforces around heavy industry concerned only a minority of workers located in the northeast and in the Paris region. Elsewhere workers combined industrial and agricultural activity, offsetting fluctuations in the one against the other. The tone of working-­class life was thus set by semi-­artisanal activity located in the towns: traditional sectors subject to seasonal downturns in demand.2 In this context, the precise role played by the placement mechanisms set up by the bourses cannot be understood simply in terms of modern forms of labour intermediation. The fact that the bourses were also trade union meeting rooms locates their placement activity in the context of late nineteenth-­century social

152

Malcolm Mansfield

reform. The two functions were closely interconnected just as they were with the various ‘travelling benefit’ systems established by the skilled trade unions in nineteenth-­century Britain and elsewhere.3 Benefit systems such as these were not simply defensive social measures aimed at helping workless members. They were also techniques aimed at controlling the standards of a given trade and at defending hard-­won advantages. The late nineteenth-­century bourses du travail were essentially union-­ managed placement mechanisms using travelling benefits to provide some protection for the standards of a trade in what was often a situation of heightened wage competition. As semi-­public institutions, however, they also dealt with the emerging problem of the unemployed in urban labour markets. To this extent they were obliged to deal with joblessness regardless of the specificities of any given trade. The problem was that the emergence of a network of bourses expressed a shift away from the exclusiveness of the earlier system of craft fraternities or compagnonnages and away from the related tradition of wandering from town to town in order to gain experience within a given trade. The more inclusive placement activities of the bourses indeed worked against the close control over entry into an occupation needed for effective trade unionism. Worse, the reliance of the bourses on municipal subsidies was conditional upon the neutral placement of workers. What was once the tour de France undertaken by skilled and organized workers re-­emerged as a system of job seeking held together by an often haphazard provision of travelling benefits or viatiques. Although these techniques of placement encouraged workers to join the expanding union structures, the suggestion that the bourse network had unwittingly contributed to the consolidation of dependent wage-­labour is difficult to refute.4 Nonetheless the network reinforced union structures and contributed to the strike waves of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as we shall see. But it often did so by concentrating on issues common to skilled and unskilled workers alike: notably wages and working hours. The ambiguities of the techniques used to deal with workers looking for work were thus potentially expressive of a loosening of direct control over production by the workforce.

The Bourse du Travail and the Employment Crisis The ideas that led to the establishment in 1887 of a bourse du travail in Paris have been usefully discussed at length elsewhere.5 The original idea is usually attributed to the Belgian liberal economist de Molinari in the 1840s,6 although similar projects had been doing the rounds for

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

153

decades: notably Leuillier’s project of the same period, and schemes aimed at returning construction workers into the distant provinces.7 Free placement was also a feature of the Paris Commune of 1871. The issue was, in fact, first seriously debated by the Conseil Municipal in February 1882 when a report was presented at a meeting chaired by the Préfet of the Seine region.8 Here de Molinari once more presented his elaborate if eccentric scheme for labour intermediation modelled on the working of stock exchanges or bourses. The idea of creating an exchange for workers, a bourse du travail was presented as a way to create an impersonal labour market placing labour and capital on an equal footing. Despite this impeccably bourgeois pedigree the bourse du travail idea was from the outset very popular: worker representatives at the meeting of 1882 – mainly construction workers – were united in calling for such a mechanism as a way to bring about the elimination of the fee-­paying private employment agencies. The popularity of the project was further underlined by the creation in June 1886 of a 50,000 member League for the Abolition of Private Labour Exchanges, which organized extremely violent demonstrations aimed at pushing the authorities to realize the bourse project. A parallel and equally violent movement of the unemployed organized by extreme political formations demanded the opening up of public work schemes and the abolition of private agencies. Quite apart from their open hostility to trade unions, the abuses of these agencies were numerous: Schöttler draws attention to the situation of workers in catering who could forfeit up to 20 per cent of their monthly wage in agency fees and other spurious ‘gratifications’.9 In this way private agencies had a vested interest in rapid staff turnover, the resulting fragmentation of employment constituting positive hindrances to the patient work of recruiting workers into the syndicats legalized by the law of 1884. Conceived as premises for the new trade unions, the Bourse in Paris was from the outset presented as an instrument of social pacification. Following the Commune, governmental republicans were attempting to distance the emerging labour movement from the influence of revolutionary socialists. The officially-­sponsored Union des Chambres Syndicales (U.C.S.), for example, provided the template for the apolitical trade unionism permitted by the Waldeck-­Rousseau law of 1884. Syndicats emerged as strictly occupational entities whose statutes had to be approved by the police authorities. This meant that they presented a challenge to militants attached to a deeply-­rooted clandestine tradition. In the final analysis, however, the revolutionary threat proved to be something of a mirage: Parisian workers preferred the moderate ‘possibilist’ tendency emerging in the socialist movement.10 This was a programme of reforms that ran in parallel to the reassertion of municipal autonomy championed by the

154

Malcolm Mansfield

radical wing of the republican movement. More extreme socialists were also interested in the Bourse but largely as a platform for socialist propaganda. All this means that when the report presented by Mesureur on behalf of the Parisian Commission du Travail set up in 1885 raised the issue of the Bourse again it had gained broad acceptance on the left.11 As it turns out the opening of the Bourse in February 1887 coincided with what historians describe as an ‘employment crisis’ (or the ‘Freycinet crisis’),12 the absence of a clearly defined unemployment crisis devolving from the very nature of French industry. The crisis resulted from the failure to raise the sixteen billion francs of finance required by the infrastructure project associated with the name of Freycinet following the Stock Exchange crash of January 1882. Shortly afterwards the government was obliged to scale down public work projects and this heightened competition between entrepreneurs involved in the process of bidding for public contracts (adjudication). The cancelling of outstanding orders for steel resulted in the onset of a major crisis right across provincial France. Between 1883 and 1887 a quarter of the miners and a fifth of the metalworkers employed in the Loire basin were laid off.13 As depressed areas began to emerge south of the Loire,14 unemployed metalworkers from the small-­scale rural forges joined a population of vagabonds made up to a large extent of workers from the traditional rural trades (clog and shoemakers, locksmiths, together with workers in leather, wood and textile trades).15 This wandering population also included unskilled workers who moved from one occupation to another in the towns, workers who were attempting to return to the land after failing in the towns, construction workers, artisans in decaying trades seeking work as handlers and labourers, workers in the marginal urban trades (hawkers and street dealers) and a small group of workers in the furniture trade. The Parliamentary Enquiry of 188516 noted that out of the 40,000 or so masons normally employed in Paris only 10,000 remained employed in 1885.17 Nine ­thousand of the 12,000 housepainters were out of work and only one-­sixth of the workforce of stonemasons was working. Of the 2,500 carpenters left in Paris, up to 1,500 were without work. Only 2,000 of the 15,000 construction labourers remained employed.

The ‘Prix Fait’ and Subcontracting The sharp decline in major public works projects as a result of the collapse of the Freycinet project obliged the newly elected socialist members of the Paris Municipal Council in the mid-­1880s to take a hard look at the way that work was organized in the metropolis. The crisis in con-

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

155

struction, for example, placed pressure on the system, which fixed piece-­ rates in the process of ‘adjudication’, leading to considerable unrest in the construction industry.18 Adjudication owed its legitimacy to the existence of rules fixing the rates for tasks and wages, the municipality of Paris having applied standard piece-­rates – the famous Séries de prix – to prevent undercutting and poor quality work from the 1830s onwards. In 1876 chambres syndicales were given a role in the fixing of the Série via the bilateral industrial tribunals or conseils de prud’hommes. The involvement of syndicats in this process supplanted a largely informal but nonetheless functional system which regulated the relationship between workers and their employers. This was an aspect of the so-­called ‘prix fait en place de grève’ derived from the practice of workers determining wage rates collectively by congregating in the square in front of the Hotel de Ville.19 Over time the centrally located Place de Grève became somewhat less important as similar sites spread around the capital20 but the question of placement was becoming more complex due to the emergence of provincial recruiting fairs (foires) and the setting up of networks of intermediaries (rôdeurs) who avoided the traditional recruitment sites run by the various trades. In many ways this seems to have been more of a problem for construction labourers than for the more skilled workers in the industry as a whole.21 Nonetheless the fear that Paris was being overrun by outsiders during the crisis years considerably sharpened the hostile attitude of organized workers towards private placement agencies. A related problem was that of the receding importance of the prud’hommes during the early years of the crisis. In this case employers complained of the undue influence of delegates whose independence had been compromised by election on a revocable political mandate, workers using this technique as a way to organize in the absence of stable trade union structures. In response employers refused the decisions of the prud’hommes and boycotted hearings, fundamentally weakening this form of conciliation. Workers’ complaints about unscrupulous subcontractors or tâcherons underlined the same issue but from another angle: in this case subcontractors were accused of lengthening the working day and of lowering the quality of work.22 Since access to work in construction was generally mediated by subcontractors who were often skilled workers in their own right, subcontracting became an issue.23 In many ways this was quite novel: chronic labour shortages in the mid-­nineteenth century meant that complaints against subcontractors were relatively rare. During the employment crisis however, subcontractors were perceived less as useful intermediaries than as rogue operators who took advantage of the crisis in order to undercut piece-­rates by promoting shoddy work.24 The ‘employment crisis’ was thus experienced by workers either as an inordinate

156

Malcolm Mansfield

lengthening of the working day orchestrated by subcontractors, as the need to resort to the refuge occupations available in the metropolis or as the urgent need to return to the region of origin. The absence of a regulated working day and the largely traditional nature of the construction industry meant that the shortage of work was indistinguishable from the uncertain employment patterns established by an earlier generation of migrant workers. Whilst some workers attempted to offset lower piece-­rates by working excessively long hours, the more stable workforce involved in more regular activity (made possible by standardized procedures and prefabricated materials) may well have simply associated the pressure on wage levels with falling demand.25 The role played by product prices in the organization of construction work, however, underlined the semi-­artisanal nature of the trade, even if conciliation via the prud’hommes was losing its anchorage in this system of work.

Towards Syndicalism These were, at any rate, the problems that the left-­leaning Paris Municipal Council sought to resolve from the mid-1880s onward. At the outset the problem of the Série was tackled with some determination. Between April 1887 and February 1888 the Council sought to revise the Série of 1882 and to establish a nine-­hour day on municipal worksites. The number of foreign workers on municipal worksites was limited to 10 per cent. The problem of illegal subcontracting was also addressed: in this case, however, the practice had been outlawed since 1848 but the interdiction had rarely been applied.26 The Council therefore energetically demanded its application and made efforts to banish subcontractors from the prud’hommes and from the whole process of adjudication. In practice, however, it was often very difficult to distinguish on-­site between simple supervisors working for employers and subcontractors or tâcherons who were out for themselves. The complexity of this issue was such that it would lead to a series of legal disputes in the coming decades, despite being partially resolved by a landmark decision in the courts in 1901.27 This being said, in March 1888 the Conseil d’Etat cancelled the revised Série of 1882 together with the council deliberations of 27 April 1887, 30 December 1887 and 29 February 1888. Private contractors were thus given a free hand to take advantage of the situation, much to the fury of the emerging trade union movement. What followed was a prolonged turf-­war between the municipality and the central government, with the Senate voting a law on 3 December 1888, which banned the fair wage clauses that had been introduced into the documents accompanying

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

157

public works contracts.28 These were the events which led to the violent strike of 12,000 construction workers in Paris in the summer of 1888.29 The movement represented the first in a series of general strikes across the industry. In this case, the municipal framework was merely a point of departure as construction labourers – the more active elements in the movement – sought to generalize the issue across Parisian worksites, municipal or otherwise. Although unsuccessful these movements precipitated the marginalization of the moderate unionists in the Bourse who were allied to members of the Municipal Council who were singularly unable to deliver on the Série. Henceforth labour activists adopted a far more apolitical position as the formerly under-­represented federated syndicats in construction and in the metalworking trades began to use their numerical superiority to better effect,30 undermining the influence of the smaller and often more moderate organizations in the Bourse.31 Far beyond our scope here, the Boulangist movement – essentially an extreme nationalistic and anti-­parliamentary current associated with General Boulanger – is worth mentioning in this context if only because it drew considerable support from disgruntled workers in construction. In fact, the movement echoed the popular call for a revision of the Constitution and by implication the possibility of a renewed application of the Série together with the abolition of private labour exchanges.32 However the movement ultimately failed to change the existing political set-­up leaving the administration free to maintain its refusal to apply the Série. In 1893 the Bourse was evacuated by the military and it remained closed for three years. Protests against the law of 1884 were ignored and alternative joint-­regulated placement projects were shelved.33 Clearly the 102 chambres syndicales in the Bourse who – out of a total of 219 – refused to register with the Préfet had put themselves beyond the law and as such could hardly expect favourable treatment from the authorities. More important however, was the fact that the across-­the-­board strike activity and political autonomy championed by the federated unions in the Bourse momentarily shelved the question of the Série and the localized ­arrangement surrounding work in the metropolis. So it was that the expansion of the bourse network into the provinces frequently sparked off industrial and political conflict even if at the municipal level the Préfets tended to interfere with less frequency. The closure of the Paris Bourse and the decline of Boulangism transformed the social perception of the new trade union groups as two rival labour movements emerged from the stagnation of the late 1880s: the Fédération nationale des syndicats (F.N.S.), and the Fédération Nationale des Bourses du Travail (F.B.T.), formed, in 1892. The trade union activity organized by the F.N.S. prior to this period had been in many ways over-­ambitious,

158

Malcolm Mansfield

loose regional groupings expanding and contracting with the f­ormation and break-­up of smaller entities. Membership in the federations was often built around a handful of socialist militants. The trade union movement that coalesced around the emerging bourse network was considerably more successful. The movement grew from 64,000 members in 1880 in 478 trade unions to 436,000 members in 2,314 organizations in 1895.34 Many of these small local organizations subsequently federated into wider structures, often taking advantage of pre-­existing networks based on compagnonnage. This was the case, noticeably, with the hatters and the carpenters, both of which federated prior to 1880, other organizations expanding in like manner in the wake of the legislation of 1884.35 No fewer than twenty new federations were created between 1890 and 1893. To a certain extent, the existence of local or regional federations ran in parallel to this expansion, although in this case, such geographical groupings owed much to the militant activity of the First International. Regional federations of this sort existed in Paris, Rouen and Marseilles. Corresponding to the need to transcend the smaller organizations in the towns, the federations invariably formed the basis for the later expansion of the bourses du travail into the provinces. The situation in the Lyon region broadly confirms this tendency. The Fédération Lyonnaise des Syndicats established in 1881, for example, produced no reaction within the working class. Based on a mere fourteen affiliated organizations in 1882, the Fédération grew slowly towards the end of the decade when it encompassed forty-­five organizations mainly from the Beaujolais weaving area.36 Such a situation contrasted sharply with the liveliness of the small urban organizations, approximately 324 in 1894, which made up the bulk of the union movement (86 per cent) in the 1890s.37 Taking advantage of the more intense activity of these smaller organizations, the local Fédération des Bourses was able to play a disproportionate role in the representation of working-­class interests as a result of its presence within the F.N.S. The almost immediate success of the various bourses du travail in Lyon, St Etienne and elsewhere reflected the expansion of syndicalism into the surrounding region in the years following the major discontent of 1889. Here as elsewhere the movement towards socialist unification failed to bring together the mosaic of political groupings found in the major towns. The syndicalism of the early 1900s, however, could take advantage of the logistical support offered by the bourse network more typically situated in small provincial towns often dominated by semi-­artisanal forms of activity (leather goods, clothing, light engineering, carpentry, food production etc.). The inter-­ occupational nature of the bourses was better suited to industry in France than centralized movement based on vertical structures dominated by

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

159

politicians.38 Although workers new to trade union activity would be exposed to potentially divisive political propaganda put out by bourse militants they could also take advantage of the logistical support and experience available there. The strike waves of 1878–1882, 1888–1890 and 1896–1903 were the consequences of this activity.39

