FOREIGN WORK AND ENGLISH WAGES. CHAPTER I. DEPRESSION OF TRADE. remarks. I PROPOSE to examine the present commercial situation Prefatory of the country as a mediator between employers and employed, and not as a merchant or a practical manufacturer. I owe my position to the harmonious combination of capital and labour, and I desire to see cordial relations maintained between those interdependent, yet often conflicting interests. While enjoying the unmerited advantage of comparative immunity from the hazards and fluctuations of trade, I am not an indifferent spectator of the ebb and flow of the tide of commerce. I appreciate the difficulties of our manufacturers in their anxious conflict with the cheap labour, accumulating capital, and protective tariffs of foreign countries; and I sympathise with the legitimate aspirations of our labouring population. tions of I am fully sensible of the imperfections of the Imperfecpapers which I here present to the public. As we treatment. proceed in our investigations in any field of know ledge, the horizon enlarges and recedes; we are less B Impartiality. Prevailing discontent. and less satisfied, as to the completeness of our inquiry, in proportion as we become acquainted with the existence of other sources of information. Whenever I approach the labour question, I regret my inability to devote my whole time to a subject which demands the undivided attention of the most competent and instructed economist. As Miss Byron sententiously remarked to Sir Charles Grandison, the ploughman makes fewer mistakes in the conduct of life than the scholar, because the sphere in which he moves is a more contracted one. It is idle to look for strict impartiality from those directly engaged in industry, whether as workmen or as employers. It has been appropriately observed by the late Professor Cairnes that human interests, well understood, are fundamentally one; but we must not confound the statement that human interests are one, with the statement that class interests are one. Passion, prejudice, custom, esprit de corps, combine to draw people aside from knowing their interests, in the sense in which they coincide with the interests of others. A selfish misconception, as to what would really best promote their own interests, induced landlords to oppose the repeal of the Corn Laws, and encouraged manufacturers to raise objections to the merciful provisions of the Short Time Acts. In the same spirit, Trade Unions have laid down rules, restricting the individual energies of their members. The competition between labour and capital, between nation and nation, is intensified at a time like the present, when the commerce of the world is going |