Page images
PDF
EPUB

natural right of every man to sell his labour to whom, and on whatsoever terms his pleasure, his judgment, or his necessity may command, if it placed such funds under the same safeguard as those of Benefit Societies. In anticipating that the great remedy for the abuses of Trades-unionism will be found in the gradual enlightenment of the working classes, and their more familiar acquaintance with the truths of social science-truths that will convince them that labour and capital are not necessarily enemies, and that Trades-unionism, by degrading every labourer to the lowest level of his trade, prevents a man who is once a labourer from ever becoming anything else we are justified by the fact that no such outrages as have covered the sawgrinders and brickmakers with infamy, have been committed by members of what may be called the educated trades, or handicrafts that require skill and ingenuity. Saw-grinders and brickmakers perform the roughest and rudest kinds of work, and their minds appear to partake of the nature of their employment; and brickmakers, although their occupation is less prejudicial to health than that of the saw-grinders, and they work for the most part in the open air, employ about as small an amount of skill and intellect as can well be exacted from human beings. The skilled and educated artisan or mechanic, engaged in the manufacture of a watch, a steam-engine, a ship, a pianoforte, a piece of jewellery, or inlaid cabinet-work, who decorates houses and apartments, who sets up an author's manuscript in a printing-office, or is engaged in any of the countless departments of industry that require taste, intellect, judgment, and delicacy of manipulation, are to a certain extent men of culture, and gentlemen as compared with those who perform the common kinds of labour, where little beyond bodily strength is required. For this reason we do not hear that

they either sanction or commit acts of coarse and brutal violence in the enforcement of their Trade rules, however stringent these may be. It is to these men that society will look to take more decided steps than any they have yet taken, the Exeter Hall meeting included, to show their reprobation of the Sheffield and Manchester horrors. If such trades will truly, honestly, and fearlessly, throughout every town and city in the country, publicly and privately, disavow all fellowship, and even connection, with any Union of any Trade that has systematically devoted any portion of its funds to pay for breaches of the law, they will do far more than the law itself can do to elevate the character of the working classes, and to prevent the recurrence of the atrocities which have too long been sanctioned, or apparently sanctioned, by their apathy and silence. It is also time that the Non-unionists of all the trades, who must be a large and powerful body, if we may judge by the violence and obstinacy of the war which the Unionists have so long waged against them, should combine so as to show their strength to their enemies, and resist by every legal means the tyranny sought to be imposed upon them. A combination of the Nonunionists against the Unionists would have the whole force of public opinion on its side, in itself an inestimable advantage; and if legally and successfully conducted, would help to liberate the working white slaves of Great Britain from their debasing thraldom to the idlest, stupidest, and most brutal of their own class. It is the workman's inhumanity to the workman that, in the words of Robert Burns, "makes countless thousands mourn;" and as soon as the workmen thoroughly understand and appreciate the fact in all its ramifications, they will wonder at the long delusion under which they have suffered, and vindicate that great right of free labour which ought to be, but is not,

the legitimate and necessary result of free thought, free speech, and free trade in a free country.

Very opportunely, and in the very midst of these disheartening and humiliating disclosures, a large body of independent working men have stood before the world to proclaim their own triumph over Trades-unionism, to detail the various incidents of the long struggle they had with it before their final conquest of the evil thing; and to draw, in marked contrast, two pictures, the one of their unhappy condition under Unionism, and that of their happy condition after they had succeeded in liberating themselves. A few days before the commencement of the Manchester Inquiry, a meeting of men engaged in coal-mining and the manufacture of iron, at Staveley, in Derbyshire, was held in that thriving village, in order to present a silver claret-jug, salver, and inkstand, for which all the workmen, without exception, had subscribed their sixpences and shillings, to the manager of the Staveley Coal and Iron Company, as a substantial mark of their gratitude for the valuable support and assistance he had afforded them, in enabling them to free themselves from the dictation of the Union. The Union of the Trade, a powerful body, some time ago sent their delegates to Staveley to enrol members, collect subscriptions, and dictate to the men the terms on which alone they were to work. The delegates summoned meetings, and their paid lecturer, with a salary of £150 a-year, delivered lectures on the tyranny of capital, the rights of working men, the necessity and the advantages of protecting the Trade, and the sacred duty of striking work whenever the Union commanded. The formerly peaceful village was speedily in an uproar, opinions were divided on the subject, disputes arose between the men and the masters, and between one section of the men and another.