Dealing with Unemployment This was evidently not the outcome foreseen by the architects of the 1884 legislation on trade unions, but the writing was clearly on the wall for those willing to read it. During the nineteenth century apolitical industrial relations were identified with trade union mutuality; legislation which facilitated the establishment of unemployment funds by the chambres syndicales. However in Paris, mutual aid societies dispensed with the honorary membership of bourgeois notables and went their own way.40 Chambres syndicales distributed out-­of-­work benefits far more frequently than any other kind of benefit, whilst the various semi-­clandestine sociétés de resistance dealt exclusively in this kind of benefit.41 The sudden growth in the number of similar mutual societies in Lyon in the 1850s and 1860s coincided with attempts to impose a uniform tarif. In short, the various benefit funds played an important role in the regulation of work, the ‘workless’ being more often than not striking workers.42 Although the 1884 legalisation made such schemes theoretically possible, it did little to facilitate their financial viability: federal structures were provided with no legal status and were deprived of the right to possess premises.43 Thus even if French workers could see the use of the sophisticated, benefit paying trade unionism established in Great Britain, this was not the path that was taken.44 For much of the nineteenth-­century labour shortages maintained wage levels. The sharp irregularities of small-­scale production and the careful budgeting needed to establish such schemes made this form of unionism singularly unattractive.45 Workers reacted to job insecurity by severely limiting the proportion of their wages spent on housing despite spiralling rent-­level outlays.46 Workers moved around from one workshop to another, constructing extensive horizontal networks useful for finding work.47 Mutual funds were used for banqueting or meetings, or used to cover the kind of ‘bad risks’ – chronic illness, for example – routinely excluded from insurance on actuarial grounds.48 Thus when working-­class leaders denounced bourgeois mutuality on the grounds that it undermined solidarity, they could have been referring to the legal restrictions that promoted the ‘rational management’ of risks,

160

Malcolm Mansfield

the presence of bourgeois notables or the ban on federal structures in chambres syndicales. In short, the practice of pooling limited resources was too deeply embedded to require official promotion or the expansion of British style craft unionism. Significantly, the historical decline of friendly or mutual societies by no means led to a compensatory expansion in trade union services.49 Given the weak financial basis of much of French trade unionism, the services that cost the least (libraries and publications etc.) were the most present, but 11 per cent of the 5,325 syndicats surveyed in 1911 possessed an out-­ of-­work fund and 9.3 per cent distributed travelling benefits. 14.3 per cent of the 196 unions de syndicats, on the other hand, distributed travelling benefits and 13 per cent possessed a placement office but only 5.6 per cent distributed out-­of-­work benefit.50 By far the most organized workers with respect to out-­of-­work benefits were those with long traditions of compagnonnage: woodworkers, leatherworkers, hatters, engineers, precision instrument makers and so on. Workers in catering tended to fund employment bureaux. In 1894 only 22 per cent of a sample of 487 syndicats provided financial aid to out-­of-­work members, a mere 8 per cent boasting precise rules for the distribution of such benefits. Only 4 per cent of trade union members in France (16,250) were in organizations with a well-­ established practice for the distribution of out of work benefits, and most of these organizations (75 per cent) had no specific funding for this risk. In this context it is significant that the travelling benefit system set up by the bourse network was seen by Pelloutier – the secretary of the F.B.T. – as an expression of solidarity towards the unstable sections of the working class rather than as a means of regulating working conditions.51 The device was accorded to unionists prepared to undertake available work in their particular trade in any given town but at the established standard rate.52 However, many bourses gave help to unorganized workers on the tramp on condition that they subsequently joined a union. Other provincial bourses established night shelters for workers on the tramp.53 Sometimes unemployed workers leaving a town were provided with travelling benefits, on condition that they did not come back, except if they found work.54 The rules stipulated that workers had to visit all the workshops in their trade situated between the point of departure and the ultimate destination. Although there was little in the way of a policy to ‘codify’ tramping in terms of the needs of a hypothetical national labour market, something which resembled an attempt to construct regional catchment areas seems to have been sketched out. If the rules seem, indeed, to indicate an attempt to increase the ‘friction’ involved in travelling from one bourse to another, the close control of entry into a local trade often seems to have been a secondary consideration.

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

161

For highly skilled craftsmen, long-­ distance tramping coupled with close control over apprenticeship and working conditions had always provided protection against the seasonal shutdowns common to small-­ scale production. Prior to 1887, the shoemakers in Fougères could deal with unemployment by resorting to agricultural wage labour and enforcing implicit trade conventions with respect to autonomous regulation, by moving between factories or from factories to domestic production, within the region or between sectors and so on.55 The remarkable success of the bourses in acting as catalysts to the formation of syndicats ouvriers also derived from the fact that both shared roots in the system of travelling associated with compagnonnage.56 In many ways, the activity of the bourses replicated the function of the rôleur in compagnonnage.57 The rôleur was the individual who maintained the list of compagnons arriving in a town and who could – if the terms and conditions of work were in conformity with traditional standards – send the worker on to an employer. Here, however, the bourses were operating within the much larger framework of working-­class unity across the whole territory. Although the key factor at work in the extension of trade unionism may well have been the greater immobility of skilled workers, federated union organizations were often simply attempting to limit the inflow of unemployed workers into the towns. As a consequence the organization of work and mobility within a given trade may well have received less priority.

Dealing with Vagrancy On the strictly national level, travelling workers constituted a major public policy problem in the years following the Commune. Vagabondage following the economic crisis of the 1880s was considerably worsened by the severe agricultural crisis, which did much to reduce the population of worker-­peasants. The patchy nature of assistance meant that the poor drifted towards the towns or wandered from town to town, adding to the problems of public order. The repressive policy adopted by the state towards vagabonds, however, encountered resistance from lawyers and magistrates.58 With the livret ouvrier abolished in July 1890, the blanket application of the legal penalties was increasingly recognized as an inappropriate response to problems resulting from socio-­economic causes. Thus while localized attempts to punish vagrants merely pushed them back into the country areas, the incoherent distribution of medical care in these areas resulted in the wandering of the invalid and sick poor. However, the Conseil Supérieur de l’Assistance Publique (C.S.A.P.) at no time advocated a softening of the conditions under which assistance

162

Malcolm Mansfield

was accorded to vagrants and beggars within the archaic system of dépôts de mendicité. Submerged by a growing population of destitute and often incapable workers these establishments were unable to exclude individuals who were suspected of avoiding work. Towards the end of the century, assistance to able-­bodied vagrants was supposedly based on the reconstruction of stable habits of work, but its effects were too limited to constitute a serious solution to the problem. An alternative to the call for public works, the various ‘assistance by work’ agencies provided little in the way of a statutory ‘right to work’ and furthered the tendency to categorize the poor in terms of their level of regularity and motivation. Established by a Central Committee on Public Works in 1891, these privately financed and occasionally municipal societies numbered 38 in 1895 and 60 in 1901. They selected their clientele from out of the mass of chronically underemployed by task work designed to test willingness to work. Situated on the frontier dividing involuntary idleness from vagabondage, these agencies were perceived as an intervention into the downward spiral leading from ‘chronic’ unemployment to ‘total’ unemployment or destitution.59 As such their action was an attempt to render a small number of the more motivated workers capable of establishing a somewhat more stable situation. Experimentation with personalized placement practices thus provided no solution for the less capable workers and very little for the great mass of workers who were wandering the roads in the search for work. Absolutely the first piece of mandatory ‘social’ legislation applied to the active population, the law of 1893 on free medical assistance obliged the municipalities to prepare lists of destitute individuals, scrapped birthplace criteria, and replaced them with criteria based on residence.60 The law had little impact on the appalling sanitary conditions encountered in the smaller French towns and villages, but it eliminated the notion of ‘indigence’ together with the associated loss of civic rights.61 In a way this was a tacit admission that a free and mobile labour market had clearly emerged, even if the distinction between workers temporarily in need and the semi-­pauperized class excluded the mobile workers lacking a fixed profession.62 Unfortunately the compilation of lists of destitute workers was possible in rural areas but problematic in larger urban areas. Worse still, the smaller rural towns proved reluctant to implement the law. In much the same way, the massive influx of workers seeking employment in Paris undermined the efforts that had been made to construct a municipal health policy.63 If these dilemmas indicate the difficulty of dealing with the vicissitudes of labour mobility, they nonetheless demonstrate the potential utility of the bourses as instruments of social policy. The bourses represented a

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

163

possible response to the need to absorb the growing fringe of workers who were attracted into towns by the chance of finding employment. And this response had the advantage of gaining support from the labour movement itself. Thus the suggestion made in 1899 by the deputy Cruppi – a member of the C.S.A.P. – to open up workhouses for able-­bodied indigents and to create a network of night shelters for the others, was rejected by the C.S.A.P. on the grounds that obligatory workhouses ran the risk of appearing to trade unions and to the bourses as an obstacle to their work of placement whilst presenting entrepreneurs with a weapon against strikes.64 This more appreciative consideration of the work of the bourses, however, did little to remedy the unstable financial basis of the system. Local bourses tended to rely on municipal subsidies subject to the vicissitudes of uncertain political alliances. Demands for ‘public utility’ status, to oblige the communes to provide finances, were not successful. Only the Paris Bourse possessed the legal status of ‘public utility’ post-­1889 and this in a period when the recognition of such a status was becoming increasingly commonplace.65 On the other hand, financial assistance of this kind ran the risk of closer central government supervision which was abhorrent to many militants.66 The demand for public utility status was thus momentarily shelved by the Fédération des Bourses in 1895, militants tending to promote autonomous funding via the establishment of consumer or producer cooperatives in addition to the money provided by local unionists. A demand for public utility status re-­emerged at the Nice congress of the F.B.T. in 1901 but, being unlikely to gain government support, it was quietly forgotten.

Unemployment as a Category of Public Action The controversies surrounding placement mechanisms were taken up by the Conseil Supérieur du Travail (C.S.T.) and its sister organization the Office du Travail. Created by decree in 1891, the C.S.T. possessed a tripartite configuration which brought together parliamentarians, employers and workers’ representatives charged with the task of elaborating projects for conciliation, arbitration, placement and the regulation of wages. The Office du Travail provided statistical and documentary evidence on wages, unemployment and placement mechanisms, often deploying the expertise of an ‘official proletariat’ of trade unionists prepared to cooperate with the administration.67 Much of this work was innovative but inconclusive: The statistician Lucian March, for example, demonstrated the difficulty of distinguishing between the suspensions of activity typical of any given trade and the more accidental occurrences which he described as ‘abnormal

164

Malcolm Mansfield

unemployment’.68 His analysis implied the existence of large-­scale establishments using capital equipment with a stabilized workforce together with a contractual framework linking individual productive activity to the collective framework of the establishment. The seven major enquiries into placement mechanisms published by the Office between 1893 and 1911 nonetheless bear witness to a growing preoccupation with disorders brought about by the employment crisis.69 Keüfer’s contribution to the work of the Office followed this pattern. As spokesman for the powerful Printers’ Union and an active member of a Positivist organization, he underlined the increasingly unpredictable nature of downturns in small-­scale urban production, holding that neither workers’ organizations nor those of the employers were capable of resolving the resulting social problems. A plea for state intervention and public works, Keüfer’s work implied that workers were often ill-­advised to seek work elsewhere given the need to maintain connections with the employer and access to housing.70 Indeed, the Printers’ Union was distinctive in having attempted to establish a federated unemployment relief fund following the typesetters’ congress in 1892.71 Here the idea was to fix workers where they were, rather than to organize their mobility. Keüfer indeed argued that the development of placement mechanisms by individual trade unions was burdensome and unnecessary. It was a position that he shared with other investigators working at the Office. Nonetheless Jules Lax worried about the possible creation of trade union monopolies over placement – perhaps of the kind established by the Printers’ Union itself – the disorganization and corruption associated with private placement agencies being somewhat exaggerated.72 In reality, the localized placement activity of the bourses proved to be relatively small in scale and in no way monopolistic. To be sure, the 609,000 stable placements effected by the commercial employment bureaux between 1897 and 1898 contrasted sharply with the 66,981 long-­term placements realised by the bourses during the same period.73 Placement by the bourses was concentrated on the tertiary sector. 55 per cent of placements in Marseilles were in catering, 15 per cent in construction, 10 per cent in the furniture trade and a mere 2 per cent in textiles.74 In Nîmes, domestic workers, construction workers and harvest workers were dealt with. Patchy in coverage and subject to the suspicion of local employers, at no moment in time did the network cover the totality of the working population. In fact, most of the placement which did take place was concentrated in Marseilles and Paris; all the other centres put together constituting approximately one-­half of this activity.75 Routine, local placements went unrecorded and workers who were hired rarely confirmed the fact by letter.76

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

165

Narrowly specialized in domestic staff, hairdressing and the catering industry, the private employment agencies were unable to stop the bourses from breaking their monopoly and from establishing a foothold in the placement of clerical staff. Contrasted with a system of private placement with paid staff, commercial criteria for the identification of ‘successful’ placement, and a singular temptation to increase staff turnover, the bourses with their badly paid staff, demanding criteria of success and statistics which dissimulated local placements were unlikely to appear as models of efficiency. But local placement by the bourses could be very successful. The bourse in Agen, for example, placed 390 of the 816 unemployed workers registered in the first six months of 1904. Having received notification of 574 vacancies, bourse militants considered themselves perfectly entitled to demand the elimination of the municipal bureaux de placement established shortly afterwards.77 In Limoges, the bourse placed, in its first year of functioning, 542 workers out of 1,657 job seekers who came to it for help, 600 vacancies having being registered.78 In 1898, anything between 800 and 900 workers came to the bourse to demand information on work in the town.79 On another level, the intense activity which took place in many bourses, the constant coming and going, meant that the bourses tended if anything to widen the employment possibilities for isolated workers looking for employment, regardless of their attachment to a trade. The fact that, for example, nearly every member of the working population of Nîmes had some contact with the bourse at one time or another must have had repercussions on a labour market where workers found jobs very much by word-­of-­mouth.80 The mere fact that the bourse brought together individuals within the same trade, and from a variety of trades, going so far as to have a disproportionate influence on the smallest trade organization, was a fact of some significance. Indeed, the various distractions organized by local bourses (dances, meals, meetings, debates, conferences, exhibitions, promenades, children’s choirs, visits, day trips, theatre performances, technical courses etc.) presumably helped to break the isolation of unemployed workers whilst the publication of newsletters and bulletins meant that workers could find a limited amount of information on the state of the trades in their region.81 Other localized features, on the other hand, may have facilitated forms of action which, to a certain extent, prevented the emergence of unemployment. This was the case, for example, with the bakery workers in Cette who shared out the available work in the town in order to prevent unemployment, but it was also the case with the workers from the Military Establishment in Bourges who were encouraged by bourse militants not to take out-­of-­hours employment in the town.82 In Fougères,

166

Malcolm Mansfield

the bourse operated as a mechanism for the even distribution of work in the highly seasonal shoe industry of the town, struggling against excessive overtime whilst taking advantage of the mobility of the workforce to underline collective control over the pace of work.83 In 1904, the bourse in Agen intervened at the administrative level in order to restrain the activities of a subcontractor operating in breach of the terms stipulated in his contract with the military. Fearing unemployment in the dead season, the masons were encouraged by the entrepreneur to practice excessive working hours – twelve-­hour days – in the summer months. The bourse succeeded in bringing about the annulment of the contract and thus, to a certain extent, in spreading employment.84 Finally, the peculiarly political impact of the labour movement at the municipal level made possible by the bourse facilitated the initiation of public works (tramways, roads, drains and so on), which were not only big employers subject to municipal control, but which also tended to improve the conditions of life of individuals in the singularly neglected suburbs.

