^taming anb ^abor. LIBRARY II OF THE I University of Illinois, CLASS. BOOK. VOLUME. ik Accession No. Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/industrialremuneOOunse INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFEEEXCE LONDON : PKINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREF.T SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION THE EEPOET OF THE PEOCEEDING8 AND PAPEES READ IN PRINCE’S HALL, PICCADILLY UNDER THE PRESIDENCY OF THE Right Hon. SIR CHARLES W. DILKE, Bart., M.P. On the 28th, 29th, and 30th January 1886 CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED LONDON, PAKIS, NEW YORK, AND MELBOURNE 1885 *** Each AuthoT and S^eakei' has had the ojjpoTtunity of correcting his remarhs before and is solely responsible for the state- ments of fact and expressions of opinion contained in his contributions to the volume PEEFACE. In the spring of 1884 a gentleman of Edinburgh determined to devote a considerable sum of money to the purpose of ‘ keep- ing before the public mind this vital question, viz. — What are the best means, consistent with justice and equity, for bringing about a more equal division of the daily products of industry between Capital and Labour, so that it may become possible for all to enjoy a fair share of material comfort and intellectual culture, possible for all to lead a dignified life, and less difficult for all to lead a good life ? ’ In response to his request. Sir Thomas Brassey, Mr. John Burnett, Mr. Thomas Burt, the Earl of Dalhousie, Professor Foxwell, Mr. Kobert Griffen, and Mr. Frederic Harrison con- sented to act as the Trustees of a sum of 1,000^., which should be devoted to prosecuting an inquiry into the question, Is the present system or manner luhereby the products of industry are distributed betiveen the various persons and classes of the community satisfactory ? Or, if not, are there any means by which that system coidd be improved ? They determined to invite the Statistical Society to assist in the undertaking, and a Joint Committee was formed, consisting of the Trustees and the following nominees of the Statistical Society: Sir Kawson W. Kawson, Professor Leone Levi, Mr. F. Gr. P. Neison, Major Kitchie,^ Mr. Stephen Bourne, Mr. David ‘ Major Kitchie, M.P., was, owing to other engagements, unable to serve on the committee. VI PREFACE. Dale, and the Eev. W. Cunningham. The Joint Committee subsequently co-opted five additional members : Mr. A. H. D. Acland, Mr. W. Crawford, Mr. W. H. Hey, Mr. B. Jones, and Mr. K. D. Roberts. The Committee determined that they could best carry out the purpose of the trust by organising a Conference, at which the interests of Capital and Labour respectively should be adequately represented by practical men. They determined to invite papers bearing on the question, and to give opportunity for the thorough discussion of the statements made in those papers. They announced their willingness to receive offers of papers and information as to trade societies or other bodies that would wish to be represented by delegates at the Confer- ence, and suggested the following points as specially worthy of consideration : — 1. The existing system by which the products of industry are distributed. 2. Do any artificial and remediable causes infiuence pre- judicially (а) The stability of industrial employment ; (б) The steadiness of rates of wages ; (c) The well-being of the working classes ? 3. How far, in what manner, and by what means would the more general distribution of capital, or the State direction of capital, contribute, or not contribute, to (a) An increase in the products of industry ; (b) The well-being of the classes dependent upon the use of capital ? (Co-operative production, profit- sharing, &c.) 4. How far, in what manner, and by what means, would (1) a more general ownership of land (peasant proprietorship), of an interest in land (tenant right), or (2) the State ownership of land, conduce, or not conduce, to (a) The increased production of wealth ; (b) The welfare of the classes affected by the change ? PEEFACE. vii 5. Does existing legislation, or the incidence of existing legislation, affect prejudicially (a) The production of industrial wealth ; {!)) The well-being of the classes engaged in the pro- duction ; (c) The natural or the most beneficial distribution of the accumulating products of national industry (in- cluding Succession Duties, Friendly Societies, Insur- ance, &c.) ? Can any of these be promoted by changes in existing legis- lation or taxation ? This announcement was made in the London and provincial papers on September 8, 1884. On the same day an article appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette from the pen of Mr. F. Harrison, which gives a clear statement of the purposes of the founder of the trust, and the hopes entertained by those engaged in carrying it out. A NEW INDUSTRIAL INQUIRY. By Mr. Frederic Harrison. As I have known something of the projected Conference on In- dustrial Questions from the first, I may be permitted to say a few words as to its scope and nature. A gentleman of Edinburgh, who prefers to remain anonymous, some time ago consul ted several persons known to take an interest in industrial problems, as to how he could best devote a certain portion of his fortune, so as ‘ to make some pro- vision for keeping before the public mind this vital question, namely — What are the best meam, consistent with equity and jiistice, for bringing about a more equal division of the accumxdated wealth of this country^ and a more equal division of the daily 'products of indus- try between Caq)ital and Labour, so that it may become possible for all to enjoy a fair share of material comfort and intellectual cidture, possible for all to lead a dignified life, and less difficult for all to lead a, good life ? ’ He received in reply various suggestions, and, after long deliberation, decided to name trustees to whom he should make over an ample fund, authorising them to arrange, in any ways they Vlll PREFACE. thought best, for the holding of a public Conference on some definite industrial question, limiting the discussion to a moderately small number of representative men, nominated by well-known bodies having an industrial interest from many different sides. The original Trustees are Sir Thomas Brassey, Mr. J. Burnett (of the Engineers^ Society), Mr. T. Burt, M.P., Lord Dalhousie, Mr. Robert Giffen (President of the Statistical Society), Professor H. S. Eoxwell (of Cambridge), and Mr. Frederic Harrison. The seven Trustees held a series of meetings, wherein they considered the best means of giving effect with complete impartiality to the purposes of the trust. This was simply to keep before the public mind the enormous disparity of comfort resulting from our modern industrial life ; which is, as the original letter puts it, at once a great evil in itself and a great danger to the commonwealth. There are never wanting, of course, inquiries and discussions as to alleged defects in our industrial system ; but they are not always fruitful in result, and they usually start from preconceived doctrines and represent one side or one interest. The Trustees have sought to originate an inquiry which should not start from any doctrine, and which should be open to all interests. They have sought to reduce to a minimum that inevitable part of every inquiry into these wide questions which is desultory, unscientific, anarchical, or doctrinaire. They would wish to have the debate limited to those who have some- thing to tell us that will stand sifting ; and at the same time they do not exclude from a fair hearing any serious opinion or school. It seemed to them that these conditions would be best attained if they proposed to one of the established associations to undertake the in- quiry with a special Committee and fund. Ultimately the Statistical Society undertook the task, and named a Sub-Committee for the purpose. As the published list will show, the Committee now in- cludes the names of men known as trained officials and administrators, statisticians, and economists; leaders of the workmen’s movements and societies ; men representing great estates, and men representing popular constituencies ; as well as several of the economists of the younger school, both at Oxford and Cambridge, who have applied themselves ardently to the study of social problems. The idea in forming the Committee was to insure the presence of men trained to business and scientific statistics, who should be ready to look at those questions from the point of view of labour as well as capital, and v ho would not come to the inquiry with any hide-bound doctrines whatever. PREFACE. IX After much deliberation, the scheme of inquiiy adopted by the Committee is this. They would begin by holding a Conference, consisting of 150 members, not casually selected from a body of sub- scribers, much less open indiscriminately to all comers, but consisting entirely of delegates selected by a great many public associations representing labour as well as capital, or occupied in the investiga- tion of industrial questions. Thus trades unions and chambers of commerce, co-operative and economic societies, together with all similar associations dealing with industry, either in the interests of the workmen or employer, or in the interests of society generally, would be invited to name representatives to the Conference. And, alongside of this and the public discussion of such questions, the Committee would invite papers for publication, and endeavour to collect trustworthy returns on selected points. After the Conference is concluded, the scheme contemplates the publication of the discus- sions, together with such papers, returns, and other information as may appear worthy of a permanent form. In this way, it is hoped, something may be done to form materials for a practical hand-book on industrial problems, the result of the work of many minds, dealing with the subject under very different conditions. The type to which such a volume or volumes would belong is the very remarkable and authoritative Report on Trade Societies, issued by the Social Science Association in 1860. That volume was the real source of almost all the knowledge before the public down to the Reports of the Royal Commission, in 1867-8-9, which, indeed, in no way super- seded its usefulness. It is remarkable how many of the men who worked on that Committee of 1860, and prepared the volume that resulted from its discussions, have since been eminent in the service of the State, or in the cause of science. When men like the late Mr. Fawcett, Mr. Forster, Mr. Shaw Lefevre, and the late Charles Buxton, Frederick Maurice, and Professor Jevons combined their experience in one joint investigation, the result was at once impartial and trust- worthy. Whether the inquiry about to be undertaken will bear fruit in similar usefulness will depend on the answers given to the invitations by the public bodies and eminent authorities to whom they are ad- dressed. The subject is, of course, in one sense, a more difficult one to grasp, because it is not confined to the association of a particular class, but relates to the field of labour in general. For the details of the scheme now submitted to the public the original Trustees are not, as a body, responsible, and by devolving their trust for execution on X PEEFACE. the Statistical Society and its sub-committee, they have ceased directly to control the organisation. But it is their earnest hope that some little thing may be done to keep before the eyes of the public the need of unremitting efforts to mitigate the acknowledged dangers which beset our industrial life. Men like Mr. Burt and Sir Thomas Brassey, Mr. Burnett and Mr. Giffen, view that industrial life from very difierent points of view, and they often differ widely as to what the dangers are, and how they could be lessened. But they have felt, like all their colleagues in the trust, and of the Special Committee of organisation, that they ought not to decline the task thrown on them by a man of generous public spirit, who is as completely free from any personal object in founding this trust as they are them- selves in accepting it. And I believe they all agree with him when he says, ‘ Wealth, luxury, and extravagance among the few, accom- panied by poverty, misery, and want among the many, is at once a great evil in itself and a great danger to the commonwealth .’ — Pall Mall Gazette, September 8, 1884. When the Committee came to consider the practical arrange- ments of a three days’ Conference in greater detail, it became obvious that the questions must be put somewhat differently if they were to evoke good discussion, and the business of each day was planned as follows : — First Day. Has the increase of the products of industry within the last hundred years tended most to the benefit of capitalists and employers, or to that of the working classes, whether artisans, labourers, or others ? and in what relative pro- portions in any given period ? Second Day. Do any remediable causes influence prejudicially (a) The continuity of industrial employment ; {h) The rates of wages ; (c) The well-being of the working- classes ? PEEFACE. XI Third Day. Would the more general distribution of capital or land, or the State management of capital or land, promote or impair the production of wealth and the welfare of the community ? In addition to the papers offered, some of which the Committee were unable to accept, papers were invited from representative men, who were known to be well qualified to put forward the views of some important classes of the community, or who were authoritatively recommended as competent to express the views of some association.^ The Committee then proceeded to invite additional dele gates to the Conference from bodies connected with different interests. They desired that the Conference should be composed so far as possible as follows : — Number of Delegates. 1. Delegates of Chambers of Commerce (10) and Associations of Capitalists engaged in Industry (10) or Agriculture (10) 30 2. Delegates of Trades Unions 50 3. Delegates of Friendly Societies 10 4. Delegates of Distributive (5) and Productive (10) Co-opera- tive Societies 15 5. Delegates of Economic, Literary, and Social Societies . . 20 125 The Conference met on the 28th, 29th, and 30th of January, 1885, in the Prince’s Hall, Piccadilly, under the presidency of Sir Charles W. Dilke. There was a fair attendance of the general public, especially on the afternoon of the third day. The present volume contains the papers prepared for the Conference, along with a verbatim report of the discussions. ^ This was the case with Mr. Hyndman and Mr. W. Morris, who were in- vited by the Committee, on the recommendation of the Social Democratic Federation, to write or furnish papers from the Socialist standpoint, but who did not do so and did not attend the Conference. Subsequently three delegate.s from the Federation were admitted and took part in the discussions. Xll PKEFACE. The papers and reports have been in all cases submitted to the authors and speakers for revision, but the Committee has determined that the volume should be a faithful report of the proceedings of the Conference, and have only provided for the omitting of one or two personal and political allusions which had no real connection with the purpose of the trust. Each reader or speaker is solely responsible for the accuracy of the statements made as to matters of fact. In some cases, the assertions made appeared to members of the Committee to be demonstrably wrong, but they have determined not to carry the argument on such matters farther than was done in the Conference itself. Mr. J). Cunningham, Mr. Hutchinson, and others of the authors have made brief additions to their papers, and the Committee have also inserted two contributions as appendices. One of these is a paper representing the views of the Shop Hours League. Two members of this body attended the Conference at very great personal inconvenience, but owing to the fortune of the ballot they were unable to bring the views of the very large class they represent before the Conference. A short letter has also been reprinted which was addressed to the Times by Professor Nicholson, whose duties in Edinburgh rendered it impossible for him to be present and reply to the criicisms on his paper. LIST OF lilEMBEES OP THE INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. President : The Eight Hon. Sir CHAELES W. DILKE, Bart., M.P. Vice-Presidents : The Eight Hon. G. J. SHAW LEFEVEE, M.P. The Eight Hon. A. J. MUNDELLA, M.P. Committee : *Mr. Thomas Burt, M.P., Eeform Club, S.W. *Mr. J. Burnett, 90 Blackfriars Eoad, S.E. *Professor Foxwell, St. John’s College, Cambridge, Hon. Sec. *Mr. F. Harrison, 38 Westbourne Terrace, W. *The Earl of Dalhousie, K.T,, 86 Brook Street, W. *Sir Thomas Brassey, K.C.B., M.P., 21 Park Lane, W. *]Mr. E. Gifpen, Board of Trade, Whitehall Gardens, S.W. tSir Eawson W. Eawson, K.C.M.G., C.B., 68 Cornwall Gardens, S.W. t Professor Leone Levi, 5 Crown Office Eow, Temple, E.C. tMr. F. G. P. Neison, 30 Moorgate Street, E.C. tMr. Stephen Bourne, H.M. Custom Plouse, E.C. hMr. David Dale, Darlington. tEev. W. Cunningham, Trinity College, Cambridge, Sec. JMr. E. D. Egberts, Clare College, Cambridge. JMr. A. H. D. Acland, Fyfield Eoad, Oxford. JMr. B. Jones, Co-operative Wholesale Society, Hooper Square, E. JMr. W. H. Hey, 3 William’s Place, Victoria Eoad, Peckham, S.E. :j;Mr. W. Crawford, North Eoad, Durham. * Trustees. t Nominated by Statistical Society. J Co-opted by Committee. XIV LIST OF MEMBERS. INVITED EEADERS. Sir T. Brassey, K.C.B., M.P., 24 Park Lane, W. Mr. R. Giffen, Board of Trade, Whitehall Gardens, S.W. Mr. Lloyd Jones, 14 S. Michael’s Road, Stockwell, S.W. Mr. J. G. Hutchinson, 28 Edinburgh Road, Upper Armley, Leeds. Miss Edith Simcox, 1 Douro Place, Victoria Road, Kensington, W. Mr. W. H. Houldsworth, M.P., Knutsford, Cheshire. Professor Marshall, Chesterton Road, Cambridge. Mr. W. Owen, Staffordshire Knot Office, New Hall Street, Hanley, N, Mr. J. Mawdsley, 260 Ashton New Road, Manchester. Mrs. Paterson, 36 Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn, W.C, Mr. W. J. Harris, M.P., Halwell Manor, Highampton. Mr. J. Morley, M.P., West Hill, Putney, S.W. Mr. B. Jones, Co-operative Wholesale Society, Hooper Square, E. Mr. Sedley Taylor, Trinity College, Cambridge. Lord Bramwell, Four Elms, Edenbridge, Kent. Mr. A. J. Balfour, M.P., Whittinghame, Prestonkirk, N.B. Professor Nicholson, 15 Jordan Lane, Edinburgh. Mr. F. Harrison, 38 Westbourne Terrace, W. Dr. A. R. Wallace, Frith Hill, Godaiming. Mr. D. Cunningham, M.Inst.C.E., Harbour Works Office, Dundee. DELEGATES. . Aberdare, Merthyr, and Dowlais Miners’ Association : Mr. D. Morgan, 21 Dean Street, Ab rdare. Agricultural Labourers’ Union : Mr. Ball, Chipping Hill, Witham, Essex. Alliance Cabinet Makers’ Association : Mr. J. R. Smith, 64 Finsbury Pavement, E.C. Allotments Association (Maidstone): Mr. C. Beale, Holland Street Maidstone. Amalgamated Bootmakers : Mr. Donald McGregor, 38 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, W. Amalgamated Cabdrivers’ Society : Mr. E. Dyke, 6 Camera Square, Chelsea, S.W. Mr. G. S. Ross, 112 Pitfield Street, Hoxton, N. Mr. H. W. Rowland, 26 Bouverie Street, E.C. Amalgamated Cotton Spinners : Mr. William Cape, 32 Albert Street, Ramsbottom. Mr. J. Mawdsley, 260 Ashton New Road, Manchester. Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners : Mr. J. S. Murchie, 95 Brunswick Street, Ardwick Green, Manchester. Artisans’ Technical Association : Rev. Henry Solly, East Croydon. LIST OF MEMBERS. XV Assington Farming : Mr. R. Taylor, 4 Bramah Road, Mostyn Road, Brixton, S.E. Associated Society of Shipwrights : Mr. Alexander Wilkie, 23 Maxwell Street, Partick, Glasgow. Mr. D. M. Anderson, 106 Byker Street, Walker, Newcastle-on-Tyne. Association for the Defence of British Industry : Mr. C. A. Upton, Mount Pleasant, Merton Road, Wandsworth, S.W. Bedmiuster Union : Mr. Stephen Harding, Bower Ashton, near Bristol. Birmingham Philosophical Society : Mr. J. Middlemore. Boot and Shoe Riveters (Leicester) : jMr. George Sedgwick, 30 Gladstone Street, Leicester. Borough Hop Trade Mutual Friendly Society : Mr. C. Oscar Gridley, 9 Duke Street, London Bridge, S.E. British Iron Trade Association : Mr. I. Lowthian Bell, Rounton Grange, Northallerton. Mr. J. S. Jeans, Victoria Mansions, S.W. Central Co-operative Board, Midland Section : Mr. W. Hemm, 57 Healey Street, Nottingham. Central Co-operative Board, Northern Section : Mr. T. Rule, 20 Ravensworth Terrace, Gateshead-on-Tyne. Central Co-operative Board, North-Western Section : Mr. D. Fennell, 37 Derby Street, Oldham. Mr. J. Johnston, S. George’s Chambers, Albert Square, Manchester. Central Co-operative Board, Scottish Section : Mr. J. Deans, 28 Campbell Street, Riccarton, Kilmarnock. Central Co-operative Board, Southern Section : Mr. R. Newton, 2 Champion Terrace, Grove Lane, Camberwell, S.E. Central Co-operative Board, Western Section : Mr. R. Warne, 12 Vauxhall Road, Gloucester. Charity Organisation Society : Dr. G. B. LongstafE, Southfield Grange, West Hill Rd., Wandsworth, S.W. Cleckheaton Chamber of Commerce : Mr. S. Wadsworth, B.A., 63 Abingdon Villas, Kensington, W. Cleveland and District Blastfurnacemen’s Association : Mr, William Snow, 14 Middlesborough Road, South Bank. Coal Co-operative Society : Rev. Isaac Doxsey, F.S.S., 186 The Grove, Camberwell, S.E. Co-operative Printing Society : Mr. H. R. Slatter, 74 Everton Road, Manchester. Decorative Co-operators’ Association : Miss M. H. Hart, 405 Oxford Street, W. East Suffolk Chamber of Agriculture : Mr. B. B. Hunter Rodwell, Q.C., Holbrook, Ipswich. Eccles Manufacturing Society : Mr. Mort, Truell Grove, Eccles. XVI LIST OF MEMBERS. Edinburgh Social Union : Mr. Patrick Geddes, 81 Princes Street, Edinburgh. English Land Restoration League : Mr. William Saunders, Mount View, Streathara, S.W. English Wholesale Co-operative Society : Mr. T. E. Webb, 2 Plough Road, Battersea, S.W. Mr. G. Hines, Laurel Cottage, Croft Street, Ipswich. Exeter Chamber of Commerce : Capt. Halford Thompson, Claremont, Exeter. Fabian Society : Mr. J. G. Stapleton, 47 Lee Terrace, S.E. Mr. Hubert Bland, Bowater Crescent, Woolwich. Falmouth Chamber of Commerce : Mr. H. S. Mackenzie, Falmouth. Glasgow Chamber of Commerce : Sir James Bain, Junior Carlton Club, Pall Mall, S.W. Greenock Chamber of Commerce : jMr. James Aitkin, 78 Eldon Street, Greenock. Guild of Co-operators : Mr. C. Cooper, 31 Southampton Street, Strand, W.C. Guild of St. Matthew : Rev. S. D. Headlam, B.A., National Liberal Club, S.W. Hearts of Oak Benefit Society : Mr. W. G. Bunn, 27 Overstone Road, Hammersmith, W. Mr. W. Shaen, 8 Bedford Row, London, W.C. Hebden-Bridge Fustian : Mr. J. Greenwood, Nutclough, Hebden-Bridge. Heckmondwike Manufacturing Company : Mr. James Crabtree, Croft Mills, Heckmondwike. Highland Land Law Association, London : Dr. G. B. Clark, West Dulwich, S.E. Hollow Ware Pressers’ Amalgamated Society : Mr. C. Bloor, 37 Derby Road, Burslem. Huddersfield and District Woollen Weavers : Mrs. Ann Ellis, Cross Bank, Batley. Irish Land Restoration Society : Rev. J. Bruce Wallace, M.A., 7 Clifton Park Avenue, Belfast. Ironfounders : Mr. James Brevitt, 318 Kennington Road, S.E. Mr. E. Woods, 200 New Kent Road, S.E. Labour Association : Mr. H. Rowley, 6 Adam Street, Adelphi, W.C. Labourers’ Union (Kent and Sussex) ; Mr. Alfred Simmons, High Street, Maidstone. Land Nationalisation Society ; Rev. H. J. B. Heath, 67 Ludgate Hill, E.C. LIST OF MEMBERS. xvii Land Law Reform League ; Mr. C. Bradlaugh, M.P., 20 Circus Road, St. John’s Wood, N.W. Liberty and Property Defence League : tLord Bramwell, Four Elms, Edenbridge, Kent. tMr. Wordsworth Donisthorpe, 32 Pembridge Villas, Bayswater, W. Mr. M. J. Lyons, 12 Wilmington Square, Clerkenwell, W.C. Lithographic Printers : Mr. G. D. Kelley, 39 Sidney Street, Oxford Road, Manchester. Local Taxation Committee : Major P. G. Craigie, 7 Arundel Street, W.C. London Chamber of Commerce : Mr. K. B. Murray, 85 King William Street, E.C. London Timber Trades’ Association : Mr. Ernest Foreman, 57 Gracechurch Street, E.C. IMalthusian League : Dr. C. R. Drysdale, National Liberal Club, S.W. Masons (United Operative) : Mr. William Hancock, 4 Stamford Street, Blackfriars, S.E. Miners’ Association (Rhondda) Mr. William Abraham, Miners’ Office, Pentre, Pontypridd. Miners’ National Union : Mr. E. Cowey, Sharlston Colliery, Wakefield. Mr. J. Nixon, 34 Lovaine Cre.scent, Newcastle-on-Tyne. Mr. B. Pickard, 2 Huddersfield Road, Barnsley. Mr. D. Reid, 404 Tin Street, Leadgate, Co. Durham. Mr. J. Toyne, Ruby Street, Saltburn-by-the-Sea. Mr. W. Wright, Dinnington Colliery, Northumberland. Mr. J. Wilson, 14 North Road, Durham. National Association for the Promotion of Social Science : Mr. Westlake, Q.C., LL.D., The River House, Chelsea Embankment, S.W. North Yorkshire and Cleveland Miners’ Association : Mr. Robert Rowland, 29 Ruby Street, Saltburn-by-the-Sea. Positivist Society : Prof. Beesly, Elm Lawn, Woodberry Down, Finsbury Park, N. Progressive Association : Mr. Rowland Estcourt, National Liberal Club, S.W. Railway Servants : Mr. E. Harford, 306 City Road, London, E.C. Railway Servants (Scotland) : Mr. Joseph Hope, 28 Dewar Place, Edinburgh. Scottish Chamber of Agriculture : Mr. James W. Guild, The Abbey, North Berwick. Scottish Land Restoration League : Mr. J. M. Cherrie, Clutha Cottage, Tollcross, Glasgow. Scottish Wholesale Co-operative Society : Mr. W. Maxwell, 92 Fountainbridge, Edinburgh. a xviii LIST OF MEMBEKS. Shop Hours League : Mr. Malcolm Guthrie, J.P., Basnett Street, Liverpool. » Mr. J. F. Millar, 4 Beet Street, Edge Hill, Liverpool. Skye Crofters : Mr. J. S. Stuart Glennie, M.A., Athenaeum Club, S.W. Social Democratic Federation : Mr. J. E. Williams, 24 Brooks Mews, Craven Boad, W. Mr. J. Burns, 8 Holden Street, Shaftesbury Park, Battersea, S.W. Mr. J. McDonald, 24 Edward Street, Hampstead Road, N.W. Society for Promoting the Employment of Women : Miss G. J. King, 22 Berners Street, W. Statistical Society : Mr. Rowland Hamilton, Oriental Club, Hanover Square, W. Statistical Society of Ireland : Prof. Barnstaple, 23 Trinity College, Dublin. Tailors (Amalgamated) : Mr. Davy, 22 Greenfield Terrace, Askew Road, Gateshead-on-Tyne. Trades Council, Bolton : Mr. James Robinson, 68 Town Hall Square, Bolton. Trades Council, Edinburgh : Mr. Neil McLean, 30 Dairy Road, Edinburgh. Trades Council, Hull : Mr. W. J. Strachan, 24 Pennington Street, Holderness Road, Hull. Trades Council, Hyde : Mr. George Wilde, 27 Jane Street, Haughton Denton, near Manchester. Trades Council, Leeds : Mr. John Judge, 26 Darley Street, Leeds : Trades Council, Liverpool : Mr. A. Clark, 47 Hart Street, Liverpool. Trades Council, London (Women) : fMiss Mears, 114 Albany Street, N.W. fMiss Rogers, 35 Ranelagh Road, Pimlico, S.W. tMiss Whyte, 5 Macclesfield Street, Soho, W. Trades Council, Manchester : Mr. George D. Kelley, 39 Sidney Street, Oxford Road, Manchester. Trades Council, Middlesborough : Mr. William Snow, 14 Middlesborough Road, South Bank. Trades Council, Sunderland : Mr. W. Foreman, 14 Bramwell Street, Sunderland. Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committee : Mr. J. S. Murchie, 95 Brunswick Street, Ardwick Green, Manchester. Mr. Burnett, 90 Blackfriars Road, London, S.E. Mr. A. W. Bailey, 179 North Road, Preston. Typographical Association : Mr. H. Slatter, 74 Everton Road, Manchester. Weavers, Northern Counties : Mr. D. Holmes, 35 Whitton Street, Burnley. LIST OF MEMBERS. XlX Weavers’ Association (Power Loom) : Mr. John Marshall, Clark Yard, Church Street, Preston. West Suffolk Chamber of Agriculture : Mr. William Bidclell, M.P. Window Glass Makers’ Federation : Mr. Joseph French, Co-operative Glass Blowers’ Association, Sunderland Woman’s Protection and Provident League : tMrs. Cooper, 1 Silver Street, Holborn, W.C. tRev. Stewart D. Headlam, National Liberal Club, S.W. tM. Adolphe Smith, 13 Sutherland Place, Pimlico, S.W. Workman’s Association for Defence of British Industry : Mr. H. J. Pettifer, 171 Commercial Road, S.E. Delegates whose names were marked f attended alternately with other representatives of the same society. RULES The followiiig Rules were adopted for the discussions in the Conference : I. That the several subjects selected for discussion be introduced by two (or more) papers, each of which may occupy about twenty minutes, together with ten minutes for the reply, so that ample time may be reserved in each session for free and open debate. II. As it is not intended to pass any resolutions at the Conference, no question arising out of any paper read or subject treated shall be put to a vote. III. That all questions concerning the order of proceedings or the relevancy of any argument shall be in the discretion of the Chairman, whose decision shall be final. IV. That every member of the Congress desirous of speaking on the subject of discussion shall give his name in writing to the Secretary in attendance, and await the call of the Chairman. V. That every speaker shall address the Chair only, confine himself strictly to the subject under discussion, cease when time is called, and not be permitted to speak twice on the same subject. VI. That the time allowed to each speaker shall not exceed ten minutes, and that at the discretion of the Chairman the speeches during the last hour, or aiu part of the last hour, of each session may be still farther limited. VII. That the Chairman shall call on speakers in the order in which their names are sent in ; but if more than six names are sent in during the reading of the papers, he shall ballot for the order in which speakers shall be heard, and may in doing so exclude the names of those speakers who have already addressed the Conference on other topics, so that they shall only be called on after fresh speakers have been heard. CONTENTS PAGE PEE FACE V LIST OF MEMBEES xiii EULES XX FIEST DAY: President’s Address REPORT, 1 Has the Increase of the Products of Industry within the last Hun- dred Years tended most to the Benefit of Caintalists and Em- ployers or to that of the Working Classes, luhether Artisans, Labourers, or others ? and in lohat Relative Proportions in any given Period'^ Morning Session. lias the Increase of the Products of Industry tended most to the Benefit of Capitalists or to that of the Working Classes ? By Sir Thomas Brassey, M.P. ......... 4 Profits of Industry and the Workers. By Mr. Lloyd Jones . . 23 Eates of Wages paid by Dundee Harbour Trustees during the last Twenty-five Years. B}^ ]\Ir. David Cunningham, M.Inst.C.E., F.S.S 41 Appendices on Wages, Hours, Population, and Plouse-rents in Dundee 45, 515 Labour and its Eeward. By Mr. J. G. Hutchinson .... 46 Appendix on Average Earnings of Mill Hands . . . . .61 Discussion 62-83 CONTENTS. Xxii Afternoon Session. PAGE Loss or Gain of the Working Classes during the Nineteenth Century. By Miss Edith Simcox 84 Appendices . — Income and Expenditure of the Upper and Middle Classes since 1800 — Age, Sex, and Employments of the Working Population — Comparative Mortality of Rural and Urban Districts — Mortality in Workhouses and Hospitals — Pauperism not re- stricted to any Class or Calling — The Rate of Wages— Compara- tive Rise of Rent and Wages — Hourly Hirings — State House- keeping — Employers’ Liability . . . . , . . 96-107 Loss or Gain of Labourers in Rural Districts. By Mr. W. Saunders 107 Skilled and Unskilled Labour in the Shipbuilding Trade. By Mr. J. Lynch ............ 114 Discussion 119-136 SECOND DAY: Do any Remediable Causes injliience^ Prejudicially (a) the Continuity of Industrial Bmployment, (6) the Rates of Wages, (c) the Well- being of the Working Classes ? Morning Session. On the Existing Modes of Distribution of the Products of Industry in the Chemical Works, Collieries, Ironstone Mines, and Blast Furnaces in the North-east of England. By Mr. I. Lowthian Bell 137 Apyendix . — Agricultural Wages in Cleveland — Diagram showing Scotch and Westphalian Miners’ Wages 148 The Unionist View of Possible Remedies for Prejudicial Influences on Rates of Wages and Continuity of Employment. By Mr. W. Owen ............ 149 Rates of Wages and Combination. By Mr. J. Mawdsley . . . 156 Discussion 164-172 How far do Remediable Causes Influence Prejudicially {a) the Con- tinuity of Employment, (&) the Rates of Wages ? By Professor A. Marshall 173 Appendiees . — Overcrowding of Towns — The Interdependence of In- dustries— A Standard of Purchasing Power — Theories and Facts about Wages 183-199 Continuity of Employment and Rates of Wages. By Mrs. Emma A. Paterson 199 Appendices . — Numbers of Female Workers — Cheap and Nasty Wares — Numbers of Unmarried Women — Male and Female Lives 206 Discussion 208-214 CONTENTS. XXlll Afteknoon Session. PAGE The Education of Public Opinion. By Professor Beesly . . .215 Do any Remediable Causes Influence Prejudicially the Well-being of the Working Classes ? By Mr. W. J. Harris, M.P .... 221 The Conditions of Industrial Prosperity. By Mr. W. H. Houldsworth, M.P 231 Home and Foreign Policy, or Howto Restore Prosperity to a Distressed and Anxious People. By Mr. S. Harding 235 Discussion 240-250 How Far do Remediable Causes Influence Prejudicially the Well- being of the Working Classes ? By Mr. Sedley Taylor . . . 251 AppenSAces . — Letter from M. Billon — Letter from Eighty-five Par- ticipating Workmen of the Maison Billon et Isaac . . . 263-265 Do any Remediable Causes Influence Prejudicially the Well-being of the Working Classes ? By Mr. Benjamin Jones .... 265 Appendices . — National Income — Cost of Maintenance of Paupers — Families with Incomes Less than ^10 per head — Larger Income Possible — Too Little and Too Much— Wages of Workers can be Increased — Remuneration of Management can be Reduced — In- terest on Capital can be Reduced — Monopolies and the Govern- ment — Higher Cultivation of Land — Progress of Invention — Co- operative Stores — Imprudent Marriages — Improved Dwellings — Cost of Drinking — Higher Standard of Providence — Associated Houses — Museums on Sundays— Love of the Beautiful — Thrusting up the Residuum — Technical Schools — Culture — Practice of Equity Teaching the Power of Union — Working Class Education . 276-304 Profit Sharing and Co-operative Production. By Mr. E. W. Greening . 304 Appendix . — Oldham Joint-Stock Mills— Co-operative Stores— Co- operative Corn Mills — Co-operative Wholesale Societies’ Work- shops —Results of Work in Fifteen Co-operative Workshops . 309-311 Our Industrial System, its Effects upon the Well-being of the Work- ing Classes. Mr. J. M. Cherrie 311 Appendix . — Exports and Imports — Production of Coal and Iron — Shipbuilding — Glasgow Dwelliugs — Acreage under Crop — Land Values 321, 323 Discussion 323-335 THIRD DAY: Would the more General Distribution of Capital or Land, or the State Management of Capital or Land, Promote or Impair the Production of Wealth and the W elf are of the Community ? Morning Session. Land, Land Reformers, and the Nation. By Mr. A. J. Balfour, M.P. 336 Note on the ‘ Original Properties’ of the Soil 365 XXIV CONTENTS. PAGE How to Cause Wealth to be More Equally Distributed. By Dr. A. K. Wallace 368 Land Nationalisation. By Emeritus Professor F. W. Newman . 392 Discussion 397 Afternoon Session. The Question Discussed and Answered. By Lord Bramwell . . 419 Appendix, — Communism 425-427 Remedies for Social Distress. By Mr. Frederic Harrison . . 428 State Management of Land. By Professor Nicholson . . . 462 Note on Dr. Wallace’s Paper 472 The French Workman’s Party on the State Management of Capital and Land. By M. Adolphe Smith 473 Discussion 481-505 APPENDICES. I. Legislative Regulation of Shop Hours. By Messrs. M. Guthrie, J.P., and J. F. Millar 507 II. House Rent in Dundee. By Mr. D. Cunningham . . . 515 III. Letter to the Editor of the Times. By Professor Nicholson . 516 INDEX 517 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. ^YEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 1885. OPENING SPEECH. By Sie Charles W. Dilke, Bart., M.P. President of the Conference. This is a Conference presided over by a committee of which a third are representatives of the Statistical Society, and it is as a member since 1867 of the Statistical Society, and as an old member of the Political Economy Club, that I have been asked to occupy the chair. The Conference is one of delegates of chambers of commerce, delegates of associations of capitalists, among whom we have Mr. Lowthian Bell, delegates of trades unions, among whom we have Mr. Burnett and other well- known men, delegates of Friendly Societies, and delegates of economic societies, such as Lord Bramwell, who comes on behalf of the Liberty and Property Defence League. The committee only offer a fair field for discussion, which they believe will prove useful. They have no collective opinion, and are not responsible for the opinions put forward by the various writers and speakers. So far as I have seen the papers, most of them are strongly in favour of large changes in the laws, but not in favour of what may be called communistic change. Those who will take part in the Conference belong to both great parties in the State, and represent very varying forms of opinion of all kinds. For my part, I am sorry that 2 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. foreign opinion will not be largely represented here, and I am especially sorry that we have no representatives of that school of thought in Grermany of which Fichte was the father, and the doctrines of which have descended through Lassalle to no less a person than the Iron Chancellor. Ideas, revolutionary no doubt, but not worked out with revolutionary haste ; for even Lassalle declared that two centuries would be needed to replace the wages system by one which, in his opinion, would be better. In 1878 Prince Bismarck used some words which we might take here as our text : — ‘ We try for Grovernment experi- ments on different systems of cultivation of the soil. Would it not be as well to try similar experiments as to the labour of man, and to try to solve, by the improvement of the toilers’ lot, that social question which lies at the root of what is called Social Democracy?’ In 1882, in pressing on the attention of his Chambers his plan of workmen’s insurance, which was his own favourite child. Prince Bismarck said : — ‘ Our endeavour is to reach a state of things in which no man can say, “ I bear the burden of society, but no one cares for me.” The Kings of Prussia have been, are, and shall be, the kings of the poor, the kings of the beggars in rags.’ As we have not the advantage of the presence of any representatives of these Grerman ideas, let me call the attention of the Conference to the fact that an account is given of a portion of Prince Bismarck’s social policy in two able Parliamentary Papers which were circulated in 1883 and in 1884 respectively. The point which strikes one most forcibly in studying the science of political economy in relation to the whole development of human thought and life is its close and necessary connexion with morality, or ‘ morals.’ If we take that branch of considerations which deal with the dis- tribution of wealth, of which the question of industrial remu- neration forms a part, we find that the science of political economy, while pointing out the inequalities which attend this distribution and the causes to which they are due, appeals for aid to the cultivation of habits of self-control, of foresight, to the development of the intelligence and of the moral nature. It is useful to bear in mind these considerations while discus- sing the question before us. They will help us to a clearer OPENING SPEECH. 3 conception of what aid we may expect from society, from tlie State, and what we must expect from ourselves as individuals. By laying, for example, greater burdens on the wealthy, society may make the rich poorer, but it cannot make the toilers really richer unless the relief obtained is applied in such a way as to tend to the mental and moral development of the people. This is, to my mind, one of the greatest problems of our modern social change, and I shall look most anxiously for any light which your discussions may throw upon it. (Applause.) MORNING SESSION HAS THE INCKEASE OF THE PRODUCTS OF INDUSTRY WITHIN THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS TENDED MOST TO THE BENEFIT OF CAPITALISTS AND EMPLOYERS OR TO THAT OF THE WORK- ING CLASSES, WHETHER ARTISANS, LABOURERS, OR OTHERS? AND IN WHAT RELATIVE PROPORTIONS IN ANY GIVEN PERIOD ? Has the Increase of the Products of Industry tended most to the Benefit of Capitalists or to that of the Working Classes ? By Sir Thomas Brassey, M.P. I HAVE consented to take part in this Conference in the hope that it may be the means of disseminating useful knowledge and experience among the masses whose lot it is to labour. It was well said by M. Turgot : ‘ On pent etre opprime par un seul tyran, mais on pent I’etre tout autant et aussi injustement par une multitude.’ These are not times in which it is well to hold aloof from the trusted representatives of labour, or from the authors of new theories of industrial and social organisation. It may be that the discussions at this Conference will bring to light some visionary schemes, but is there a man amongst us, who has given a thought to the subject, who sees no room for improvement in the existing economic condition ? Does any man question the advantage of a more equal distribution of wealth, or a closer community of interests between capitalists and workmen ? To those who with the late lamented Mr. Fawcett have faith in the unlimited capacities of the human race to improve, a conference like this is a golden opportunity. To those who are hopeless, perhaps reckless, for the future, our discussions may appear contemptible. That is not the view of those who are assembled within these walls. WEDNESDAY MOENING. 5 As to the tone in which our discussions shall be conducted, I cannot doubt that a generous toleration will smooth the asperities of debate. As the late Mr. Jevons truly said, in the introduction to his essay on The State in relation to Labour, ‘ The time has come when all class rancour, all bitter terms, all needless reference to former unfortunate occurrences should be laid aside. The economic errors of trades unions are after all not greater than those which pervaded the commercial and even the governing classes a generation ago.’ Coming here as the representative of the capitalist class I shall ask that it may be remembered that abstinence from enjoyment is the only source of capital, that it is upon the increase of capital that advances of wages depend, while labour, on the other hand, to use the eloquent phrase of Mr. Mongredien, is the vivifying principle which preserves capital from decay. I much regret that the limits of time will prevent me from entering upon many topics of the greatest practical importance, including the power and the functions of trades unions, the ex- tension of profit-sharing and co-operation, the representation of labour in Parliament, the recreations of the people, national edu- cation, and the value of our colonial connexion to the trade of the mother country and as a field for the energies of her sons. The loss on the present occasion of such men as Professor Fawcett and Mr. Jevons will be deeply deplored. And now let us turn to the special subject for discussion. To attack such a topic exhaustively in twenty minutes is impos- sible. In the circumstances, I have thought that to bring together the testimony of accredited authorities, giving their conclusions, without attempting to produce their facts, would be found an effective method of treating the subject. Beginning with the most recent writers, Mr. Jeans, the able Secretary of the British Iron Trade Association, has recently published a pamphlet on the comparative earnings of workmen at home and abroad. For England he estimates the average in 1880, at 42^. per year. In 1867, a similar calculation by Mr. Leone Levi resulted in an average of 38Z. Since 1850, as Mr. Jeans shows, a more or less considerable rise in wages has been obtained throughout the whole civilised world — a rise 6 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. exceeding that of any previous period of equal duration, and attributable to four principal causes — the application of steam to locomotion by sea and land ; the increasing use of labour- saving machinery ; the enormous increase in the exports and imports ; and the gold discoveries. According to the statistics compiled by Mr. Lord for the Manchester Chamber of Com- merce, the percentage of increase in 1883 over 1850 in ten leading industries was 39*18 per cent., ranging from 10 per cent, in mechanical engineering to 74*72 in certain branches of the cotton trade. In agriculture, the advances prior to 1850 have been ascertained by Sir James Caird. The wages of agri- cultural labour in England were 7s. 3d. per week in 1770 ; 9s. Id. in 1850; 14s. in 1878 ; and, in Cheshire, 17s. 3d. in 1880. In the 80 years prior to 1850 the advances were 2s. 4c/. a week or 32 per cent. In the next 28 years, the advances were 4s. 5c/. or 46 per cent. Mr. Jeans gives his general conclusion as follows : There has been within recent years a tendency to the cheapening of articles of every-day consumption, and this move- ment, running concurrently with better remuneration for labour, has induced a higher standard of living than formerly. There is nothing to show that population is pressing on the means of subsistence. Mr. Mulhall, whose researches on this subject are known to all students of statistics, in the introduction to his volume. The Balance Sheet of the Worlds addresses himself to the special subject selected for discussion by this Conference. ^ All indications point to the conclusion that the number of persons in easy circumstances, or at least above want, is increasing much faster than population.’ He quotes in evidence ‘the reduced ratio of paupers to population, 4*79 per cent, in 1870 and 3*29 in 1880.’ He shows an increase of 20 per cent, in the consumption of imported food and tobacco, and of 30 per cent, in the deposits in the savings banks. Professor Kogers, who has carried his inquiry on the subject of wages far back into history, and who cannot be suspected of an undue partiality for the hereditary landowners or the capitalist classes, in his last volume, gives statistics which clearly show the melancholy condition of the labourer at the WEDNESDAY MORNING. 7 close of the last and the beginning of the present century. In contrast with this gloomy picture of the past he expresses his conviction that ‘ the workmen of this country, speaking of them in the mass, are to-day better paid than those of any other settled and fully peopled country, if one takes into account not merely the money wages which they earn, but the power which those wages have over commodities. The rise is entirely of the last thirty years, and unfortunately it has not been shared by all in proportion.’ I give one more quotation from a teacher of economic science. Professor Bonamy Price, in the chapter on trades unions in his treatise on political economy, expresses the opinion that, as an almost universal rule, industrial fortunes are not made out of a high rate of profit, but out of moderate profits earned by large operations. As an indication of the improved condition of the labouring class, he points to the fact that, while the population of London has trebled since 1815, the number of paupers is about the same. But while the numbers are unchanged, the cost of maintenance has been increased fivefold. The rule is, that the pauper shall be maintained at such a standard of living as is usual with labourers of the humblest class. The difference, therefore, in the cost of maintenance has arisen from the more liberal ideas which now prevail as to what is necessary for the poor. A much more elevated minimum of wages has been secured ; and the rise is not in nominal wages only, but in the effective purchasing power. A recent and strictly commercial view of the situation is given in the Economist review of the trade of 1882. The working-man has done well. His food and clothing have been cheap, and work has been abundant. This state of matters places the power of saving throughout the country mainly in the hands of the class which, up to the present time, has saved least, and which invests such savings as it makes principally in fixed invest, ments or in Government securities. Statistics with reference to the state of trade, and the remu- neration and supply of labour, are indispensable to form sound judgment as to the relative claims of capital and labour. In 8 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. the collection of statistics on this subject England is certainly not in advance of other countries. The statistics of the foreign trade of the country are tolerably complete ; but with regard to the internal trade, which is of far greater importance, the traffic returns of the railway companies are practically the chief indications of the fluctuations of our internal trade. The Grovernment should take in hand the collection and pub- lication of the statistics of the internal trade of the country ; and with regard to the remuneration of labour and the cost of living, the Board of Trade should at frequent intervals issue publications similar to those put forth by the Bureau of Labour of the State of Massachusetts and by the Statistical Department at Washington. The wide extension of commerce and the greater facilities of communication by sea and land which we owe to the intro- duction of steam, have led to a steady reduction in the cost of the principal articles of consumption. The fluctuations, as determined by Mr. Griffen, and expressed in the form of index numbers, are as follows; — 1865, 3,575 ; 1868, 2,682; 1879, 2,227 ; in 1 884, the Economist gives 2,221 as the index number. At the prices of 1883 the wheat imports of 1884 would have cost four millions more. For our imports of sugar we paid five millions less, and we imported a greater quantity. The cheapening of commodities has led to an increase of consumption which may be estimated roughly, for many articles of food not of the first necessity, at double the amount of twenty years ago. Turning from contemporary inquiries to former investi- gations, I would particularly refer to a paper read by Mr. Porter before the British Association in 1850 on the accumu- lation of capital by the different classes of society. Then, as now, the sources of information were limited. The deposits in the savings banks had largely increased. The return of the dividends upon portions of the public debt showed a large increase in the number of persons receiving £5, while other classes remained stationary. The comparisons of the Income Tax Keturns between 1812 and 1848 showed that while the total amount assessed had increased by 168*21 per cent., the increase in the lowest class, between 150/. and 500/. WEDNESDAY MOKNING. 