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maintain wages, reduce hours, increase cost of production, lessen profits, diminish capital, and then employ the unemployed.

The fourth argument is that a legal limitation of the hours of labour would be a coercion of trade. As Bradlaugh said, however much a man wanted to work more than eight hours for wages, he would be prevented by law. This compulsion would take away the opportunity of thrift, and curtail the workman's freedom. Inspection would be necessary to prevent men from working more than the legal number of hours at the same rate of wages. Referring to the fact that work is often taken home, Bradlaugh asked,' Are you going to allow the police spies to come into your home and say how long you shall work?' Mr. Hyndman will answer that the espionage would be exercised by a system of fines imposed on the employers, not on the employed. But in many cases it could only be effective by seeing that the workmen themselves did not exceed the hours by private arrangement. His own Bill contemplated informers to be rewarded by half the fines. The whole industry of the country would be blighted by the evil eye of spies and sycophants.

The last argument is the consequence that a coercion so inimical to the freedom of trade would not be obeyed. The legal limitation, in spite of espionage, would be evaded when it became contrary to the wishes of employer and employed, and all the more because the ordinary conscience would not condemn the evasion. Bradlaugh rightly concluded that the hours of labour should be severally settled by conciliatory conferences. It is a matter for contract and for conscience, not for coercion and law. 'Nam si velis quod nondum vetitum est, timeas ne vetere; at si prohibita impune transcenderis, neque metus ultra neque pudor est.' Oxford, Aug. 20.

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THE CRISIS IN LABOUR

The strike of Taff Vale Railway employees took place in August 1900. It lasted for only ten days, and resulted in the return of the men to work without any increase of wages. In the Taff Vale picketing case which followed, the House of Lords, acting as the Final "Court of Appeal, gave a judgement (July 22, 1901) which made trade unions liable to be sued for damages on account of injuries sustained through unlawful conduct of persons acting on their behalf. The second Baron Penrhyn (1836-1907), who had taken over practically bankrupt quarries from his father in 1885, and made them prosperous, was faced with a prolonged strike from 1897 to 1903, although the stoppage was not complete. He refused to negotiate with the union. The strike was formally declared at an end on November 13, 1903. Case used to say: 'Lord Penrhyn is the greatest man in England.'

The strike of the men employed in the Grimsby steam trawlers lasted from the middle of August into October (1901). On September 17 the offices of the Owners' Federation were wrecked in a riot and set on fire.

FROM The Times, OCTOBER 7, 1901.

Some years ago I addressed to you a number of letters, which, if their warnings had received more attention, might have saved some of our present difficulties in dealing with the labour question. For example, whereas I urged that, when crime had been committed, conciliation and arbitration would be injurious because they would condone crime, conciliation and arbitration have since that time been largely established without any distinction of circumstances. But when one contemplates the criminal violence which has attended disputes so near together as that on the Taff Vale Railway in South Wales, that at the Penrhyn Quarries in North Wales, and that now proceeding in the East of England at Grimsby, one cannot help asking this questionHow is it that those who commit these crimes think that the dispute will nevertheless end in their favour? It is because they expect on the one hand to escape punishment, and on the other hand to recover their places by conciliation or arbitration of some kind.

The labouring classes have lately obtained legal and practical powers, some of which may be singly defended, but the whole of which combined and acting together is excessive:

1. They have a legal right to combine to terminate a contract by a strike, which is in itself quite defensible.

2. They have a legal right, which is less defensible, to combine to picket in crowds with a view to information about another's business which they have voluntarily left.

3. They have a practical power, which is wholly indefensible, of committing crimes of intimidation and violence, individually and in crowds, without adequate punishment.

4. They retain a legal right, in spite of previous crimes, as yet unpunished by Government in the law Courts, to propose arbitration by the same Government on the Board of Trade, which uses its quasi-judicial powers without reference to the past with cynical indifference.

5. They have also a practical power of playing upon the sympathies of the public. People, not realizing that injudicious sympathy is a vice, all the more dangerous because it appears to be a virtue, accord indiscriminate sympathy sometimes directly in the form of subscriptions, but more often indirectly in the cheap form of A advising B to be kind to C. The latter plan, frequently adopted by politicians, parsons, and papers, brings the overwhelming force of public opinion to bear on the employers to adopt conciliation and take back their former workmen, no matter what may have been their violence and no matter what may be the sequel.

The result of this excessive combination of powers used together by men in crowds is that workmen, who have not made a business, and can and do leave it whenever they wish, nevertheless obtain the prac

tical control of it, whether they work or not, and even after they have struck and ostensibly terminated their connexion with it. After a strike, armed with their after-powers, as one may call them, they are practically able in the majority of instances to behave as if they were the sole persons who could possibly be employed. They pose as the men', and are commonly called by everybody' the men'; whereas if they were conscious of being 'the former men', and were so treated by the State and society, they would never have dared to behave as they do. Moreover, this practical monopoly reacts on the business even without a strike; employers will grant almost any terms to avoid such a catastrophe. Without being legal owners, a given number of workmen thus become practical masters.

However much this result may recommend itself to the socialistic spirit of the times, or rather because it does so, the consequences are inevitable:

1. Contracts for employment are founded less on freedom than on fear.

2. The consequence to capital is partly its gradual destruction and diversion from this country, but still more the less noticed decrease in its productiveness. We reckon our national capital by millions, and often congratulate ourselves on its increase, but forget that a million now means much less in the way of interest. For example, the problem of railway directors at the present moment is how to save out of a maximum of wages a minimum of dividend.

3. The consequence to labour is a continual diminution of its productiveness, because workmen use their excessive powers to get higher wages for less work. Though there are no doubt many exceptions, the common motto of the British workman is fast becoming, 'Do as little work during as few hours as you can for as much wages as you can screw.' Perhaps we all have some such tendency; but, if it is a human

failing, it is all the more dangerous when a body of men have excessive powers of putting it into action.

4. The whole community suffers from the increased cost of production, which drives up prices and, when they cannot rise, leaves so little margin of profit and interest on capital that employers are tempted to make cheap and inferior articles. Railways also, to take an industry which we all use, find it now so difficult to make both ends meet that they cannot do for the public as much as in prosperous times.

5. Finally, here we have, not perhaps the whole secret, but one of the main causes of the difficulty of competing with foreign countries. When the labouring classes have powers so great as to become practical masters of undertakings made by capital which is not theirs, and to counteract the laws of political economy by terrorism, and by making contracts for wages, hours, and for what they will do and what they will not do, depend on the fears of their employers, how can this great country hope to maintain a commercial position which was won not by fear but by freedom? September 28.

THE FUTURE OF THE NATION

PRINCIPLES AND A PROGRAMME

The sixteenth annual Conference of the Labour Party was opened at Manchester on January 23, 1917, Mr. George Wardle, M.P., Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in the Chair.

FROM The Times, JUNE 11, 1917.

Since the death of Lord Palmerston in 1865 three serious changes have come over this nation. First, having in the course of centuries gradually risen to greatness under a mixed government of King, Lords, and Commons, limiting one another so that the general good might not be sacrificed to the particular good of the one, the few, or the many, the nation

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