Republican Policy on Unemployment The series of measures that were eventually taken at the turn of the century to deal with the problem of unemployment devolved from the gradual acceptance of legality on the part of union militants and an appreciation of the opportunities available for moderate reformism rooted in the municipalities. The political crisis brought about by the Dreyfus affair in the late 1890s led to a change in the attitude of the government towards the emerging labour movement. Resulting in the formation of a government of republican defence under Waldeck-­Rousseau in 1899, the political dangers represented by the affair led to the partial reintegration of the radicals into a moderate republican government and to the participation of the socialist, Millerand, as Minister of Commerce and Industry. His action was characterized by an opening towards the trade unions and efforts to force the pace of long-­overdue social reforms, including the introduction of legislation on working hours,85 and the regulation of working conditions and pay on public works.86 The Conseil Supérieur du Travail was also transformed into a more representative body87 and efforts were made to bring about the pacification of industrial relations via the introduction of democratic forms of deliberation, negotiation and arbitration.88 But it was the peculiar political risks and opportunities in Paris which led to the first official recognition of the importance of the bourses by the government. The years of Millerand’s participation in the government

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

167

(1899–1902) witnessed the restoration of the autonomy formerly enjoyed by the Paris Bourse and efforts to improve its financial independence.89 This followed closely on the general strike of Parisian construction workers and masons in autumn 1898 which obliged the municipality to enforce the Série of 1882 on the entrepreneurs, anticipating somewhat the projected legislation of the incoming government.90 In the same vein Millerand promulgated decrees – those of August 1899 – obliging the state, and allowing the communes and departments, to stipulate working conditions (regional pay scales, working hours, limitations on foreign workers, rest periods etc.) on public contract work.91 Contested at the Conseil d’Etat but applied by the administration, the decrees were backed up by the creation in 1900 of Conseils du travail, responsible for arbitration and the regulation of regional wage levels established by joint consultation between elected representatives of the employers and the unions. Although Millerand’s arbitration proposals were contested both by the employers and bourse militants,92 some of his less spectacular attempts to integrate the labour movement were welcomed.93 This was the case with Millerand’s granting of a subsidy of 10,000 francs to the statistical service of the F.B.T. in 1900. Presented as a means by which workers could be sent back to the provinces following the completion of the public works for the Exposition Universelle of 1900, the subsidy was not only aimed at preventing the emergence of public disorder in a delicate political situation but at establishing good relations between the government and the labour movement, very much in keeping with the decrees of 1899. By supplying a list of public construction sites in the provinces and delegating the signalling of vacancies to the F.B.T. the Millerand subsidy granted the bourses leeway to insist upon regional pay ­standards.94 The government paid the bill for travelling expenses.95 Here the validity of a ‘vacancy’ depended on the conjoint nature of the information provided both by the government and the local bourse. This putative ‘clearing’ mechanism rendered the labour market less transparent, the communication of information on vacancies to jobseekers being conditional on local circumstances. In this case, it was precisely because the bourses were not technical mechanisms concerned purely with placement that they could refuse to signal vacancies that did not meet the required standards.96 The statistical service, however, did not outlive the brief Millerand subsidy and soon began to encounter opposition from the unionists themselves.97 If the long overdue reform of placement was finally tackled post 1900, progress to reform commercial labour bureaux was becoming increasingly palpable prior to Millerand’s arrival. Adopted in February 1897,

168

Malcolm Mansfield

Boucher’s law obliged towns of over 30,000 inhabitants to establish one or many free employment agencies with placement fees partly paid by the employer. Commercial agencies were henceforth subject to strict regulation.98 This law was quickly followed by the resubmission of Berry’s proposal in 1900, which stipulated that the regulations on the establishment of non-­fee-­paying placement agencies be relaxed. These ideas, however, were countered by a senatorial veto two years later. The legislation of March 1904 on placement facilitated the establishment of non-­fee paying agencies by legally constituted associations and obliged municipalities of over 10,000 inhabitants to set up employment bureaux. No clearing mechanism existed between these bureaux.99 With respect to unemployment insurance, however, the government was forced to improvise. Given the relatively low level of trade union organization in France, approximately 16 per cent on average in most industries, its uneven coverage in any given industry and lack of national organization, no basis existed for the construction of a centralized social insurance scheme.100 The establishment of localized schemes in a certain number of towns stood in sharp contrast to the limited number of viable out-­of-­work funds set up by trade union federations which could have functioned as models for a national scheme. Thus the 1903 enquiry undertaken by the C.S.T. showed that only 602 syndicats ouvriers out of the 3,234 could boast out-­of-­work funds.101 The Seine region had 40, the north 8 (of which 7 were in the privileged printing trades), 9 in the lower Seine, 7 in the Rhône region and 7 in the lower Loire. Against this the Haute-­Vienne region possessed 34 out-­of-­work funds, all of them in Limoges, whilst the Cote d’Or possessed 14 of which 12 existed in Dijon. These towns were distinctive for having subsidized trade union out-­of-­ work funds, the former from 1890 onwards and the latter from 1896. In both cases, the local bourses distributed funds to the various affiliated trade unions and operated internal controls over the correct functioning of the schemes.102 The government facilitated the extension of such localized schemes whilst attempting to encourage the consolidation and expansion of trade union funds within a federal structure. In this way it clearly hoped to square the circle of paying meaningful benefits on the basis of irregular and low contributions. The decree of 9 September 1905 thus provided subsidies to union funds for the relief of a clearly demarcated involuntary unemployment (excluding strikes, workplace accidents and sickness) regardless of whether this relief took the form of travelling, transport or out-­of-­work benefits. Subsidies could be granted to funds numbering at least 100 members in the same occupation, federal structures with at least 1,000 members across at least three départements receiving particularly advantageous

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

169

funding. Although the decree thus explicitly recognized the occupational character of unemployment, the parallel funding of municipal schemes in towns of fewer than 20,000 inhabitants was based on the bringing together of a diversity of trades under the umbrella of the local bourses. Indeed, the decree (paragraph 4 of article 2) enabled bourses receiving no subsidy from the municipality to receive subsidies for their travelling benefits funds directly from the state. So it was that in 1906, 106 subsidized funds provided coverage for 42,000 workers and indemnified 8,500 unemployed, these social advances clearly dealing more successfully with the already well-­protected strata of the French working class.103

Conclusion Emerging towards the end of the nineteenth century, the network of bourses du travail represented a response to the difficulties encountered in the transition to new forms of labour mediation in France. These difficulties surfaced in a particularly acute form in the Paris region, where a sharp downturn in the construction industry following the abandoning of the Freycinet plan worsened an already fraught political situation. A subject of constant preoccupation to a wary central state, the ceaseless activity of militants based in the Bourse du Travail in Paris highlighted the strategic role of this institution and provided an important model for the labour movement elsewhere. The difficulties faced by workers in the construction industry in Paris were such that labour movement activists in the capital were eager to push the administration of the Bourse well beyond its official remit of free placement and the provision of trade union premises. Free placement was, of course, an important item on the checklist of popular demands in the early years of the Third Republic. Labour movement activists indeed warmly welcomed the establishment of the Bourse du Travail notwithstanding the ambiguities of its origins. If nothing else the establishment of the Bourse du Travail promised the curtailing of private placement agencies whose corrupt practices were well-­known and documented. But the setting up of the Bourse also heralding a determined grappling with a whole range of issues related to labour mediation in a wider sense. Thus as we have seen, unionists working in the Bourse were concerned with the system which determined pay in public works, an explosive issue in a city crowded with construction workers. The inability of the labour movement to satisfactorily resolve the issue provoked a rift with moderate reformist politicians in the municipality, which made the very existence of the Bourse as an autonomous institution a moot issue for the government. The participation of Bourse militants in the

170

Malcolm Mansfield

orchestration of unrest in the capital expressed a desire to fully participate in the piloting of labour mediation procedures, regardless of the political complexion of the administration. That the Bourse du Travail in Paris emerged in a period when the organization of work in the construction trade in the capital was undergoing transformation was presumably more than a happy coincidence: the industry seemed to be moving away from a traditional form of organization centred on officially recognized price lists and highly seasonal patterns of mobility towards a system which – given the crisis – threatened established wage levels and conditions. For this reason, the non-­application of the Série des prix by the administration was a provocative event and one that heavily underscored the growing irrelevance of the various mechanisms that had been put into place to defend trade standards. The participation of unionists in the conseils de prud’hommes, for example, provided access to the procedures which effectively maintained levels of remuneration for work quite independently of the level of unionization. But the initial strategy of using political representation in the prud’hommes backfired as delegates sympathetic to the cause of labour encountered the hostility of employers convinced that the institution had lost its impartiality. In much the same way, the government was no longer prepared to underwrite the resulting level of prices, as we have seen. Mass strike action and violent demonstrations in the capital grew out of the resulting frustration. Such strike action anticipated the emergence of a movement towards larger, federated syndicats thought more capable of defending trade standards even if the internal structure of the Bourse provided disproportionate representation to smaller, more moderate organizations. To be sure, the organization of demonstrations against private recruitment agencies in the same period implied that the labour movement recognized the usefulness of the refashioning of placement as a public service. But it would be an error to believe that rising levels of unemployment alone accounted for the subsequent history of the Bourse du Travail. Given that the Bourse du Travail provided needed premises for the new unions, its involvement in placement as a public service could be perceived as a response to the problem of unemployment compatible with the need to defend the standards of a trade rather than as a fundamental shift in the centre of gravity of the organization of work. The depredations of rogue operators in placement underlined the dangers represented by the continued flooding of the Parisian labour market with provincial newcomers, even though many trades in the capital had traditionally relied upon precisely these forms of seasonal migration. The problem was that annoyances that had been dealt with routinely by the procedures internal

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

171

to any given métier now emerged as regulatory problems in their own right. Thus when social reformers in the Paris municipality intervened to reform the labour market they found themselves involved in any number of misunderstandings with their friends in the labour movement. Unable to impose recognized price levels against opposition from the central government, the reforming socialists in the municipal council attempted to modify working conditions – notably the length of the working day – by regulating public contracts in the construction industry. Here their target was the downward pressure on conditions and wages caused by the actions of an evanescent group of tâcherons: exploitative subcontractors operating in an industry where such forms of intermediation had always been relatively commonplace. In the final analysis, however, Parisian workers were by no means reconciled to dealing with these problems in the roundabout fashion preferred by the reformers and they continually demonstrated their attachment to the restoration of the Série by undertaking general strikes emboldened by the knowledge that a restoration of the pre-­existing system required a major political upheaval. Unfortunately for the hapless reformers, the very existence of the Bourse facilitated the organization of a series of violent general strikes. As a gradual slide backwards towards authoritarian politics set in, the inability of the social reformers to provide a workable solution grew ever more evident. As it happens the outcome of the unrest in the capital belied the extremism of the sloganeers: the promulgation of the Millerand decrees of 1899 establishing standard rates on public works ended official prevarication with respect to the autonomy of the bourses du travail and signalled a recognition that wage bargaining could not be left entirely to market forces. Getting to this point, however, required something of a sea-­change in the political environment at the national level. This was brought about by a working compromise struck between the labour movement and the parliamentary left, which took some time to materialize. The long tradition of clandestine organization coupled to a deep-­ seated distrust of legal forms had bequeathed a trade union movement that was as dispersed over the territory as it was divided over doctrinal issues. However, somewhere between the closure of the Paris Bourse du Travail in 1893 and the coming to power of a reformist administration at the turn of the century, the trade union movement heavily invested in the network of local bourses du travail and loosened its hostility to the registration procedures contained in the Waldeck-­Rousseau legislation. Taking their cue more from the successes than from the failures of the Paris Bourse du Travail, syndicalists outside the capital cemented alliances with left-­leaning local politicians and gained political clout in the smaller provincial towns. Here they were able to pursue objectives in the local

172

Malcolm Mansfield

political environment and overcome the resistance of conservative forces. The movement towards the consolidation of the trade unions also benefited from the pooling of resources – monetary, material and cultural – made possible by the bourses and this heightened their ability to figure as an economic and political force in the regions. In short, the implantation of the network had important repercussions on public policy options at the regional level, which would later be transformed into the pursuit of progressive policy options at the national level. If many of these localized initiatives compensated for the quasi-­absence of public institutions in some of the smaller towns, a good number were clearly targeted on the situation of workers suffering from the sudden shortfall in work, from the absence of information regarding the opportunities for work and from the vicissitudes of travelling in search of work or hearth. Here individual trade unions were clearly limited by their small scale, by the lack of adequate funding, by their involvement in industrial disputes or finally by their internal divisions. By contrast, the multifarious activities which accompanied the establishment of local bourses must have relieved some of the isolation suffered by workers seeking work. In some cases, as we have documented, the bourses attempted to spread available employment by modifying the terms of public contracts or by encouraging public employees to avoid outside work. However these preventive measures were of limited value to workers who were travelling across an enormous territory in search of gainful employment. Official policy on this issue remained hesitant and patchy, disfigured by a suspicion towards the unemployed which was out of step with the statistics demonstrating the unpredictability of industrial unemployment. The decriminalization of vagabondage however – not to mention the disappearance of the residence requirement in some aspects of public policy – implicitly recognized the importance of an employment problem existing on a national level. The administration therefore, would have been hard put to deny the utility of the localized placement undertaken by the bourses du travail even if it worried over the possible construction of trade union monopolies over placement or hesitated when militants pursued provocative political options. In fact, the placement mechanisms established by the municipal bourses were highly localized, and coverage uneven. As we have seen, placement by the bourses never reached the scale attained by private agencies. For this and other reasons the imposition of trade union monopolies over entry into any given trade was never a realistic policy option for the bourses; syndicalists struggling to impose union standards were expected to find employment for a growing mass of unemployed workers. Thus if Keüfer was qualified to give lessons to the government and the unions on the

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

173

effective treatment of unemployment this was not only because he had studied the subject but also perhaps, because he was a leading figure in a trade union that was capable of exercising an effective closed-­shop. For the Printers’ Union geographical transfer within the trade was just one option among many. With the trade unions in the bourses the situation was generally very different: although the travelling benefits in the bourses recalled the system operated by the compagnonnages, the resemblance often went little further than a certain geographical extension. Close control over recruitment made possible by professional exclusivity not only contradicted the public function of the bourses – potentially limiting access to public subsidies – but it also ran counter to the need to unionize workers who often shared little more than the need to find paid employment. The incoming Millerand administration accordingly had little reason to hesitate when using the bourse network to return construction workers to the provinces after the Exposition Universelle. At the very least this was a prudent measure of public order and very much a singular event. In much the same way the subsidies provided for the establishment and running of a centralized placement system were little more than a symbolic gesture: as a general rule local vacancies were filled before distant candidates had even registered,104 and the national travelling benefit system had been largely abandoned by 1897 its remains having been transferred to the trade union federations.105 Once the new public placement agencies were up and running, the involvement of the bourses in the process of placement on a national level lost much of its raison d’être.

Notes    1. See U. Sautter. 1991. Three Cheers for the Unemployed: Government and Unemployment before the New Deal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 68–73.   2. See H. Moss. 1985. Aux Origines du Mouvement Ouvrier Français. Le Socialisme des ouvriers de métier 1830–1914, Paris: Université de Besançon, passim.    3. R.A. Leesen. 1979. ‘Travelling Brothers’: The Six Centuries’ Road from Craft Fellowship to Trade Unionism, London: Paladin, 193–210.   4. J. Luciani. 1990. ‘Logiques du Placement Ouvrier au XIXè Siècle et Construction du Marché du Travail’, Société Contemporaine 3, 5–18.    5. The standard work is P. Schöttler. 1985. Naissance des Bourses du Travail. Un Appareil Idéologique d’Etat à la fin du XIXè Siècle, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.    6. C. Centi. 1989. ‘Les Leçons d’un échec: Molinari et le Marché du Travail’, Economies et Sociétés 12, 31–75.   7. A. Hennequin. 1848. Statistique du Travail et du placement des ouvriers, Paris: Chez France, 1–44.    8. See Conseil Municipal de Paris. 1887. Rapport présenté par M. Mesureur, au nom de la Commission du travail, sur la création d’une Bourse du travail à Paris le 5 novembre 1886 142, Paris: Imprimerie Municipale.

