"Now...came a further threat to the power of employers (no longer "masters"): the arrival of national trade unions or federations of unions. So the employers too began to organise themselves on an industry-wide scale. Their purpose was well expressed by Colonel Dyer, the American leader of the Federation of Engineering Employers (founded in 1896), in respect of his own industry. It was "to obtain the freedom to manage their own affairs which has proved so beneficial to the American manufacturers as to enable them to compete...in what was formally an English monopoly..." Just how far that freedom had been cumulatively shackled by the past step-by-step gains of the trade unions was revealed by books and newspaper campaigns urging Britain to "wake up" to German and American competition. In 1894 appeared the bestselling British Industries and Foreign Competition. In 1896 followed a "Made in Germany" press panic, on publication of a book under that title. In 1901 the Daily Mail followed a Daily Express series entitled "Wake up England!" with its own on "American Invaders". In 1900–1901 The Times, governing-class opinion incarnate, ran major articles on "The Crisis in British Industry" and "American Competition and Progress". Technical journals critically examined the efficiency of particular industries. All exposed British owners and managers as now widely old-fashioned in outlook, lethargic in action, and smug. But also fully explored was the opposition of the unions to new machines and new methods; the shackling effect of union restrictive practices on efficiency and productivity."
Correlli Barnett

January 1, 1970

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