M. Ettinger, Der Streik in der Herrenkleiderkonfektion (1904)

This expanded journal offprint is a socio-economic monograph on the 1903 strike in the Austrian men’s ready-made clothing trade. Ettinger’s scope is both empirical and theoretical: he reconstructs the Vienna–Proßnitz production chain, the strike and tariff negotiations, and the larger problem of Heimarbeit within modern exchange economy. His governing thesis is that social reform must join ethical purpose to economic feasibility.

Von einer gelungenen Operation kann man nur sprechen, wenn der Patient bei derselben nicht stirbt.

English translation: One can speak of a successful operation only if the patient does not die in the course of it.

The eight sections move from introduction and industry structure to the strike, the organization of customer tailors, the minimum wage tariff, the concept and economic position of home work, and finally a program for industrial reorganization. Ettinger shows a trade divided among Konfektionäre, Stückmeister, Kundenschneider, and factors, under pressure from export decline, customs burdens, fashion cycles, credit losses, and disorganized competition. The misery of workers—starvation wages, long hours, tuberculosis, overcrowded workrooms—is therefore not treated as an isolated moral scandal but as a symptom of a structurally irrational market.

Man erkennt aus der gegebenen Struktur der Konfektionsindustrie, daß der Hungerlohn gar nicht einem Interesse der Unternehmerschaft als eines Ganzen entspricht, sondern vielmehr einen Ausfluß derselben Ursachen darstellt, welchen auch die Nivellierung des Unternehmergewinnes zuzuschreiben ist — nämlich der mangelnden Organisation in Produktion und Absatz sowie der unzulänglichen handelspolitischen Fürsorge für den Export.

English translation: From the given structure of the ready-made clothing industry one recognizes that starvation wages by no means correspond to any interest of the entrepreneurs as a whole; rather, they are an outgrowth of the same causes to which the leveling-down of entrepreneurial profit is also to be ascribed — namely, the lack of organization in production and sales, and the inadequate commercial-policy provision for exports.

The strike of January 1903 becomes Ettinger’s test case. Organized workers pushed Stückmeister and employers toward a wage settlement, but a simple percentage rise would have rewarded previous wage-cutters and punished better-paying firms. Hence the central institutional device is the controllable Minimallohntarif, supported by wage books, posted tariffs, declarations of honor, control commissions, arbitration, and partial strikes against violators.

Der springende Punkt liegt also in erster Reihe in der Frage der Durchsetzung einer von zwei Interessengruppen getroffenen Tarifkonvention, und die australischen Staaten haben diese Frage ja auch durch Statuierung eines gesetzlichen Zwanges mit bestem Erfolge gelöst.

English translation: The crucial point lies, therefore, first and foremost in the question of how to enforce a tariff agreement concluded between two interest groups; and the Australian states have solved this question, with the best results, by establishing statutory compulsion.

The chapter on customer tailors generalizes the lesson. Ettinger criticizes the existing Genossenschaft as too local, politicized, and internally divided to regulate competition. Each functional group must first organize itself, define its own conditions of prosperity, and then bargain with the others. The “alliance contract” between employers and workers becomes the modern substitute for guild protection: not nostalgia, but enforceable collective self-government.

Ettinger’s most important conceptual move is to define home work economically rather than merely legally. What matters is not simply domestic location, but the displacement of risk and wage pressure onto dispersed labor.

Die uns hier sozialpolitisch und wirtschaftlich interessierende Heimarbeit ist diejenige, welche für fremde Rechnung und auf fremdes Risiko weit unter dem allgemeinen Lohnniveau außerhalb der Werkstätte des das Risiko tragenden Unternehmers ausgeführt wird.

English translation: The home labor which interests us here in social-political and economic terms is that which is carried out for another's account and at another's risk, far below the general wage level, outside the workshop of the entrepreneur who bears the risk.

He then embeds this definition in marginal utility and price theory. Large-scale industry can release labor by restricting output to preserve profitability; displaced workers flow into low-capital, easily entered sectors such as clothing. Home work is thus both an “industrial reserve army” and, in the clothing trades, a remediable failure of organization: low wages may not even cheapen consumption if the gain is absorbed by middlemen, sales costs, and chaotic credit competition.

The final section turns the strike into a program for a supervised welfare economy. Ettinger favors legally sanctioned voluntary tariff conventions, exclusive dealings among organized groups, export-oriented customs reform, and coordinated producer, worker, and consumer organization. The work’s relevance lies in its early corporatist synthesis of labor law, industrial self-government, and home-work regulation.

Nicht Kommunismus und nicht Anarchismus — sondern vernünftig organisierter Individualismus wird die Erlösung bringen.

English translation: Not communism and not anarchism — but rationally organized individualism will bring deliverance.

For Ettinger, the strike teaches that social peace cannot be left to sentiment or market spontaneity. It must be built through institutions that align loyal employers, organized workers, and public policy against the destructive freedom to underbid.