174

Malcolm Mansfield

  9. Schöttler, Naissance des Bourses du Travail, 220–221.   10. C. Landauer. 1967. ‘The Origins of Socialist Reformism in France’, International Review of Social History 12(1), 81–107.  11. M. Dommanget. 1956. Edouard Vaillant. Un Grand Socialiste 1840–1915, Paris: La Table Ronde, 153.   12. Y. Gonjo. 1972. ‘Le “plan Freycinet”, 1878–1882: un aspect de la “grande dépression” économique en France’, Revue Historique 240(7), 49–86.   13. G. Noiriel. 1986. Les ouvriers dans la société française XIXème–XX siècle Paris: Seuil, 87.   14. J. Luciani. 1987. ‘Le Chômage au XIXè siècle en France’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Université de Paris 1, 34.   15. J.F. Wagniart. 1999. Le Vagabond à la fin du XIXè siècle, Paris: Belin, 221–250.  16. The so-­ called Spuller Report of 1885, Commission d’Enquête Parlementaire sur la Situation des Ouvriers de l’Industrie et de l’Agriculture en France et sur la Crise Industrielle à Paris, Paris: Imprimerie du Journal Officiel.   17. Ibid., 221.   18. S. Rudischhauser. 1999. ‘Salaire Minimum et libre concurrence. Le rôle de la Demande Publique dans la constitution d’un marché national du travail. France – Allemagne 1890 – 1914’, in C. Didry, P. Wagner and B. Zimmerman (eds), Le Travail et la Nation. Histoire Croisée de la France et de l’Allemagne à l’Horizon Européen, Paris: Edition de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 199–221.   19. A. Cottereau. 2002. ‘Droit et bon droit. Un droit des ouvriers instauré puis évincé par le droit du travail (France, XIXè siècle)’, Annales 57(6), 1521–1557.  20. C. Harison. 2008. The Stonemasons of Creuse in Nineteenth-­Century Paris, Cranbury: Rosement, 205–206.   21. P. du Maroussem. 1891. La Question Ouvrière: Les Charpentiers de Paris, Compagnons et Indépendants, Paris: Arthur Rousseau, 76–77.  22. C. Harison. 2002. ‘La Question du Marchandage’: The Political and Legal Struggle Against Exploitative Subcontracting in Paris, 1881–1911’, European Historical Quarterly 32(4), 451–487.   23. P. Lefebvre. 2003. L’invention de la grande entreprise. Travail, hiérarchie, marché. France, fin XVIIIè – début XXè siècle, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 114.   24. G. Ribeill. 1991. ‘Heurs et malheurs du tâcheronat dans le Bâtiment au XIXe siècle’, in J. Crola and A. Guillerme, Histoire des métiers du bâtiment aux XIXe et XXe siècle, Paris: Plans Construction et Architecture, 131–146.   25. Ibid., 136–137.  26. R. Jay. 1900. ‘Le Marchandage et le Décret du 2 mars 1848’, Extrait de la Revue d’économie politique, Paris: L. Larose, 1–23.   27. See the subtle analysis by C. Didry. 2004. ‘Ressource juridique ou contre-­pouvoir? A la recherche du syndicat dans les accords collectives en France au tournant des XIXe et XX siècles’, in J.P. Crom (ed.), Les acteurs de l’histoire du droit du travail, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 291–296.   28. In 1894 Vaillant proposed the elaboration of an enabling act as a means to give official sanction to what had become an extra-­legal tolerance in the intervening period.   29. F. Boll and S. Sirot. 1997. ‘Du “tarif” à la convention collective, Grèves et syndicats des ouvriers à Londres, Paris et Hambourg à la fin du XIXè siècle’, in J. Robert, F. Boll and A. Prost (eds), Invention des Syndicalismes en Europe Occidentale à la fin du XIXè siècle, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 129–151.  30. Schöttler, Naissance des Bourses du Travail, 75–87.   31. I. Lespinet-­Moret. 2007. L’Office du Travail. La République et la réforme sociale, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 58–62.   32. The standard work on these issues is J. Néré. 1959. ‘La Crise Industrielle de 1882 et le Mouvement Boulangiste’, two volumes, unpublished doctoral thesis, Université de Paris.

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

175

 33. Schöttler, Naissance des Bourses du Travail, 82–87.   34. The following is taken from C. Willard. 1993. La France Ouvrière. Des Origines à 1920, Paris: Éditions Sociales, 278–279.  35. Willard lists the following: the printers (1881), the miners, engineers (mécaniciens), drivers, metal foundry workers (mouleurs en métaux) (1883), pastry chefs (1887), cordwainers (1889), glassworkers (1890), tobacco and textile workers, compositors and carriage makers (1891), construction workers and shoemakers (coupeurs et brocheurs de chaussures) (1892) and the clothes workers, leather-­goods workers (1893) and the glovemakers (1895). Ibid., 278–280.   36. Y. Lequin. 1977. Les ouvriers de la région lyonnaise (1848–1914) Les intérêts de classe et la république, Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 247.   37. Ibid., 244–245.   38. This point is made forcibly by Schöttler, Naissance des Bourses du Travail, 141.   39. Between 1866 and 1911 the number of strikes in France grew by 1,667 per cent, and the number of workers involved in strikes by 925 per cent. In industry there was one striker for 121 workers in 1866. In 1906, this ratio stood at one striker for every sixteen workers. See M. Perrot, Les Ouvriers en Grève, 49 and 53.   40. M. Pigenet. 1993. ‘Prestations et services dans le mouvement syndical français (1860–1914) Aux origines d’une “lacune”’, Cahiers d’histoire de l’institut de recherches marxistes 51, 21.   41. F. Soubiran-­Paillet and M.L. Pottier. 1996. De l’Usage Professionnel à la Loi. (Les chambres syndicales ouvrières parisiennes de 1867 à 1884), Paris: l’Harmattan, 55–57.  42. Lequin, Les ouvriers de la région lyonnaise, 198–204.   43. The federation of syndicats established in Limoges in 1893 was without premises until the creation of the bourse two years later. J.M. Merriman. 1990. Limoges la ville rouge. Portrait d’une ville révolutionnaire, Paris: Belin, 285–287.   44. The Société professionnelle des ouvriers mécaniciens managed to recruit no more than fifteen members on this basis. Office du Travail. 1903. Les Associations Professionnelles Ouvrières, vol. 3, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 274–276.   45. M. Perrot. 1974. Les Ouvriers en Grève. France 1871–1890, vol. 1, Paris: Mouton, 215.   46. Ibid., 218–220.  47. Noiriel, Les ouvriers dans la société française, 54.  48. See A. Cottereau. 1984. ‘Prévoyance des uns, Imprévoyance des Autres’ Prévenir 9, 57– 68.   49. Pigenet, ‘Prestations et services dans le mouvement syndical français’, 21.   50. Ibid., 10–24.   51. F. Pelloutier and M. Pelloutier. 1900. La Vie Ouvrière en France, Paris: C. Reinwald, 297.  52. Occasionally, the ‘viaticum’ was accorded to non-­syndiqués on the understanding that they join an organization in the following months. This benefit was often given in kind, the local municipality often providing a small subsidy. See F.Pelloutier. 1971. Histoire des Bourses du Travail, Paris: Gordon and Breach, 149–159.  53. Schöttler, Naissance des Bourses du Travail, 139.  54. Pelloutier, Histoire des Bourses, 156.  55. A. Cottereau. 1986. ‘The Distinctiveness of Working-­Class Cultures in France, 1848– 1900’, in I. Katznelson and A. Zolberg (eds), Working Class Formation: Nineteenth-­ Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 110–154.   56. E. Coornaert. 1966. Les Compagnonnages en France. Du Moyen age à nos Jours, Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières, 121–122.   57. See the contribution of A. Knotter on this subject.   58. C. Guitton. 1994. ‘Le chômage entre question sociale et question pénale en France au tournant du siècle’, in M. Mansfield, R. Salais and N. Whiteside (eds). Aux Sources du Chômage 1880–1914, Paris: Belin, 63–91.

176

Malcolm Mansfield

  59. Ibid., 73.   60. ‘qui renvoie à une personne “n’ayant ni argent comptant, ni crédit suffisant pour acquitter les frais du médecin” donc une personne pouvant éventuellement subvenir à ses besoins en dehors d’accidents et d’imprévus.’ C. Bec. 1994. Assistance et République. La Recherche d’un nouveau contrat social sous la Troisième République, Paris: Editions Ouvrières, 40.   61. L. Murard and P. Zylberman. 1996. L’Hygiène dans la République. La Santé publique en France ou l’utopie contrariée 1870–1918, Paris: Fayard, 220–221.  62. Bec, Assistance et République, 117.   63. A. Mitchell. 1991. The Divided Path: The German Influence on Social Reform in France after 1870, London: University of North Carolina Press, 154–156.   64. Quoted in Guitton, ‘Le chômage entre question sociale et question pénale en France au tournant du siècle’, 80, my translation.  65. The sixteen such recognitions of 1820–1839 grew to 73 in 1840–1859, and more than doubled in 1860–1879. In 1880–1899, the figure stood at 192. Bec, Assistance et République, 126.  66. This had been the case with the sociétés de secours mutuels approuvées et reconnues d’utilité publique under the law of 26 March 1852, which resulted in the close surveillance of members via a system of ‘livrets’ linked to the police functions of the Préfet. Soubiran-­Paillet and Pottier, De l’Usage Professionnel à la Loi, 29.   67. R. Salais and J. Luciani. 1990. ‘Matériaux pour la Naissance d’une Institution: l’Office du Travail 1890–1900’, Genèses 2, 83–108.   68. R. Salais, N. Bavarez and B. Reynaud. 1986. L’invention du chômage. Histoire et transformations d’une catégorie en France des années 1890 aux années 1980, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 33–78.   69. Lespinet-­Moret, L’Office du Travail, 342–344.   70. Thus in January 1894 Keüfer’s intervention at the C.S.T. expressed the hope that it would research ‘les moyens qui permettraient de protéger les conditions du travail en modifiant les dispositions des cahiers des charges dans les adjudications des travaux exécutés pour le compte de l’État, des départements et des communes’ quoted in A. Ziegler. 1973. ‘Un Parlement Social’, Revue Française des Affaires Sociales 4, 136–137.   71. F. Birck. 1992. ‘Le Positivisme Ouvrier et La Question du Travail’, in J. Luciani (ed.), Histoire de l’Office du Travail (1890–1914), Paris: Syros, 66.   72. J. Lax. 1893. Le Placement des Employés, ouvriers et Domestiques en France. Son Histoire – son état actuel, Paris: Berger-­Levraut et C.   73. The figures supplied by the Office du Travail survey of 1901. See Schöttler, Naissance des Bourses du Travail, 264.   74. R. Trempé. 1993. Solidaires. Les Bourses du travail, Paris: Scandéditions, 20.  75. Schöttler, Naissance des Bourses du Travail, 115.   76. Ibid., 170.  77. P. Robin and A. Glayroux. 1995. Mémoires et Traditions Ouvrières. Contribution à l’histoire du syndicalisme en Lot-­et-­Garonne, vol. 1, Agen: Union Départementale de la C.G.T. Lot-­et-­Garonne, 238.  78. Merriman, Limoges la ville rouge, 334–335.   79. The bourse often provided a few francs and often new clothes to individuals arriving from the countryside.  80. Schöttler, Naissance des Bourses du Travail, 142.   81. 50 per cent of the bourses published some kind of newsletter. Schöttler, Naissance des Bourses du Travail, 130–132.  82. Lax, Le Placement des Employés, ouvriers et Domestiques en France, 485.   83. C. Geslin. 1984. ‘Le syndicalisme ouvrier en Bretagne avant 1914’, Le Mouvement Social 127, 111–121.

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

177

  84. Robin and Glayroux, Mémoires et Traditions Ouvrières, 238–239.  85. Millerand’s law of 30 March 1900 introduced an eleven-­hour working day, which in some cases increased the permitted working hours of juveniles by one hour, but nonetheless created uniform legislation for all the categories of the working population as a prelude to a standard reduction to 10 hours. See A.M. Mallet. 1992. ’2 Novembre 1892–30 Mars 1900: genèse de la Loi Millerand’ in Luciani, Histoire de l’Office du Travail, 247–259.  86. J. Stone. 1985. The Search for Social Peace: Reform Legislation in France, 1890–1914, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1–24.   87. From 1899 onwards, unions were entitled to elect twenty-­two members to the C.S.T.   88. See N. Roussellier. 1992. ‘Alexandre Millerand et la Question de l’Arbitrage des Conflits du Travail’ in J. Luciani, Histoire de l’Office du Travail, 81–103.  89. A decree of 17 July 1900 placed the Bourse under the control of a Commission Administrative composed of fifteen trade union delegates. The Préfet no longer intervened.   90. For an excellent discussion of this episode, see H. Lemesle. 2010. ‘Un statut pour les ouvriers des travaux publics et du bâtiment? Le rôle de l’achat public dans la construction d’un droit du travail dans la France du XIXe siècle’, in M. Cartier, J.N. Retière and Y. Siblot (eds), Le salariat à statut. Genèses et culture, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 41–53.   91. Rudischhauser, ‘Salaire Minimum et libre concurrence’, 205–206.  92. The project did not succeed. See G. Lefranc. 1977. Le Mouvement Socialiste sous la Troisième République, vol. 1, Paris: Payot, 116.   93. N. Olsack. 1993. ‘Les Avocats et l’Acculturation Juridique du Mouvement Ouvrier de 1884 à 1920’, Revue de la Société d’Histoire de la Profession d’Avocat 5, 189–212.   94. Given that there was no direct communication between the potential employer and the job seeker, the office was in a position to undermine the lockout of employers in Le Havre in 1900. See Schöttler, Naissance des Bourses du Travail, 234.   95. Totalling 1,400 francs for 1900. Pelloutier, Histoire des Bourses, 167.   96. Thus the rule established by the Office national ouvrier de statistique et de placement ‘Par emplois vacants il faut entendre ceux qui n’ont pu, pour un motif quelconque, être occupés par aucun des ouvriers en chômage de la localité ou pour l’occupation desquels il n’y a dans la localité aucun ouvrier disponible.’ Ibid., 300.  97. Schöttler, Naissance des Bourses du Travail, 149.   98. L. Ladoux. 1908. ‘La Question du Chômage Involontaire en France et Principalement les Caisses de Chômage’, doctoral thesis, Faculté de Droit de Bordeaux, Bordeaux: Y. Cadoret, 57.   99. A fact which was heavily underlined by Ladoux, La Question du Chômage Involontaire, 58–59. 100. J. Luciani. 1996. ‘Syndicats et indemnisation du chômage en France à la fin du XIXème siècle: la convergence vers l’assurance chômage obligatoire’, Journée d’études, Faculté Jean Monnet, Sceaux, 1–27. 101. Ladoux, ‘La Question du Chômage Involontaire,’ 148–149. 102. In Dijon, the municipality recognized the role that the trade unions could play in the verification of claims on the fund. From the regulations laid down by the Conseil Municipal on the 7th Oct 1896 quoted in ibid., 187. For its part, Limoges provided a subsidy (totalling 9,000 francs in 1908) subject to no direct control by the municipality beyond that of a strict proportionality with respect to the active membership of the various syndicats. See ibid., 191. 103. Pigenet, ‘Prestations et services dans le mouvement français’, 23. 104. Ibid., 149. 105. Schöttler, Naissance des Bourses du Travail, 139.

178

Malcolm Mansfield

Bibliography Bec, C. 1994. Assistance et République. La Recherche d’un nouveau contrat social sous la Troisième République, Paris: Editions Ouvrières. Birck, F. 1992. ‘Le Positivisme Ouvrier et La Question du Travail’, in J. Luciani (ed.), Histoire de l’Office du Travail (1890–1914), Paris: Syros, 51–80. Boll, F. and Sirot, S. 1997. ‘Du “tarif” à la convention collective, Grèves et syndicats des ouvriers à Londres, Paris et Hambourg à la fin du XIXè siècle’, in J. Robert, F. Boll and A. Prost (eds), Invention des Syndicalismes en Europe Occidentale à la fin du XIXè siécle, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 129–151. Centi, C. 1989. ‘Les Leçons d’un échec: Molinari et le Marché du Travail’, Economies et Sociétés 12, 31–75. Conseil Municipal de Paris. 1887. Rapport présenté par M. Mesureur, au nom de la Commission du travail, sur la création d’une Bourse du travail à Paris le 5 novembre 1886, Paris: Imprimerie Municipale. Coornaert, E. 1966. Les Compagnonnages en France. Du Moyen age à nos Jours, Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières. Cottereau, A. 1984. ‘Prévoyance des uns, Imprévoyance des Autres’, Prévenir 9, 57–68. Cottereau, A. 1986. ‘The Distinctiveness of Working-­Class Cultures in France, 1848–1900’, in I. Katznelson and A. Zolberg, Working Class Formation: Nineteenth-­Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 110–154. Cottereau, A. 2002. ‘Droit et bon droit. Un droit des ouvriers instauré puis évincé par le droit du travail (France, XIXè siècle)’, Annales 57(6), 1521–1557. Didry, C. 2004. ‘Ressource juridique ou contre-­pouvoir? A la recherche du syndicat dans les accords collectives en France au tournant des XIXe et XX siècles’, in J.P. Crom (ed.), Les acteurs de l’histoire du droit du travail, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 291–296. Dommanget, M. 1956. Edouard Vaillant. Un Grand Socialiste 1840–1915, Paris: La Table Ronde. Gaudemar, J. de. 1979. La Mobilisation Générale, Paris: Champs Urbain. Geslin, C. 1984. ‘Le syndicalisme ouvrier en Bretagne avant 1914’, Le Mouvement Social 127, 111–121. Geslin, C. 1995. Moi, Jules Couasnault Syndicalist de Fougères. Rennes: Editions Apogée. Gonjo, Y. 1972. ‘Le “plan Freycinet”, 1878–1882: un aspect de la “grande dépression” économique en France’, Revue Historique 240(7), 49–86. Guitton, C. 1994. ‘Le chômage entre question sociale et question pénale en France au tournant du siècle’, in M. Mansfield, R. Salais and N. Whiteside (eds), Aux Sources du Chômage 1880–1914, Paris: Belin, 63–91. Harison, C. 2002. ‘La Question du Marchandage’: The Political and Legal Struggle Against Exploitative Subcontracting in Paris, 1881–1911’, European Historical Quarterly 32(4), 451–487. Harison, C. 2008. The Stonemasons of Creuse in Nineteenth-­Century Paris, Cranbury: Rosement. Hennequin, A. 1848. Statistique du Travail et du placement des ouvriers, Paris: Chez France. Jay, R. 1900. ‘Le Marchandage et le Décret du 2 mars 1848’, Extrait de la Revue d’économie politique, Paris: L. Larose. Ladoux, L. 1908. ‘La Question du Chômage Involontaire en France et Principalement les Caisses de Chômage’, Bordeaux: Y. Cadoret. Landauer, C. 1967. ‘The Origins of Socialist Reformism in France’, International Review of Social History 12(1), 81–107. Lax, J. 1893. Le Placement des Employés, ouvriers et Domestiques en France. Son Histoire – son état actuel, Paris: Berger-­Levraut et C.

Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the bourses du travail

179

Leesen, R.A. 1979. ‘Travelling Brothers’: The Six Centuries’ Road from Craft Fellowship to Trade Unionism, London: Paladin. Lefebvre, P. 2003. L’invention de la grande entreprise. Travail, hiérarchie, marché. France, fin XVIIIè – début XXè siècle, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Lefranc, G. 1977. Le Mouvement Socialiste sous la Troisième République, vol. 1, Paris: Payot. Lemesle, H. 2010. ‘Un statut pour les ouvriers des travaux publics et du bâtiment? Le rôle de l’achat public dans la construction d’un droit du travail dans la France du XIXe siècle’, in M. Cartier, J.N. Retière and Y. Siblot (eds), Le salariat à statut. Genèses et culture, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 41–53. Lequin, Y. 1977. Les ouvriers de la région lyonnaise (1848–1914) Les intérêts de classe et la république, Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon. Lespinet-­Moret, I. 2007. L’Office du Travail. La République et la réforme sociale, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Luciani, J. 1987. ‘Le Chômage au XIXè siècle en France’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Université de Paris 1. Luciani, J. 1990. ‘Logiques du Placement Ouvrier au XIXè Siècle et Construction du Marché du Travail’, Société Contemporaine 3, 5–18. Luciani, J. (ed.). 1992. Histoire de l’Office du Travail (1890–1914), Paris: Syros. Luciani, J. 1996. Syndicats et indemnisation du chômage en France à la fin du XIXème siècle: la convergence vers l’assurance chômage obligatoire, Journée d’études, Faculté Jean Monnet, Sceaux, 1–27. Mallet, A.M. 1992. ’2 Novembre 1892–30 Mars 1900: genèse de la Loi Millerand’, in J. Luciani (ed.), Histoire de l’Office du Travail (1890–1914), Paris: Syros, 247–259. Maroussem, P. du. 1891. La Question Ouvrière: Les Charpentiers de Paris, Compagnons et Indépendants, Paris: Arthur Rousseau. Merriman, J.M. 1990. Limoges la ville rouge. Portrait d’une ville révolutionnaire, Paris: Belin. Mitchell, A. 1991. The Divided Path: The German Influence on Social Reform in France after 1870, London: University of North Carolina Press. Moss, H. 1985. Aux Origines du Mouvement Ouvrier Français. Le Socialisme des ouvriers de métier 1830–1914, Paris: Université de Besançon. Murard, L. and P. Zylberman. 1996. L’Hygiène dans la République. La Santé publique en France ou l’utopie contrariée 1870–1918, Paris: Fayard. Néré, J. 1959. ‘La Crise Industrielle de 1882 et le Mouvement Boulangiste’, two volumes, unpublished doctoral thesis, Université de Paris. Noiriel, G. 1986. Les ouvriers dans la société française XIXème–XX siècle, Paris: Seuil. Office du Travail. 1903. Les Associations Professionnelles Ouvrières, vol. 3, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. Olsack, N. 1993. ‘Les Avocats et l’Acculturation Juridique du Mouvement Ouvrier de 1884 à 1920’, Revue de la Société d’Histoire de la Profession d’Avocat 5, 189–212. Pelloutier, F. 1971. Histoire des Bourses du Travail, Paris: Gordon and Breach. Pelloutier, F. and M. Pelloutier. 1900. La Vie Ouvrière en France, Paris: C. Reinwald. Perrot, M. 1974. Les Ouvriers en Grève. France 1871–1890, vol. 1, Paris: Mouton. Pigenet, M. 1993. ‘Prestations et services dans le mouvement syndical français (1860–1914) Aux origines d’une “lacune”’, Cahiers d’histoire de l’institut de recherches marxistes 51, 7–28. Ribeill, G. 1991. ‘Heurs et malheurs du tâcheronnat dans le Bâtiment au XIXe siècle’ in J. Crola and A. Guillerme, Histoire des métiers du bâtiment aux XIXe et XXe siècle, Paris: Plans Construction et Architecture, 131–146. Robin, P. and A. Glayroux. 1995. Mémoires et Traditions Ouvrières. Contribution à l’histoire du syndicalisme en Lot-­et-­Garonne, vol. 1, Agen: Union Départementale de la C.G.T. Lot-­et-­Garonne. Roussellier, N. 1992. ‘Alexandre Millerand et la Question de l’Arbitrage des Conflits du Travail’, in J. Luciani (ed.), Histoire de l’Office du Travail, Paris: Syros, 81–103.

180

Malcolm Mansfield

Rudischhauser, S. 1999. ‘Salaire Minimum et libre concurrence. Le rôle de la Demande Publique dans la constitution d’un marché national du travail. France – Allemagne 1890–1914’ in C. Didry, P. Wagner and B. Zimmerman (eds), Le Travail et la Nation. Histoire Croisée de la France et de l’Allemagne à l’Horizon Européen, Paris: Edition de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 199–221. Salais, R., N. Bavarez, and B. Reynaud. 1986. L’invention du chômage. Histoire et transformations d’une catégorie en France des années 1890 aux années 1980, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Salais, R. and J. Luciani. 1990. ‘Matériaux pour la Naissance d’une Institution: l’Office du Travail 1890–1900’, Genèses 2, 83–108. Sautter. U. 1991. Three Cheers for the Unemployed: Government and Unemployment before the New Deal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schöttler, P. 1985. Naissance des Bourses du Travail. Un Appareil Idéologique d’Etat à la fin du XIXè Siècle, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Soubiran-­Paillet, F. and M.L. Pottier. 1996. De l’Usage Professionnel à la Loi. (Les Chambres syndicales ouvrières parisiennes de 1867 à 1884), Paris: l’Harmattan. Spuller, M. 1885. Commission d’Enquête Parlementaire sur la Situation des Ouvriers de l’Industrie et de l’agriculture en France et sur la Crise Industrielle à Paris, Paris: Imprimerie du Journal Officiel. Stone. J. 1985. The Search for Social Peace: Reform Legislation in France, 1890–1914, Albany: State University of New York Press. Trempé, R. 1993. Solidaires. Les Bourses du travail. Paris: Scandéditions. Wagniart, J.F. 1999. Le Vagabond à la fin du XIXè siècle, Paris: Belin. Willard, C. 1993. La France Ouvrière. Des Origines à 1920, Paris: Éditions Sociales. Ziegler, A. 1973. ‘Un Parlement Social’, Revue Française des Affaires Sociales 4, 136–137.

Chapter 7

Transforming Soldiers into Workers

The Austrian Employment Agency for Disabled Veterans during the First World War

Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin

When thinking about disabled veterans during the First World War, two images typically come to mind: that of a former soldier playing a barrel organ whose leg has been amputated, or that of another ex-­soldier, blind and begging on a street corner. Such were the images people had at the beginning of the Great War as well as those that Habsburg monarchy authorities repeatedly summoned when explaining what assistance for disabled veterans should not look like. For they wanted these representations to contrast with new efforts intended to prevent disabled veterans from leading degrading lives as beggars on the street. The new objective was instead their complete reintegration in the labour market. And we must point out a significant fact: a common experience at the beginning of the twentieth century might have been to see some disabled ex-­soldiers who were blind or playing barrel organs. These relics of former wars were the visible products of an older welfare system, even though there could not have been so many begging in this manner.1 The new war produced masses of disabled veterans. As the result of compulsory military service, more men were involved in warfare than in preceding conflicts. Better medical care for wounded soldiers additionally meant that more were likely to survive. Epidemics were no longer the main cause of mortality on the battlefields. And owing to medical progress, much more is known about the enormous range of different

182

Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin

disabilities, and even traumatic effects such as shell shock, that were first observed during the First World War. Amputees and the blind thus formed a relatively small group among all (newly) disabled veterans.2 But let us return to the new efforts on behalf of disabled veterans. These had already commenced in 1915, in the second year of the war. ‘Reintegration’ was the slogan that summed up these endeavours, the aim of which was to enable the wounded or sick soldier to lead an independent life as a civilian. He was not supposed to become a beggar or dependent on social welfare. Instead, it was hoped that he would work and earn his living as he had done previously. This notion of reintegration was based on the way the monarchy had chosen to handle the large number of disabled veterans. The pensions provided for them by the state were thought to compensate for only a specific amount of damages; the complete indemnity would therefore have to be assessed precisely by experts. The basis for this estimate was the so-­called Minderung der Erwerbsfähigkeit (reduction of earning capacity), represented as a percentage.3 To be accepted as a disabled veteran, the wounded soldier had to demonstrate that his earning capacity had been reduced by at least 20 per cent. At the same time, he was obliged to make use of the remaining earning capacity in order to achieve a full income. According to this viewpoint, labour intermediation played an important role and became a matter of public interest. It was always seen as the final of five steps in the process of reintegrating disabled veterans.4 The four steps preceding this measure were: 1) Erste Heilung (primary healing); 2) Nachbehandlung (medical follow-­ up treatment including work therapy and the fitting of artificial limbs);5 3) Berufsberatung (vocational guidance); and 4) Invalidenschulung (training for the disabled). These four stages were intended to guarantee the restoration of disabled veterans’ ability to work, whereas the aim of the employment exchange was to restore their opportunities for work. How was this idea put into practice? The active role was not taken by the War Ministry but by the Ministry of the Interior; there was no Ministry of Social Affairs until January 1918. The Ministry of the Interior established a new administrative structure for dealing with all aspects of assistance for disabled veterans. First, so-­called Landeskommissionen zur Fürsorge für heimkehrende Krieger (Provincial Commissions for the Welfare of Returning Warriors) were set up all over the Austrian part of the monarchy starting in 1915. Second, the k.k. Arbeitsvermittlung an Kriegsinvalide (an employment exchange for disabled veterans) was established in the middle of the same year.6 These agencies worked for three years until they were absorbed into the Provincial Commissions in 1918 and finally disappeared after the war.

Transforming Soldiers into Workers 183

To judge the efficiency and day-­to-­day activities of these agencies, it is necessary to know something about how they were organized. The Ministry of the Interior developed initiatives and proclaimed a new central structure but did not place any money at the disposal of the provinces. As a result, the Kronländer themselves were left to enact the Provincial Commissions and employment agencies, and they structured these administrative units in quite different ways. Ordinarily, an enormous amount of private engagement was necessary to make such an administration work. Private charity and volunteer efforts formed the essential prerequisites for these agencies to be effective. The more developed the social preconditions, the better the new agencies would function. The Ministry was inclined to make use of existing structures. It was therefore declared that already active employment agencies be transformed into offices for disabled veterans or that older institutions take over the new tasks. The existing agencies had been non-­profit and charitable as well as public organizations. Now both these and newly established offices were expected to cooperate to place disabled veterans in jobs again. The Ministry supported the new administrative structures through propaganda measures and – despite being underfunded – by means of central coordination. Paradoxically, a great number of publications emerged at the administrative level, but only a few of the agency’s documents were really concerned with the actual work of intermediation. Their publications were clearly efforts in public relations and self-­legitimation; their optimistic and euphoric tone contrasted sharply with the results they achieved. But this aspect will be addressed below. For now, it suffices to note that the state was only somewhat involved in the recently established institution of employment agencies for disabled veterans. However, it is remarkable and novel that the state became involved in a field not ­traditionally seen as its territory. Every provincial employment agency for disabled veterans had a president (appointed by the Minister of the Interior), a manager (appointed by the government) and a board. The board consisted of representatives from the most important political bodies, representatives from other relevant organizations (associations of trade and industry, for example) and some prominent local citizens.7 These boards were not only supposed to control labour intermediation by organizing the exchange of supply and demand but also were expected to help enlarge the range of jobs. Their objectives were to convince companies to employ disabled veterans, to launch special workshops for them, and to ensure that factories offering jobs to disabled veterans were given preference by official commissions. The first employment agency for disabled veterans was established in Vienna. It was not only responsible for the capital but for all of

184

Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin

Lower Austria, and very soon it became a model for all other offices. Its i­mportance was underlined by the fact that its opening was attended by the Minister of the Interior himself. It appeared to be the only office that really operated successfully. Offices in the other Austrian Kronländer sometimes did not move beyond the establishment phase. Hence an official sent by the Minster of the Interior found the office in Klagenfurt still completely inactive one year after it had been formed. In Vienna the existing Landesarbeitsnachweisstelle für Niederösterreich, the provincial employment agency for Lower Austria, was simply redefined, becoming the official employment agency for disabled veterans.8 It ran two offices, one in the city’s centre and another on its outskirts, in the Neubaugürtel.9 The latter was the actual agency. Outside Vienna, the Lower Austrian Bezirksarmenräte (a type of relief council) joined the Viennese agency as official district offices. Such offices at the district level existed only in Lower Austria, Galicia, Bohemia and Moravia. All the other Kronländer only sustained offices at the provincial level. From December 1915 on, a journal on labour intermediation for disabled veterans (Der österreichische Arbeitsnachweis für Kriegsinvalide) was published twice a week by the Viennese office on behalf of the Ministry of the Interior. It offered a list of actual vacancies as well as articles and was free to disabled veterans.10 The agency in the Neubaugürtel was repeatedly cited as an example of how labour intermediation for disabled veterans was working. The office was open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Whenever a disabled veteran or an employer entered the agency, he found himself in the veterans’ waiting room with its broad counter. This is where direct contact between the disabled veteran and the officials took place. Employers had their own lounge off the waiting room, a space that was also used as a conference room. The employers shared this space with disabled officers, who were not expected to abide spatial proximity with regular ex-­soldiers and therefore were kept apart from them.11 Two additional rooms, the manager’s office and an examination room, rounded out the premises. The Vienna agency was the first office to work out the details of official procedures.12 The 1915 regulation set out how the offices of labour intermediation for disabled veterans were supposed to operate. First, the agency obviously served the purpose of intermediation. To accomplish this goal, a pool of suitable vacancies had to be created. If it was possible, a disabled veteran was to be returned to his local milieu and social background – even to the type of occupation he had practised before his invalidity. If prevented from doing so by his disability, the labour agency attempted to find him a similar job in the same industry. To move him into a different trade was considered inappropriate. Second, the agency aimed to allocate the labour market for disabled veterans between the

