to ever been the favourite theory of trades' unions, a uniform rate of wages. Now, a uniform rate of wages would ultimately produce a uniform kind and class of workmen. The injustice and absurdity of such an arrangement were apparent. Under a system where wages were uniform, young men when out of their apprenticeship found themselves at once on a level with the best workmen; there was nothing more to hope or strive for. Intelligence, application, ability, or good conduct, brought neither fee nor reward. A uniform rate of wages was unjust to the employers in busy seasons: they were obliged to have bad workmen when good workmen were not to be found, and pay for the bad article the same price as they did for the good. If workmen were wise, they would never attempt in any way to obstruct or annoy the operations of capital—its accumulation was the life of labour. Wherever capital was plentiful, labour was comfortable and wages high. Trades' unions impress upon workmen the necessity of union to resist the encroachments of capital; it was to be looked upon and treated as their enemy. When the workingclasses were fully employed, and required no support from trades' unions, it was precisely then that trades' unions became strong; when trade was bad and workmen idle, unions ceased to exist. Instead of being a tower of strength to working men, trades' unions were a source of weakness. They were regulated on principles at variance with the maxims of political economy, universal experience, and common sense; and any association which attempted to substitute official zeal and formal regulations in place of individual self-reliance, would fail in improving the character or the conditions of men." At the London meeting of the Association in 1862, Mr. J. M. Ludlow, a Barrister-at-Law, not more distinguished for his ability than for his unceasing endeavours to promote the welfare of the working-classes, thus eloquently set forth the necessity of union between employers and employed: Assuredly a state of open or smothered hostility is de 66 structive of the true interests both of capital and labour. The great point in this age of exaggerated individualism is to teach employers and employed that they live not to themselves alone, that the eyes of their fellow-men are upon them, that they are members of the great body of the English nation, charged with a great function which they have to fulfil in due harmony with the rest of their fellow-members, and for the common welfare of the whole body;-that they have no more right to fall out and disagree amongst themselves, and cause inconvenience and ruin perhaps to others by their disagreements, than the hand has to tear the face or the breast;—that the very fact of their doing so is a proof of disease or madness. Lastly, that the successive abolition, under a free-trade policy, of all those legal fetters which in almost every country weigh, indeed, upon industry, yet in doing so, nevertheless, to some extent hinder its worst internal convulsions, only renders it the more incumbent upon them to submit to the control of an enlightened public opinion, of an enlightened public morality, so that having no law,' they may indeed 'be a law unto themselves.' Combinations and strikes have been almost defended as likely to lead to a closer union of capital and labour than is likely to be accomplished by the system of giving service for wages. The following was the speech of Mr. Henry Faucett, M.A., in 1859, as expounded at Bradford :— "Many able writers have remarked that the English are apt to forget that there can be any other social arrangement than employers and the employed, who are simply hired labourers. Manifestly, such a division is not in itself desirable, for can there be anything more unfortunate or more sorrowful to contemplate than that masses of intelligent beings from childhood to old age should toil in a work in which they have no interest, and that between themselves and those for whom they toil the attachment should be no more than that between a buyer and seller?" The great principles of co-operation, thus intended as leading to a more perfect alliance of labour and capital, will be treated in the concluding chapters. QUESTIONS UPON CHAPTER XXV. 1. What is the result on wages of increasing capital? 2. What are the conditions which it is the business of mercantile knowledge to apply? 3. What does political economy teach with regard to wages ? 4. What is the principle of socialism? 5. Give an instance of the triumph of political economy over a form of combination opposed to its principles. 6. What is the cause that all combinations to effect what competition cannot accomplish terminate in defeat? 7. What is the chief cause of the impulse given to all the arts of construction? 8. What has been the effect on wages of this increase in capital? 9. Repeat the opinion of a working-man as to the evils of trades' unions. 10. Repeat the opinion of a working-man as to a uniform rate of wages. CHAPTER XXVI. Competition of unskilled labour-Competition of uncapitalled labourItinerant traders-The contrast of organized industry-Factory labour and garret labour. THE process which has been steadily going on amongst us for increasing the demand for skill and trustworthiness, has no doubt produced a diminution of the funds for employ in which neither skill nor trust is required. Thus a great amount of suffering is constantly presented to our view, which benevolence has set about relieving in our time with a zeal which shows how fully it is acknowledged that the great principle, to " Love one another," is not to evaporate in sentiment, but is to be ripened in action. Ast a nation, England was never indifferent to the command, "Feed the hungry." But the "understanding heart" has discovered that many of the miseries of society may be relieved by other modes as effectually as by almsgiving, and perhaps much more effectually. Whether some of these efforts may be misdirected, in no degree detracts from the value of the principle which seeks the prevention of misery rather than the relief. One of the most obvious forms in which misery has presented itself in our large cities, and especially in London, has arisen from the competition amongst labour which may be called unskilled, because there are a numerous unemployed body of labourers at hand to do the same work, in which there is no special skill. This was the case with the sempstresses of London; and the famous 'Song of the Shirt' struck a note to which there was a responding chord in every bosom. But the terrible evils of the low wages of shirt-making would not have been relieved by an universal agreement of the com munity to purchase none but shirts that, by their price, could afford to give higher wages to the shirt-makers. The higher wages would have infallibly attracted more women and more children to the business of shirt-making. The straw-plaiters, the embroiderers, the milliners, would have rushed to shirt-making; and, unless there had been a constantly-increasing rate of price charged to the wearers of shirts, and therefore a constant forced contribution to the capital devoted to shirt-making, the payment to one shirtmaker would have come to be divided amongst two; and the whole body, thus doubled by a rate of wages disproportioned to the rate of other labour requiring little peculiar skill, would have been in a worse condition in the end than in the beginning. The Whatever suffering may arise out of the competition that must exist between mere manual labour, and also between that labour which is displayed in the practice of some art easily learnt, capable of exercise by both sexes, and in which very young children may readily engage-it is scarcely fair that those who witness the suffering of the employed at very low wages should instantly conclude that the employers are extortioners and oppressors. A branch of trade which seems inconsiderable as regards the article produced is often found in a particular locality, and furnishes employment to large numbers. In the London parish of Cripplegate there were great quantities of tooth-brushes made. handle is formed by the lathe, in which skilled labour is employed. The hair is cut by machinery. The holes in the handle in which the hair is inserted are also pierced by machines. But the insertion of the hair, and the fastening it by wire, are done by hand. Excellent people, who, with a strong sense of Christian duty, enter "ragged huts" to relieve and to advise, see a number of women and children daily labouring at the one task of fastening the hair in tooth-brushes; and they learn that the wages paid are miserably low. They immediately conclude that the wages should be higher; because in the difference between the |