9 per annum, was more than 56 per cent, greater than in the highest class of incomes. He made a comparison of probate duty with similar results, and having examined all the official returns which have afforded means for arriving at the truth, he found the most perfect agreement in their results, all pointing to the conclusion that there was nothing to justify the fears of the probable disappearance of the middle classes. In the Progress of the Nation^ Mr. Porter deals most elaborately with the condition of the wage-earning classes. The following passage gives the general result of the inquiry : — If we look back on the condition of the masses of the people, as it existed in this country, even so recently as the beginning of the present century, and then look around us at the indications of the greater comfort and respectability which meet us on every side, it is hardly possible to doubt, that here in England at least the elements in social improvement have been successfully at work, and that they have been, and are, producing an increased amount of comfort in the great bulk of the people. It will be remembered that Mr. Porter was writing but a short time after the miserable year 1842, a year of which Miss Martineau, in her History of the Peace, writes as follows : — In 1842, distress had so deepened in the manufacturing districts, as to render it clearly inevitable that many must die, while there seemed no chance of any member of the manufacturing class coming out of the struggle with a vestige of property. In Carlisle, a Committee of Inquiry found a quarter of the population in a state bordering on starvation. In Stockport, more than half the master spinners had failed. At Leeds, the paupers’ stone heap amounted to 150,000 tons. In Dorsetshire, a man and his wife had for wages 2s. 6cZ. per week, and three loaves, and the ablest labourer had from 6s. to 7s. In so far as the public welfare can be promoted by the diminished pressure of taxation, the United Kingdom compares favourably with the rest of Europe. In the decennial period of 1870-80 the amount of taxes per inhabitant had increased, according to Mr. Mulhall, in Grreat Britain from 13s. od. to 2>L 19s. 9c?., while for the rest of Europe the increase was from 1?. 18s. Id. to 21. 7s. The increase in Great Britain was 10 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. considerably less in amount, and the increased expenditure was devoted wholly to education and to the general improvement of the civil government of the country. The increased expen- diture on the Continent was devoted to military preparations. The changes are still more remarkable in the statistics of National Debt. The amount for each inhabitant of Great Britain was reduced from 25^. 7s, to 221. 9s. For Europe, on the other hand, the amount rose from 71. 16s. to 12^. 10s. As regards the incidence of taxation, the whole weight of the additional burdens in this country has been thrown on the capitalist classes. Our total expenditure increased from 77,440,000^. in 1874 to 89,000,000^. in 1883, while the revenue from customs and excise exhibits no material change. The increased expenditure has been met by an advance of two millions on the stamp duties and by raising the income tax from 3d. to in the pound. Fair Trade — or, in other words. Protection — has been advocated as a means of improving the condition of our agricultural and industrial population. These retrograde proposals have, happily, found little support among the thoughtful and instructed representatives of labour. They well know that free trade has been a mitigating force, that it has preserved the people from the alternatives of misery and comparative plenty which they experienced before the repeal of the corn duties. Of the legislation of recent years it may be confidently asserted that it is marked by an earnest desire to do justice to labour. The Factory Acts, with which the honoured name of Shaftesbury will be for ever associated, were the beginning of a new era of labour legislation. The right of the labourers to combine to raise their wages, which had been denied to them from the reign of Elizabeth, was recognised at last by the Act of 1875. By that statute it was declared that no combination of persons was to be deemed criminal if the act proposed to be done would not be criminal when done by one person. This seems an obvious principle, but it was new to the law of England. When the present Administration came into power the Employers’ Liability Act was one of the first measures which they inscribed on the statute book. Among the various WEDNESDAY MOKNING. 11 efforts made by the Grovernment of this country to raise the condition of the masses, the Education Act and its necessary accompaniment, the extension of the franchise in the counties, are, perhaps, the first in order of importance. No agencies are so capable as these of securing the moral and material advance- ment of the people. In raising the efficiency of labour the results of education are certain. Much yet remains to be done in education. Our educational wants include not only the primary instruction which is now happily universal, but that technical education which is far more fully and cheaply organ- ised on the Continent than with us. Our educational wants include some homely subjects which have hitherto been too much neglected in this country. I would refer, as an illustra- tion, to the art of cooking. With more skill in the use of materials it is certain that much might be done to diminish the cost of living without diminishing the standard of comfort. Economy in household expenditure is better understood in many parts of the Continent than with us. A most useful movement has been set on foot at South Kensington to extend the knowledge of cookery. Progress must of necessity be slow ; but great results may, ultimately, be accomplished. I conclude this branch of my subject with an extract from the History of Lord Macaulay. It contains an observation which is abundantly supported by the active sympathy for the improvement of the masses which we see on every side. Con- trasting the wages paid in the time of Sir William Petty with the wages and prices of the date when he was writing, Lord Macaulay says : — . A hard struggle for life was maintained, by accepting a miserably low standard of living, by the cruel and reckless employment of child labour, and by supplementing wages from the poor-rates to such an extent that in the reign of Charles II. the poor-rate was little less than half of the entire revenue of the State. The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelli- gence which discerns and the humanity which remedies them. 12 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. Having shown what advances have taken place in the accu- mulated wealth and in the general well-being of the country, I will give some evidence to prove that tendency of profits to a minimum which must inevitably result from the progress of civilisation and the providence and sense of security which it creates. The rate of profit in business is a subject of great im- portance to the labourer. More or less, wages must follow the fluctuation in profits. In many trades the want of correct information as to the profits realised by their employers con- stitutes a great difficulty for workmen. They do not know when to press their demand, nor when to acquiesce in reduction in the rate of remuneration for their labour. It may be safely affirmed, speaking of the larger industries of the country, that profit in excess of the ordinary returns, not immoderate in amount, which is obtainable through commercial operations, can only be realised under exceptional circumstances. A new discovery, a new process, the exclusive command of a good opportunity, will enable the employer for a time to realise a temporary advantage ; but sooner or later he will be deprived of that advantage by competition. The larger the accumula- tion of capital in a country the greater will be the tendency of profits to a minimum, the keener will be the competition in any industry which happens for a time to afford the prospect of exceptional profits. Writing some thirt} years ago, the returns upon safe invest- ments in England were estimated by Mr. John Stuart Mill at from 3 to 4 per cent. In the near future he believed that the annual increase of capital would bring down the rate of profit to 1 per cent, but for the counteracting circumstances of waste of capital in periods of overtrading, improvements in produc- tion, greater facilities for obtaining cheap commodities from foreign countries, and the perpetual overflow of capital into colonies in search of higher profits. The present rate of profit upon investments may be gauged with accuracy by tests which it is easy to apply. The high price of the funds and of railway debentures is an evidence at once of the accumulation of savings, and of the increasing diffi- WEDNESDAY MORNING. 13 culty of finding more profitable investments. The average price of consols has advanced from 88 in 1860 to 93| in 1875. It has ranged from 99f to 102J in 1884. Four per cent, deben- ture stocks of our railway companies are issued at the rate of many millions per year, and the price has advanced to 116. Other indications of a similar character are afforded by a com- parison of the net returns of our railways and the premiums upon stocks. In 1882 the net receipts upon an authorised rail- way capital of 878 millions were 4*32 per cent. The stocks of the more important lines would not return at present prices a rate of interest in excess of the average net receipts for the whole capital invested in railways. The fluctua- tions in the Bank rate in ten years, 1873-1883, have been as follows: df, 3^, 2|, 2J, 3|, 2|, 2^, 3^, 4^, 3^V If the secure profits of business had been greatly in excess of the Bank rate, there would have been less money on deposit, and higher rates would have been charged for banking accommoda- tion. The average returns upon other descriptions of enterprises are given by Mr. Mulhall as follows : On capital in banks, 270 millions, 6*5 per cent.; on mines and ironworks, 315 millions, 5*5 per cent. ; on shipping, 193 millions, 5 per cent. The average return on a total capital of 2,433 millions is 4*4 per cent. The comparison of these figures with similar statistics from foreign countries will show that English labour commands the use of capital at lower rates of interest than have as yet been accepted in any other country with the exception of Holland. The advantage which must result to industry of every descrip- tion cannot be exaggerated. The English landlord is satisfied with 3 per cent, on money advanced for agricultural improve- ments. Tlie cultivators of the soil in Germany have to pay to the ‘ People’s Banks,’ established by Herr Schulze-Delitzsch, rates of interest ranging from 6 to 6| per cent. The ‘ People’s Banks ’ were specially established to supply loans to borrowers in humble life at a lower rate than they had heretofore been called upon to pay, and to destroy the monopoly of capitalists in the profits arising from money-lending. The assessments of the income tax are another indication of the average profits of our industries. The recent fluctuations 14 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. in the returns were described by Mr. Gladstone in his Budget Speech on the 4th of April, 1881. Tracing the worth of \cl, of the income tax from 1842, when the tax was first laid, he showed that in the period 1852-1877, the produce per penny of the income tax had grown from 810,000/. to 1,990,000/. Having grown to these figures, the Id. income tax, which does not represent, as he truly said, the general condition of the people, but the condition of the wealthier classes of the people, had gone back for the first time since it was imposed. The Id. of income tax was estimated for 1881-1882 at 1,943,000/. The diminished returns of the income tax to which Mr. Gladstone referred are the more remarkable because in certain descriptions of property, such as houses and railways, the onward movement continues in a certain sense automatically. In house property for example, in the 6 years 1876-1882, the annual value increased from 97,000,000/. to 121,000,000/. It will be evident from these figures how large has been the diminution in the return from other descriptions of business in which conflicts can arise, as between labour and capital, in the appropriation of profits. At the present time we may take 3 per cent, as the average rate of interest obtainable by the idle investor. Anything beyond that which does not represent insurance to cover extra risk or the reward of labour and skill will be speedily cut down by competition. The effects of competition in bringing down the profits to a minimum are exhibited in a striking manner in those branches of trade which at the present time are in the least prosperous condition. Why is it that the profits on the coal and iron trades have fallen below the returns obtainable in other great branches of industry ? It was because extraordinary profits, though realised for a short period, led to a development of production which still remains far in excess of the normal demand. In the two years 1870-1872, the quantity of coal produced in the United Kingdom was increased by no less than 13 millions of tons. In the iron trade the inflation due to similar causes has been of a more recent date. Comparing the years 1879-1882, the production of pig iron was increased from 5,995,000 tons to 8,493,000 tons, while the production of steel rails was increased from 520,000 to 1,236,000 tons. In ship- WEDNESDAY MOKNING. 15 ping, the latest instance of over-production, the registered steam tonnage was increased from 2,723,000 tons in 1880 to 3,728,000 tons in 1883. With such a development of the carrying power a reduction of freights to a point which left no remuneration for the shipowner was inevitable. At the present time our docks are filled with vessels laid up, and the principal com- panies running between Liverpool and the United States are unable to declare a dividend to their shareholders. A cursory examination of the dividends on the joint stock companies connected with the coal and iron trades will show that in 1884 the maximum returns rarely reached, and still more seldom exceeded, 10 per cent., while the instances were numerous in which no dividend was declared. I happen to be a share- holder in a large coal mine in South Wales. It is under the able management of Sir Greorge Elliott. When the coal famine caused the excessive advance of price, he clearly predicted the disastrous results which must follow. For a long period of years no dividend has been declared. In the meanwhile it has been impossible to stop the working of the mine, and with a view to diminish the cost of working a large expenditure of capital has been called for. We are in a better position than before to take advantage of a favourable turn in the market, but of this there is as }'et no prospect. I have been led to refer to a particular instance because it is a striking illustration of that mutually destructive competition, which is certain to follow any abnormal advance beyond the very moderate rate of profit which is usually obtainable in this country. The state of trade in the United States has for some years -exhibited a most striking illustration of the ultimate disastrous results of an exaggerated rate of profit. Protection was origi- nally introduced as a ready means of at once paying off the debt incurred during the Civil War and encouraging the develop- ment of domestic manufactures. For this purpose rates of duty ranging from 20 to 200 per cent, were imposed on foreign goods. In the first instance profits were increased in corre- sponding ratio. These profits unduly stimulated production, while the manufacturers, enervated by the tariff, were incapable of competing in point of price with the foreign manufacturers 16 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. in any other market but their own. After a few years the American market became glutted with excessive supplies of goods. So long ago as 1878 Mr. Blane, the Chairman of the Maryland Convention, called attention to the fact that 1,200,000 able-bodied men were out of employment, and that numbers were roaming about the country a terror to the resident popula- tion. The state of affairs at the present time in the United States affords evidence of the disastrous results of a protec- tionist policy. In spite of the advantage afforded by a liberal system of public education, leading to a marvellous develop- ment of ingenuity and great efficiency of labour, and with an ample supply of the raw materials, we find that the operatives in the cotton trade of Massachusetts are in a position a great deal worse than that of the operatives of England. They work more hours and harder, the pay in many cases is less, while rents are from two to three times higher, fuel 104 per cent.^ clothing 70 to 80 per cent, higher, and other things in propor- tion. The reduction of wages since 1874 is no less than 50 per cent. The dividends on the joint-stock mills may be accepted as an indication of the average return on the capital invested in the cotton industry of the United Kingdom, and we find the dividends range from 12 per cent, to 5 per cent. These returns are not excessive, but they are sufficient. They are far more advantageous in the end, both for capital and labour, than the high profits which have been realised in this country in the iron and coal trades, and in America from the unwise fiscal system adopted under the circumstances already described, but the unwisdom of which, under the pressure of the present hard times, is becoming only too palpable to the industrial community which is suffering so severely from its effects. While I have shown how the profits realised by employers, under the present organisation of industry, have been brought down by competition, the large accumulations of capital in this country being derived from savings rather than profits, I readily admit that the division of the industrial world into employers with and labourers without wealth does not present a perfect ideal. Under the present system, as Mr. Jevons truly said, every demand for wages and every strike is made in the WEDNESDAY MORNING. 17 dark, and the point to which the master carries resistance is the only real test of the sincerity of his professions. In spite, however, of its obvious disadvantages, the actual constitution of industry exists because it is the easiest and the most natural. To work as a member of a co-operative association demands higher moral qualities than are required, either in employers or work- men, in the more usual industrial relations. Mr. Fawcett, an earnest advocate of co-operative industry, was fully alive to its difficulties. He knew that the joint-stock company could not compete successfully with the individual trader in any business where constant watchfulness and attention to small details are of essential importance. The co-operative plan is not adapted to trades exposed to the uncertainties inseparable from agriculture. We have seen how spasmodic and fitful are the profits in mining and in the iron manufacture. Even in the textile industries, where the conditions vary less from year to year, a fair average cannot be taken over a period of less than ten years. These are not con- ditions which are suitable to men accustomed to receive the whole of their earnings in the form of weekly wages. The necessity for providing capital wherewith to commence operations presents another difficulty which can only be overcome by the establishment of limited liability companies, in which membership is not necessarily limited to the operatives em- ployed. Even in agriculture, the co-operative plan can scarcely be adopted sufficiently widely to tell upon the condition of the farm labourers as a body. Every improvement in agriculture demands a large outlay. Draining, the purchase of stock, the formation of roads, fencing, laying down land to grass, the construction of buildings, all these are operations involving large preliminary expense, with a remote and uncertain re- turn. Profit sharing is another form of co-operation. In many cases the distribution of a bonus on profits is a wholesome stimulus to exertion, and an act of justice to workmen. Even a percentage on profits is not unattended with difficulty. If the wage-earner were required, as a condition of sharing in the profits of a good year, to accept a reduction of wages in a losing c 18 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. year, the system would be less acceptable to many than a steady average wage. Such being the difficulties, practical as well as theoretical, an extensive change in the present industrial system is highly improbable. It is, however, in the highest degree desirable as far as possible to liberate industry from the deadening in- fluence caused by the antagonism of interest between capital and labour. Nothing will so facilitate the development of co- operative industry as the spread of education. It tends to develop those qualities of independence, self-denial, and reso- lution without which an industrial partnership cannot be carried out with success. Many examples might be quoted of co-operative work. Some of the earliest are given by Mr. Smiles in his essay on Thrift. The fisheries have been largely conducted on this principle for hundreds of years. From the earliest dawn of history the tin-miners of Cornwall have been co-operators. In Paris co-operative industry has long been advocated by social reformers. Several examples have been described by Mr. Sedley Taylor. In the business of house-painting and decora- tion, the Maison Leclaire paid in 1882 wages to the amount of 43,000L, while a bonus of 9,630L, or 22 per cent, on the wages, was distributed amongst 998 participants. Mr. Taylor also quotes numerous instances of the payment of a bonus based on profits by private individuals, such as M. Chaix, the bookseller, and M. Bord, manufacturer of pianofortes. He also gives details of a similar system carried out by the Orleans Kailway Company, and by the Vieille Montaigne Zinc Com- pany, of Liege, which gives employment to 6,500 hands. The list on next page, prepared by the secretary of an associa- tion for the purpose of extending the co-operative system in England, shows that, to the limited extent to which this organi- sation has been carried out in this country, a fair measure of success has been attained. With these examples before us, with the immense advan- tages derived from an improved national education, and with the aid of many men of distinguished abilities, who have en- listed in the cause from the purest and most philanthropic A Return, showing the Results of Twelve Co-operative Productive Societies Based on the Co-partnership OP THE Workers, for J883. WEDNESDAY MORNING. 19 0) o O H-^ O 4-3 £3 g* "55 • 2 o Hie> cq CD O .02 t-H oT 0 03 (d -u -<|C3 05 T3 O CO I'i fS o rO -U ■&. c3 O O -fJ -■I'M t- 44) 0 .s 44> ^ -H-t ^ 00 rrt d 0 rQ Jh Q >0 . . h;^ o 44) 4^ It 4-) p P4 CD CD 03 o o Ut Ph O *E. o 3 o '-g CD £3 c3 o o -fj -H 1 d ’Ph .1 s ^ o 03* « ■^. ^ 4 H ^ p 43 PH ^ oS J-i 0 03 02 .d Cd -M d _, 2.2 ^* '^* iD ccIrfHcq fsc £3 02 j:; £3 03 H £4 ^ -+1 05 di ai P a o £3 03 oo ^ g fH , Crt O cS ^ .O (D — ' ^ fH 23 5-1 03 0 43 C3 £4 .-tf SI'S •,-1 ® PH a & H-M ^ 03 a 03 Q, 4g.£ o 1-H O t- lO 30 Q o o O b- CO (M C5 CO 30 2 o O CD GO 30 C<1 0 (M o 73 £h 03 03 -U 73 73 P £3 6 o S 03 13 id 03 03 •2 ■S 0 ^ g -S I • O bo 6 o to O 03 w 03 .O *03 *03 2 bo .s o s 6 O 03 W d d 00 r*?H 0 ^ *ot^ • 73 *d PH -M o bo d be bo ba.^ •' o O OH34£4a 0 C4-( ci o •-I £3 02 d . 0 c rt iM Q bo £3 .t.:! O £3 .2 £3 D -^-‘ +3 0 0 2^-8S bJO .d s >-. <52 0 | r c3 0 >2 d • 03 0 43 03 .£4 d £4 rP W ‘rH ^ ^ • g ^ 2 H .>>.£4 ’fH £3 0 c3 q-( £3 £4 c4 o o a P o c3 O PH O 6 O’ 73 03 13 o £3 03 ’n 'o b-- 03 *M “=^42 “ 2 Northamp Leek Silk The Cutle Dunferml line , bD 03 *rt O o W w S H P-( c 2 Showing a net profit of 19G per cent, of the share capital employed. Note. Allowance to labour is on wages paid. Dividend to trade is on amount of purchases. In some cases capital is allowed some- 20 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. motives, we have reason to hope that, in the future, we shall see many co-operative establishments growing up side by side with those carried on upon the old footing. The latter will always be the more numerous, but the moral effect of a further develop- ment of co-operation will be felt over the whole industrial world. I am confident that the effect will be beneficial, and that opera- tives, as they become acquainted with their difficulties, will be more contented with the wages they earn from their employers. My allotted space is now exhausted. I have endeavoured to answer the first question submitted to this Conference by laying before you the impartial testimony of the most competent economists. Their opinions lend no support to the vague impression which prevails that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer than before. Progress — real progress — has been made towards a more satisfactory social order. But we are very far from having attained to an ideal state of perfection. A more even distribution of wealth, a more complete identity of interest between capital and labour, are earnestly to be desired. In so far as that consummation is to be accomplished by the workmen themselves — and they must be active instru- ments in their own advancement — our hopes for the future rest on co-operative industry. Their efforts must commence with the simplest forms of industrial organisation — those which require the least amount of capital and are most free from the fluctuations so painfully felt in international commerce. In industries which cannot be organised so readily on the co- operative plan, the extended operations of the joint-stock companies will secure the publication of profits and afford opportunities to the workmen for participation, as holders of shares, in the profits of capital. One condition is essential. The workman must save from his present earnings. This con- dition is easy for the Celt. It is hard for the more vigorous but more open-handed Englishman. The improved returns from savings banks and building societies encourage the hope of a growing capacity for thrift in the Anglo-Saxon race. Havinsr referred to the workmen, what should be said to the capitalists ? Capital is amassed, for the most part, by. individual contributions of very modest proportions. But the aggregate WEDNESDAY MOKNING. 