Transforming Soldiers into Workers 185

capital city and the rural areas of Lower Austria. Third, it was enjoined to increase the work opportunities for disabled veterans by stimulating new job creation and by persuading companies to employ this clientele. And fourth, the offices were supposed to support disabled veterans until they were placed in jobs. Usually provided as benefits in kind – and only in exceptional cases as money – such assistance increasingly became the central task of these offices. State authorities, however, did not provide any budget. Instead, funds had to be raised by private charity. The aid was only supplementary, for disabled veterans were not entitled to these benefits. The task of distributing benefits clearly exceeded the responsibilities typically associated with labour intermediation. This point should not be underemphasized. In a paper published by the Ministry of the Interior only one year later (in 1916), support was increased for disabled veterans looking for a job (prior to their first salary payment), thereby taking second place on the ministry’s list of priorities.13 At this juncture, it is important to ask whether the Austrian employment agency for disabled veterans, as it operated in the Habsburg monarchy from 1915 to 1918, was a successful invention. This question also must consider the range and efficiency of this special labour intermediation. To anticipate our conclusion: it is our impression that the institution failed – at least with respect to its aims. But let us review the arguments one by one. Although most of the documents give grounds for optimism, they also reveal conflicts and problems. Especially when the records involve data, the wording used cautions us to read carefully between the lines. When the job placement of a small percentage of disabled veterans was called a ‘respectable initial success’ (‘achtungsgebietender Anfangserfolg’) even in 1917, we can therefore assume that it was not that successful. And at nearly the same time, high representatives of the provincial commissions also admitted that labour intermediation for disabled veterans as a whole comprised one of the most difficult problems in assisting disabled veterans.14 The problems that arose had different origins. They principally stemmed from the clientele: men with physical disabilities could hardly be integrated into the labour market. Those who were able to do so usually went back to their families and their home region. Often they returned to their former employer, in effect solving the problem of reintegration themselves. But those who failed as the result of other circumstances turned out to be a problem. For many former soldiers were already in a very bad physical state when they consulted the offices. Wounds, illness and the experience of war had left their marks on them. They had no

186

Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin

money, clothing or food, nor often any place to stay. The employment agencies’ work of assistance consequently became more important in the course of the war. The manager of the Viennese office expressed resignation at the beginning of 1918, remarking that most of the disabled veterans were more liable to be considered for a benefit than for a job.15 The Viennese office thus began cooperating with an association called the Gesellschaft zur Fürsorge für Kriegsinvalide.16 This private society, founded in 1914, was given special duties by the state. It managed the accommodation, nourishment and clothing of those invalids in need. Thus the Viennese agency had the opportunity to transfer all assistance to the Gesellschaft, sending them disabled veterans who were too weak, ill or impoverished to be immediately placed in the labour market. In this way, the agency rid itself of unpleasant duties and could easily ‘prove’ how successful the system was. But it was the only one with such a track record. All the other offices of labour intermediation had to cope with the problems of ex-­soldiers who were not only impoverished but also incapable of being reintegrated into the labour market. The often noted resistance of disabled veterans to what was (more or less) compulsory intermediation often made it difficult for them to find suitable employment. But problems also emerged from the underdeveloped structures of the offices and their general lack of experience. There were therefore complaints about poorly trained staff who had little practical or psychological knowledge of the invalids’ problems.17 And there were complaints about the lack of local separation of employees and employers, of soldiers and officers within the offices. Vienna’s position in this case was unique, and the absence of differentiated job placements was constantly repeated in the reports of the k.k. Arbeitsvermittlung an Kriegsinvalide to the Ministry. We should also mention that the labour agencies were unable to apply pressure on employers. During the war, there was no legal basis to force companies to employ disabled veterans; the entire project had to rely on employers’ goodwill. As a result, there was nothing else the employment agencies for disabled veterans could do but appeal for cooperation from society and for understanding and patriotic engagement from employers. Appealing to such emotions might have worked at the beginning of the war, but over the course of four years it proved a weak approach. After that, another aspect of labour intermediation for disabled veterans emerged. Authorities were now finding it difficult to justify this particular kind of labour intermediation in terms of economic necessity. It was not simply a question of supply and demand, as the authorities involved finally confessed.18 To be sure, the individual disabled veteran needed a job to earn his living, and the economy as a whole required

Transforming Soldiers into Workers 187

sufficient reintegration of disabled veterans, but individual employers did not really need disabled veterans. They fell back on them only when fully adequate, healthy employees were not available – or because men with handicaps were less expensive. It will come as no surprise that employing disabled veterans was initially referred to as a ‘dictate of humanity’ or that it was seen as an ‘obligatory expression of gratitude to the defenders of the fatherland’.19 Economic and social aspects were touched on, but they were only of secondary importance. The employment agencies for dis­ abled veterans could not justify their existence merely by referring to the needs of the labour market. A crucial question is whether labour intermediation for disabled veterans was a success with regard to the rates of job placement. The described transformation of the employment agencies, whose primary task of job placement widened into a kind of overall welfare for the disabled veterans, made it understandable that labour intermediation for disabled veterans had failed. Figures underscore the rather low placement rates. The offices that operated most successfully were those in Vienna and Graz. Fifty per cent of the disabled veterans registered in these agencies were able to find a job with the help of the agency. In Bohemia only 20 to 35 per cent of handicapped men who applied to the offices were actually placed in firms. And the lowest figures were reported in Ljubljana, where only 5 to 10 per cent of the men registered could be reintegrated into the labour market by the agency. Although authorities did not want to admit the extent to which their ideas had failed, they had to confess that these rates remained far below the wartime rates reported by employment agencies – which themselves were not restricted to disabled employees. To the responsible parties, then, it was disappointing that on average 80 per cent of those for whom employment was arranged left their jobs again within a year. Evidently, individual placements of disabled veterans were much more effective than job intermediation by officials. Personal relations and mutual obligations played an important role in that process. The agencies’ activities could rarely substitute for such factors. Let us conclude this section by quoting Wilhelm Exner. Exner (1840–1931), an engineer well-­known as the founder of the Vienna Museum of Technology (in 1908), was also an honorary president of the Gesellschaft zur Fürsorge für Kriegsinvalide mentioned above. Moreover, he was chairman of another influential association called Die Technik für die Kriegsinvaliden, a board member of the Arbeitsvermittlung an Kriegsinvalide and a member of the upper chamber of parliament.20 In that last capacity, he criticized the organizational structure of labour intermediation for disabled veterans, claiming the entire institution involved little more than a card file and shifting clients around from one place to another.21

188

Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin

That was in the spring of 1918. Eight months after this devastating statement, the war was over – and with it the idea of patriotic labour intermediation for disabled veterans. The ambitious idea of their reintegration was now confronted with post-­war reality.22 The employment agencies for disabled veterans would remain an interlude on the path of developing more comprehensive employment agencies. They represent a first attempt to set up an employment exchange that would cover the entire country. In this respect, they preceded the Reichsstelle für Arbeitsvermittlung, which was not established until 1917. Disabled veterans were evidently not a reason to invent labour intermediation, but their circumstances brought together a number of efforts for the first time. This episode in the history of employment agencies can be regarded as an example of how the state adapted to new circumstances. From the moment the war ended, one can hardly find a hint in the files or in papers that there had previously been something like labour intermediation for disabled veterans. Neither officials nor the representatives of the disabled veterans tried to develop the labour agencies further after 1918. Instead the government as well as the Zentralverband, the most important organization for disabled veterans, worked toward realizing what was called the Zwangseinstellungsgesetz (‘compulsory employment law’). This law intended to oblige companies to employ a certain number of disabled veterans based on their total number of employees. The idea of such a law was not new. After all, the k.k. Ministry of Social Affairs had been working on a draft practically since its founding at the beginning of 1918. The Ministry realized that as soon as the war ended and a large number of ex-­soldiers without disabilities returned, it would hardly be possible to provide disabled veterans with employment without legal assistance. Employers’ organizations resisted these efforts strongly. Even within the government there was disagreement on whether the state should be entitled to intervene in the private sector in this way. The employers argued that the state had decided to send the men to war and that the state therefore had to take responsibility for any and all consequences of this decision. In a certain sense, this discussion about the extent of the responsibility of the state can be viewed as the beginning of a new relationship between the state and the citizen in general. The disabled veterans of the First World War were probably the first group entitled to make demands on the state which it could not easily ignore. It was a relationship that had actually been established in 1868 when the monarchy inaugurated compulsory military service.23 But it was not until the First World War that anyone recognized the consequences of this law on the relationship between the state and the citizen. A former minister of education, Gustav Marchet, was the first to formulate this new

Transforming Soldiers into Workers 189

relationship.24 What he described in a small publication in 1915 can be summarized as a ‘triangle of duties’ that had been introduced by compulsory military service.25 While the first point of the triangle was constituted by compulsory military service, the second was represented by the state’s obligation to take care of those who were wounded or disabled during military service. The third point of this triangle was something new: to transform the ex-­soldiers into gainfully employed civilians. And Marchet’s triangle was clearly evidence of the two fundamental principles of labour intermediation during the war and the Zwangseinstellungsgesetz after 1918. Finally, this law was passed by the Austrian parliament on 1 October 1920. Although representatives of the disabled veterans in particular continued to speak of Zwangseinstellung (or ‘forced employment’), the term ‘force’ was ultimately removed from the law. Instead, the legislation was renamed the Invalidenbeschäftigungsgesetz (‘Disabled Veterans Employment Law’).26 As a result, every company with at least twenty employees was required to employ a disabled veteran. And for every additional twenty-­five employees, another disabled veteran had to be hired. The resulting reduction of earning capacity was supposed to amount to at least 35 per cent. The first reliable figures about the impact of this law date from 1927. According to that data, approximately 2 per cent of those disabled veterans receiving a state pension because of their disability were employed owing to the 1920 law. However, it did not mean that 98 per cent of disabled veterans were unemployed. The success of the Invalidenbeschäftigungsgesetz was nonetheless limited, and the unemployment rate among disabled veterans was much higher than that of the remaining labour force.

Conclusions As noted above, labour intermediation for disabled veterans during the First World War was either not necessary because they were able to find a job on their own, or it was unsuccessful because the disabled veteran was not able to work at all (depending on the extent of his disability). To a certain extent these problems persisted after the Invalidenbeschäftigungsgesetz was enacted. Yet the prevailing opinion was that the integration of disabled veterans into the labour market by common labour intermediation had failed. This knowledge led to a shift towards a legal obligation, requiring employers to engage a certain number of disabled veterans. As a result, a second labour market emerged that was accessible only to a legally defined group of employees. In the long run, this transformation

190

Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin

proved highly important inasmuch as the Invalidenbeschäftigungsgesetz has become the general model for Austrian legislation concerning the employment of disabled persons up to the present day.

Notes The broader context of this chapter is a research project by the two authors on the history of disabled veterans in the Habsburg Monarchy during and after the First World War entitled ‘Die Wunden des Staates. Die Versorgung der Kriegsopfer des Ersten Weltkrieges in Österreich’. Based in the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna (Univ.-­Doz. Dr. Bertrand Perz), it was financed by the Austrian Science Fund from 2006 to the end of August 2008.   1. Up to now there has been little research on disabled Austrian veterans of the First World War (despite some focus on conditions in the Habsburg Monarchy or First Austrian Republic). For examples, see: M. Healy. 2006. ‘Civilizing the Soldier in Postwar Austria’, in N. Wingfield and M. Bucur (eds), Gender and War in Twentieth-­Century Eastern Europe, Bloomington: Indianapolis University Press, 47–69; K. Hsia. 2010. ‘A Partnership of the Weak: War Victims and the State in the Early First Austrian Republic’, Contemporary Austrian Studies 19, 192–221; V. Pawlowsky and H. Wendelin. 2008. ‘Die Verwaltung des Leides. Kriegsbeschädigtenversorgung in Niederösterreich’, in P. Melichar, E. Langthaler and S. Eminger (eds), Niederösterreich im 20. Jahrhundert, vol. 2: Wirtschaft, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: UTB/Böhlau Verlag, 507–536; V. Pawlowsky and H. Wendelin. 2009. ‘Kriegsopfer und Sozialstaat. Österreich nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, in N. Stegmann (ed.), Die Weltkriege als symbolische Bezugspunkte: Polen, die Tschechoslowakei und Deutschland nach dem Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg, Prague: Masarykuv, 127–146; V. Pawlowsky and H. Wendelin. 2010. ‘Die normative Konstruktion des Opfers – Die Versorgung der Invaliden, Witwen und Waisen des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in L. Cole, C. Hämmerle and M. Scheutz (eds), Glanz – Gewalt – Gehorsam. Militär und Gesellschaft in der Habsburgermonarchie (1800 bis 1918) (= Frieden und Krieg. Beiträge zur Historischen Friedensforschung 18), Essen: Klartext Verlag, 359–386; V. Pawlowsky and H. Wendelin. 2011. ‘Mobilisierung der Immobilen – Die Kriegsbeschädigten des Ersten Weltkriegs organisieren sich’, Österreichischen Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 22, 185–198. Pawlowsky, V. and H. Wendelin. 2015. Die Wunden des Staates. Kriegsopfer und Sozialstaat in Österreich 1914–1938, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag.   2. On the bodily aspects of war disability in Austria, see the following studies: H.-­G. Hofer. 2004. Nervenschwäche und Krieg. Modernitätskritik und Krisenbewältigung in der österreichischen Psychiatrie (1880–1920), Vienna: Böhlau; J.B. Köhne. 2009. Kriegshysteriker. Strategische Bilder und mediale Techniken militärpsychiatrischen Wissens (1914–1920), Husum: Matthiesen Verlag.  3. A. Deutsch. 1920. Anleitung zur Feststellung der Erwerbseinbusse bei Kriegsbeschädigten (= Veröffentlichungen des deutschösterreichischen Staatsamtes für Volksgesundheit 1), 3rd ed., Vienna: Staatsamt für Volksgesundheit.  4. The reintegration process of disabled veterans has been described for other European countries by: D. Cohen. 2001. The War Come Home. Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press; D.A. Gerber (ed.). 2000. Disabled Veterans in History, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press; M. Geyer. 1983. ‘Ein Vorbote des Wohlfahrtsstaates. Die Kriegsopferversorgung in Frankreich, Deutschland und Großbritannien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, in W.J. Mommsen (ed.). Die Organisierung des Friedens: Demobilmachung 1918–1920 (= Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9(2)), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 230–277; S.R. Ward (ed.). 1975. The War Generation. Veterans of the First World War, Port

