commercial and social prosperity of the community of which the board formed the centre.

To say that there will be a rapid adoption of such means for rendering the clashing interests of employers and employed amenable to rational counsel-intelligent in its character, and regular in its action-would be, perhaps, too sanguine a prediction. Surely, however, we are warranted in looking for a more rapid realisation of them in the future than in the past. Employers have often hitherto regarded the claims of the employed to union, and their action in that direction, as an attack upon their interests. Whenever this idea is laid aside, another idea that of dealing with such unions most effectively -will take its place. Employers naturally must possess more education and development of the intelligence than the employed; and it is, therefore, from their side that the advances in the direction of supplanting brute force by reason are naturally are naturally to be looked for. Yet necessity has sometimes led the workmen to make the first advances. When intelligence on the one side and necessity on the other incline bodies of men towards each other, there but remains that application of special knowledge and energy, on the part of a few leading individuals, to cement a union. It is for some of the more prominent employers to do this, and the recognition of the responsibility will be the first step towards it. There can probably be no more successful way in which to cause that responsibility to be felt, than by the promulgation of the doctrine that every one who has attained a position of comparative comfort is bound to extend his hand toward others and towards the masses of the community who labour with their hands, and who have only a feeble opportunity of ever looking beyond the limited circle of their own daily wants. Men who toil with their hands from week to week, and month to month, have little oppor

tunity of seeing far around them, so as to discern the general influences that affect their position for good or for evil. But men who have attained the position of large employers, who in the very course of business need to consult many men and consider many interests, and who, besides, have always more or less of leisure in which they may take a more extensive view of the situation, are they who must naturally guide those who are unable to guide themselves. From large employers, therefore, the first movements towards the adoption of specific measures for the general benefit should come.

Masons are probably more refractory than other classes of workmen, which arises doubtless from the fact that they have a virtual monopoly of work within their district, for the articles of their manufacture-viz. stone buildings-cannot be imported, like the articles of most other trades, from a distance. Yet they are amenable to reason, and they must, like other workmen, feel the severity of strikes when they occur. Mr. Crompton says:-The opposition of the masons is to be overcome. The leaders are most desirous for a permanent system of conciliation, to replace the present antagonism. They would do all that in them lies to influence their men in the right direction. It cannot be doubted that if the master builders in London were really to advance towards the men, to establish a board, inviting the masons to join with the other trades, the force of public opinion and that of their fellow workmen, and their own common sense, would sooner or later produce a great impression upon them. All men on these subjects have undergone great change, and there are plenty of reasons why certain changes should be made less rapidly in some trades than in others.'1

And, again, Mr. Crompton says:-'To me it seems

1 Industrial Conciliation, pp. 115, 116.

difficult to point to any set of men in history, certainly to none in modern history, on whom a greater and more important duty rested, than at the present moment devolves upon the English capitalists. They have to solve the industrial problem of the world; to discover the truths on which it must depend; and, putting aside the preconceived notions and prejudices of the past, to urge forward the final, and industrial, and social reorganisation towards which we are now moving. There cannot be a nobler or more sacred work for men to do.'1

At the present time there generally exist two separate objects in the organisation of trades unions. One of these is to establish concerted action, and to accumulate the funds to maintain such action in the event of a strike, a lock-out, or sometimes inability to procure work; the other object consists in the creation of funds by which those who are sick, or are superannuated, are relieved, and also for insurance against death, commonly with the view of meeting the funeral expenses. But these means and funds are not kept as applicable to the separate objects contemplated, but generally form one common fund, the result being that the members may at any time lose all their contributions towards benefit objects from the necessary expenses of a strike. All the funds that have been contributed for both purposes are expended on the one, and the law provides no remedy to the sick or dying workman. As Mr. William Thomas Thornton remarks :— 'All unions which seek, as most do, to combine the purposes of "benefit" with those of "trade" societies, rest upon bases financially unsound. The incomings of the richest among them are insufficient even for their ordinary and calculable liabilities; and they are liable, in addition, to extraordinary calls, the amount of which cannot possibly be calculated beforehand. Few, if any, other unionists 1 Industrial Conciliation, p. 166.

tax themselves nearly as heavily as the amalgamated engineers and the amalgamated carpenters, who pay 18. a head weekly, or three or four times the more usual rate of 3d. or 4d.; but, according to the principles by which the proceedings of ordinary insurance companies are regulated, the taxation of these engineers and carpenters ought to be three or four times heavier still, in order to provide duly for the allowances which their associations are pledged to make for the support of sick and superannuated, and for the burial of deceased members, independently of their miscellaneous obligations towards members who are desirous of emigrating, or who have lost or broken their tools. It is true that the proportion of its promises to pay, which a "trades" union is likely to be called upon to keep, is smaller than that of an ordinary life insurance company. Almost every one who has begun to insure his life, goes on regularly paying the premium, until, on his death, the company has to pay in turn to his heirs; whereas, it is a very common thing for unionists, after paying their weekly groats or shillings for a year or two, to stop their subscriptions on changing their place of residence, and thereby to forfeit all future claim upon their society, leaving to it all their past contributions as so much pure gain. The amalgamated engineers during the first sixteen years of their existence profited in this manner at the expense of 13,317 of their

members.' 1

And, again, Mr. Thornton says:- No definite provision can be depended upon for an indefinite drain. No subscriptions, no accumulations can afford complete security for ordinary claims, if these are liable at any moment to be indefinitely swollen by irregular and extraordinary claims of unforeseeable amount. As long as the cost of a strike or a lock-out is held to constitute a first lien on

1 On Labour, p. 328.

union finde, no inicnlet can be certain that his application for the alperannuation or other allowances, to which he may have become entitled, will not be addressed to an empty exchequer I

In the evidence given by the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, M.P., before the Friendly Societies Commission, he says: A great many trade societies are formed as a benefit society and a trade society, and the benefits which they promise are out of all proportion to the payments, and can only be made up by arbitrary calls in a case of emergency. Hardly one of them will stand an investigation. I think that that is a great cruelty and a great fraud upon the working classes, and one which it is quite in the power of the government to stop.'

A correspondent in the Pall Mall Budget, of October 19, 1877, remarks upon the abuses that are possible at present as follows:-The Trades Union Act of 1871, as first drawn, provided that, as in the case of insurance companies and friendly societies, the funds contributed to the unions for distinct and specific benefit society purposes should be kept apart, and not all confused in one fund applicable as a primary object to fighting or strike purposes. Surely, nothing could be more reasonable or honest.. .. But the trades union leaders did not see the case in this ordinary light; . . . the Act was allowed to pass with special clauses which permit trades unions to be exempt from the obligations placed on insurance companies and friendly societies as regards the separation of funds received as the purchase money of specified benefits. Nay, more, trades unions need not be registered, nor require security from their treasurers, nor separately provide for expenses of management; and, still further, the Act provides that no court of law shall have power to give redress to any member who considers himself

1 On Labour, p. 331.