21 sum is immense, and as it is capable, under wise direction, of conferring the greatest benefits on the community, so by inju- dicious investments deplorable suffering and misery may be caused. To the excessive accumulation of capital in the hands of individuals there are obvious objections, if not from an economic, at least from a social, point of view ; but the accumulation of capital in the aggregate, apart from its distribution among individuals, is essential to the prosperity of labour. The figures quoted in this paper show an average rate of profit on in- vestment in British industries so moderate that if it were materially reduced there would be no inducement to engage in any industrial operations. In the absence of any exceptional profits to cover the risks of business, Gfovernment stocks, rail- way debentures, and mortgages would be the only channels in which savings would be invested. The price of guaranteed securities would advance enormously, and the growth of industry would be arrested with results most disastrous to the wage-earning classes. At various epochs in our industrial history the public has been possessed with manias for the extension of railways, mills, mines and ironworks, and for loans to bankrupt States. The consequence of alternations such as I have described in the iron trade and shipping are shared by all concerned. The price of labour depends on the demand for it. We have an example in the earnings of the Scotch colliers, which rose from 3s. 9(i. a day in 1870 to 9s. llcZ. in 1873, and fell to 4s. 8(i. in 1876 and 3s. 2cZ. in 1878. Changes of this violent character entail great misery on the wage-earner. In the shipbuilding trades the state of affairs on the Clyde in 1883 was thus described in the columns of Iron : — In time of ordinary activity about 40,000 men are employed in ship- building on the Clyde. The numbers have increased during the past twelve months to over 50,000. Wages have gone up by leaps and bounds. Eiveters’ wages have increased 50 per cent. ; fitters’, 25 per cent. ; caulkers’, over 90 per cent. By the piece-work rates caulkers earn about 21, 11s. per week ; riveters, 4Z. 10s. and upwards; fitters, 5Z., and in many* cases over ll, a week. At the present time, after an 22 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEEATION CONEEEENCE. interval of little more than a year, how different would be the reports we should receive of the condition of the labour market on the Clyde. The total number of hands employed in shipbuilding has been reduced, according to Mr. Jeans, from 94,700 in 1883 to 59,200 in 1884. If, as Mr. Grreg most truly said, the money squandered in many a barren enterprise had been expended on comfortable dwellings for the labouring poor, what an inestimable boon would have been conferred I The sharp lessons of the past should teach caution, not discouragement. The fact which lies at the root of competition is the insufficiency of work for the workmen who are seeking it. Of all forms of investment at present open to British capital, none could confer a greater benefit than the building of industrial dwellings, and judicious advances for colonial enterprise. Among the owners of capital the wealthy are the few— so few indeed, that, as an economic force for the regeneration of society, their utmost efforts of self-denial would exercise no appreciable difference : but if we may argue on the one hand,, with the late Mr. Bagehot, that it is not a Spartan or ascetic state which most generates saving, and that without the multi- farious wants which are called luxury, there would be far less saving than there is, we must admit, on the other hand, that all consumption of luxuries is unproductive. It creates a temporary employment, while it destroys the capital, which,, if saved, would have been a permanent addition to the wages fund. The excesses of self-indulgence have been held up to universal obloquy by the poet-laureate in the opening lines of the Palace of Art : — I built myself a lordly pleasure house, In which at ease for aye to dwell. I said unto my soul, ‘ Make merry and carouse. Dear soul ! for all is well.’ To the truly wise man a life of ease presents no allurements. He knows how hard it is to avoid giving provocation to envy WEDNESDAY MORNING. • 23 and hatred. He is humbled and saddened by the perpetual consciousness of the misery around him. Taste and the sense of duty alike point to simplicity of life. Wealth, if valued at all, will be valued only as a power which it is his duty to use as a steward for the public good. Projits of Industry and the Workers. By Lloyd Jones. The question proposed for discussion to-day is important ; it is also difficult. , ‘ Has the increase of the products of industry within the last hundred years tended most to the benefit of capitalists and employers or to that of the working classes, whether artisans, labourers, or others ? and in what relative proportions in any given period ? ’ Before attempting to answer this question we ought to understand what the industrial state of England was at, or about, the time when our inquiry begins. Nearly all state- ments in regard to wages, profits, social condition of the workers, wealth of the employers, and general state of the nation are more or less conjectural. Our industrial condition since the middle of last century has been completely revolu- tionised, not only as regards methods of work, but also as regards the industrial and social condition of the worker ; and though it would be impossible to prove every point in such a statement by elaborately prepared tables of figures, we may, by an examination of the facts of our industrial history as a nation, arrive at fairly reliable conclusions as to how the people of England worked and lived before machinery was so universally applied for productive purposes. Arkwright took his first patent in 1769. Hargreaves, Crompton, Cartwright, Watt, and Whitney made up a group whose labours completely altered the industrial aspect of the world. Previously to this time the man as a worker was the main reliance, and the increase of our industrial resources was principally sought in a judicious division of labour. From this 24 INDUSTKIAL KEMUNERATION CONEERENCE. time human labour, though still necessary in connexion with machinery, became subordinate to it ; and how to develop and make perfect mechanical power became a matter of much more serious consideration, in a business sense, than how to develop and improve the faculties and powers of man in a human sense, or how in any way to improve his condition, industrially and socially, by aid of the newly-acquired power placed in the hands of society. During what may be called the pre-mechanical times, England, for reasons which need not be further alluded to here, had but a very limited foreign trade, especially in manufactured articles. Our chief source of employment was the land, and our skilled and manufacturing industries were such as were needed to meet the wants of our own people. In this way demand for commodities increased as our population increased. In actual amount at any given time, and in the increase of this over any given period, neither could outrun the other to any very inconvenient length. When the community was supplied and the expense of production defrayed, the profit remaining might be regarded as little more than was necessary to make such extended provision for an increasing trade as might be found necessary. Under such conditions excessive speculative production could not be entered on. The employer, whose business increased, provided for such increase out of the profits his growing trade had given him. Increase was slow : there were no ‘ leaps and bounds ’ ; there were few panics or crises ; there were no colossal fortunes ; the manufacturing millionaire was a playful, unrealisable fancy, not a reality known to the officials at the Probate Court. The working man was also different in position and condition from what he is to-day. For the most part labour operations were carried on in the home of the employer, or in accommo- dation attached to the house he inhabited. The worker served a seven years’ apprenticeship to his employer, who himself had obtained his right to carry on his trade by an apprenticeship served in his youth. The number of apprentices was regulated by the number of journeymen, and thus the new ‘ hands ’ found their way to where increase of trade was actually taking place. WEDNESDAY MOENING. 25 The absolute separation ot the worker from his employer which prevails at the present day was then impossible. The ap- prenticeship and. the journey man ship that followed, partook somewhat of the family relation ; and it is recorded that the friendships and affections of the family were frequently con- tinued in the workshop. In times of brisk trade there was willing activity on the part of the worker, and, when trade was slack, hospitality and help from the employer. The income of the nation was not known with any certainty then any more than it is now. Sinclair, in his History of the Public Revenue of the British Em]pire,^ tells us that Henry VIII. had a survey made of the whole kingdom — of the number of inhabitants, their age, professions, wealth, income, and every other important particular. This survey is unfortunately lost, the only thiug w^hich it contained at present known being ‘ that the income of the whole kingdom was estimated at four millions _ 2 :>er annum.'' He also gives us in the second part of the same work (page 9) the estimate of the income of the nation, made by Arthur Young about the time our inquiry commences. £ Income from land ..... 63,000,000 From manufactures ..... 20,000,000 From commerce and the colonial possessions 17,000,000 100,000,000 Mulhall states the income of England in 1770 at 122 millions, whilst Pultney’s estimate of the capital of the country at the same period in land, houses, stock of all kinds, materials for manufacture, shipping, cash, money in the funds, in short everything that can be denominated wealth or property, at 1,000 millions.^ This may be taken as the industrial con- dition of England. The employers and artisans worked on a system that had been slowly formed by the daily experience of centuries, and which had the sanction of deeply-rooted custom, and, it may be added, deeply-rooted prejudice. That it answered all the claims of justice need not be asserted here; that there was neither deep suffering nor dangerous discontent ' Sinclair, vol. i., p. 115. ^ Ihid. vol. i., p. 9. 26 INDUSTEIAL KEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. I do not say ; all I desire to make clear is that the employing class and the working class were more on an equality socially than they now are, and that the extremes of poverty and wealth were not so dangerously distant. Dr. Aikin tells us how the ‘ eminent Manchester manufacturer of the early part of the eighteenth century took his porridge breakfast, surrounded by his sons and daughters, who helped him in his business, as early as six o’clock in the morning, and dipped their spoons in a dish, of milk that stood beside the porridge.’ And Eatcliffe, in his book entitled Origin of the New System of Manufacture^ says that, when he was a young man in 1785, any young weaver might from his earnings lay by sufficient to set him up as a manufacturer, and he himself did this. He describes also the condition of the weavers and of their houses a hundred years ago as one of such comfort that it seems at the present time to be incredible. But perhaps the best test of the general condition of the working portion of the population is to be found in the amount spent on the poor annually in poor-rates. Such expenditure, however it may he called, is a payment to meet requirements on the part of the most necessitous of our workers, which the wages earned are not sufficieut to meet ; that is making allowance for exceptional misfortunes, and the self-provoked sufferings of the ill-conducted, which operate at all periods. This fund, as Mr. Senior tells us in his essay on the English Poor Laivs^'^ averaged for the three years ending 1750, 690,000^. odd a year, which is but slightly over the aver- age from 1673, up to that time. I do not urge any fact stated here as proof of a high state of prosperity. I am simply seeking to make plain the actual condition of the people, the amount of comfort they secured, and the misery they avoided by the use they made of the means at their disposal. I have stated that whether we consider this state of things satisfactory or not, it was the slow growth of time. It had nO' pretence to scientific initiation ; its worst features were not justified by scientific arguments, based on abstruse principles.. It was the child of time with such amendments as experience * Edinhurgli Review, October 1841. WEDNESDAY MOKNING. 27 liad succeeded in effecting ; and such faults and abuses as self- interest and prejudice were strong enough to preserve. Of the new industrial life begotten by the inventions of the remarkable men already named, the birth may be said to have been instantaneous, and the growth rapid. An enormous power beyond our means of calculation was placed in our hands,. Our knowledge of how to use and direct it had not come with it. It demanded intelligence, wisdom, and humanity to deal with it in its facts and consequences ; and these unfortunately were not to be had when wanted. Intelligence to develop its power in the work of production ; wisdom to adapt it to the other productive forces of the world, so as to avoid loss or injury by antagonisms of interest ; humanity to fit it to satisfy the requirements of society at large, rather than those of a class ; and thus to connect it with human labour, so that it should help the worker, without displacing and ruining him, in its first in- troduction. I wish here to guard against misunderstanding, by saying that I am friendly to the introduction of machinery. I am simply speaking of the method of introducing and working it, so that it may be a blessing to men, and not in any way an injury or a curse. Machinery as a great productive force became at first the possession of those who had money. The inventors at the very beginning were taken captive by the possessors of capital. Some of them did well in their bondage, others not so welL The masses of the workers were absolutely shut out by their want of means individually. As the Combination Laws were not repealed till 1824, it is clear that nothing could be done by associative efforts to obtain possession of any portion of the new mechanical productive power then rapidly coming inta existence. Day by day this increased, and the first effect was to produce more rapidly than the existing markets required. All articles so produced became much cheaper ; but habit of use and means of purchase were not sufficient to carry off the greatly augmented production of the country. The first effect, therefore, of the comparatively extensive estab- lishment of mechanical production was to disemploy the hand- worker. His old method of production rapidly fell inta 28 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. disuse ; as, in addition to its clumsiness and dearness, the markets were kept constantly overstocked by the product of the machine. The distress of the country and the increase of the poor had other causes besides the displacement of labour, the American and French wars being amongst the number ; but it is a significant fact that over the whole of the time we have been in possession of this marvellous productive power the poor-rates have been continually on the increase. As already stated, a three years’ average was, in 1750, under 700,000^. In 1785, 1,912,000^. was the average over a similar time. When the present century opened, however, this was above 4,000,000^. During the machine-breaking period it had gone to above seven millions sterling. In 1820 it was 7,330,256L In 1834, the poor-rates, as stated by Senior, amounted to 7,51 1, 2 19^. By the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act, they were reduced to 5,110,683/. All this time machinery had gone on increasing, and the wealth of the country rapidly growing. Now in 1884, taking into account our enormous mechanical and chemical productive powers, and the wealth produced (so far as we can estimate it), side by side with a poor-rate over 8,000,000/. sterling, for England alone, the inquiry of to-day cannot be considered premature or unnecessary. I believe there is no correct estimate of the mechanical power we possess, counted as manual, or man power. Pro- fessor Leone Levi, in his lectures entitled Work and Pay, delivered in 1877, tells us that ‘ to make by hand all the yarn spun in England in one year, by the use of the self-acting mule carrying 1,000 spindles, viz., 1,000 threads at the time, we would require 100,000,000 of men.’ We may now say that our mechanical power, including railways and steamships, must be equal at least to 1,000,000,000 of men. What this produces in annual wealth, compared with what was annually produced before our industrial mechanism was invented and applied, nobody can tell. In what proportions this is divided amongst our several classes, many have attempted to inform us ; and though their tables of figures look formidable, it is right to say they are not WEDNESDAY MORNING. 29 accurate, for the simple reason that the requisite facts are too numerous, intricate, and obscure to be ascertained. The amount of our productive power is unknown ; the market value of our produce, which is always varying, is never certain. The profit on the vast business done in the multitude of articles we produce is, and most likely ever must be, absolutely un- known. The proportion that goes to the higher and middle classes cannot be discovered. Eent of land may be pretty accurately estimated ; profits on trade, wholesale or retail, never. The statistician makes a wild guess, and tables it in figures ; but he, in fact, leaves the matter where he found it. Mr. Griffen,, I have no doubt, tries to get as near the fact as possible, of the profits on the foreign investments of our monied men, acknow- ledged and unacknowledged. He says, ‘ I believe I shall be confirmed by those who know the city, in the opinion that much income comes home from abroad which is not returned to the income tax authorities ; those estimates fully warrant me in set- ting down 40,000,000^. as the foreign income omitted from the income tax returns.’ ^ This one fact vitiates all argument as to the income of the monied classes. If the income tax collectors can allow such a sum to slip through their fingers, having many better reasons for ferreting out the truth than our statisticians, it is startling to think of what may escape in connexion with the wholesale and retail trade, and the multi- tude of investments made by our traders and others at home. Going from our manufacturers and traders to our working people, the difficulties of the statistician increase. It is easy enough to venture an estimate of the numbers belonging to that loosely defined class, commonly called the working class ; and it is not difficult to say that they earn so much, each individual by the day, the week, or the year. It seems one of the easiest things possible, by addition and subtraction, to settle what the wage earners of a family receive ; and by extending the calculation to show what is the gross annual income of the millions who live on the wages they earn. The numbers of the class being stated, and the supposed daily income set down, alt the rest follows with admirable clearness. It is usually forgotten ’ Essays in Finance, p. 171. 30 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONEEEENCE. that there are serious deductions to be made from an income so reckoned on account of sickness and broken time, through misfortunes in the workshop, and a number of minor causes, which, although they do not attract public notice, are yet serious causes of loss and suffering to large numbers of working- men. In addition to these, it may be said that if we set down half the members of any skilled trade as belonging to their trade society, it will be found that every such body has a number of its members out of employment — in times of bad trade, a large number ; when trade is good, a smaller number ; but always some. The half, not in the union, are usually worse situated, as the men do not help each other so willingly ; and, as a rule, are not so steady or so well skilled as the men belonging to the unions. We have no stated allowance for lost time. This is so im- portant a matter in connection with wages, that the sum de- ducted ought to be distinctly stated. Mr. Hey, one of the Secretaries of the Moulders’ Union, has prepared an elaborate account from the books of his society, and finds the time lost by their members to be 20 per cent, or one-fifth of the whole. This calculation, if carried out over the non-union workers, would be much increased, and this has to be added to depressions of trade like that existing at present ; and though generous efforts have usually been made to relieve the sufferings of those out of work, it is not going too far to say that not only savings, but wages, yet unearned, have to be largely used to get rid of the indebtedness incurred at such times. Professor Leone Levi, in a recent article in the Times, brings the wages of the workers up to 523 millions sterling; but the calculation of Mr. Hey rubs out over 100 millions of this amount. Beyond this the improvements and depressions of trade are continually occurring, and these changes and uncertainties have an exceedingly bad effect on the condition of our working- population. Mr. W. M. Halbert, in his book called Economic and Financial Science, points out, that there is what he denominates a cycle of seasons in trade, that bring round periodical revolutions known as financial crises. Each decade, in its parallel years, presents commercial phases almost alike if WEDNESDAY MOKNING. 31 not identical ; and he shows by undeniable facts that this is the case. He gives the years and states the principal causes. In 1826, the culminating cause lay in foreign loans and mining speculation ; 1837 and 1838, the great American panic; 1847, great railway panic and Irish potato rot ; 1857, financial panic, including ^Yestern Scottish Bank failure ; 1866, Overend Gurney as one fact in the general disaster. In these five periods there were sixty years out of which there were six years of financial crises and financial depression ; fifteen years of great depression and general stagnation ; six years of slow recovery from depression and stagnation ; six years of decided recovery from commercial depression ; eighteen years of prosperous and remunerative commercial enterprise ; and eleven years of over- trading and commercial reaction. If the description given by Mr. Halbert is kept in mind, it will be seen that over thirty of these years mean a strongly depressed, or a declining, and a recovering trade. In these three conditions the working-men of the country are very un- favourably situated. The employer's chief resource, to curtail ■expense of production, at such times lies in a curtailment of the wages of labour. He has little or no influence over the price of raw material, expenses of management must go on, if the organ- isation of his establishment is to be kept up ; whilst wages form so large a proportion of the cost of the manufactured article, that they become naturally and immediately a direct object of attack. I do not mean that such an attack is the result of pre- arrangement, nor that the employers as a body always approve of it. Among the employers of England there are many who, with insufficient capital, are eager to avoid defeat, and to fight their way onward in the competitive battle on which they have entered. As a rule, these commence the attack on wages. It may be their position at the bankers compels them to realise, and they sell at reduced prices for this purpose, and having made the necessary sacrifice in the market, they seek to recoup themselves by reductions of wages. However few these may be, the better disposed, and better situated, must follow, for the purpose of meeting their competitions in the markets ; and hence a war between capital and labour, I think I may say not 32 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. serviceable to the interests of the employers, but most decidedly adverse to the interests of the workers. In this way, when the periodical decline sets in, a severe pressure on wages commences, which continues till the worst part of the depression has passed. During this time the trades union is fighting to prevent a too rapid descent. When a turn for the better takes place, the trades unionist fights to regain the ground he has lost, and this being an uphill fight is also a severe one ; and assuming that he gets back to his old position, in amount of wages, all that has been lost, in both the retreat and advance, is gone for ever ; as there are no means of re- covering the cost of a strike or a lock-out, whichever way it may terminate. It has been pointed out many times that the working-men of the country might avoid this loss by a policy of non-resistance. True — but as this, all the world over, means a policy of ruin to those who adopt it, the working-men of the country, so long as they have in them the power to unite, are not likely to adopt it. No men know better than the trades unionists of the country, liow much loss there is attending strikes. Mr. Henry Ashworth, who published in 1854 a full account of the Preston strike of the previous year, informs us that the cost of this local strike in loss of wages was 250,000?., and in contributions spent in support of the people on strike 97,000?., in the whole, 347,000?. If we add to this the priva- tions and sufferings in the homes of the people on strike, it will be easily understood with what terrible force such a calamity must come home to the minds of working-men; and yet, singular to say, such circumstances, when they occur, instead of acting as deterrents, have precisely the opposite effect. Those who condemn strikes should understand that until some better plan can be discovered for protecting the interests of the workers, strikes, however objectionable, or however heavy in the losses they bring, must continue. It is right to say here that working-men generally are not favourable to strikes ; that, on the contrary, the leaders of trade societies exert themselves to prevent them, and would be very glad to see an end of them, could any alternative be found that on the whole would answer their purpose as well.. WEDNESDAY MORNING. 