Absence of

personal attach

ment be

Mighty changes, not always tending to the improvement of our social condition, have taken place tween em- since the age of the Stuarts, so graphically described by Lord Macaulay.

ployer

and employed.

local ties.

The merchant and his clerks,

the millowner and the operative, cared more for one another when they lived in the same parish and Lord Mac- shared in the same local attachments. "To their aulay on dwelling-place they were bound by the strongest ties of interest and affection. There they had passed their youth, had made their friendships, had courted their wives, had seen their children grow up, had laid the remains of their parents in the earth, and expected that their own remains would be laid. That intense patriotism which is peculiar to the members of societies congregated within a narrow space was, in such circumstances, strongly developed. London was, to the Londoner, what Athens was to the Athenian of the age of Pericles, what Florence was to the Florentine of the fifteenth century. The citizen was proud of the grandeur of his city, punctilious about her claims to respect, ambitious of her offices, and zealous for her franchises.'

Carlyle on perma. nency as a stimulus to exertion.

The absence of personal attachment in the present day, and the fluctuating character of the employment, are necessarily attended with regrettable consequences. Mr. Carlyle has well said that permanence, persistence, is the first condition of all fruitfulness in the ways of men. The tendency to persevere, it is this that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak, the civilised burgher from the nomadic savage. Month-long contracts do not answer well even with

your house servants. The principle of permanence once secured, the basis of all good results is laid. Once permanent, you do not quarrel with the first difficulty in your path, and quit it in weak disgust: you reflect that it cannot be quitted, that it must be conquered, and wise arrangements fallen on with regard to it.

The very horse that is permanent, how much kindlier do his rider and he work than the temporary one hired on any hack principle yet known. I am for permanence in all things at the earliest possible moment and to the latest possible.'

I have said that the absence of that personal attachment, which binds together the small master and the few hands in his employment, men in much the same condition of life as his own, is a dark feature of the industrial combinations of modern times. The examples are not few where an effective competition is maintained under an almost patriarchal system with the colossal factories of the great cities. The manufacture of hardware is carried on in Germany, and the watchmaking in the Jura, with much success in small workshops, each limiting itself to a speciality, which reaches the hands of the consumer through the medium of travellers and commission agents.

of Trades

The tendency, however, of modern industry is in Strength another direction-towards those large combinations Unions. which are favourable to the formation of Trades Unions. We have, therefore, to deal with Trades Unionism as an accomplished fact. The registered

Trades Unions in 1877 had an income of 254,565l.

Limits to

their con

trol of wages.

Higher wages

gained by

non

accumulated funds of the value of 374,9891., and 260,222 members. In his book on the Manufacturing Industries,' Mr. Bevan gives a list of Trades Unions, established in almost every branch of trade. It is clear, from an examination of the statistics he has collected, that the members of the Trades Unions are a limited minority of the whole body of our working people. They are nevertheless a power, and, in the interests of the workmen themselves, it is most important that such a power should be prudently exercised.

Mere organisation and combination will not enable Trades Unions arbitrarily to fix the rate of wages. The consent of the employers must be obtained; and an employer will speedily withdraw from a business in which the ordinary interest upon capital cannot be obtained, together with such additional sum as may be necessary to insure against any exceptional risk incurred, and to remunerate him for the skill and the labour bestowed in the management of the undertaking. Trades Unions may secure an earlier advance of wages in prosperous times, and delay a reduction in adverse times; but if they try to exact such terms as render it impossible that the trade in which they are employed can be carried on at a profit, its speedy cessation is inevitable.

It is established by the recent inquiries of Professor Levi that a greater advance has taken place in the last unionists, decade in the wages of workmen who have no trades unions, than in the wages of men who have organised the most powerful trade societies.

The average wage represented by the total amount of earnings, divided among the respective number of earners, compared with 1866, is as follows:

Women's wages have advanced more in proportion than men's wages. This is especially the case among domestic servants and dressmakers.

If it be admitted that a profitable condition of trade is an essential preliminary to an advance of wages, and that a fall of wages cannot be prevented when trade is languishing and unprofitable, the value of Trades Unions to the workmen, considered as an instrumentality for raising wages, becomes extremely questionable. The eagerness of employers to extend their business with every favourable opportunity causes a competition for labour, aud insures to the workman an advance of wages, which he wrongly believes to have been gained only by the pressure exercised through the Trades Union to which he contributes.

Wages

regulated

by demand

for labour.

ing trades.

The building trades have succeeded in enforcing The buildmany obnoxious rules, because they have not been exposed to foreign competition in neutral markets, and because the lavish expenditure of the public in buildings, and the facility with which money can be borrowed by speculative builders, have, until a recent

Dictation successful

labour is

scarce.

period, kept up the demand for the labour of mechanics engaged in this branch of industry. Mechanics in the building trades command exceptionally high wages in all newly settled countries; indeed, they are always the first to profit by a local scarcity of labour. Houses must be built in situ. Textiles, iron, and many descriptions of food can be bought in the cheapest market, and can be imported by the railway and the steamship from remote districts. The wages of the manufacturing operative, on the other hand, are fixed by competition with the whole world. In the building trades the competition is limited to the workmen on the spot. Mr. Lowthian Bell gives the following wages as the average earnings of tradesmen in America: 'Blacksmiths, 7s. 6d. to 8s. 6d. per day; masons and bricklayers, 11s. 3d. to 15s., and the latter had received in 1873 as much as 18s. 10d.' In 1874 Mr. Bell found the bricklayers at Ireton, in the United States, earning an average wage of 18s. 10d. per day.

It is only when labour is scarce that the working only when men are enabled to dictate terms to their employers. The effect of the scarcity of labour, during the Civil War in America, in raising wages, may be appreciated from a few striking examples. At Pittsburg ordinary labourers were paid, before the war, 3s. 4 d. per day; while during the war wages rose to 7s. 6d. a day. They had fallen, at the date of Mr. Lowthian Bell's paper, to 5s. 72d. In the Leheigh Valley, the furnace labour on a ton of pig-iron rose from 5s. 9d. to 12s. 3d. during the war; it had subsequently fallen to about 8s. 6d. As a rule, all over the States we find a steady