Transforming Soldiers into Workers 191

Washington, London: Kennikat Press; R. Weldon Whalen. 1984. Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914–1939, Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press; S. Kienitz. 2008. Beschädigte Helden. Kriegsinvalidität und Körperbilder 1914–1923 (= Krieg in der Geschichte 41), Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, Zürich: Schöningh.  5. See also J.S. Reznick. 2000. ‘Work-­Therapy and the Disabled British Soldier in Great Britain in the First World War: The Case of Shepherd’s Bush Military Hospital, London’, in Gerber, Disabled Veterans in History, 185–203.   6. Erlass des MdI [decree of the Ministry of the Interior], 28.6.1915, in K. k. Ministerium des Innern (ed.). 1915. Mitteilungen über Fürsorge für Kriegsbeschädigte, Vienna, 26–28. (hereafter, Mitteilungen MdI).   7. The political bodies included Landesausschüsse and Landeskommissionen.  8. The complete title of the existing agency was: ‘Landesarbeitsnachweisstelle für Niederösterreich (Zentralstelle für Arbeitsvermittlung in Wien und Niederösterreich)’.   9. The one in the centre was called ‘k.k. Arbeitsvermittlung an Kriegsinvalide, Landesstelle Wien’, and its address was: Wien I, Stock im Eisenplatz 3; the other functioned as an intermediation office (Vermittlungsinstitut) and was located at Wien VII, Neubaugürtel 32. 10. Mitteilungen MdI, 1915, 76. 11. ‘Invalidenwarteraum mit Vermittlungsschalter’, ‘Aufenthaltsraum für Offiziere und Arbeitgeber’. 12. Mitteilungen MdI, 2/1915, 28ff. 13. ÖStA (= Österreichisches Staatsarchiv/Austrian State Archives)/AdR 03 BMfSV/KB-­F, Kt. 1356, 93/1918. 14. ‘Die Arbeitsvermittlung an Kriegsinvalide ist eines der schwierigsten Probleme der Kriegsbeschädigtenfürsorge’ (Sitzungsbericht der Versammlung der Vertreter der Landes­ kommissionen zur Fürsorge für heimkehrende Krieger am 18. Mai 1917), in Mitteilungen MdI, 23–24/1917, 261–300; the statement by Marschner is on p.293. 15. ÖStA/AdR 03 BMfsV KB-­F, Kt. 1359, 8246/1918, Protokoll der Sitzung des Arbeits­ ausschusses der k.k. Arbeitsvermittlung/Landesstelle Wien, 4.3.1918, VIII. (‘für eine Arbeitsvermittlung weit weniger als für eine Unterstützung in Betracht kommt’). 16. This association also published its own periodical, the Zeitschrift für Invalidenschutz. 17. ÖStA/AdR 03 BMfSV/KB-­Fürsorge, Kt. 1356, 93/1918. 18. Sitzungsbericht der Versammlung der Vertreter der Landeskommissionen zur Fürsorge für heimkehrende Krieger am 18. Mai 1917, in Mitteilungen MdI, 23–24/1917, 261–300; the statement by Marschner is on p.293. 19. Mitteilungen MdI, 26–27/1917, 318 (‘in erster Reihe ein Gebot der Menschlichkeit und der pflichtmäßigen Dankabstattung an unsere Vaterlandsverteidiger’). 20. During the war, Exner (as an engineer) was more interested in the technical aspects of prosthetics for disabled veterans to use; see W. Exner. 1915. Über die technische Invalidenfürsorge, Sonderabdruck aus der Wiener Medizinischen Wochenschrift. After the war he also was engaged in finding a society-­wide solution to the legacy of war; see W. Exner (ed.). 1928. 10 Jahre Wiederaufbau. Die staatliche, kulturelle und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung der Republik Österreich 1918–1928, Vienna: Wirtschaftszeitungs-­­Verlags-  Ges. 21. ‘[D]iese ganze Institution [besteht] eigentlich nur aus einer Kartothek und Zuschiebung von Invaliden von einem Ort zum anderen mit Hilfe von Korrespondenzkarten u. dgl’. ÖStA/AdR 03 BMfsV KB-­F, Kt. 1359, 8246/1918, Protokoll der Sitzung des Arbeitsausschusses der k.k. Arbeitsvermittlung/Landesstelle Wien, 4.3.1918, II. 22. Internationales Arbeitsamt (ed.). 1921–1924. Studien und Berichte, Reihe E: Beschädigte, Geneva. 23. Gesetz vom 5. Dezember 1868, womit für die im Reichsrathe vertretenen Königreiche und Länder die Art und Weise der Erfüllung der Wehrpflicht geregelt wird, Reichsgesetzblatt für die im Reichsrathe vertretenen Königreiche und Länder (hereafter, RGBl.) 151/1868; see here C. Hämmerle. 2004. ‘Die k. (u.) k. Armee als “Schule des Volkes”? Zur Geschichte

192

Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin

der Allgemeinen Wehrpflicht in der multinationalen Habsburgermonarchie (1866– 1914/18)’, in C. Jansen (ed.), Der Bürger als Soldat. Die Militarisierung europäischer Gesellschaften im  langen 19. Jahrhundert: Ein internationaler Vergleich, Essen: Klartext Verlag, 175–213. 24. Gustav Marchet (1846–1916) was an Austrian jurist, member of the Reichsrat (1901– 1907) and Minister of Education (1906–1908). After 1908 he served as a member of the Herrenhaus. He played a substantial role in the creation of the 1906 pension law for office workers (Gesetz vom 16. Dezember 1906 betreffend die Pensionsversicherung der in privaten Diensten und einiger in öffentlichen Diensten Angestellten, RGBl. 1/1907). See Österreichisches biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950, vol. 6, Vienna: Verlag der Öster­ reichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1975, 70. 25. G. Marchet. 1915. Die Versorgung der Kriegsinvaliden und ihrer Hinterbliebenen (= Flugschriften für Österreich-­Ungarns Erwachen), Warnsdorf i.B.: Strache. 26. Gesetz über die Einstellung und Beschäftigung Kriegsbeschädigter (Invalidenbeschäf­ tigungsgesetz), Staatsgesetzblatt (StGBl.) 459/1920.

Bibliography Cohen, D. 2001. The War Come Home. Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Deutsch, A. 1920. Anleitung zur Feststellung der Erwerbseinbusse bei Kriegsbeschädigten (= Veröffentlichungen des deutschösterreichischen Staatsamtes für Volksgesundheit 1), Vienna: Staatsamt für Volksgesundheit. Exner, W. 1915. Über die technische Invalidenfürsorge, Sonderabdruck aus der Wiener Medizinischen Wochenschrift. Exner, W. (ed.). 1928. 10 Jahre Wiederaufbau. Die staatliche, kulturelle und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung der Republik Österreich 1918–1928, Vienna: Wirtschaftszeitungs-­Verlags-­Ges. Gerber, D.A. (ed.). 2000. Disabled Veterans in History, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Geyer, M. 1983. ‘Ein Vorbote des Wohlfahrtsstaates. Die Kriegsopferversorgung in Frankreich, Deutschland und Großbritannien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, in W.J. Mommsen (ed.). Die Organisierung des Friedens: Demobilmachung 1918–1920 (= Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9(2)), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 230–277. Hämmerle, C. 2004. ‘Die k. (u.) k. Armee als “Schule des Volkes”? Zur Geschichte der Allge­ meinen Wehrpflicht in der multinationalen Habsburgermonarchie (1866– 1914/18)’, in C. Jansen (ed.), Der Bürger als Soldat. Die Militarisierung europäischer Gesellschaften im langen 19. Jahrhundert: Ein internationaler Vergleich, Essen: Klartext Verlag, 175–213. Healy, M. 2006. ‘Civilizing the Soldier in Postwar Austria’, in N. Wingfield and M. Bucur (eds), Gender and War in Twentieth-­Century Eastern Europe, Bloomington: Indianapolis University Press, 47–69. Hofer, H.-­G. 2004. Nervenschwäche und Krieg. Modernitätskritik und Krisenbewältigung in der österreichischen Psychiatrie (1880–1920), Vienna: Böhlau. Hsia, K. 2010. ‘A Partnership of the Weak: War Victims and the State in the Early First Austrian Republic’, Contemporary Austrian Studies 19, 192–221. Internationales Arbeitsamt (ed.). 1921–1924. Studien und Berichte, Reihe E: Beschädigte, Geneva. K. k. Ministerium des Innern (ed.). 1915–1918. Mitteilungen über Fürsorge für Kriegsbeschädigte, Vienna.

Transforming Soldiers into Workers 193

Kienitz, S. 2008. Beschädigte Helden. Kriegsinvalidität und Körperbilder 1914–1923 (= Krieg in der Geschichte 41), Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, Zürich: Schöningh. Köhne, J.B. 2009. Kriegshysteriker. Strategische Bilder und mediale Techniken militärpsychiatrischen Wissens (1914–1920), Husum: Matthiesen Verlag. Marchet, G. 1915. Die Versorgung der Kriegsinvaliden und ihrer Hinterbliebenen (= Flugschriften für Österreich-­Ungarns Erwachen), Warnsdorf i.B.: Strache. Österreichisches biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950, vol. 6, Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1975. Pawlowsky, V. and H. Wendelin. 2008. ‘Die Verwaltung des Leides. Kriegsbeschädigtenversorgung in Niederösterreich’, in P. Melichar, E. Langthaler and S. Eminger (eds), Niederösterreich im 20. Jahrhundert, vol. 2: Wirtschaft, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: UTB/Böhlau Verlag, 507–536. Pawlowsky, V. and H. Wendelin. 2009. ‘Kriegsopfer und Sozialstaat. Österreich nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, in N. Stegmann (ed.), Die Weltkriege als symbolische Bezugspunkte: Polen, die Tschechoslowakei und Deutschland nach dem Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg, Prague: Masarykuv, 127–146. Pawlowsky, V. and H. Wendelin. 2010. ‘Die normative Konstruktion des Opfers – Die Versorgung der Invaliden, Witwen und Waisen des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in L. Cole, C. Hämmerle and M. Scheutz (eds), Glanz – Gewalt – Gehorsam. Militär und Gesellschaft in der Habsburgermonarchie (1800 bis 1918) (= Frieden und Krieg. Beiträge zur Historischen Friedensforschung 18), Essen: Klartext Verlag, 359–386. Pawlowsky, V. and H. Wendelin. 2011. ‘Mobilisierung der Immobilen – Die Kriegsbeschädigten des Ersten Weltkriegs organisieren sich’, Österreichischen Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 22, 185–198. Pawlowsky, V. and H. Wendelin. 2015. Die Wunden des Staates. Kriegsopfer und Sozialstaat in Österreich 1914–1938, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag. Reznick, J.S. 2000. ‘Work-­Therapy and the Disabled British Soldier in Great Britain in the First World War: The Case of Shepherd’s Bush Military Hospital, London’, in Gerber, D.A. (ed.). 2000. Disabled Veterans in History, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 185–203. Ward, S.R. (ed.). 1975. The War Generation: Veterans of the First World War, Port Washington, London: Kennikat Press. Weldon Whalen, R. 1984. Bitter Wounds. German Victims of the Great War, 1914–1939, Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press.

Chapter 8

The Use of Public Labour Offices by Job Seekers in Interwar Austria Irina Vana

Studies on the establishment of public labour offices have often regarded such institutions as an answer to the problems of an increasingly complex labour market.1 Public labour offices have been analysed as a reaction to the ‘disappearance of market transparency through industrialization’ when ‘traditional forms’ of intermediation no longer seemed sufficient.2 Moreover, labour offices were supposed to combat the growing problem of mass unemployment at the end of the nineteenth century.3 Yet when examining the development of public labour market ­institutions, it would be misleading to understand them as historically inevitable.4 For such a perspective cannot explain why other institutions of labour intermediation also had an important impact on the turn­ over of labour. At all times, such institutions co-­existed alongside public labour offices. Moreover, what has been overlooked is the disputes that emerged between those involved in public labour intermediation: among experts, employees’ and employers’ representatives as well as job seekers, ­employers and officers of public labour exchanges.5 Instead of explaining why labour offices were established, some historians have therefore begun to focus on the contribution of public labour offices to new representations of labour markets,6 work and non-­work.7 Analysing the role of social policies and new labour-­ law provisions, they ask how the concepts of employment8 and unemployment9 were invented or made. These studies show for example how public labour

The Use of Public Labour Offices by Job Seekers in Interwar Austria 195

intermediation made available new (statistical) knowledge on the unemployed.10 Labour offices thus made the unemployed visible as a distinct collective.11 The studies reveal that the establishment of public labour offices was not only a response to social or economic problems as some historians have argued.12 But on account of concepts and definitions of work, labour markets and non-­work were also ­transformed. While the political, social and economic aims and effects of public labour intermediation have been discussed broadly, we know little about how people effectively made use of public labour offices: why did some people register at public labour offices and others not?13 Did the perceptions of work and non-­work differ between those who used public labour intermediation and those who did not? What were the advantages of, the objections against and the expectations towards public labour offices and other ways of searching for work? Analysing how people used public labour offices and how they found work can help us understand how people recognized and put into practice norms introduced by social and labour market policies. It can also help us clarify the role public labour offices played in comparison to other institutions and other practices of finding work or making a living. Here I attempt to address these questions by reconstructing the structural relations between different practices of searching for work based on descriptions given in autobiographical accounts. Therefore I first discuss the options open to job seekers in Austria in the interwar period until 1938 when searching for labour. I describe the way the Austrian system of public labour offices was established by focusing on the effects of unemployment laws on the administrative practices of labour offices after 1918. Moreover, the role of public labour intermediation vis-­à-­vis other practices of searching for work will be assessed. This question is addressed by analysing the statistical representation of the different options of searching for work. Based on the given information on the administrative and statistical representation of public labour offices I will finally deal with the question of how the unemployed and job seekers used public labour offices. I compare the range of options for seeking work and making a living as depicted in autobiographical writings.

On the Establishment of Public Labour Offices in Austria The first public labour offices in Austria were founded at the end of the nineteenth century.14 These labour offices were run by communities or municipalities. There was no coordination between them on the national

196

Irina Vana

level.15 According to politicians and experts, the main aim of public labour offices was to provide ‘appropriate employment’ for job seekers as well as adequate staffing for employers.16 They were imposed against other forms of mediation, especially commercial forms.17 Moreover, they were seen as a remedy against ‘involuntary unemployment’ and as an answer to the ‘social problem’ resulting from unstable working conditions.18 Before the First World War, about eighteen public labour offices were located in the area of today’s Austrian provinces. The first one was established in Vienna in 1898.19 Other public labour offices in larger cities followed.20 Moreover, a number of Naturalverpflegsstationen21 were established to provide sustenance, shelter and mediation for people tramping in search of work.22 These ‘relief stations’ were intended to be open to all those able and willing to work. The demobilization of the army after the First World War stimulated the establishment of a national network of public labour offices, with the objective of finding new employment opportunities for former soldiers.23 Moreover, public labour intermediation aimed to increase the demand for workers after industries related to warfare shut down.24 In 1917 eleven Industrielle Bezirkskommissionen (i.e. ‘District Industrial Commissions’) were founded.25 Each Industrielle Bezirkskommission controlled a different number of public labour offices. In these offices job seekers and potential employers could register, whether looking for work or for workers. To register in public labour offices was also a precondition for receiving unemployment benefits, which was paid for the first time in 1918. The Industrielle Bezirkskommissionen were commissions consisting equally of employers’ and employees’ representatives. They were independent of regional and local authorities,26 and responsible to the newly established Ministry of Social Welfare, where a nationwide central equalization board (Zentralausgleichsstelle) was also set up.27 This organizational structure attempted to involve those organizations and political representatives in public labour intermediation who had already ‘been in touch with the local economy’.28 It further attempted to earn the trust of employers and workers in the new public institutions.29 By 1919 a hundred and twenty public labour offices had been installed in Austria.30 Most public labour offices could be found in cities and in the southern and western parts of Lower Austria close to Vienna.31 In some parts of Austria Herbergen (the former Naturalverpflegsstationen) were re-­established in the interwar period.32 As before the war, they offered food and shelter, and were supposed to offer intermediation for job-­seeking wayfarers.33 They were not responsible to the Industrielle Bezirkskommisionen but run by the local communities, funded by districts and supervised by the provincial governments.34

The Use of Public Labour Offices by Job Seekers in Interwar Austria 197

The system of public labour intermediation included the former public labour offices run by communities as well as some exchanges formally run by unions or trade associations.35 The organization of public labour intermediation differed regionally. In Tyrol and Vorarlberg, for instance, public labour offices were based on a communal system. A nonprofit association, which had already set up a system of labour intermediation before the war, was responsible for operating the public labour offices in Styria. In Vienna a mixed system was set up of (initially) communal labour offices along with labour offices run by employers’ and employees’ representatives.36 In addition, there were differences between the infrastructure of labour offices and the ways labour was offered in them. While a new infrastructure was built in Vienna, other labour offices were situated in flats,37 barracks38 or even inns.39 ‘Job fairs’ – where employers could select from the unemployed present in the office40 – were as common as mediation in the forms of: the proclamation of vacancies to the audience,41 individual assignment at the counter42 or announcement of vacancies by mail.43 Hence, public labour intermediation was characterized by different practices at that time.44 Except in Vienna, where skilled and unskilled workers registered in different offices, labour offices in Austria were labour offices where everyone in search of work could register, regardless of profession or type of trade. All labour offices shared a common accountability to the Industrielle Bezirkskommissionen of their region. They were partly financed by the state, communities and cities.45 Moreover, public labour offices were given the responsibility of offering labour intermediation free of charge. They were further responsible for announcing the jobs sought and jobs available, which could not be filled in their districts, to the Industrielle Bezirkskommissionen they reported to. In turn, these Industrielle Bezirkskommission conveyed the remaining job openings and job seekers to the central equalization board at the Federal Ministry of Social Affairs. The information collected was then redistributed to the Industrielle Bezirkskommissionen, making possible a nationwide labour exchange.46 By such means, a national labour market was to be established.47 Yet the idea of a national equalization of the labour market did not work out as hoped. Job seekers were often assigned job openings from other labour offices that had already been filled.48 Labour officers were critical of the qualifications of people assigned from other regions, maintaining that they did not correspond to the qualifications sought by employers of the region they were assigned to.49 Moreover, other forms of labour intermediation, such as commercial mediation or job advertising were not abolished in Austria, even though workers’ representatives had often