33 Arbitration has been tried, but it does not appear to have grown into favour. It is slow, expensive, and at the same time very imcertain in its results. The sufficiency and correctness of the data are not always satisfactory ; besides which, foregone con- clusions in the minds of those who hear the evidence and give judgment, whether they operate or not, are frequently sus- pected as being in operation. Eegulation of wages by sliding scale has been for some time in operation in the coal trade, but it would be premature at present to pronounce any judgment either in its favour or against it. The arrangement in the coal trade is that wages shall rise and fall in given proportion to rise and fall of price in the coal market. It is not, however, in accordance with economic doctrine to regulate the price of one commodity by that of another ; and as labour and its market may at any time be different in its conditions from coal and the market in which it is sold, it does not appear reasonable that the price of the one should regulate the price of the other. An over-supply in the coal is now becoming something like a regular condition, in consequence of an enormously increased capacity of out-put. This may be regarded as meaning a permanent lowness of price, and by consequence a permanent lowness of wages, even though the demand in the labour market should be favourable to an advance of wages. In addition, it may be said that as the men by their union may be presumed to have some power over the price of labour, and never can have any in regard to the price of coal, it appears as if something was risked by the miners in making such an arrangement. In such a matter as this, however, it is dangerous to be too positive in urging an opinion strongly in opposition to any the men may themselves favour. I imagine that as a rule the men are the best judges, and if their experience of a sliding scale disposes them in its favour, the best way is to try the experiment fully, before any positive judgment is pronounced. Of one thing we may be certain. Up to the present time the considerations named here inevitably point to the necessity for very heavy deductions from whatever sum may be stated as the nominal wages of the workers of the country. The estimate D 34 INDUSTKIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. can never be carried beyond a guess. Uncertainty of employ- ment, difference in wages, losses by strike, difference in skill, ^ and many other considerations, place the wage-receiver far lower, as a partaker in the income of the country, than the statisticians place him. Much stress has been laid on the amount of money saved by the working people, as in savings banks, building societies, co-operative and other societies. Such investments are proofs of providence, but not so much of increased means. Money in a savings bank is not a permanent acquirement, and when such deposits are balanced with withdrawals this becomes plain enough. Money paid into building societies to a large extent belongs to other classes ; whilst the money saved in the co- operative societies of the kingdom is simply a saving on expenditure, the bulk of which is drawn out at intervals to meet the household requirements of the members. Indeed, were the whole amount which is not required to be held within call to meet contingent demands summed up, it would be found not more than sufficient to cover the indebtedness of the millions of Englishmen who live on the daily wages they earn. So that in fact the income of the working people may be re- garded as little, if any, more than sufficient to meet their wants, one year with another. In saying this I speak of the whole working class, commonly so called, but I wish to add that this class is made up of many classes. The highest skilled of these are comparatively well paid. They live in moderate comfort, and having the inclination, have got the means to save. Below these there are gradations run- ning into pauperism. When in full work they can with diffi- culty pay their way, but at their best times they have a crippling indebtedness to pay off, and as these times alternate they can never be truly regarded as in a condition to save. At the lowest and worst it is no exaggeration to say that comfort in life is impossible, and hope of independence by their own exertions a possibility so remote as to make despair and reck- lessness a hideous inheritance from generation to generation. I have examined a number of the figures given by Edward Young in his elaborate work, Labour in Eurojpe and America, WEDNESDAY MORNING. 35 and while I admit the industry displayed by Mr. Young to be highly creditable to him, I cannot admit the accuracy of his figures on this subject. Professor Leone Levi’s figures appear to me of a like kind, estimated, not ascertained. ‘ I have,’ says Professor Leone Levi, ‘ estimated upon a very good basis, though necessarily in a general manner, that the 12,000,000 persons at work annually earn about 418,000,000^.’ A general estimate, however laboriously made, does not meet the requirements of the case ; and when we are afterwards told that the income of the middle and upper classes united amounts only to 349.000. 000^., with something added for that portion under 100^. not assessed to the tax, we are puzzled how to recon- cile it with general estimates made by other experts. Two years after Professor Leone Levi’s book containing the foregoing statement came out, Mr. Dudley Baxter published his work on the Taxation of the United Kingdom. He no doubt, also estimating on a ‘ good basis,’ states the income of the ‘ manual labour class ’ at 325,000,000^, or 93,000,000^. less than Professor Leone Levi. He also gives the income of the upper and middle classes as 490,000,000^. This is 141.000. 000^. more than Professor Leone Levi’s estimate ; not allowing for the difference pointed out in consequence of the excluded 100^. not taxable. If, however, we turn to Mr. Mul- haU’s Dictionary of Statistics, we find on page 246, that the middle and upper classes possessed an income for 1883 of 818.000. 000^., a sum of 328,000,000L more than Mr. Dudley Baxter and 469,000,000L more than Professor Leone Levi. Of course allowance must be made for difference in time between the two first named gentlemen and Mr. Mulhall ; but the discrepancy between all three seems difficult to explain. Professor Kolb, in referring to these returns, remarks, I think very truly, ^ that all such estimates are as a matter of course very uncertain.’ There is nothing more variable than the net income of working-men. The wage paid, the time worked, the numbers to be supported, vary so much and so continually, that how much passes into the houses of the working-men to meet, per head, the requirements of their families cannot be got at witli 36 INDUSTEIAL REMUNEEATION CONFERENCE. anything approaching to certainty. Personally I have acted as arbitrator in a large number of important cases between the ^ working-men and their employers, more particularly in the coal trade ; and I have found, without any apparent inclination to deceive, startling differences between the wages stated by the men as those received, and by the employers as those paid. It has struck me in thinking over this matter, that the men estimate their wages more as the average of their receipts over the year with all drawbacks of broken time and the lower as well as the higher wages counted in ; whilst the employers confine their calculations more to the higher earnings of the best workers, and take them after the manner of the statisticians, as though they were earned and received during the whole working period of the year. Besides, I have noticed, in looking over Mr. Young’s large volume, that the informa- tion it contains comes from men whose positions are more in alliance with capital than with labour. I cast no doubt on them on this account ; only my experience tells me that the unconscious leanings of position in such an inquiry as this count for much more than impartial outsiders are likely to imagine. Before leaving this part of my subject I ought to notice the attempts so persistently made of late years to blame the working people themselves as the chief authors of their own miseries. I have read Dr. Smiles’ work on Thrift and other books of the same kind, written probably with good intention, but, in fact, very misleading ; and, I am disposed to think, rather mischievous in tendency. In one entitled Protection and Bad Times, published in 1879, I find this passage : — ‘ The coal-miner indeed will do all in his power to raise wages, but when he spends half of his week’s earnings in champagne, he will never own that he is himself lowering his wages by one half.’ To me this reads like an extravagance of statement meant to be regarded as ludicrous. I have had an intimate personal connexion with the working people of England for over half a century ; my intercourse with them has been constant and familiar. Their follies and extravagances are not un- known to me ; but I am bound to say that, making fair allow- WEDNESDAY MORNING. 37 ance for them as for the members of the other classes of society, it has always struck me that their virtues in self-denying economies far outweigh their follies and extravagances. I have also had special acquaintance with the miners of the kingdom for at least twenty years. I moved a good deal among them when wages were at the highest and their extravagance, I pre- sume, at the worst ; when, as is stated, they were spending their earnings on champagne, ducks and green peas out of season, and treating their bull-dogs to the best cuts from legs of mut- ton ; and I feel bound to say that I never saw^ any of these things, nor anything that indicated to me their existence even in the slightest degree. I have read of them in books and newspapers, and have heard the miners talk about them and laugh at them, but up to the present moment I have been compelled to regard them as simply untruthful. I am pre- pared to say that the poverty of the people is mainly due to the lowness of their wages, and the uncertainty of their employ- ment. When I say this I am not thinking of a model popula- tion free from every desire to touch what they cannot afford ; and who gather to themselves, and carefully hoard the smallest trifle they can lay their hands on, remembering that — ‘ A penny saved is twopence clear, A pin a day, a groat a year.’ I speak of the people as we have them and as we must deal with them ; the human creatures we meet in our streets, and who swarm in our mines, factories, and workshops ; whose wages are not sufficient to keep decent lives in their bodies ; who are everywhere discontented, not because others tell them they ought to be so, but because they feel it impossible to be content with painfully inequitable conditions of industrial and social life. What is said here does not apply to our better paid classes of artisans, but to the multitudes who swarm in all our large towns ; whose employment is uncertain, and whose wages are low ; and who in their feeblest and worst condition required in England, in the year 1883, no less a sum, as supplementary to wages, than 8,353,292^., as against the sum of 690,000Z., stated by ^Ir. Senior as ^the average in England of the three 38 INDUSTEIA.L EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. years ending 1750. About the general condition of large numbers of the workers of Great Britain, whatever supposititious figures may say, there can be no question. Nor can there be any doubt of the enormously increased wealth of the middle and higher classes. Mulhall tells us that in 1806 the income of G-reat Britain was 170,000,000L ; while in 1882 it was 1.247.000. 000^. Kolb, quoting Leone Levi, states that our national property at the commencement of the present century was 1,800,000,000^., whilst in 1860 it had increased to 6.000. 000.000^. When, however, Mr. G-iffen published his Essays in Finance, in 1880, he computed the national wealth at 8,500, 000,000^. The position is this : — The productive power of the country is in the hands of a small class. The distributive business is also in the hands of a class, and the profits realised in produc- tion and distribution belong to these. Wages can scarcely be regarded as more than an element of cost in production. The money carried into the houses of working-men to feed, clothe, and shelter the present and rising generations of workers is for the wants of the day, and adds little annually to the in- creasing capital of the country. It is really difficult to ask seriously whether the increase of the products of industry within the last hundred years has tended most to the benefit of capitalists and employers, or to the benefit of the working classes. Why lose time in calculating the pennies spent by working-men for food, drink, clothing, and rent, instead of going to the accumu- lated property of the country, and telling us how much of it belongs to the working classes as compared with what belongs to the middle and upper classes ? — their possessions in land and houses, in railways and our merchant navy, in British and Foreign loans and stocks ; in mines, factories, iron-works, and other tangible forms of national wealth. If the workers have been participators in any fair degree in the growth of the country’s wealth, this would be a better way to get at the fact than through assumed detail in receipts and expenditure utterly impossible of proof. ^ * The Spectator, in 1873 and in 1883, published two lists of all British fortunes exceeding a quarter of a million personalty, which had been trans- WEDNESDAY MOENIND. 39 In the books and papers of statisticians I find a very re- markable improvement in the income and condition of the working classes. On a large general subject like this, including such varied multiplicity of detail (on which, among statisticians, there is no common agreement, beyond what there might be on any general question among any number of people), the safest way is to listen to the almost universal complaints made as to the poverty and suffering to be seen everywhere around us ; to note what our parliamentary inquiries on such questions as the dwellings of the poor bring out, to note also the great increase in the annual amount of our poor rates ; to comprehend, if pos- sible, the large amount of money given annually in private charity, and also that spent every year in support of benevolent institutions ; to consider, in addition, the deep discontent of the masses of our working people heard on every side ; and then ask ourselves whether the existence of such a state of things is not as startling as it is dangerous, in connexion with a growth of productive power in the country almost incompre- hensible by its vastness. Whatever the situation, as regards its anomalies and dangers, it is certain that the action of trade societies cannot fundamentally alter it. They can, at certain times, insist on adjustments more in accordance with equity than if all resistance to the action of employers were removed. The competitions of the markets, stimulated by our enormous and ever increasing power of supply in every kind of commodity, and the competitions stimulated among the workers by hunger during panics and crises, and strivings by employing com- petitors for cheapness, could not fail to produce a most dis- astrous condition of things for all who Jive by their labour. It would be a mistake in the general recognition of the evils of f erred by death within the preceding twenty years. The result was as follows : — Persons above a million sterling .... 23 Persons above half a million 109 Persons above quarter of a million . . .356 If persons possessed of over a hundred thousand sterling had been added, these numbers would have been vastly increased. Those who died worth even a hundred thousand before the middle of last century, could they be discovered, would not be many. 40 INDUSTEIAL REMUNEEATION CONFERENCE. the prevailing system of competitive wages to suppose that the working people had no conception of remedy but what lies in the action of the trades unions of the country. The co-operators, as a rule, belong to the working class, and in the co-operative body there are large numbers of trades unionists. The co-operative organisation includes about two and a half millions of the most thoughtful and provident of the British people. They have re- moved the disadvantages attending the ordinary distributive system by a plan of their own ; and this in a limited way is now placing in their hands something over two millions sterling a year as profit. They have made this profit because they have found the way to use their own capital, made fruitful by their own consumption, for the carrying on of their own distributive business. They entertain like views in reference to productive industry. They have, so far as they have gone, got possession of the implements of distribution ; and as they find their own capital, the profits of their business belong to them. They have carried this idea to a certain extent into the work of pro- duction, and with such results that they become day by day more convinced that, as time passes and experience increases, and a knowledge of the best principle on which to struggle for success becomes developed among the general body of their members, success will be found as practicable in production as in distribution. In concluding this paper, however, it may be said that our working people are not progressing in comfort and independence commensurately with the increase of the nation’s productive powers, nor with its actual growth of wealth. No calculating power possessed by the statisticians will convince them of this. Their trades unions will therefore continue to be maintained and their co-operative experimen tings will go forward. The atti- tude of these two great bodies is not one of defiance and aggres- sion, of violence and spoliation. They are men of peace seek- ing by their own efforts legally to bring a higher equity into the business of life. Some idea of the growth of wealth in the country may be formed by noting the increase of the nation’s capitalised wealth during the present century, and the income annually derived from it, — fully confirmed by the evidences of WEDNESDAY MOENING. 41 wealth to be seen on all hands, as well as by the records of the Probate Court. The poverty in the country, as felt by the poorest of our working people, needs no proof ; and it is our duty to recognise and remedy it, rather than to disguise or deny it. We should frankly acknowledge that as a nation we have not succeeded in distributing equitably the wealth that has come to us so abundantly, and that instead of seeking honestly to correct so dangerous a failure, we have sought to justify the blunders of ignorance by scientific pretences, and by charging the sufferers with causing their own miseries by wanton and reckless extravagance. It ought to be a matter of congratulation to those who possess and exercise power in these islands to know that the two great influencing organisations * of workers — the trades unionists and co-operators — instead of being discontented conspirators, are acting openly in the light of day ; the one to peaceably secure some degree of equitable treatment for labour; the other to so alter the relation of capital and labour as to permanently secure justice for all interests, and as a consequence the future peace and well-being of the country. Rates of Wages paid by the Dundee Harbour Trustees during the last Twenty-fve years. By David Cunningham, M.Inst.C.E., F.S.S. The Table on following page showing the rates of wages paid to the workmen at Dundee Harbour from 1859 to 1884, indicates some interesting facts with reference to the condition of work- men in this part of the country during the last twenty-five years. The rates of wages stated may be regarded as a fair index of the local rates of wages in Dundee generally, the former being closely regulated by the latter. The rates are well authenticated, having been extracted from the wages books of the Dundee Harbour Trust for the months of June, July, and August of each specified year. From this table it may be observed that the wages of workmen generally have increased from 60 to 80 per cent, in 42 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONEERENCE. O PQ P3 w w w p iz; P P H P P O P cu P c:> § s 30 hT XI ^ ^ liT 0 S H S X 1 c? fe P ^ w H P P I— i O W m P P P <5 H d mh § -OOi>< ^OCOOiOiiQ .OCDOOOCDO d^ g O . ?H "S S 5 Ph '(NrHC^C^C^COCOCOCOiOCO'^r*^ '^lOO^t^OCCCOT-Hi-HC^OCOT^O •OOO^C^COt 52; ® .coa>usi-Hco'cjH(N^->*< c3 c3 ^ p^ a ai m I ® a ^ft-g (U - OJ c3 a ^ a ^ CO Im t- t- I 1 f5I^COOOTtl OS rH CO US Oi 1 IC 0 lfSb~ 05 >—IC 0 - . !>. b- t- CO OO I I CO CO 00 00 00 00 < Calcu- lated average rate per trades- man. l0Ot^^aiUlC5b-.THC^»0'MC0wa Metal breakers Rate per cube yard |t-oooo:.ococo Horses No. of horses |C^-^CO |COCCiOkO Rate per horse per week .OOOO^Oi *^oo OOOOO rH 1 .H 1 CDCOCOC<^(M rHCOi— 1 -OOCOCC OOOOOOOOOOCOOOGOOOCOCOCOOOCO WEDNESDAY MOENING. 43 twenty-five years. But to understand whether this increase in the rates of wages has been real or only nominal (as might be the case if the value of the precious metals had become depreciated), it is imperative to consider whether the neces- saries of life have increased or diminished in price. On inquiry we find that the prices of the higher class com- modities, such as butcher’s meat and eggs, appear to have risen from 10 to 40 per cent. The prices of the more immediate necessaries of life, such as bread and butter, appear now to average when taken together the same as they were in 1859, while tea, sugar, soap, treacle, syrup, and marmalade, average now only half the prices of 1859. Kents appear to have in- creased about 50 per cent., but a large proportion of this increase is doubtless due to improved accommodation, and to the intro- duction of water. The rates of tradesmen generally are seen from the table to have increased by 80 per cent., and the rates of labourers by 60 per cent., over the rates twenty-five years ago ; and within this period (from 1875 to 1877) masons, joiners, and labourers were paid better wages than at present, and therefore found their condition more rapidly improved than even these per- centages indicate. These extraordinary rates of increase are certainly not attributable in any material degree to an increased cost of living, for the principal necessaries of life, as represented by bread, are no dearer now than they were twenty-five years ago. Superior articles of consumption, such as eggs and meat of home growth, have indeed risen considerably in price, but their place is now largely occupied by imported food in tins, of which upwards of one million pounds weight are consumed in Dundee every year. Taking this into account, and the fact that the class of home meat chiefly consumed by the working classes has risen 15 per cent, in price only, it is probable that the average price of meat as consumed by the working classes is no greater now than at the commencement of the period. And as we have seen a large miscellaneous group of articles have greatly fallen in price, it may fairly be assumed that the necessaries of life are no dearer now than they were twenty-five years ago. 44 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. To what, then, is such an unprecedented rise in the wages of labour attributable ? We answer, it must be owing largely to the greater relative demand for the services of the workman ; that is to say, that the number of men required to perform certain operations must have diminished relatively to the work to be done. But the number of men in the country has, not- withstanding emigration, increased considerably. The intro- duction of labour-saving machines would have the effect of rendering the work performed by such increased workmen still more prolific, so that, in ordinary course, the work done would be much more than before. To cause, then, such an exceptional demand for labour, and a resulting rise in the rates of wages of so extraordinary a character, there must have existed a very extraordinary increase in demand for the commodities or articles produced. This unprecedented demand could, however, have been ren- dered possible only by the enormously increased facilities of communication which have taken place between all parts of the commercial world within the last twenty-five years, whereby the market of Gfreat Britain has been extended largely and with great rapidity. Gfreat Britain has, in most important aspects, occupied during this period a position of vantage over almost every other country in the world. She possessed large stocks of coal and iron, and these have been drawn upon without stint. The most recent calculation which has been made of the time in which our stock of coal will last at the present annually increasing rate of consumption — namely, that by Mr. Sydney Lupton — shows that it would become exhausted to a depth of 4,000 feet in 106 years from the present time. This theoretical calculation will serve very well to give us some idea of how our exception- ally improving times have arisen. At no part of the country are we far removed from the coast, and by means of the sea, and by the adoption of Free Trade, we have not been very far removed from any other country ; for the introduction of steam and 'of large vessels has practically shortened our former ocean-distances immensely. We have, therefore, with perhaps the exception of Belgium, been alone in reaping the firstfruits WEDNESDAY MORNING. 