Eugen Peter Schwiedland, Aufhebung des Sitzgesellenwesens durch die Arbeiter. Eine Mittheilung (1894)

Schwiedland’s report examines how Viennese meerschaum sculptors addressed the harms of isolated homeworking through collective organization. Moving from the Austrian parliamentary inquiry into trade reform to the workers’ shared workshops and household finances, it distinguishes statutory prohibition of the Sitzgesellenwesen from workers’ efforts to overcome its destructive competitive effects themselves.

Masters and workers supported prohibition for different reasons. Their apparent agreement concealed contrasting concerns about competition and the conditions of wage labor:

Die Meister sahen in der Heimarbeit die Concurrenz unbefugter, die Preise unterbietender Gewerbetreibender, die Arbeiter hingegen verdamnten sie, als das böseste Mittel, durch welches Unternehmer wie Arbeiter die Löhne unter das erträgliche Maass hinabdrücken.

English translation: The masters saw in home work the competition of unauthorized tradesmen who undercut prices; the workers, on the other hand, condemned it as the most wicked means by which employers as well as workers press wages down below the tolerable measure.

The workers’ demand went beyond spatial concentration: employers should also bear the costs displaced onto homeworking households. The legislative remedy discussed in the report states:

Daher ist es von absoluter Nothwendigkeit, dass gesetzlich bestimmt wird, dass jeder Unternehmer verpflichtet wird, seine Arbeiter in den Werkstätten zu beschäftigen, und alles Materiale, Werkzeuge, Beheizung und Beleuchtung auf seine Kosten beizustellen.

English translation: It is therefore of absolute necessity that it be laid down by law that every employer be obliged to employ his workers in the workshops and to provide all material, tools, heating and lighting at his own expense.

Schwiedland sets aside the feasibility of prohibition to examine a different arrangement. The sculptors continued accepting manufacturers’ commissions but worked together under common regulation. Their association therefore separated two questions often treated as identical: whether workers should cease working alone at home, and whether they should return to employers’ premises.

The industrial account explains why this distinction mattered. Production linked carving, turning, finishing, and distribution across factory and domestic settings. Registered masters could themselves be economically dependent homeworkers, so legal occupational status did not reliably indicate independence. Growing output likewise offered no guarantee of durable improvement:

Seither dehnte sich die Erzeugung mächtig aus; die Lage der Erzeuger verbesserte sich aber nur vorübergehend.

English translation: Since then production expanded mightily; the position of the producers, however, improved only temporarily.

Division of tasks, excessive apprentice recruitment, and increased working speed contributed to pressure on piece rates. Failed productive cooperatives and manufacturers’ use of competition among workers form the background to the sculptors’ more limited experiment: organizing the labor process collectively without immediately assuming responsibility for production and sale.

Founded in summer 1893 through small contributions and improvised furnishings, the association subsequently occupied six rooms accommodating about eighty workers. Shared premises made working hours and rates visible to fellow workers. Uniform tariffs, restrictions on hours, and the distribution of commissions sought to prevent individual strategies of overwork and undercutting from damaging collective earnings. The group adopted the highest existing rates as its standard, increased particularly low payments, and successfully resisted one manufacturer’s preference for unorganized homeworkers.

The chief reported gain was shorter working time rather than a general rise in weekly income. Weekday labor fell from as much as fifteen hours to ten, while earnings generally remained comparable, with some substantial increases. This achievement depended on discipline extending beyond the common workshop: visits to members’ homes checked for concealed evening labor. Collective protection thus required restraints on practices that might benefit an individual temporarily while weakening everyone’s bargaining position.

Schwiedland nevertheless presents poverty as a continuing threat to organization. Workers still paid rent, heating, and lighting, thereby retaining overhead costs that the proposed legislation would have assigned to employers. Administration consumed unpaid working time; emergency advances depleted the rent fund; educational plans lacked resources. Household expenditure, illness, dependants, and seasonal unemployment exposed the association’s fragile material basis.

The aspiration to establish a productive cooperative remained dependent on outside assistance. Purchasing materials and integrating complementary trades would substantially enlarge the undertaking; avoiding those costs might even lead these opponents of homeworking to employ homeworkers themselves. The report’s significance consequently lies in the existing institution rather than an assured cooperative future. Workers had restrained destructive competition without severing their relations with manufacturers. Schwiedland’s concluding appeal gives legislation and administration an enabling role: they should support this demonstrated capacity for collective self-organization.