Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of W. Kulemann’s Die Gewerkschaftsbewegung (1900)

Schullern’s review evaluates Kulemann’s international survey of workers’ associations, employers’ associations, and their joint organizations as a substantial empirical contribution to the study of industrial relations. Its central judgment is that the book successfully combines unusual breadth with careful documentation, despite uneven access to evidence. Schullern distinguishes Kulemann’s guiding conviction—that lasting economic and social improvement requires the organization of both workers and entrepreneurs—from the primarily factual task of this volume:

Die principielle Seite der Organisationen, ihre wirtschaftliche und sociale Bedeutung will der Verfasser in einem späteren Werke, auf das man gespannt sein darf, untersuchen; im vorliegenden Bande sollte im wesentlichen eine kritische Darstellung der vorliegenden Thatsachen geboten werden.

English translation: The author intends to examine the side of these organizations that touches on principle, their economic and social significance, in a later work, to which one may look forward with anticipation; in the present volume essentially a critical presentation of the available facts was to be offered.

This distinction frames the review’s praise: Kulemann’s achievement lies in establishing a comparative evidentiary foundation for an argument whose fuller theoretical development remains forthcoming. Existing scholarship supplied only part of that foundation. Kulemann had to collect material on neglected organizations, including Christian unions in Germany, emerging international industrial connections, and employers’ organizations directed against workers. Schullern acknowledges that the last category remains incompletely documented because accessible materials were deficient.

Der in den obigen Zeilen dargelegte Zweck und Plan des Werkes ist in demselben getreulich und mit erstaunlicher Vollständigkeit durchgeführt worden.

English translation: The purpose and plan of the work set out in the lines above have been carried through in it faithfully and with astonishing completeness.

The review follows the book’s three-part architecture. The first part treats national workers’ associations by country before examining international relations. Its German coverage extends across political and confessional divisions and includes occupational organizations of printers, miners, railway employees, commercial employees, and others. Schullern particularly values the international section for testing employers’ familiar objections even to modest workers’ demands. He reports Kulemann’s qualified assessment of international workers’ congresses: they mark real organizational progress, but their practical results remain limited, principally because union activity continues to be tied to political mobilization.

Austria provides the review’s clearest moment of critical distance. Kulemann identifies differences in living standards among nationalities, linguistic diversity, and relatively limited industrial development as impediments to union growth. Schullern is less convinced by his favorable assessment of compulsory craft organization. Such institutions might assist propaganda, but their defective and one-sided contemporary arrangements make their broader contribution questionable. The reviewer thus separates recognition of an organizational mechanism from endorsement of its actual institutional form.

The second part surveys employers’ associations, concentrating on Germany and then Austria, England, and France. Schullern notes both general protective associations and organizations within particular industries. His example of the German strike-insurance society “Industria,” dissolved in 1898 apparently because many employers considered it too worker-friendly, reveals tensions within employer organization rather than treating it as a uniform interest. The third part turns to joint organizations of workers and employers, distinguishing voluntary arrangements from statutory bodies associated with workers’ insurance or industrial legislation. Germany and Austria receive particular attention, including Austrian journeymen’s assemblies and pending legislative proposals.

Schullern’s concluding assessment joins methodological restraint to practical scholarly usefulness:

Am Schlusse unserer vorliegenden Anzeige sei es gestattet, zu bemerken, dass das Werk sich durchaus einer grossen Objectivität beflüssigt, dass die darin geübte Kritik nirgends mehr hervortritt, als unumgänglich nothwendig ist, und dass die Darstellungsweise stets durchaus klar und prägnant bleibt.

English translation: At the close of our present notice let it be permitted to remark that the work throughout applies itself to a great objectivity, that the criticism exercised in it nowhere comes forward more than is unavoidably necessary, and that the manner of presentation always remains thoroughly clear and concise.

The review’s relevance lies in its recognition that understanding the labor movement requires studying workers, employers, and shared institutions together, across national boundaries. Its endorsement remains grounded in the book’s documentary achievement—statistical evidence, newly assembled materials, updating supplements, and an extensive index—while preserving reservations about evidentiary gaps and particular institutional judgments.