'may grow up among men of science just as it does among 'men who practise any other special business. But surely a University is the very place where we should be able to overcome this tendency of men to become, as it were, granu'lated into small worlds, which are all the more worldly for their very smallness. We lose the advantage of having men ' of varied pursuits collected into one body if we do not ' endeavour to imbibe some of the spirit even of those whose 'special branch of learning is different from our own.' Weymouth, August 11, 1916. IV LETTERS ON THE LABOUR QUESTION Sir Edward James Reed, K.C.B., was Member of Parliament for The year 1890 had some serious strikes of gas-workers and dock- FROM The Times, AUGUST 23, 1890. Sir Edward Reed has addressed to you two letters on the labour question at Cardiff, which, though primarily intended to defend himself and the recent strikers, really open up the wider question between free labour' and what we may call the monopoly of employment'. There can be no doubt on two points-the first, that the railway companies in South Wales could have obtained new servants in the places of the strikers; the second, that they were prevented by force, without which the strikers could not have been successful. The perusal of your reports of the strike (August 8-15) shows that the railway men on strike roughly handled those who refused to come out' and prevented others from being employed by means of pickets; while they were assisted by the co-operation of outsiders. The colliers refused to cut coal and the dockers to ship it if' black-legs' were used to carry it; the Amalgamated Society of Engineers requested its members to prevent workmen coming to Cardiff; Mr. Wilson, Secretary of the Seamen's and Firemen's Union, threatened to stop all Cardiff vessels from getting men; Mr. Ben Tillett was there; and Sir Edward. Reed admits that he promised to hold up the grim visage of democracy'. I mention these facts, not from any wish to rake up the past, but because they are examples of what is becoming the habitual conduct of a strike, and the question arises, What will be the result if workmen are to be allowed not only to strike, but also to establish perforce a monopoly of employment by preventing new hands from being employed? The railway companies had an undoubted right to employ new servants, and, in fact, the very same right of free contract as that by which the old servants originally engaged themselves and afterwards terminated the contract by striking. Similarly the strikers had no right to prevent new servants from engaging themselves. They committed the illegal acts of preventing the companies from conducting their business and of intimidating those who were willing to work it. Yet Sir Edward Reed, in his letter last Saturday, said that the conduct of the railway men was throughout most exemplary and absolutely free from any tendency to violence'. To-day he asks, 'Amidst the conflicts of war, how many deeds are done of which neither of the high combating parties approve?' He has apparently forgotten that strikers are not belligerents, but citizens of a State, and that by roughly treating men who were actually working the engines the strikers in South Wales broke the laws of the State of which they are citizens. Similar illegal acts have become a feature of strikes. . . This violent and illegal monopoly of an employment, if allowed to continue, will not terminate in isolated acts of injustice. In his letter of this morning Sir Edward Reed says that a strike in one trade paralyses the whole district. But it would not have this effect if the employers in that trade were allowed to act upon their right of employing new servants. On the other hand, if they are compelled by force either to shut up shop' or to re-engage the strikers, the latter will have the power of increasing their demands until their wages more and more absorb the profits. In other words, a forcible monopoly of employment will make the workmen who exercise it the real owners. Now, many of the employers in the railway companies, for example, are shareholders, who are often far from rich; and, in fact, one of the railway men, who dared to drive a train at the beginning of the recent strike, was 'Thomas John, who, being a shareholder in the Taff Vale Company', says your report (The Times, August 8), 'had deserted the ranks of the strikers'. It would be a national disgrace if men, who have been paid for their work and have laid out no capital, should, by a series of violent strikes, dispossess poor shareholders who have invested their hard-earned savings. Nor is this all; through the combination of unions the workmen of a given district, if allowed to monopolize employments in that district, will become the real owners of every industry in the district, by a series of violent strikes so organized as to prevent new workmen coming into the district. . . . It is not to be denied that a section of workmen may enrich themselves by this unjust and illegal process. Meanwhile, they are not benefiting all labourers, for they are preventing others from being employed. In these labour troubles it has been astounding how strikers have been able to assault, to intimidate, to prevent poor men from working, who are sorely in need of employment, and how little legal protection and what scant sympathy has been accorded to the so-called 'blacklegs', who are the poor that cry, and have none to help them. What are the causes of this strange departure from English justice and generosity? One cause is that men have got it into their heads that the strikes are a struggle of labour against capital, and therefore of the poor against the rich. Superficially this is true, and in former strikes it was the whole truth. But nowadays the violent strike is also a struggle of labour against labour, of those who can, at all events, afford to strike against those who want work-of the employed against the unemployed. We are constantly in danger of forgetting that there are higher and lower classes in the ranks of labour itself. There is another cause of the want of sympathy with the 'blacklegs. It is thought that they ought to be members of the unions. There is an undefined feeling', which is thus expressed by Sir Edward Reed this morning: 'In the long run there can be little doubt, I think, that working men will become so generally combined in trade organi'zations that they will feel themselves safe, and not unfair, in 'making the complete organization of all labour a condition of supplying their own.' say In order to dispel this vision by reality, I might that even if there is little doubt of its realization in the long run, there is no doubt at all that to prevent a non-unionist from working at the present moment is unjust and illegal. I might also point out that the desirability of the end does not justify the illegal means of forcing non-unionists into unions, and preventing them from working if they refuse. I might further appeal to the prophets of a general organization of all labour to use their imagi nations and ask themselves whether its formation could be tolerated by any Government; for it is certain that, when formed, it would be so strong as to destroy the existing Government, and become itself a government, which would cease to be the protector of all rights, and become a huge trade union. But what would be the economical working? That is the real question. A general organization of labour would ruin this country. The threat of a general strike would, no doubt, raise wages at first. But a general rise in S |