45 of modern international communications. We have been able to sell our manufactures to every country which would take them, at a much cheaper rate than such countries could make them for themselves. A demand quite unprecedented has thus grown upon us, and all who have been connected with our industrial employments have reaped the benefits. It is impossible that this rate of rapid improvement can last, for as the raw materials become, as they must do in a few generations, somewhat more difficult to realise, so must the relative advantages of our manufacturing industry gradually disappear. The ability to purchase foreign food will then diminish, and the soil of Grreat Britain will be unable to main- tain a population constantly increasing in numbers as at present ; and it may even be that ultimately the pressure may become so great as to necessitate an abnormal emigration, so as thereby to reduce the population below its maximum. APPENDIX. Note as to Wages in the Printing Trade, Dundee, for 52 Years, from 1833 to 1884. Per week Per week From 1833 to 1838, Newspapers 16s. — Book and Jobbing 16s. 1838 to 1854, >> 20s. - „ „ 20s. 1854 to 1859, 22s. - „ „ 22s. 1859 to 1870, 25s. Od. to 35s. — „ „ 22s. 5) 1870 to 1872, 25s. Od. to 35s. — „ „ 24s. >> 1872 to 1876, 5> 25s. Od. to 40s. — „ „ 25s. 1876 to 1884, 5J 32s. 6d. to 42s. — ,, „ 26s. Newspapers are now almost entirely ^set up’ by piece-work, but although the figures given represent what is termed ‘ ’stab.’ wages, they may be accepted as the earnings of piece-workers as well. In the Jobbing Department, 26s. is given as the minimum wage ; only a very limited number are now paid at that rate. The wages generally paid vary from 26s. to 35^. for journeymen. A very considerable reduction in the number of working hours per week has taken place during the period from 1833 to 1884. From 1833 to 1859 the working hours per week were not less than 60; from 1859 to 1872, 57 hours; from 1872 till the present time the hours have been 51 per week. This statement apjdies only to Dundee. 46 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. Note as to the Hours per Week wrought by the Workmen EMPLOYED BY THE DuNDEE HaRBOUR TRUSTEES. The hours per week of both tradesmen and labourers up to and including the year 1867 were 57. From 1869 to and including 1877, tradesmen wrought 51 hours per week; labourers 56 hours per week. Masons and causeway layers wrought 54 hours per week till 1879, and 51 hours thereafter. Other tradesmen have wrought up to the present time 54 hours per week, and labourers 56 hours. Note as to the Savings of the Working Classes in Dundee. The statistics of the Dundee Savings Bank show that the total deposits at the end of 1876 were 447,080^., and at the end of 1884 they were 739,483/., showing an increase of 290,000/. in eight years; and I have been informed by the accountant and cashier of that bank that on an average eleven-twelfths of the depositors belong to the working classes. Note as to the Population of Dundee. In 1821 the population numbered 30,575. 1831 45,355. 1841 62,794. 1851 78,931. 1861 99 91,664. 1871 99 120,724. 1881 99 142,454. In 1884 the population is reckoned to number about five times as many persons as in 1821, and this extraordinary increase must be largely due to the relatively high rates of wages offered to workpeople engaged in the town, whereby they have been drafted in vast numbers from the country. See also additional note on 2^- 514. Labour and its Beward. By J. Gr. Hutchinson. That there has never been any age when labour, the work of the world, has not engaged the attention of statesmen and philosophers in most civilised nations, is made plentifully apparent by the aphorisms, or mottoes, handed down to us from by-gone times. Labor omnia vincit. Labour conquers every- thing. If labour conquers everything, what must be said of WEDNESDAY MOENING. 47 the source of all labour, the labourer ? Is he invincible ? Has he never been conquered ? Has he always, or ever, been able to bring the world to his feet ? Has he never known the thrall of slavery ? He would be a bold man who ventured to answer the first of these questions in the affirmative, or the last in the negative. Labor ipse voluptas. Labour itself is pleasure. Labour is sacred, &c., &c. Even in our own times, in this eminently practical age, we often hear and read of the dignity of labour ; indeed, many worthy people who have never done a hard day’s work in their lives, are particularly fond of using this formula. But work, the day after day spent wearily tugging at the oar, the routine work involved in our minute systems of division of labour, is, taken and considered apart from its reward, certainly far more irksome than dignified. In a consideration of the labour question at the present time, it will be well to disabuse our minds of a great deal of the sentiment that appertains to it. We must cease to re- member that there was ever a time when an employer lived among his workpeople ; when he took a kindly interest in their welfare; and that, when declining years incapacitated them from labour, his helping hand would smooth their downward path. We cannot forget, if we would, that we live in an age when a man is looked upon as a mere machine, from which the greatest possible amount of work is to be exacted ; with this difference ‘in favour of the machine, that some regard will be paid to its wearing out, while with the man this is not so ; he falls out of the ranks of life, and instantly his place is filled by another ; another, whose form and features are, as likely as not, equally well known to his employer. Although we deplore the seeming antagonism, or conflict of interests, between employer and employed, we do not think it would be possible under the prevailing system of aggregation of labour in large factories and workshops — and, of course, in no other way can we maintain our place in the manufactures of the world — to keep up the kindly relations that were so marked a feature of the domestic system. In instituting an inquiry into the specific question as to whether ‘ the increase of the products of industry within the last hundred years has tended most to the benefit of 48 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. capitalists and employers, or to that of the working-classes, whether artisans, labourers, or others, and in what relative proportion in any given period ? ’ it will be necessary, in order to^ keep within the prescribed limit, to narrow the question down somewhat. We shall not, therefore, do more than glance briefly at the social advantages the workman of to-day has at his command, that were entirely beyond the reach of his com- peers in tlie earlier years of the present century. We have now the means placed in our hands for securing a cheap and efficient education for our children. We have classes and lectures for tlie instruction and edification of ourselves, and the adult mem- bers of our families. We have the free libraries and museums common to most of our large towns. We have, in a large measure, better dwellings, situated in more airy, better drained, and better lighted streets. And we have, as a ne plus ultra to these consummate advantages, higher rents, higher rates, and a considerably less amount of personal freedom than our fathers fifty years ago could boast of. This curtailment of our indi- vidual liberty seems to us to be a necessary concomitant of our advanced civilisation. Man does not now live for himself alone. Man’s communion with man has fostered and developed a regard for each other’s interests to this degree, that his in- dividuality is, almost unconsciously, lost in the common good. Nor shall we examine in detail, although it is a radical part of our inquiry, the arguments as to whether the introduction of machinery into the various industries have, or have not, been an unmitigated good. We are of opinion that the benefits derived therefrom by the whole community have far outweighed any hardship or inconvenience its introduction has inflicted on any particular trade. Without the spinning-frame and power- loom it would have been practically impossible for our textile trades to have made the immense increase in their productive power that the present century has witnessed. Without the invention of the labour-saving and labour-supplementing ma- chinery used in the conversion of iron and steel, our industries in the metal trades could never have attained their present gigantic proportions. As to whether the universal use of machinery has most benefited the capitalist and employer or WEDNESDAY MORNING. 49 the working classes, is a moot point ; but in so far as the advantages have been reciprocal, we think neither side have much fault to find. As far as we can apportion the benefits, the employer who was first in the field with his invention — whether it was the product of his own ingenuity or not is immaterial — would reap his reward in an extended market for his manufactures if he sold them, as he could, at a rather lower rate, or otherwise, if at the market price, in an increased profit. But as soon as the use of the machine became general, his monopoly with its enhanced profit would disappear, and the invention become merged in the common good to benefit the consumer. We are in nowise inclined to believe that the in- troduction of machinery has, to any great extent, militated against the interests of the working man. On the contrary, he has been enabled — with some exceptions that prove the rule — to maintain almost as good, and in some special instances, a better rate of wages than under the old system of hand labour ; while the prices of the products of his industry have been lowered to such a degree as to bring them more readily within the purchasing power of himself and family. There is one phase of this question that is, to my mind, disappointing in the extreme. Instead of man’s labour being made easier by the co-operation of the machine, his life has become more intense, and, in many instances, the man has been supplanted altogether by what should have been at most but his helpmate. Still, this is more the effect of our system of unlimited competition than an innate desire to crush man out of existence. The introduction of machinery as a means of increasing and cheap- ening production must certainly be acknowledged as the prime mover in the great industrial revolution that has been developed within the last hundred years. And although there have been cases of hardship in some trades — notably among the hand-loom weavers — the greater good has justified the infliction of the lesser evil, and the advent of the Age of Steam may be regarded as the inauguration of the greatest and most stable period of national prosperity we, here in England, have ever known. As an illustration of the beneficial effects following the E 50 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. application of improved machinery to cotton-spinning, I ap- pend the table below, from Porter’s Progress of the Nation^ sec. 2, chap, ii., p. 230. Years Work turned off by One Spinner Per Week Wages Per Week Honrs of Work 1 1 Prices from Greenwich Hos- pital Records Quantities which a Week’s Net Earnings would , Purchase ' Lbs. Nos. Gross Piecers Net per Week Flour per Sack Flesh per lb. Lbs. of Flour Lbs. ; of ^ Flesh 1 1801 12 180 s. d. 60 0 s. d. 27 6 . 5 . d. 32 6 74 s. d. 83 0 d. 6 to 7 117 624 1 9 200 67 6 31 0 36 6 74 83 0 6 to 7 124 73 1814 18 180 72 0 27 6 44 6 74 70 6 8 175 67 13^ 200 90 0 30 0 60 0 74 70 6 8 239 90 1833 224 180 54 8 21 0 33 8 69 45 0 6 210 67 19 200 65 3 22 6 42 9 69 45 0 6 267 85 The sack of flour is taken at 280 lbs. The above is the result of an average of several men’s work at the different periods. As a comparison I give the average earnings of cotton- spinners at Manchester in 1876, from Sevan’s Industrial Classes and Industrial Statistics. Year Wages Flour per Flesh per Quantities which a Week’s Net Sack Lb. Earnings would Purchase 1876 d. 28 4 s. d. 43 4 d. 10 Lbs. of Flour 182 Lbs. of Flesh 34 From this it is evident that not only were a spinner’s wages in 1833 higher than in 1876, but the purchasing power of his earnings was considerably in his favour also. We do not deem it necessary to multiply examples, but we will give below some additional evidence to show that the wages given for 1833 were not the highest for that time. Mr. Cowell, in his explanatory preface to the Tables relative to Cotton and Silk Mills in the Lancashire District, gives the following example of the effect of increasing the size of the mules, as regards the cost of the yarn, and the earnings of the spinner. In the year 1833, in two fine spinning-mills at Manchester, while WEDNESDAY MORNING. 51 I was in the town, a spinner could produce sixteen pounds of yarn, of the fineness of 200 hanks to the pound, from mules of the productive fertility of 300 to 324, working them sixty-nine hours. These very mules were being replaced by others of double power while I was in Manchester. Let us examine the efiect on the spinner’s earnings. In the early part of last year he produced sixteen pounds of yarn of No. 200 from mules of the power of 300 to 324 spindles. Consulting the list of prices, I perceive that in May he was paid 3s. 6d. a pound. This gives 54s. for his gross receipts, out of which he had to pay (I will put the amount high) 13s. for assistants. This leaves him with 41s. earnings. His mules have their productive fertilit}^ doubled. They are converted into mules of the power of 648. He is now paid 2s. 5d. a pound instead of 3s. 6d. But he produces thirty-two pounds ■of yarn of the fineness of 200 hanks to the pound in sixty-nine hours. His gross receipts are immediately raised to 77s. 4d. I will now admit that he requires five assistants to help him, and averaging their cost at 5s. a piece, their labour will cost him 25s., and to avoid all cavil, I will add 2s. extra. Then, deducting 27s. from his gross earnings, there remains 50s. id. for his net wages for sixty-nine hours’ work instead of 41s., an increase of more than 20 per cent., while the cost of the yarn is reduced 13d. per pound. ^ See Appendix, p. 61. If we will but contrast his earnings in 1876 — taking into account the productive power of the mule of the present day — we shall be better satisfied that the cotton-spinner in 1833 was considerably in advance of his fellow-worker at the present period. We have been enabled, from various sources, to com- pile the following comparisons of wages in different industries. Our authorities are Porter’s Progress of the Nation., Mr. Jellinger Symonds’ Arts and Artisans at Home and Abroad, ])ublished in 1839, J. Wade’s History of the Middle and Working Classes, The Greenwich Hospital Records, and Bevan’s Industrial Classes and Industrial Statistics. As will be seen from table on next page,^ the difference in the rates of wages is nothing like so marked as we have been given * Porter’s Progress of the Nation, sec. 2, ch. ii., pp. 234-5, 2 Since compiling this table of wages, there has been published in the Leeds Mercimj, for January 2, 1885, the following advertisement: — ‘Stone- masons wanted. — Apply, J, Braj^more, Cross ]\Iill Street, Leeds. Wages 225. per week.’ This advertisement, as a sign of the times, needs no comment from me. But surely this benefactor of his species deserves to be immor- talised. 52 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONEERENCE. COMPAEISONS OF WAGES, 18.32 1871 1876 s. d. s. d. s. d. Cotton-spinners, Porter . . 38 2 — Bevan 28 4 „ weavers, Symonds . . 14 6 — — Woollen-spinners ,, . . 21 0 Bevan 19 0 „ 28 0 ,, weavers ,, . . 14 0 „ 13 0 „ 17 0 ,, dressers, Wade . . 21 0 „ 20 10 „ 23 6 Flax, men. Porter .... 16 73 „ 19 9 — ,, women 8 2f „ 13 0 1 Coal-miners, Symonds (per day) 3 6 » 4 9 ! „ 5 2 Ironfounders „ ... 29 0 „ 34 0 — Machine-makers „ ... 28 0 „ 30 0 — Carpenters, Greenwich . . , 32 6 — 39 8 „ country average . 22 6 — 27 0 Masons, Greenwich .... 31 6 — 39 8 „ country average . . 24 9 29 0 Bricklayers, Greenwich . . . 28 6 — — „ country average . 24 0 — 29 0 to understand they were. And it seems to me the Grolden Age of labour within the last hundred years — taking into considera- tion the rates of wages, the continuity of employment, and the cost of the various necessaries of life — must be placed between the years 1832 and 1840 ; not only with regard to the money amount of wages and their purchasing power, but also with reference to the fact that a man was a man at that time, and had not become degraded to the office of a mere machine, to be turned off or on at the unreasoning caprice of an employer.^ But we are not so much concerned with a retrospective re- view and comparison of the workman’s status fifty years ago with that of our own time, as we are with his present position and future prospects. Whatever has been his condition in past times_, and there will always be differences of opinion so long * In talking over this question with an old mason who has followed his trade for over fifty years, we were told that when the Leeds and Thirsk Railway was being made, mason’s wages were 5s. per day, that at that time prime cuts of beef and mutton were but from to 5^d. per lb., that fresh eggs were to be had from the farmers at the rate of 36 for a shilling, that house rents were not half the amount they are now, that coals were no more than IO 5 . per ton delivered, and that generally life, if somewhat rough, was certainly blest with more rude plenty than obtains at the present day. The general verdict we have received frorh our old workmen friends has been that although wages were less fifty years since than now, the people, taken in the mass, were better off than they are at the present time. ^A^DNESDAY MOENINa. 53 as there are two sides to the question, all must admit that there is room for improvement now in the social, and still more in the material, position of the labouring classes. Let us then endeavour to answer the question, What are the causes that induce the recurring periods of depression in trade and consequent scarcity of employment, that have become so marked a feature of our industrial history during the last few years ? First and foremost, we must place the inordinate greed and unscrupulousness of our capitalists and employers in the mad race for wealth. In the inflated time following the Franco- Grerman war, the means of production in Great Britain were increased to a degree that nothing but the certainty of con- tinuing to be the workshop of the world would have justified. Capital that, in the normal state of things, would have been applied to legitimate undertakings, was, in the vain hope of realising not far from cent, per cent., eagerly invested in what too often proved to be bogus enterprises, promoted by needy and unconscionable speculators. Money was wasted, credit was impaired, and in many instances financial ruin followed, to the detriment of sober and legitimate enterprise. True, the workman was not slow in his demand for a share in the un- usual prosperity. And we are of opinion that it is in a measure to the large advance in the wages of certain classes of labour obtained at this period, engendering as they did increased ex- penditure in baneful luxuries, we may ascribe some portion of the distress at present existing. But we can hardly blame the uneducated workman if he ‘lost his head’ at this juncture, when we remember his betters were little, if any, wiser in their day and generation. If mutual recrimination were likely to do any good, the British workman and his employer ought to be considerably benefited by the lecturing they have given each other on this point, as well as that they have undergone from every grade of social opinion during the last decade. The reasons generally given, and accepted as truisms, for depressions in trade are over production, foreign competition, and adverse seasons. Let us briefly examine these excuses for what we consider, at least as far as the first reason is concerned, has no need or business to exist. Over-production, indeed ! We 54 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. are extremely anxious to know what article of natural or arti- ficial production it is of which we have an overplus ? It cannot be wheat, for surely if that was so we should have no hungry, dinnerless children, half-famished for want of bread ; no homes stripped of their scant furniture, to win a short respite from the dread wolf of want ; no half-stifled cries of distress from starv- ing thousands, whose only hope and want is honest work and wages. It cannot be that we have too much clothing, for we are satisfied, if we wiU but look around, on every hand we shall find that there is ample need for all we have in store. Nor can we think that, for all the thousand pairs of shoes we have in excess of the demand, there are no feet the owners whereof would not be glad to wear them. We confess that this cry of over production is wholly beyond our comprehension. We can- not conceive that there can be over production in any com- modity until each and all, rich and poor, have had their wants supplied. Nor is it that we have not in our midst the where- withal to purchase these necessaries. For there is not only a plethora of all natural and manufactured commodities, but an ever-increasing amount — a positive glut — of wealth literally going a-begging, while honest working-men and women are actually perishing from lack of the common necessaries of life. Why is it, then, that in the face of this superabundance of the good things of this world we have depressions in trade, with their corresponding reverses in the condition of the working classes? We are of opinion the real reason is because the workman does not get an adequate or even a fair share of the profits of his labour. We submit that it is not possible for a man, whose every endeavour is to keep straight with the world, to contribute his share towards the general well-being, when the means at his command will barely admit of a sufficiency of food for himself and family. Even under the most favourable, circumstances the average workman has, so to speak, his wages mortgaged, if not before they are earned, at least before they come into his possession. It may be said this arises from want of forethought, from want of economy : we unhesitatingly declare, in the vast majority of cases, it has its source in want of means. In support of our assertion that the workman is not paid a fair WEDNESDAY MORNING. 55 share of the proceeds of his industry, we give the following calculation of Mr. Giflfen’s : ‘ An approximate estimate has been made of the total savings of the working classes. Their amount has been carefully calculated from the statistics of Building Societies, Savings Banks, Co-operative Societies, Trades Unions, Friendly Societies, and Industrial and Provident Societies, to be 130,000,000^. All this is small compared with the whole capital of the country, which in 1875 was estimated at 8,500,000,000^. at least, with an annual increase of 235,000,000?., this latter sum far exceeding the total savings of the luorking classes.^ ^ We have no wish to pose as prophets, but we are satisfied that the old doctrine that a man should rest content in the position in which it has pleased God to place him, must, if it has not already, go to the wall. The old political economy that decrees that labour is a commodity that must, equally with the products of labour, be ruled by supply and demand ; the old political economy that ordains that the wages of labour will, in the normal order of things, be determined by the terms on which the labourer will consent to produce, and will constantly tend to a bare level of subsistence — this doctrine, that has been a palliative to suave the consciences of our capitalists and em- ployers, must be abandoned as being out of date, and not in accordance with our new religion of humanity. Man’s labour as the support of his life cannot, in common fairness, be placed on a par with a bale of cloth. If the man were as inert as the bale of cloth, if he had no requirements, if he did not need to live, to be clothed and housed, then their positions might be identical. But so long as the man has human aspirations, so long as he is able to discriminate between right and wrong, it is not only unjust, it is cruel, to place his labour as a com- modity in juxtaposition with that of an inanimate article, to be ruled by the inexorable law of supply and demand. Besides, man in his present position does not stand on equal ground with the capitalist in bargaining for employment ; he cannot, in the great majority of cases, ‘ take it or leave it,’ as he is told to do. No ; the work must be his at one price or another, and * GifEen’s Essays on Finance, pp. 173-5. The italics are mine 56 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFEEENCE. often, too often, the man who has the giant’s power uses it as a giant. With regard to foreign competition, we have long been of opinion that we could not continue supplying our foreign com- petitors with machines to make machinery, for the production of all manner of goods, and still go on supplying them with our finished products as well. We cannot find fault with our engi- neers and machinists for their action in this matter. For, if we have had some importations of goods that we might have made for ourselves, we should remember that we in return have sup- plied our foreign customers with goods that, had they been selfishly inclined, they would have manufactured for themselves. And further, we are of opinion that, unless we can find a market where the buyers are composed wholly of the capitalist class and its dependents — that is, a community who are not producers - in any sense of the word, but only consumers — this bugbear of foreign competition must be considered as a constant factor in our trade calculations, which it will be well to look upon and combat in a spirit of generous emulation rather than of a jealous over-reaching rivalry in trade. Adverse seasons have certainly during the course of the last few years dealt a heavy blow at our agricultural interests, and through them at our home trade — a trade which is admitted to be our surest bulwark against a deficiency of labour, a trade that would, if the profits of our industries were more justly distributed, go a long way towards providing our teeming millions with the work and wages for want of which they starve. There only remains now for us to pass in rapid review the different remedies that have been proposed for the social and • material amelioration of the condition of the poorer classes. Mr. George, whose book. Progress and Poverty^ has done more than aught besides towards making this a burning question, would confiscate — utterly unconscious of doing wrong — the whole land of the country, and place it under State ownership and management. The leading assumption that permeates Mr. George’s book, and which he has laboured with intense earnestness to demonstrate and substantiate, is that the in- WEDNESDAY MOENING. 