and more of each capitalist as the condition of supplying him with any labour at all, and, we may add, by the formidable weapon of the boycott, as Mr. John Burns now calls it. Sir Edward Reed has endeavoured to discountenance this fear. This арpears to me', he says, 'about equivalent to saying that when, by general organization of their labour, workmen put themselves into a position for contracting on fair terms for the exercise of that labour, they will immediately proceed to behave foolishly, so foolishly, indeed, as to throw themselves out of work and starve themselves and their wives and children. I have no sympathy with, I cannot even understand, such fears.' No; he does not understand these fears, partly because he shuts his eyes to facts, though your labour reports and your article on labour questions this very day might undeceive him of any optimism; and partly because he is too hasty to comprehend the complex continuity of human affairs. If there was one moment, a parte ante, when labour was being generally organized, and then another moment, a parte post, when the general organization of labour would have either to give the whole body of capitalists sufficient profit to remain on the spot, or else to starve the workmen, it is very likely that the workmen would pause and reflect on Bastiat's maxim, 'Le capital favorise toujours plus le travail par sa présence que par son absence.' But this immediate and wholesale transition is the very thing which never happens, except in the abstractions of incomplete thinkers. As I said in my previous letter,' Capitalists can gradually and, so to speak, imperceptibly depart with their capital and their intelligence.' Capital drops from a country, as it were, in driblets. You, Sir, give an instance this morning, when you point out that in consequence of the dock strike British capital has quietly dropped off to the Hamburg docks. Capital,

drop by drop, streams from a country. In this gradual and imperceptible process, the general organization of workmen would first perforce exact higher wages; then come higher prices; next the departure of the consumers' money abroad; then the fall of prices; next the diminution of the capitalist's profits; and finally, the exodus of one capitalist after another to more profitable countries. This latent process takes time, escapes notice, and is only felt in its ulterior consequences-when it is too late.

THE TRADE UNION CONGRESS

The Trade Union Congress of 1890 was held in the first week of September at Liverpool. The subjects most debated were the proposal for an eight-hours day', and proposals for co-operation or concerted action between unions; but Case drew attention to the most dangerous proposal, to alter the law of conspiracy. In this year there were labour strikes in all the Australian colonies. These strikes were especially serious in Melbourne and Sydney. The Annual Register for that year states: At length after being prolonged for a period of over ten weeks, the strike, which was more general than any hitherto experienced in England or in any British colony, terminated in the "unconditional submission of the unions, in spite of the large sums of 'money which had been subscribed for their assistance from England ' and from other countries. . . . The result is one which will generally tend to promote the interests of free labour and to advance the principle of free contract throughout the British world.'

FROM The Times, SEPTEMBER 15, 1890.

On the surface, the congress at Liverpool appeared to be a disunited mob, from which there was little to fear, because its members fell out with one another, and nothing to learn, because it fell into the economical, or rather uneconomical, blunder of supposing that this populous country could keep everybody employed either in private or in public workshops at trade union wages for a compulsorily limited number of hours a day, without either raising the cost of production or diminishing its amount; without driving customers to foreign mar

kets and capitalists to foreign investments; without levelling the grades of workmen and crippling the energy and thrift of rising men; without producing a general struggle to eat as much and labour as little as possible': and without affecting the freedom of man to use his powers according to his lights and his rights. But beneath the surface, and behind the fallacy of free trade without free labour, there lurked an animus of a really dangerous kind. The congress voted the eight-hours day by no very large majority. But it was unanimous in recognizing violence.

On the first day, September 1, the first general question was the strike in Australia. It had been universally known from the latest intelligence in the papers for at least a week that this is a violent strike, conducted by assault, by intimidation, and by boycotting. On September 1 the latest intelligence contained the announcement that the Australian Governments, both at Melbourne and at Sydney, had finally decided to protect the non-strikers from the violence of the strikers. Yet on this very day, with the news of the day fresh to hand, Mr. John Burns moved, That this congress hereby expresses its heartfelt and cordial sympathy with the workers in Australia now on strike in defence of the union principles, and pledges itself to use every effort to obtain monetary help, &c.' Not a dissentient voice was raised to object that it was a violent strike, that citizens of an Imperial State were being asked to subscribe in direct opposition to the Governments of their own colonies, and that the whole body of trade unionists were committing themselves to the doctrine that an illegal strike not merely against capitalists, not merely against blacklegs, but against a Government is a strike in defence of the union principles'. The motion was unanimously and enthusiastically carried (The Times, September 2).

To come nearer home, the Trade Union Congress

T

proceeded to pass unanimous resolutions affecting the only law which can protect the community from conspiracies of violent strikers. The English law is as lenient as possible to combinations of workmen. They are no longer regarded as coalitions which, as dangerous to the public, thereby become conspiracies; they are not unlawful by reason merely that they are in restraint of trade; their members may attend at, or near, a place of business in order thereby to obtain or communicate information. They become illegal conspiracies only when they proceed to coercion. Section 7 of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act regards as a criminal every person who, with a view to compel any other person to abstain from doing or to do any act which such other person has a legal right to do or abstain from doing, uses violence to him, or intimidates him, or persistently follows him, or watches the house where he resides or works, &c. Before the congress trade unionists were aware of the lenity with which the law draws the line between peaceful and violent picketing. A Trade Unionist,' writing in your columns about the approaching congress (The Times, August 30), said: 'Peaceable persuasion at the gates of the yard or the shops of the factory is all that is desired, and the adoption of any other means is contrary to law and justice, and should be condemned by all trade unionists.' What then did the congress do?

On the first day of the congress the report of the retiring Parliamentary Committee was read, and contained a statement of the law, and of its sufficiency, in the following words:

'The law is, however, perfectly clear and cannot be mistaken ' in the permission it gives to peaceful picketing. If those engaged in trade disputes necessitating this means of pro'tection would obtain the information, which they could ' easily get, before undertaking the work, there is no reason why they might not conduct picketing successfully, and 'without any liability to prosecution.'

In these circumstances any body of men who wished to retain a reputation for justice would have let well alone. Yet on September 4-the eight hours day-Mr. J. Cronin (London) moved an instruction to the Parliamentary Committee to introduce into Parliament a Bill repealing Section 7 of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, and other clauses dangerous to picketing and watching premises. This was adopted' (The Times, September 5). Again, on September 6, Mr. Ben Tillett, in a motion directed against 'commodities made by blackleg labour', pledged the congress' to influence their constituents to boycott all goods made under unfair conditions', with the addendum' that a trade union mark be placed on manufactured goods in transit'; and the resolution was passed unanimously' (The Times, September 8).

Those resolutions, read in the light of recent events, mark a step in the downward progress of trade unionism from practising to preaching violence. Before the congress sat various strikers had committed violent acts, in the heat of the moment; violence was becoming habitual by a sort of unconscious infection. But now the congress, by deliberately resolving to repeal the law against such acts of violence done by combinations of workmen, has expressed its approval of the growing habit of violence and its wish to see legalized a conspiracy of violence, intimidation, and persecution, to compel the unemployed to abstain from their legal right to be employed. Nor is this all; by unanimously resolving to influence trade unions to boycott' commodities made by 'blackleg' labour, the congress has committed itself to the unfortunately common practice of breaking the law before it is repealed, for boycotting has been defined by the Judges as a system of intimidation which is illegal. The real point of the Trade Union Congress is the double