198

Irina Vana

called for this to be done.50 The Federal Ministry of Social Affairs argued that an abolition of other forms of labour intermediation would not be ‘executable and not useful’ since public labour ­intermediation was in a ‘primitive stage’ and would not be able to serve the needs of the labour market.51 Even the staff of the labour offices questioned the idea of a public monopoly on labour intermediation.52 After 1918 public labour offices did not only offer labour intermediation but they also controlled the distribution of unemployment benefits.53 Registering at public labour offices became the prerequisite for receiving unemployment benefits.54 The first Unemployment Act was passed in November 1918, right after the First World War. It introduced unemployment benefits as a stopgap emergency measure. In 1920, a nationwide unemployment insurance law was enacted.55 It embodied a set of norms for deciding who and which activities were to be counted as unemployed. It thus gave u ­ nemployment a new status as a collective risk. People who had lost their employment for economic reasons should be protected from the hardship that could go along with unemployment.56 Besides that, the law determined who could register at public labour offices, and excluded those unable or unwilling to work from public labour intermediation. Even though this status of unemployment was heavily disputed in the interwar period, the linking of unemployment benefits and public labour intermediation changed how public labour offices could be used.57 As statistics disclose (Table 8.1), the number of registered requests for work in public labour offices rose 2.5 times from 116,989 to 402,923, between 1918 and 1919. The increased number was related to returning soldiers seeking work as well as the new possibility of receiving unemployment benefits as of November 1918.58 Detailed statistics reveal that the number of requests for work registered at public labour offices was nearly stable from January to November 1918, when unemployment benefits were first paid. With the implementation of unemployment benefits, registered requests for work rose from 22,071 to 54,550 in one month. As the result of demobilization the number of men increased even more than that of women. But the changing proportion of men and women registered also indicates the fundamental change in the way that public labour offices were used. Table 8.1 also lists the number of registered requests for work in the existing public labour offices in Vienna, Wiener Neustadt, Linz and Innsbruck in 1910. At that time 62 per cent of a total of 213,388 requests for work were female. In 1919, after the first payment of unemployment benefits, the ratio between female and male applicants shifted. Although

284,790

213,388

1,123,648

1,124,326

1,182,831

1,213,489

1,244,780

1,148,651

1028,353

948,385

465,706

402,862

311,629

283,513

402,923

116,986

38

75

75

75

76

75

71

71

71

72

69

68

63

57

49

62

25

25

25

24

25

29

29

29

28

31

32

37

43

51

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

total

27

21

17

16

14

22

32

30

28

27

34

47

44

42

74

male

21

18

14

15

16

26

31

29

32

29

40

45

32

50

77

female

Placement rate

26

20

16

15

14

23

31

30

29

27

36

46

39

46

76

total

72

75

78

82

82

86

86

88

83

76

–

–

–

–

–

Percentage receiving benefits

50

51

53

60

66

86

85

72

48

53

48

41

44

–

–

Percentage of all unemployed receiving benefits

22

24

26

26

22

11

 8

11

 8

 9

 5

 4

18

–

–

as a percentage

Unemployment rate

Sources:  1910: K.K. Arbeitsstatistisches Amt im Handelsministerium (ed.). 1912. Ergebnisse der Arbeitsvermittlung in Österreich im Jahr 1910, Vienna: A Hölder, 34; 1918–1919: Statistische Zentralkommission.‘Die Arbeitsvermittlung in den Jahren 1918 und 1919’, 65; 1920–1937: Österreichisches Statistisches Zentralamt (ed.). 1920–1937. Statistisches Handbuch für die Republik Österreich, Vienna: Verlag Österreichische Staatsdruckerei; Ratio of the registered who received unemployment benefits: Institut für Konjunkturforschung (ed.). 1936. ‘Die Entwicklung der unterstützten Arbeitslosen bei den einzelnen Landesarbeitsämtern seit 1923’, Monatsberichte des Österreichischen Institutes für Konjunkturforschung 2(11), 39.

838,858

292,643

1937

316,901

296,593

927,879

916,896

1932

1933

286,492

302,557

328,602

725,796

820,049

1928

1930

890,188

131,502

275,850

334,204

672,535

1924

1926

837,834

99,871

123,711

211,758

279,151

1922

1923

1934

173,293

104,351

229,630

179,162

1919

1920

1935

59,598

57,388

1918

133,008

80,380

1910

female

male

total

male

female

Gender proportion of those registered

Number of the registered requests for work

Table 8.1 Development of the registered requests for work in Austria, the placement rate in public labour offices and unemployment rates between 1910 and 1937 by gender

200

Irina Vana

the total number of registered requests for female labour increased between 1923 and 1932, requests for male labour were constantly higher. Female trades, such as textile work and the mediation offered to domestic workers, were traditionally strongly served by commercial mediation.59 Women therefore tended to use other forms of mediation more often than men. But the changing ratio between requests for work by women and men at public labour offices can also be seen as resulting from the new implementation of unemployment benefits. Unemployment insurance never included all labourers and occupations equally. A number of exceptions were made, such as for people living in mostly rural areas, farm labourers and domestic servants.60 By 1918 it had been declared that women should work in the branches where they had been employed before the war. Many were therefore considered to be domestic or rural labourers and excluded from any entitlement to unemployment benefits.61 Moreover, women were regarded as being supported by their families’ income.62 As a result, they received unemployment or crisis benefits for shorter periods than men.63 The legislation on unemployment benefits was further restricted in the wake of the world economic crisis. In 1933, the duration of entitlement to benefits was limited to twenty weeks. The data of the public census and the labour offices’ statistics reveal that from 1930 onwards fewer unemployed received benefits. Yet also during this time the proportion of people registered at public labour offices who received benefits was higher than the proportion of those registered who were not entitled to receive benefits. While only sixty-­six per cent of the total unemployed population counted in the census received benefits in 1932, still eighty-­ two per cent of those registered in labour offices were supported. As Table 8.1 reveals, the placement rate of public labour offices shows a general decreasing trend from 1918 onwards, while the number of registered requests for work rose. In 1910, 76 per cent of all registered requests for work could be placed, whereas in 1932 only 14 per cent of them were fulfilled. Even though the status of public labour intermediation changed in the interwar period, on account of its linkage with unemployment insurance, other forms of intermediation and ways of finding work remained important. Especially in times of high unemployment, labour offices were often called Stempelstellen, alleged to be solely administrating unemployment.64 Public labour offices had previously been analysed as institutions which enabled the state to enact ‘active labour market policies, to develop labour market transparency and to offer material safety for unemployed’. Hence they were depicted as an instrument of ‘systematic manipulation of the labour market’.65 However, as the argument of public labour offices as

The Use of Public Labour Offices by Job Seekers in Interwar Austria 201

Stempelstellen suggests, public labour intermediation was rather unpopular, both for employees and employers.66 It seems like a contradiction that an institution that was supposed to organize the labour market – and thus have a comprehensive knowledge of the supply and demand for labour – was seldom used by job seekers and potential employers. This circumstance would suggest that public labour offices did not have the impact on the organization and implementation of the labour market officially assigned to them. Therefore other ways of searching for work have to be taken into consideration.

Institutions and Individual Ways of Searching for Work Besides public labour offices, labour intermediation in the interwar period was offered in exchanges run by trade unions, employers’ associations, and by charitable and commercial organizations. Unions additionally offered financial help for unemployed members67 as well as financial support and shelter for unemployed members on the tramp.68 Membership – or fees, in the case of commercial mediation69 – was required in order to make use of the mediation.70 In 1928, for instance, 373 commercial placement agencies existed in Austria, most of them in Vienna and Linz.71 Moreover the listings of the official statistics of that year included seventeen labour placement agencies of diverse non-­commercial organizations, eleven labour offices run by unions and two offices run by industrial cooperatives.72 These non-­ commercial organizations covered ten per cent of all registered placements, and four per cent of the registered requests for work.73 Employment opportunities could also be found in newspapers. Firms received unsolicited applications and people went from door to door seeking work. In debates at the time, asking around for work and commercial agencies were particular targets of criticism.74 According to employees’ organizations, asking for work door to door was ­‘degrading . . . begging’.75 Labour market experts and politicians criticized it as inefficient.76 Commercial agencies were regarded as exploitative and as a moral danger to job seekers, especially women.77 Direct mediation of parents, relatives or friends, offers by former employers and in-­company mediation also played a significant role in searching for and finding work.78 Big industries often relied on their employees’ relatives to find new employees and had little interest in public labour intermediation.79 Compared to these options for seeking work, public labour offices are often categorized as a rather anonymous form of mediation in the r­ elevant

202

Irina Vana

studies.80 They are further seen as one of the least attractive options in a job search.81 Studies suggest that very few people who changed workplaces had registered at a public labour office beforehand.82 Unlike public labour offices, the importance of personal contacts is often highlighted.83 Those who used public labour intermediation often checked the job postings in newspapers as well, or asked for help from their relatives and friends when seeking employment.84 How people found a livelihood and searched for work depended equally on their social and family background, their vocational training and place of residence – not to speak of personal disposition, experience or coincidence.85

Who Registered in Public Labour Offices? Statistical information on the registered requests for work in different labour exchanges show that there were major differences in job

Women Men 100% 90%

27

80%

31

34 53

70%

62

60% 50% 40%

73

30%

69

66 47

20%

38

10% 0% Public labour offices (all vocations)

Industrial cooperative

Public labour offices (equal co-determined for skilled workers)

Unions’ offices

Other non-commercial offices

Figure 8.1 Percentage of men and women registered in different job placement agencies in 1928 Sources:  Österreichisches Statistisches Zentralamt. 1929. Statistisches Handbuch, 146, own calculations.

The Use of Public Labour Offices by Job Seekers in Interwar Austria 203

Men Women 100% 90%

26 37

80% 70% 60%

72

50% 40%

74 63

30% 20% 10%

28

0% Public labour offices

Charitable placement

Commercial placement

Figure 8.2 Mediation by gender as a percentage by public, commercial and non-­ commercial labour exchanges in Vienna in 1933 Source:  Industrielle Bezirkskommission Wien, Die Vermittlungstätigkeit, 6.

seeking behaviour regarding gender (Figures 8.1 and 8.2) or branches (Figure 8.3), for example. While men tended to use public labour exchanges more frequently, women registered more often in offices run by charitable organizations (Figure 8.1). Statistics that include commercial mediation display a similar pattern (Figure 8.2). In Vienna in autumn 1933, 72 per cent of the job placements in public labour offices were for men while most placements by charitable organizations or commercial mediation served women. Similar differences can be found when forms of placement are compared by branches.86 Figure 8.3 shows the ratio of placements in those types of work with the most blatant differences in placement. In domestic services, medicine and healthcare and in the hotel and restaurant industry, placement by charitable organizations and commercial mediation was more significant than placement by public labour offices. In contrast to these branches, which were dominated by female workers,87 most of the placements in heavy industries, such as leather, food and construction,88 were supplied by public labour offices. In some of these branches,

204

Irina Vana

Commercial placement 100%

9

15

90% 30

80%

Charitable placement

45

Public labour offices

18

19

70% 60% 50% 84

40%

28

69

100

100

100

99 82

72

30% 20% 27

10%

us

st

nd

du Le

at

he

ri

in od

ru st on C

try

ry

n io ct

st du in al et

m d an n Iro

H

Fo

e ad Tr

ed he icin al e a th n ot ca d el re an d re st in aur du an st t ry (o fa ll br T an O ch TA es L )

es

M

ic rv se tic es om D

ry

1

1

0%

Figure 8.3 Percentage of mediation, according to professional branch, by public, commercial and non-­commercial labour exchanges in Vienna in 1933 Source:  Industrielle Bezirkskommission Wien, ‘Die Vermittlungstätigkeit’, 6.

collective agreements were put into practice requiring employers to use public labour offices.89 The numbers illustrate that public labour intermediation targeted certain groups of employees and workers more than others. Certain employers and employees seemed more willing to use public labour offices than others. Yet the statistics are official representations of the labour market administration. They do not disclose exactly how people made use of different opportunities for seeking work. We cannot find out whether they registered simultaneously at different labour exchanges. And we can only guess why people chose particular options when searching for work. These are questions I will address in my examination of autobiographical accounts.

The Use of Public Labour Offices by Job Seekers in Interwar Austria 205

Source Material By analysing autobiographical accounts of former job seekers who dealt differently with public labour offices and made a living in various ways, I aimed to gain further insight into the practices of finding a job. Unlike the statistical data or administrative files, these sources allow the identification of different possible ways in which people used, assessed and reported on public labour offices. Moreover, combinations of different practices to search for labour can be analysed in relation to different practices of making a living. This can give an understanding of the practical influence the administration of public labour offices had on the job seekers’ perceptions of work and non-­work. It therefore allows us to understand how the clientele of public labour offices participated in the construction of public labour offices. The analysis is based on a systematic comparison of fifty autobiographical writings and one biographical novel. Comparing these narrations I constructed a model of different possible modes of using public labour offices, as represented in the sample.90 Yet to use autobiographical sources for this purpose is regarded controversially by historians. As has been pointed out autobiographical accounts are a way of presenting and constructing individual histories. The retrospective view of the texts shapes how life stories are constructed. In their narratives of the past, the writers reflect not only their present but also different cultural and social patterns of interpretation.91 Their style of writing is also affected by the meaning an author assigns to his or her ‘life story’. The language used is shaped by the contexts referred to in the text and the audience to whom the story is addressed.92 Not all experiences remembered are reported. The writer only narrates those experiences he thinks are worth retelling.93 To communicate an individual story, the author can refer to commonly known stories.94 As a result, certain topics and stories reappear in diverse autobiographies. Writings dealing with the interwar period, for instance, often relate to the experiences of the economic crises. But even though a number of people experienced personal economic hardship, not everyone addresses it. Besides, the effects of the economic crisis are assessed differently. As Bourdieu points out, autobiographical narratives permit the author to construct a coherent story (which did not exist before),95 putting it (more or less) in a chronological order.96 These different modes of narrating and constructing personal histories have to be considered when analysing autobiographies. One way to make visible the different modes of narration is a systematic comparison. This way we can reconstruct the meaning of different modes of writing and

206

Irina Vana

speaking in a certain context. And we can conclude which attributes are significant in understanding the differences and similarities between different statements. The position a narrative takes in relation to other texts also reveals what can be said about a certain topic from a certain position.97 Consequently, a focus on a predefined context and meanings of social positions can be avoided.98

The Sample For my comparative analysis, I selected a sample of fifty-­one narratives. They were chosen in order to cover a variety of different possible ways of using public labour offices. The sample was therefore not created according to criteria of statistical representativeness of the Austrian population. It aims to cover a range of different ways of using public labour offices by maximizing the contrast and the variations between the reported practices of job seeking and practices of finding a living.99 The selected narratives vary in terms of the authors’ genders, ages, countries of origin, professions, schooling, political interests and social and family backgrounds. Due to the limited availability of sources, however, the sample contains an age bias mostly towards younger people. The oldest was forty-­eight years old in 1938. Hence, the experiences of people older than fifty searching for a job in the interwar period are not described. Most of the autobiographical accounts are taken from the collection of the ‘Dokumentationsarchiv lebensgeschichtlicher Aufzeichnungen’ (DOKU) in Vienna, fifteen of which had been published. Most of them were composed in the 1980s. The biographical novel included in the sample was written by Rudolf Brunngraber in 1932. The impressions and experiences of the main figure – Karl Lakner – are supposed to give an example of a life of an unemployed in the interwar period. Brunngraber sought to illustrate the situation of people confronted with the necessities and conditions of war, inflation, economic crisis, unemployment, poverty and hunger.100 The selected autobiographies were compared according to different attributes: questions asked were about the practices of searching for work, the description of work, employment and other activities, as well as about the description of unemployment and being out of work. Information on schooling and vocational training was included as well. Other attributes characterized the authors’ mobility, their places of origin, their family backgrounds and their political and religious sentiments. These questions were formulated in accordance with the working hypotheses concerning job seeking behaviour and strategies. In addition,

Gender  female  male Highest education >1938  compulsory  semiskilled   completed apprenticeship   master craftsman   ‘Matura’ – higher school education  university Region of origin  Burgenland  Carinthia   Lower Austria   Upper Austria  Salzburg  Styria  Tyrol  Vienna 33 67 20 10 33 18 16  4  6  2  3 12 12  2  4 28

10  5 17  9  8  2

 3  1 16  6  1  1  2 14

Percentage

17 34

Number

Table 8.2  Example of the variation of attributes in the sample

Unemployment benefits  yes  no Used public labour offices  yes  no Highest education