may suggest to us in 1890 the conclusion that the first point in the constitution of a Conciliation Board should be the provision that in any trade dispute the board will not admit as a party to the reference any person who, or any body of persons which, by any illegal means has prevented any other persons from being employed in, or has interfered with the conduct of, the business concerned in that dispute.

Obsta principiis. If some provision of this kind be inserted in the constitution of every Conciliation Board it will help to stop the determined attempt to destroy the freedom of labour. It will also keep the boards in harmony with the law of the land; without requiring that English Conciliation Boards should be so exact an imitation of French Conseils des Prud'hommes as to be established by the Government, they ought to be like them at any rate in being subject to the Supreme Courts of law. A Conciliation Board is no fit asylum against a Criminal Court. There is no remedy against violence except the law, backed by the loyalty of law-abiding citizens. The public justice of the Law Court, not the private justice of the Conciliation Board, is the only means of ensuring equal justice to all against violence.

If, on the other hand, workmen are allowed first to strike, next to forcibly prevent new servants from being employed in lieu of themselves, and finally to go through the farce of an amicable conference with their maltreated masters before a Conciliation Board consisting of representatives of capitalists and workmen, who are not necessarily, be it remembered, directly interested in the concern affected, the following disastrous consequences must ensue. In the first place, a Conciliation Board, recognizing force, will occupy a wrong position-it will commit itself to an unjust recognition of a forcible monopoly of employment; it will be condoning injustice to employer and unemployed, who are willing to make a

contract but are forcibly prevented; it will become the cat's-paw of close unions, such as that which the dock labourers are at this moment forming under Mr. John Burns. In the second place, a Conciliation Board, recognizing force, will occupy a false position-it will have no data whereby to determine the question of wages. When labour is free this question is decided by the relations between the demand and the supply of labour: if the demand exceed the supply, wages should rise; if the supply exceed the demand, wages should fall. In such circumstances, the decision of a Conciliation Board would be comparatively simple, and its mediation most useful. But if force has been used by strikers to stop the supply of labour, the Conciliation Board would be at a loss to determine what relation the unknown supply of the unemployed may bear to the known demand of the employer. Its decision would have to be given in ignorance of the facts, as well as under the influence of violence.

The result of Conciliation Boards, recognizing force, would be that the workmen, having stopped the voluntary and natural competition for employment by a violent and artificial monopoly of employment, would be enabled, under the sanction of a powerful and popular body, to screw up the wages of a district and fancy themselves growing rich, until they raised the cost of production to such a height that consumers would buy in a cheaper market abroad, and depressed the profits of the capitalists to such a depth that they would seek a better profit abroad; and then the workmen would find that they had lost their livelihood on the departure of their real ally, the capitalist.

Sure as this effect would be under Conciliation Boards, recognizing force, in each district, it would follow more surely still in a general organization of all labour, because, as I said in my previous letter, the whole body of workmen would demand more

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 appears 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

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