Trade slackened, the confidence of the capitalists interested in the works was shaken, men were discharged, the butcher and the baker did less business and the pawnbroker more; women and children starved and went in rags, and the sturdy miners, and iron hammerers and puddlers, looked glum and discontented, blaming the tyranny of capital for all the mischief if they were adherents of the Union, and blaming the Union if they thought, as large numbers of them did, that the Union and its delegates had no business in Staveley, and ought to be driven out of it. Of this last opinion, there happened to be several men who had once been Trades-unionists in other places, and who knew the evil as well as the good of the system. These men placed themselves at the head of their fellow-workmen, got up a counter-agitation against the Unionists, enlisted the manager in their cause, and carried on the war so vigorously that the delegates and their lecturer had to decamp, and all the men who had enrolled themselves as members withdrew their names, withheld their subscriptions, and set the laws and rules of the Society at defiance. The men had a grievance, and they stated it openly to their employers. They wished the hours of labour to be reduced to ten-more, they said, for the sake of the young lads in the trade, whose assistance was necessary to the older hands, than for their own. The point was debated in a friendly manner on both sides, and cheerfully conceded. In a few months things wore a different appearance at Staveley. Fresh capital was put into the works; additional hands were taken on; wages were raised; the pawnshops yielded up the little home valuables and adornments with which it is so hard for the wite to part; the butcher, the baker, and the grocer did as good or a better trade than before; the children returned to school with the weekly pence in

66

their hands, which could not be spared when work was scanty or not to be had; and no man went supperless to bed in Staveley unless for want of will or appetite to partake of it. Mr William Jackson, the member for North Derbyshire, who has perhaps, at one time or other of his useful life, employed more men in various departments of labour than any other "organiser of industry" in England, was present at the meeting, and pithily described the results of Tradesunionism, and its heartless dictation, as bankruptcy for the master, the workhouse for the man, and the trade of England for the foreigner." The example set by the men of Staveley, if widely followed, as it might be if the Nonunionists would but pluck up heart of grace to put the labour question on its proper footing, would greatly help the efforts of all who desire to see the liberation of industry, and the elevation, social and moral, of the working man, and very greatly simplify the action of the Legislature when the subject of Tradesunionism comes formally under its notice. What is wanted is not to prohibit Trades-unions, but to con

fine them within legal bounds, so that the person, the property, and the life of all dissentients from their by-laws and trade rules may be safe from attack, or if attacked by bad men, employed by the Unions, and paid out of Union funds, the actual offenders, as well as the secret suborners, may be brought to justice as speedily and as effectually as any other murderers and robbers, bound or unbound by rules of their own making. No sensible man, no true friend of the working classes, wishes to abolish Trades-unions, or put them hors la loi. It is right that men should combine to resist oppression, whether of their employers or of their equals; but it is not right that, in resisting oppression that may be imaginary, they should commit oppression that is only too real. Let the working classes confide in Mr Tidd Pratt rather than in Mr Broadhead (we apologise to a very excellent gentleman, and very sound lawyer, for bringing his name into the same sentence with that of the great Thug of Sheffield), and means may be found for rendering Trades - unions not only harmless, but beneficial.

POSTSCRIPT.-THE AMERICAN DEBT, AND THE FINANCIAL PROSPECTS OF THE UNION.

WE learn from a long letter in the Times' of the 2d September, signed "David A. Wells, Commissioner of the Revenue, Treasury Department of the United States," that our article of July last on "The American Debt, and the Financial Prospects of the Union," has given this gentleman offence, and that he attributes to the writer a deliberate intention to injure the credit of his country. At the very outset of our reply we must deny in the most positive manner any such intention-covert or overt. The commercial relations of the two countries are most intimate and extensive-American prosperity is British prosperity; and if America suffers from bad seasons or the depression of trade, the British feel the recoil, and suffer also. It is not alone the interest and the duty, but the pleasure of our people to cultivate the most amicable relations with the Government and people of the United States; and we but express what every sensible and educated Englishman feels, that even a political estrangement between the two countries is a serious evil, and that a war between them were such a misery ever to befall-would not only be a scandal to our blood and civilisation, and a special disgrace to the country that wilfully provoked, and did not exhaust all possible modes of preventing it, but the most frightful and unnatural calamity of modern times-not even excepting the great civil war between the North and the South. And while such are the real feelings of our people, it is to be regretted that an underbred and over-sensitive class of Americans-of whom Mr Wells seems to be one-should take the comments of the British press on American affairs, if they happen to be either premonitory or disapprobatory, as deliberate insults, in

