Participation

Arthur Marwick

Different social groups in the different countries benefited in different degree from their participation in the war effort; but all were affected in one way or another. The main under-privileged groups which concern us here are: the industrial working class in all three countries; the peasants in France and the agricultural workers in the other two countries; women in all three countries; and the Afro-Americans.

 The manner in which their increasing participation in the war effort affected these groups can be easily analysed. In the first place there is the simple question of strengthened market position. Men were required, first of all, to fill the vast armies in the front line. But beyond that, men were required to man factories upon which the entire war effort depended. As men were sucked into the trenches they had to be replaced by upgrading unskilled labour, by bringing women into jobs which women had never done before, and (in the United States) by giving employment to black Americans. Because there was a demand for labour, all of these groups were able to exact higher wages. It simply was not worthwhile for governments to tolerate strikes; better to offer the war bonuses demanded than to permit a country's entire war effort to founder. That labour was in fact willing to use its strengthened bargaining position is clearly seen from the large number of strikes which took place in all three countries, particularly in the year 1917. It is true that in all countries the cost of living tended to rise faster than actual wage rates. But in general family earnings in all countries kept rather ahead of rises in the cost of living, because of the increased number of wage earners per family, and because of the longer hours of work available to anyone willing to put them in. Overall there was a very clear gain to the working class: they had the chance to purchase goods previously denied to them. And this taste for new standards of affluence was to remain with them as a continuing spur towards demanding further rises in their standard of living. (Even life in the army meant, for most Frenchmen, a rise in levels of consumption: campaign rations of meat were 300 to 500 grams a day, whereas before the war average daily consumption in the towns was 175 grams and, in the rural areas, only 66 grams.) 

Labour's improved market position can also be seen in the growing strength of the organised trade union movements in all three countries. This was most striking in Britain where the trade union movement anyway had developed furthest in pre-war years. Total membership of British trade unions increased from 4 million in 1914 to 8 million in 1920. In the United States membership of the American Federation of Labour increased from just over 2 million in 1916 to over 3.25 million in 1920. In France the increase in membership from pre-war to post-war was also from around 2 million to over 3 million. More critical in France, perhaps, was the development of a militant and self-conscious upper proletariat, based on the new metal industries centred in Paris and central France. Stronger trade unions meant that everywhere working hours were reduced at the end of the war. In the United States the average number of hours worked per week in 1914 was 53.5; in 1920 this figure had dropped to 50.4. In France the working class had on the whole managed to establish the eight-hour day as a general practice by the end of the war. In Britain, similarly, average weekly hours dropped from 50 at the beginning of the war to 48 in the early 1920s. True, the economic depression was to eat away at some of the gains made by the working classes. The widespread labour troubles of the early 1920s represent the struggle of the workers, successful on the whole, to maintain the gains which they had made during the war against attempts to return them to pre-war conditions.

 A second way in which the wartime situation could be turned to the advantage of labour was through direct participation of the representatives of the working class in government. Again this went furthest in Great Britain where as well as a strong trade union movement, there was an organised political wing in the form of the Labour Party. When the coalition government was formed in May 1915, a post was allotted to the Secretary of the Labour Party, Arthur Henderson, whose general brief was to watch over the interests of labour and to maintain Labour support for the government. When the small War Cabinet was formed in December 1916 Henderson joined the select few, while a number of other Labour men were given important posts. These representatives of labour, then, were able to pressure governments into giving special attention to the social issues which were of particular interest to the working class. In the long term, the fact that Labour men were in government and were seen to work efficiently in government, gave a tre-endous boost to the claims of the Labour Party eventually to be accepted as a possible governing party. 