57 stitution of private property in land is the immediate cause of the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege, and obviously of the consequent vice and misery, which is at once the greatest curse and menace of our nineteenth century civilisation. To remedy this injustice he boldly and unhesitatingly declares we must make land common property. This wholesale appro- priation he would make without compensation or regard to interests or rights, however acquired by the present landowners. He argues that we must give to man the unrestricted liberty to develop to its fullest power the natural resources of the land — that is, that the land shall be so cultivated as to contribute its full quota to the requirements of the whole community. His particular belief is, give but man these opportunities — and he has been deprived of them by the institution of private property in land — and the poverty that pervades all societies that have attained a superior degree of civilisation will disappear, that want or the fear of want will be extirpated, that the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey will be within measurable distance of being reached, and that the beatification of man’s condition will cease to be an ignis fatuus, ever alluring philosophers and philanthropists into impracticable fields of thought, but an established fact. But whatever possibilities there may be in Mr. Greorge’s scheme of land nationalisation, we cannot forget that it is based on injustice. Nor does the fact of a robbery being committed eight centuries ago palliate in our eyes the perpetration of further wrong-doing ; for, however wrong the institution of private property in land may have been in its original inception, it would, after the lapse of centuries of undisputed possession, be a ‘ bold, bare, enormous wrong ’ to deprive the vast majority of the present holders of their vested or purchased interests in the land, whether they are the humble possessors of a single house plot, or patriarchal lords who own the broad acres of a shire. Mr. Wallace’s plan is less open to objection, inasmuch as he recognises the right of the landowners to compensation. But any scheme of land nation- alisation seems to me to depend upon the issue of this question for its success. Will the State be likely to make a better or more considerate landlord than the present owners ? We 58 INDUSTKIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. submit that it would not, and for the following reasons : unless the State has it in its power to abolish competition rents, and this in justice to the very numerous class who are not tillers of the soil or holders of ground rents it should not have, where would be the advantage in paying a competition rent to the State over that of paying it to a private owner ? Then, again, supposing the State should fix upon what would be considered a fair rent, who is to decide from among the host of applicants which competitor shall have the land at this fixed value ? It seems to me that any scheme of land nationalisation is open to this fatal objection ; we should but throw wide open the door to a gigantic and most pernicious system of favouritism and patronage, if not of underhand bribery. Besides, all our landlords are not bad alike, and under the present system there has been occasional aid rendered, not in the pauperising form of a dole given on the rent day, but real help towards making the most of the productive power of the land which the State, as a landlord, in common fairness to the community at large, must have withheld. With reference to co-operative production, we cannot see any valid reason why our co-operative distributive societies with their large capitals should be unable to carry out productive co-operation to success. Yet such would seem to be the case ; for among many concerns started under their auspices, most of them — at least in this part of the country — have come to grief. We understand the reason generally given for this failure is that co-operative societies outside do not do business with and support their efforts. This would seem to indicate that there is a screw loose somewhere ; for unless co-operative, or any other form of industrial production, can compete with private enterprise in the open market, there is nothing so certain but that in the end it must succumb to this superior force. Industrial partnership is another form of amalgamation of the interests of capital and labour that, we are grieved to chronicle, has not been crowned with the success it deserves. The fact is the workman has not become educated so far as to see that under this form of production his and his employer’s interests are identical. Profit-sharing without loss- sharing would seem to imply a greater regard for an employer’s WEDNESDAY MOKNING. 59 interests than most employes can be credited with. Emigra- tion, ‘ the policy of despair,’ we cannot consider a true remedy ; for, in the majority of cases, the people who of their own free will expatriate themselves are the people we should keep at home — men with brains, energy, and often some little capital, who, had they a fair field for their qualifications, would never quit their native land. In drawing our observations towards a close, we will again urge on capitalists and employers to give their workpeople a more commensurate share in the profits of their labour. That they can do this, and still retain a living profit, we will try to illustrate from our own business. We will take the case of an employer in the building trade. We will suppose him to be in a large way of business, employing a hundred hands. He has his workshop fitted up with the most modern appliances for cheapening production, both in the saving of material and labour. He pays, or should pay, his workmen the standard wages of their calling, being neither more grasping nor avaricious than his fellows, but known among men as a straightforward and honourable man. Well, you may ask, what fault have we to find with this employer as a man or as a citizen? We must answer none whatever. But let us look a little further. As we have said, he pays the regular wages of his business ; the workman’s money is always ready and paid at the end of the week. He does not grind, or urge forward as with a goad, the worker. But he does appropriate to himself that for which he has not laboured in any sense of the word, that which is not his even by the political economist’s law of interest. He bargains with his workmen for a standard payment of, we will say, 7^cZ. per hour, but the price he will charge and receive from the people for whom he has work in hand will be 9cZ. per hour, so that for every workman in his employ — the working hours being fifty per week — he will receive a profit on their labour of 6s. 3rA per week, or a total of ZIL 10s. Out of this sum we will suppose he has to pay a manager 3L per week, 2L 10s. for a foreman, IL 5s. for a time and storekeeper, and 2L for a cashier. These men will manage the business in all its detail, from buying the raw 60 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. material to getting in the money for the finished work, so that this payment of 81. 15s. for management and superintendence is absolutely the only drawback from the sum he will be paid for the use of his money, except rent, rates, and taxes, and an allowance for depreciation in his machinery and buildings. If we deduct the 8l. 1 5s. from the 371. 10s. we have 281. 15s. left ; from this, as a very liberal estimate, we will allow the 81. 15s. for rent, &c., leaving 201. per week as interest for the capital invested in the business. In addition to this sum the capitalist will have a percentage of profit on the raw material, the timber, stone, &c., used in his business, which would help considerably to pay a fair interest on his capital, if it did not suffice entirely. As we have shown, this capitalist or employer, who like the lilies of the field ‘ toils not, neither does he spin,’ has an income of 1,000L per year from his business, or more correctly for the use of his capital. We ask, in the name of our common humanity, if it is not possible to pay better wages to workmen in such an instance as this ? And this is, be it remembered, no exceptional case, requiring a large amount of capital for the working of the business, as moneys are paid at stated conditions of progress of the work, so that the capital may be turned over several times in the course of the year. We confess that we have not much hope of so great a change in the moral nature of our employers as a fairer division of profits would render necessary; but, if it does not come in our generation, what about our children, if this gospel of appropriation is to con- tinue? We are educating them — and this education must go on, technical as well as scholastic — to occupy higher spheres of usefulness, mentally and socially, than we ourselves are fitted for. What is to be the outcome of it all ? Is it to be a life of discontent, a continual struggle for a bare subsistence, with the wolf of want for ever prowling around their door — a wearying, wasting life of toil and care, with little more inspiriting to look forward to than the workhouse as its goal ? Far better will it be for us, as a nation, if we had ‘ a mill-stone tied about our neck, and were cast into the depths of the sea,’ than that this should be so ! For we ought not to forget this truism, that to keep men poor, degraded, and contented, we must keep them WEDNESDAY MORNING. 61 brutish, sotted, and ignorant ; and that, moreover, as surely as education — intellectual development — is stimulated and tem- perance principles spread over the land, so surely are we paving the way for a further grand march in our civilisation, and, as we would fondly hope and believe, in our material progression. Then let us recognise and deal honestly, faithfully, and man- fully with this great power, for good or evil, that we are rais- ing in our midst. For, whatever else the future may have in store for us, we may depend upon this, that the time is coming, and may not be far distant, when Jack will have found out he is as good as his master, that he is made of the same flesh and blood and in the same image, and with a lineage in as direct a line from the common Father of us all. APPENDIX. AVe are enabled through the courtesy of Miss A. Amy Bulley, of Manchester, to supplement our list of wages in the cotton manufac- ture, with the following complete and reliable statement of the actual earnings, compiled from the wages book, of cotton operatives em- ployed in an Oldham spinning and weaving mill, in 1884 : — Average Eaenixgs for 56^ Hours op Mill Hands, Engaged in the Manufacture of Cotton. Sjnnning. Cotton mixer & . 1 s. 2 d. 0 1 Remarks, 1 Men employed in the Fly gatherer .... . 1 0 0 i ' card and scutching . 17 r rooms, paid weekly Lap tenter .... .’ 1 2 1 wages, 7iot piece Card-room jobbers . . 1 3 0 ^ work. Card-room hands (females) . 16 0 Piece work. Spinner or Minder . . 1 U 0 Piece work. Big piecer 15 1 Young men and boys Middle piecer . 11 6 1 I employed by the Little piecer .... 8 2 1 r Minder and paid Half-timers (under 13 years of age) 3 1 J ' by him. Twiner (man) . 1 14 6 Piece work. Big piecer for Twiner 14 0 ) Young women em- Little „ „ . . 9 0 i ployed by Twiner. Winders 14 6 ) Females. Warpers . . . > . . 19 0 > Piece work. 62 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. Weavi'og, £ s. d. Remarks. Weavers — 2 narrow looms 12 9 Young girls. ») 3 »> 18 0 Women. „ 4 . 1 3 0 Men. „ 2 wide looms (16/8) 14 Women, all weavers „ 2 „ (18/8) 16 0 } paid piece work. ( Men paid a per cent- al age on the weavers’ ( earnings. Loom jobbers or overlookers . . 2 3 0 The average earnings of a woman employed at weaving will be about 17s. per week. Young girls, who have just learned their trade, are allowed only two looms, and will earn 13s. to 14s. per week. Our weaving is entirely con- fined to cotton velvets ; very few men are employed except as overlookers. In the Glossop district (Derbyshire), weavers weaving printing cloth have four looms each, and earn 18s. per week. Mr. F. Harrison stated that the Committee deeply regretted that Mr. Kobert Giffen’s official duties had prevented him from complet- ing a paper which he was preparing on the subject now before the Conference. The paper Mr. Giffen had in hand would go back to a further period, and would complete his well-known essay on Earnings and Wages, already published for the Statistical Society. Mr. Giffen had expressed his sincere hopes for the success of the Conference, which only the pressure of official duties prevented him from attending. Discussion. Mr. Brevitt (Ironfounders) said that the increase of the products of industry had on the whole tended to the benefit of the working classes, he would not dispute, nor would he attempt to prove it; though no doubt others would do both. But he ventured to assert that the non- workers had, up to the present hour, managed to use the worker and his work as the means and instruments by which they had seized and appropriated most of the good things of life, securing a vastly preponderating share of the beneficial results of the modern development of all kinds of industrial productions, and the control of the mechanical agencies which alone had made such development possible. If the present inquiry were rigidly confined to two types of our social system, namely, to the capitalist who em- ploys labour, and to the employe or wage receiver, then it would be a mere farce, and a shirking of some of the most important issues involved. The real form of the question ought to be. Do the people, the WEDNESDAY MORNING. 63 toilers, the millions who, from youth to old age, are engaged in labour obtain anything like an equitable share of the products of their toil, ■or of those material comforts and social enjoyments which render life tolerable, a blessing and not a curse? To such a question there could, in his opinion, be but one answer — an emphatic negative. If by the word ‘ capitalist ’ he might be allowed to understand any in- dividual who, by some means, has accumulated wealth, or property productive of wealth, or who holds some office or dignity, from which he derives wealth, then he fearlessly affirmed that capitalists had grasped, in a most selfish and unscrupulous manner, nearly every- thing they could lay their hands on : the land, and all the good things on its surface, and even the fishes which abound in its rivers and streams. Nearly all the country was claimed by such men ; from royalty, with its numerous palaces, large estates, parks, deer forests, and immense revenues — all derived, directly or indirectly, from industry, down to the rapacious lease-granting ground -landlord who, in many cases, drew immense wealth from property paid for by others, and placed on land, which either he or his ancestors obtained by very questionable means. Throughout the land, from north to south, what did we find ? That wealth, or capital, had the best of it everywhere. We saw magnificent palaces, baronial halls, castles, lordly mansions, and beautiful villas, situated in the most desirable spots, surrounded by all that is lovely, furnished with every luxury, replete with every comfort. And who owned them all ? Men who did no work, men who scorned the worker, men who gloried in the fact that neither they nor their ancestors ever worked, and who would reckon themselves degraded and punished if they had to work. And where should we find the workers ? Mostly in the slums of cities and towns, or else in miserable cottages poorly and scantily furnished, living in the midst of squalor, where culture was impossible and •decency difficult. There, with their families, they subsisted, or existf;d on a pittance just sufficient to preserve life, ‘as in a cell, for their tyrant’s use to dwell.’ Then, look at the Established Church, mth its lordly prelates and proud dignitaries, living in palaces and fine houses, and enjoying princely incomes; look at its parsons, with their goodly benefices, ever hand in hand with princes, lords, and squires, in upholding hoary and venerable iniquities, and in keeping down very low the labourer upon whose toil they fatten. How nicely these disciples of One who said, ‘Blessed are the poor,’ manage to get possession of far more than a fair or honest share in the distribution of wealth, and of those productions of industry, in the originating of which they had no part, and to which they never contributed anything ! Those legalised iniquities, the tithes. 64 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. were ultimately extracted from toil ; for he who paid the impost, whether landlord, tenant-farmer, or house-owner, would seek to in- demnify himself by extorting increased payments from those who held property under him, and by decreasing the wages of those who worked for him. So we got, as the result, increased rents and diminished wages, in order that men who ' neither toil nor spin, might be well fed, clad, and housed, although they would not work. Then, we had the army, the fighting class, with its field-marshals, generals, colonels, and others, extorting millions sterling from the taxpayers, and sapping the industry of the country. These, he classed as capitalists, non-producers, who got hold of, and lived luxuriously upon, money wrested from the earnings and savings of the toilers. These royal pensioners, scions of the aristocracy, and hangers-on of the nobility — men who, perhaps, more than any others, despise and depreciate labour, managed to squeeze out of the indus- try which they scorned a large amount of the wealth which would, if devoted to peaceful pursuits and social improvements, render the condition of the people immeasurably better than what it now was, and would alter the face of the whole country. And they, of the rank and file, the hired bravos who had, perhaps, entered the army because they could not procure the means of living otherwise — these got none of the honours or the emoluments, but their stipend, like that of labour, was plenty of work and scant reward. Mr. F. G. P. Neison rose to a point of order. Mr. Brevitt,. whose name was not down for a paper, was reading from manuscript. This practice was not in accordance with the rule regulating dis-^ cussion. The Chairman ; The speaker is not personally to blame for reading his remarks, because Mr. Brevitt asked me, as he ascended the plat- form, whether he might refer to his notes; and I said he might. But, of course, the meeting must understand that Mr. Brevitt is not one of those who are reading papers for discussion, and that he is only supposed to be taking part in debate. Therefore, perhaps, it might be desirable that he should not read, as he is doing, from a written paper. I would, however, take this opportunity of asking Mr. Brevitt to avoid making anything that may look like attacks upon particular classes. I did not like to stop him in the first of these allusions, but there were a few remarks fell from him which would appear to be of a character calculated to give pain to various services, to members of a particular Church, and to those who are employed in different departments by the State. I think it is the feeling of the Conference that observations of that nature had better be avoided. I should, of course, stop from the chair anything like ^VEDNESDAY MOENING. 65 distinctly political allusions, but it would be also desirable that we should avoid, as far as possible, allusions which may be painful to members of particular classes as individuals. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Brevitt, in resuming, obtained the chairman’s permission to read the remainder of his remarks. He said ; A man in the ranks of labour would, by his industry and thrift, save a few pounds ; he lived among his comrades in the towns where his work was ; he had a comfortable home mthout extravagance or luxury; and was a good specimen of the artisan; determined to speculate with his money, he became in a small way an employer, he succeeded, accu- mulated more money, in fact, became a capitalist. In the majority of instances, capital, and the power attending it, demoralised the man ; he then began to aim, not at a moderate competency, but to become rich, to get as much wealth as he could ; he left his former comrades behind, and got into the suburbs; his comfortable home became dis- tasteful to him ; he must needs have luxury, servants, a horse and carriage ; his appetite grew by what it fed on ; moral and political justice were ignored; probably he ground as much work as he could out of those whom he employed ; and, while they must toil on through the years and live amidst the smoke and squalor of cities, he got into the outskirts, among the fields, and into the purer air. If still successful, he aped the manners of those who were higher in the social scale; he was now a gentleman, and looked down with something like contempt on the artisan and labourer, whose toil had made him rich. In due time he died and left his wealth to his children. All this time his life and conduct had been strictly honest and legal. But had this man 'who, by means of the sweat and toil of others, had converted his few pounds into thousands, his com- paratively humble home into a luxurious one, and a life of toil into one of ease and idleness — had he received no more, and appropriated no more of the products of industry than justice, equity, humanity, and the law of love sanctioned ? If a Christian, had he practised those precepts of self-denial, self-sacrifice, and devotion to humanity, which the Founder of his religion inculcated ^ Who would dare to say he had % Had not his whole life been selfish, unchristian, and self-seeking ? This self-love, this lust after wealth, luxury, pomp, parade, power, and indolence ; this gospel of hedonism, which so crushed, stifled, and nullified the gospel of labour, simplicity, self- denial, and love of humanity, was more than anything else account- able for the gross and monstrous inequality, injustice, and inhumanity which pervaded and permeated the whole social and political life of Europe and America. He, for one, hailed with hope and delight the efibrts of the men who w'ould restore the land to the people, and F 66 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. abolish the proud and arrogant caste who would hold the soil for their own exclusive use and emolument. He hoped that in the not very distant future, when Britain’s sons and daughters were enfran- chised and educated, we should see a noble peasant proprietary built up and gaining an honourable livelihood by cultivating the land.. Let all assist and further the efforts of the men who, by trades unions, co-operation, profit-sharing, temperance societies, and other methods,, would equalise, or, at any rate, more justly apportion the distribution of wealth. Let them cordially greet all such efforts ; they were all needed, and all deserved hearty support. Mr. B. Jones (Co-operative Wholesale Society) said he would try to keep to the chairman’s ruling, and to say nothing, if he could possibly help it, which might be painful to the feelings of the members of any class ; but, if he should unfortunately transgress, he hoped it w^ould be put down to the lack of education to which most working men at the present time were subject. It was, however, only fair to say that they were so much accustomed to have hard words said to them in their daily employment that the meaning and force of strong language seemed to be lost sight of ; whereas men unaccustomed to hard words were apt to feel them with greater severity than working- men who were so accustomed to language of that kind. What Mr. Lloyd Jones had said was quite true, that it was very difficult, if not impossible, to accumulate the data necessary to arrive at an exact estimate of the amount received by the different classes, of the benefits which the whole country had received, during the last 100 years- from improved inventions and so on. But they could arrive at an estimate sufficiently near to enable them to decide, with something like unanimity, the question as to which class had received the greatest benefits from the machinery and the inventions of the last fifty years or 100 years. Mr. Giffen, in his Progress of the Working Classes, had pointed out that the income assessed for taxation amounted to 600,000,000?. a year. The same gentleman, in another woi’k, had, he believed, estimated the income of the wealthy classes, or those subject to the income tax, which escaped taxation, as equal to another 25 per cent., which would bring the total to 750,000,000?. If to that were added the immense personal property, the immense wealth which paid no rates or taxes whatever, though it ought to do as much as other personal property, no doubt the grand total would be between 800,000,000?. and 900,000,000?. a year, representing the annual income of the wealthy or income-tax paying population. Looking on the other side, the estimate of income of the working classes was usually given at between 400,000,000?. and 500,000,000?. ; but anyone capable of adding two and two together would, on WEDNESDAY MORNING. 