tended to stir up national difficulty and ill-will. In the little we have to say in rejoinder to Mr Wells, we desire to treat him with the utmost respect, notwithstanding the fact that the foolish violence of his language does not entitle him to any courtesy at our hands. We honour patriotism, even when it compels the patriot to shut his eyes to unpleasant facts, or his ears to disagreeable arguments; and although we do not admit the strict morality of the maxim sometimes heard in America (and elsewhere), "My country, right or wrong," we can understand how Mr Wells, in his official position, while travelling amongst us, should stand forth as the champion of his country if he thinks that British or any other criticism has been unjust or erroneous, more especially upon that particular question of finance, which he represents in his mission to Europe. But as the over-sensitiveness to which we have alluded as displayed throughout his whole letter, and which breaks forth violently at its conclusion, warps his whole judgment, we desire, before proceeding to discuss the points at issue between him and ourselves, to set him right on the great preliminary question of hostile animus, whether as manifested by ourselves or other writers. He says:

"In the course of an official visit of some weeks in England during the present season, no one thing has more impressed me than the all but universal expression, on the part of those in public and private station with whom I have been brought in contact, of a desire that the most friendly and intimate relations should be maintained and preserved between the United States and Great Britain. This expression I am sure the great majority of my countrymen are prepared to reciprocate; and yet it is difficult for an American to reconcile the private expressions of kindly feelings referred to with the frequent appearance (and shall we say,

countenance by the British public?) of such attacks on the United States as are contained in the article in 'Black

wood,' which we have noticed.

And of one thing further we may be certain, that if it is the object and aim of influential parties on either side of the Atlantic to produce ill-will, distrust, and jealousy between Great Britain and the United States, to ripen possibly at some future time into reciprocal injurious legislation or actual war, continued misrepresentation and abuse will most likely effect the desired result."

What seems so strange to such an obvious novice in the ways of the polite world as Mr Wells is not strange to any English gentleman. As a nation, we are not accustomed to drag politics, especially the unpleasant parts of them, into the private intercourse of society, even among one another, unless after dinner when the ladies have retired, and we are quite certain that we are all of the same party and opinion. When foreigners visit us, we may seek information from them, but we do not enter into disputations with them. It is quite natural, therefore, that in society Mr Wells should have heard exactly what he says he heard, and that he should have the impression-which is certainly a correct one-that the feelings of Englishmen are friendly to his country. But it is also just as natural, though it does not appear so to Mr Wells, that our public journals, which are accustomed to discuss the affairs of their own country, and those of the whole civilised world, with the utmost freedom, and generally with the greatest fairness and ability, should also discuss those of America with nearly as much copiousness and frequency. America interests us too much, financially, commercially, socially, and politically, not to attract a larger share of our attention as a people or a Government than any other country of the world. Mr Wells should remember that our journals are acustomed to speak their minds plainly. They never spare the errors of their own statesmen, legislators, and officials, or

hesitate to lay bare to the gaze of the world many things in English it might be desirable to conceal, life and society, high and low, which if we were half as sensitive to the opinions of our neighbours as some foolish Americans appear to be. And certainly none of them that we have ever seen have said severer things about the United States than they have said and are constantly saying of their own country. And if our eyes do not deceive us, the American journals are even more outspoken than ours, and are accustomed to speak of Great Britain and of British institutions in a manner by no means respectful, and to draw contrasts between their country and ours which are anything but complimentary to the dwellers on this side of the Atlantic. But no man in England ever thinks of taking offence, or of looking at such utterances as provocatives to war. If the attacks are very violent or very silly, we wonder at and forget them, perhaps with the passing thought that they are not really written by Americans, but by expatriated Fenians of whom we are well quit. If they are very ignorant, we pass them by, unless they happen to be, as they sometimes are, very amusing, when we laugh and forget, and bear no rancour. An Englishman is as free in his wit and humour as in his politics. He caricatures John Bull; he enjoys Lord Dundreary, and has not the remotest idea that Brother Jonathan can be offended if he is represented, as he sometimes is in

Punch' or on the stage, as a great gawky boy who has outgrown his trousers, and thinks himself big enough to "whip all creation." The truth is that we are a good-humoured and good-natured people, who can give and take, and bear a great deal in the way of depreciatory criticism without getting into a passion, or imputing bad motives, like Mr Wells and too many of his countrymen. We wish the Americans were more generally of the

« PreviousContinue »