In the United States Samuel Gompers, the great American trade union leader, was welcomed and accepted by the politicians, so that he was able to influence social policies in a direction favourable to American labour: in return for its support of the war effort, in face of strong pacifist sentiment in the trade unions, organised labour in September 1917 demanded protection against any cuts in standards, the right of collective bargaining, equal pay for equal work, and representation on all agencies concerned with the war effort; finally a War Labor Administration, whose fundamental rationale was the conciliation of labour, was established in January 1918 under William B. Wilson. Similar developments took place in France, where, as we saw, socialist members were welcomed into the government at the very beginning of the war. Leon Jouhaux, brightest of the younger trade union leaders, was given administrative responsibility as a 'delegate of the nation': he used his experience to build up a new conception of trade-union leadership, prepared to co-operate with governments, but determined at the same time to extract maximum concessions on behalf of labour.

 Too much is sometimes made of the point (which is, none the less, extremely important) that governments felt it necessary, as it were, to buy the support of labour: that they deliberately sought, through social welfare measures, to maintain working-class morale and support for the war effort. Governments, too, were not completely immune to the feeling that the working classes deserved a certain reward for their important part in the national effort. We can see something of this, as also of the other influences we have identified, in France, where in January 1917 minimum wage rates were established in all industries with which the government had made direct contracts. Also in January 1917 permanent arbitration and conciliation commissions were set up to resolve industrial disputes. The twin notions of boosting morale and of conceding rewards to the working class are a very important element behind the major social reforms which took place in all countries at the end of the war....

 These influences affected all industrial workers. In France it was probably the skilled worker who benefited most: in the later stages of the war the French government was forced to release skilled men from the armed forces in order that domestic industry could be maintained (neither in Britain, nor in France, revealingly, was there any attempt to confine soldiers thus released to army rates of pay). In Britain unskilled workers made considerable gains through the opening of employment opportunities previously closed to them. For the French peasantry benefits were less directly obvious. They bore the brunt of the war, and considerable jealousy of the industrial workers was aroused thereby. At first glance, therefore, it might appear that the French peasant suffered nothing but loss through his participation in the war. Yet there can be no doubt that he came out of the war a changed animal, prepared now to stand up for himself and unwilling ever again to be treated as cannon fodder - French policy at Munich twenty years later was justified by the then Prime Minister, Daladier, on the grounds that France must not 'sacrifice another million or two million peasants'. In France, as in Britain and the United States, incomes directly derived from work on the land showed a marked rise due to the high wartime demand for agricultural produce: rents, where payable, did not rise to the same degree. Participation, of itself, then, brought definite economic and moral gains. But in any final reckoning the enormous disruption in the marketing of agricultural products, which took a serious toll in the post-war years, must also be taken into account: in this respect the American farmer, who had been furthest from the firing line, suffered most; the French peasant, who had been closest, suffered least.

 The women's success story in the first World War is well known: in Britain women over the age of thirty, who were themselves house-holders, or whose husbands were householders, were given the vote in 1918, and the various states of the Union granted votes for women throughout that, and the two following years; in each country including France, there was a spate of legislation affecting the social position of women. It is important to be clear first of all how much these successes depended on the participation in the war effort, not of women, but of men. It was this, obviously, which provided the first employment opportunities for women; and, in the end, it was because a drastic reform in the franchise for men was being contemplated in Britain, so that those men who had never had the vote, or who had actually lost their residence qualification by going out to fight, might be rewarded for their part in the war effort, that the question of women's suffrage also became a pressing issue. Although voting rights for women in France were widely predicted as early as 1915, French women did not get the vote at the end of the war. Partly this was because traditional attitudes about the roles of the sexes were stronger in rural, Catholic France. But two other factors, particularly significant with regard to this question of participation, are also relevant:  all French men already had the vote, so in this case there could be no question of men's efforts helping to open the door for women; and, secondly, the French labour movement, being weaker than the British, was less able to push anyway.  A third point brings the United States into the comparison and contrast:  it was in the United States first, then in Britain, that the Women's Rights movements were strongest before the war.  Due weight must be given to the unguided forces of change:  yet in history, as elsewhere, those are helped who help themselves.

From:  Arthur Marwick, War and Social Change in the Twentieth Century (Macmillan: Houndmills, 1986), pp.73-77.