67 examining these figures, see the utter fallacy buried beneath them . It must also be remembered that the larger income is divided among a few thousands, while the smaller income is divided among millions. Mr. Giften had quoted, as a substantial proof of the correctness of his estimate, the w^ages of seamen in the year 1850, and their wages at the present time. He had himself had the curiosity to look at the Blue-book ; of course, working men were not supposed to look into such things, but they now were getting into the habit of doing so. And what did he find there ? He found that Mr. Gifien, for the year 1850, gave the wages of able seamen in sailing vessels, and in 1882 or 1883 the wages of able seamen in steam vessels, instead of comparing the wages of able seamen in sailing vessels in 1882 and 1883 with the wages of able seamen in sailing vessels in 1850. He said nothing at all about these sailing vessel rates of 1882 or 1883, but ought to have done, because the employment on steam and on sailing vessels is a distinct class of occupation, and one ought not to be confounded with the other. If Mr. Gifien had taken the wages of able seamen in sailing vessels in one year and compared them with able seamen in sailing vessels in the other year, he would have found the increase of income reduced by 50 per cent. Not only -would that be so, but another fact comes out most clearly : whereas in 1850, 103,913 men were employed in sailing vessels, in 1883, 58,000 — or only one half — were employed in the same class of vessels. Now, at once some one would say that was owing to the circumstance that so many steamers were running. Nothing of the kind; for the tonnage of sailing vessels in 1883 was slightly in excess of the tonnage of the same class of vessels in 1854. So they saw that, for an increase in wages of something like 15 or 20 per cent, working men had to do very nearly double the labour. Mr. Hey, of the Ironfounders, had been at the trouble of taking from the books of that Association the average wages from the year 1855 to the present time, and had entered into careful details as to deduc- tions made for holidays, short time, sickness, and so on. After these deductions, Mr. Hey had ascertained that for the ten years, 1855-65, the net wages of ironfounders throughout the kingdom were 11 . 45 . 6cZ. per week; for the ten years, 1865-75, 11 . 55. 6cZ. ; and for the ten years, 1875-85, 11 . 55. 5^(7. Where, then, was the increase of wages, which ]\Ir. Gifien had estimated ? Look at the matter in this way : the progress of industry, causing the development of large businesses, had resulted in arrangements which enabled a certain portion of the community to do far less drudgery and far less work, while they realised gi-eater incomes. On the other hand, the working classes, for instance, weavers — my mother was a weaver, and I have heard her say F 2 68 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. that weavers, before the passing of the Factory (10 hours) Act, used to work at a certain rate of speed ; but on the introduction of the ten hours system, they had to turn out more work in a given time than they did before that Act came into operation. From these facts there was conclusive proof that the capitalist classes had less work and got more money, while the working classes had more work and got a little more pay, but not in proportion to the extra work they were now called upon to do. Mr. W. Saunders (English Land Restoration League), having explained that he had no intention of saying a word, at that moment, on behalf of the League from which he was a delegate, stated that he wished to refer to the practical suggestions made by Sir Thomas Brassey in liis excellent paper. The first was, that working-men must look to capitalists to give them employment, and that, perhaps, the best mode which capitalists could adopt for stimulating employment would be in building houses for the people. Now, they might assume that both labour and capital were directed by a reasonable amount of common sense, and that a capi- talist would employ his capital, and a labourer would employ his talent, if he had got the chance of doing so, with a prospect of profit. What was it then that prevented the employment of capital and of labour in the manner indicated by Sir Thomas Brassey ? In reference to that question he would mention two facts. In his own neigh- bourhood a man wanted to build a house and fixed his mind upon a piece of ground which, at present, was paying hardly anything to the landowner. The landowner would not allow him to build that house unless he paid at least one-third of the value of the house, or gave an equivalent in ground rent. If he wanted to build a house worth 2,000^. he could not do it unless he paid the landowner 1,000Z. for that which was not now bringing 2/. a year. In the country it was exactly the same. A gentleman desirous of building a house in the middle of the country, 100 miles from London, asked a landlord on what terms he would sell him a field — a small field which was un- occupied at the time, and which has been unoccupied ever since ; and the reply of the landlord was : ‘ If you offered me 1,000/. for that field, more than it is worth, I would not take the trouble to complicate and bother my settlement with the transaction.’ In both cases, therefore, labour was restricted by the action thus described. Instead of point- ing to various schemes which might be complicated and difficult, and instead of referring the labourer to the capitalist, and the capitalist to the labourer, and talking about lower wages, what was required in order to improve the condition of the labourer and of the artisan was simply to remove the bands which now repressed industry. WEDNESDAY MORNING. 69 Mr. Burxs (Social Democratic Federation) said they had been Avarned by the chaiimian to address their remarks to the audience in language as polite as it was possible for working-men to use. Now, con.sidering that working-men had not much time to study politeness, that the class to Avhich he himself belonged had unfortunately to get up at half-past four in the morning and to work hard all day for scanty wages, much politeness could not be expected from them. As one who had travelled throughout Great Britain, and who knew, as an engineer, the condition of his fellow- workmen, he considered that Mr. D. Cunningham, in his paper, had unjustly taken the employes of the Dundee Harbour Board as a standard of the wages of the Scotch people in that particular district. The employes of Boards of Con- servancy, and of Harbour Trust Boards and Corporation Boards generally, there received, on an average, from 45 . to 85 . and 95 . a week more than the average rate of wage paid at competition shops in the same district ; that was, the majority of men who had worked for Corporation Boards and private firms. Mr. D. Cunningham had said that between 1859 and 1884 there had been an increase of workmen’s wages from 60 to 80 per cent. Viewed from a workman’s position, that was a marvellous statement to make : it was one which he could in no sense corroborate. Mr. D. Cunningham ought not to forget the important fact that, although nominally wages had increased, yet the purchasing power of the money had decreased amazingly in the period to which reference had been made. The writer of the same paper had asserted that the prices of commodities, such as tea, sugar, soap, treacle, syrup, and marmalade averaged now only half the prices of 1859. But a working-man did not Kve on tea, sugar, soap, treacle, syrup and marmalade (laughter). There were other commodities which entered into a working-man’s diet besides such things as marmalade, sugar, and syrup. Mr. D. Cunningham told them that the price of meat to-day, compared with 1859, was not much greater. As one compelled by the general low wages he received from the capitalist to be more of a vegetarian than he liked, he would tell Mr. D. Cunningham that the meat was now extravagantly dear, the prices were prohibitive to men, esj)ecially in the district mentioned in the paper, Dundee, where the average rate of Avages of members of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, when they happened to be in work, was from 205. to 285. a week. And yet, in the face of that fact, the writer of the paper had told the Conference that the average rate of wages was between 295. and 305. per week ! Taking into consideration the circumstance that, as Dundee, being a port, was dependent upon the arrival of shipping, they would at once see that occupation there was precarious, and they 70 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEKATION CONFEEENCE. would not be surprised to hear that the amount of earnings per head, or per family, was at least 50 per cent, lower than the estimate of Mr. D. Cunningham. The average wages received by members of the Society of Amalgamated Engineers were 38s. a week in London, and in other parts from 26s. to 36s. Throughout the whole country, the average wages of men in work, in precarious times like these, would not be more than 29s. a week. Mr. D. Cunningham had told them that superior articles of consumption, such as eggs and meat of home growth, had risen considerably in price, but their place had been largely occupied by imported foods in tins. The working classes had been told by many gentlemen that one of the causes of the bad condition they were in was that they were thriftless and dissolute. Even upon the wages estimated by Mr. D. Cunningham, it was not possible for the father of a family of four or five to be thrifty. Assuming, for the moment, that Mr. D. Cunningham’s figures were not exaggerated — and he for one did not believe they were exaggerated intentionally — it was not evidence of well-being and material pro- sperity for a man to receive, on the average, from 28s. to 31s. a week; because that was not an extraordinarily large sum out of which to keep a family of two or three children, and with an ex- orbitant house-rent to pay. When he found that the actual amount received by employes of the Dundee Harbour Board, distributed over skilled and unskilled workmen, was not more than from 18s. to 19s., he felt that Mr. D. Cunningham’s figures must be accepted with a very large grain of salt. With regard to the condition of the people and their remuneration, the present period was equal in its intensity and bitterness to the period of 1879, so graphically described by Sir Thomas Brassey, some five years ago, in The Nineteenth Century. Had Sir Thomas Brassey read over his article, published in 1879, it might have saved him the trouble of writing another on the same question. With regard to the purchasing power of money, meat was at least 50 per cent, dearer than it was twenty-five years ago. It was, however, true that boots were cheaper. It used to be said, ‘ There is nothing like leather ’ ; but the shoemaker of the present day appeared to have reversed that saying by substituting another, ^ There is nothing like brown paper’; and he gave them plenty of it. What was said of boots applied to clothing, such as moleskins and corduroys, which, although decreased 25 per cent, in price, had diminished 125 per cent, in quality. In fact, the clothes sold to the working classes at the shoddy shops were similar to the goods supplied to the natives on the banks of the Niger and the Congo, where he had been. He remembered seeing a native on the banks of the Niger washing some of his clothes. They had recently been WEDNESDAY MOKNING. 71 brought from England, and by the time he had rinsed the water, blue, and size out of them, there was very little left for him to wear ■(laughter). Such statements as those made in Mr. D. Cunningham’s paper must be seriously met by the artisans to whom they were addressed, and this Conference did not in any sense represent a number of persons who were affected by the question (hear, hear). It was a question which would have to be threshed out by the working classes, and he was sorry that Mr. D. Cunningham had not gone to better authorities for his figures, and given better data than he had in his paper. Those figures and data were inaccurate and misleading, and he questioned them, as a reformer, as a sober man, as a Malthu- sian, and more of a vegetarian than he should be. There were many of his fellow-men who would question such statements ; he referred to men who practised the virtues of temperance, who neither drank, nor smoked, nor chewed (laughter). Artisans could not live on the miserable wages received by agricultural labourers, ship riveters, and sailors (applause). The Chairman : At the beginning of his remarks, Mr. Burns alluded to my ruling as to what he called politeness. I think the Conference will see that there is very great distinction between the character of the observations which have fallen from Mr. Burns, which were entirely pertinent, and to the point, and remarks such as those to which I alluded. The latter were in the nature of com- ment upon the Church and upon the Army, which are matters entirely outside, I think, the proceedings of this Conference. One of the speakers referred to those who, not belonging to the labouring classes, were unused to hard words ; but that is a remark which can- not apply to politicians. It was not in consequence of any general dislike of hard words that I spoke on the matter, but from a desire that our proceedings should be confined strictly to the great question before us. (Applause.) Mr. James Aitkin (Greenock Chamber of Commerce) said that he observed in some of the papers statements put forth that pointed in the very opposite direction to what experience teaches. Mr. Hutchinson (page 49) set forth that the increase of the products of industry had been of such benefit to the working-man as to bring these products within the purchasing power of himself and family . It must be admitted that great benefits had been derived from the increase of the products of industry of late years ; still these benefits had been altogether in favour of the capitalists, the employers, and but a very small section of the working population. That section con- sisted of those who were in constant employment and highly paid ; n,nd those who were only occasionally employed at low wages derived 72 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONEEEENCE. no benefit but rather injury. We need not go back one hundred years in search of information on this question. If the inquiry be confined to the last forty or fifty years, there is a whole army of gentlemen who have had that long experience in the weaving factory, the engine shop, or the building yard. These gentlemen can furnish much more reliable information on this question than it is possible to extract from any statistical tables, however carefully they may be prepared. In making such an assertion it is necessary to show how it is possible that what is apparently the prosperous state of the country, can be detrimental to a large portion of its inhabitants. There are agencies at work the tendency of which is to depress the workman. Fortunately many of these are under the control of the workman, if he choose to avoid them ; but there is one, the most powerfully depressing agency of all, over which he has no control whatever ; it is entirely in the hands of the capitalists and employers, and it is one of the principal factors in the depression of trade at the present time; he referred to the labour-saving appliances of modern times. Labour-saving machinery ought to be encouraged ; the evil is not in the machinery but in the keen, grasping disposition of those who have it under their control. Were they to meet it in the spirit they ought to do, it might be a blessing to every one, while at present it is a curse to many a workman. Fifty years ago labour-saving machinery was comparatively little known. Now, there are occupa- tions where the labour of the workman has been nearly dispensed with altogether, although fifty years ago the labour was entirely performed by the workman. In carpet weaving, fifty years ago, the workman drove the shuttle with the hand, and produced from forty- five to fifty yards per week, for which he was paid from 9(7. to Is* per yard, while at the present day a girl attending a steam loom can produce sixty yards a day, and does not cost her employer \\d. per yard for her labour. That girl with her loom is now doing the work of eight men. The question is. How are these men employed now 1 In a clothier’s establishment, seeing a girl at work at a sewing- machine, he asked the employer how many men's labour that machine saved him. He said it saved him twelve men’s labour. Then he asked, ‘ What would these tw’elve men be doing now? ’ ‘ Oh,’ he said, ^ they will be much better employed than if they had been with me, perhaps at some new industry.’ He asked, ‘ What new industry ? ’ but the employer could not point out any, except photo- graphy : at last he said they would probably have found employment in making sewing-machines. Shortly afterwards he was asked to visit the American Singer Sewing Machine Factory near Glasgow. He got this clothier to accompany him, and when going over thfe WEDNESDAY MORNING. 73 works they came upon the very same kind of machines as the clothier had in his establishment. They put the question to the manager, ‘ How long would it take a man to make one of these machines ? ’ He said he could not tell, as no man made a machine ; they had a more expeditious way of doing it than that ; there would be upwards of thirty men employed in the making of one machine y but he said if they were to make this particular kind of machine, they would turn out one for every four and a half days’ work of each man in their employment. How, there was a machine that with a girl had done the work of twelve men for nearly ten years, and the owner of that machine was under the impression that these twelve men would be employed making another machine, while four and a half days of each of those men were sufficient to make another machine that was capable of displacing other twelve men. Were this a solitary case, there would be little to complain of, but when we take into account that it is the same with almost every industry under the sun, it becomes a serious consideration. (Hear, hear.) The building in which they were met would have taken double the number of men to construct it fifty years ago that it would at the present day. There is scarcely a branch connected with house-build- ing in which labour-saving machinery has not come into operation.. Slating and plasterwork are but slightly affected, but in some of the other departments one man with two assistants attending a machine will do as much work as sixty men would have done fifty years ago. Viewing the present depression of trade in the light of these facts, how can it be possible for men to get a living who have nothing but their labour to depend on, and who have been deprived of a market for their labour by the introduction of labour-saving appliances 1 Is it not necessary that there should be a reduction of the hours of labour so as to allow everyone to earn his own livelihood 1 It would certainly be better that ten men should work six hours a day, and all be employed, than that six men should work ten hours a day and- the other four men go about idly and be supported as paupers. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Giffen made great efforts to induce the public to believe that the working classes have been greatly benefited by the increase of their wages during the last fifty years. His own impression was that the wage- earning population would have enjoyed all the com- forts they now do, had wages remained at the rate they were fifty years ago. Practically wages have not risen at all, for just as wages rose everything else advanced in price — clothing, house rents, and food, wdth very few exceptions, and, from the very nature of trade, it cannot be otherwise if people are to deal fairly and honourably towards each other. Fifty yeais ago wages were little more than 74 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. half of what they are now. Assume that in the house-building trade the masons claim and gain advance of 10 per cent, on their wages. Then the joiner, the slater, the unskilled and all other branches xjonnected with house-building, would consider that they were as much entitled to an advance of 10 per cent, as the masons, and they would get it. The house that could formerly be built for one thousand pounds would then cost eleven hundred pounds, and the house rent that was formerly 10^. would be lU. Next come in their turn the clothier, the shoemaker, and the baker ; these very naturally say that if they are to pay 10 per cent, more for houses, they are entitled to get 10 per cent, more for the commodities they are pro- ducing for the builders. They also make the demand and get the advance, and the same thing goes on until within two years from the start every occupation has got 10 per cent, of an advance. They are now all upon a level as formerly, only 10 per cent, higher, and ready to start afresh for another advance. Every one is getting 10 per which shall increase the produce of each man’s labour when aided by a given amount of capital. The second is a rapid growth of capital, forcing it by its own competition to accept a lower rate of interest ; thus leaving a larger share of a larger produce to be distributed among the different grades of labour. The third, and chief of all, is an increase in the number of the higher industrial grades relatively to the lower, causing the higher grades to give up a larger part of this larger share to the lower grades ; thus raising the incomes of all the ranks of the wages receiving classes, but especially the lower ranks. The highest ranks of industry are not those which have the softest hands or wear the neatest coats. They are those which make the most use of the highest and rarest faculties. A work- ing-man does much better for his son if he fits him to become a responsible foreman, than if he makes him a second-rate clerk or schoolmaster. The foreman will do the higher work, and rightly get the higher wages. The more such men there are ready to rise to the higher posts in the practical management of business, the greater will be the competition for the aid of ordinary labour, and higher will be the average level of wages. The chief remedy, then, for low wages is better education. School education ought to be good and cheap, if not free. For it makes the mind elastic, ready to take in new ideas, and able to communicate freely with others. But what makes one man really higher than another is a vigorous, straightforward cha- racter ; and the chief value of book-learning is, that it helps to form this. The work of true education must, in the main, be done by the parents ; they alone can teach their children to feel rightly, to act strongly, and to spend wisely. The first aim of every social endeavour must be to increase the numbers of those who are capable of the more difficult work of the world, and to diminish the number of those who can do only unintelligent work, or who perhaps cannot even do THURSDAY MORNING. 183 that. The age of chivalry is not over, it is dawning now in this present generation. For now we are beginning to see how dependent the possibilities of leading a noble life are on physical and moral surroundings. However great may be our distrust of forcible socialism, we are rapidly getting to feel that no one can lay his head on his pillow at peace with him- self, who is not giving of his time and his substance to diminish the number of the outcasts of society, and to increase the number of those who can earn a reasonable income and have the opportunity of living, if they will it, a noble life. APPENDICES, A. Over-crowding of Towns. There is much preventable chronic depression in all large towns, especially London, owing to the presence of classes who would do better elsewhere. Ground rents, and therefore house rents, are so high, that poorly paid workers cannot afford decent lodgings : the poverty of the poor is their destruction. Their low earnings make them lodge badly, their unwholesome lodgings weaken them physic- ally and morally, and render them more and more unable to get high earnings. Of course. Government might buy the land and let it out to the working-classes for next to nothing. This could only bribe people to stay where their work is not wanted \ after a very short time they would be no better off than before. The only people who would gain permanently would be the London landlords. Taxes levied on the community in general, including the working classes, would be used to enable the owners of London factories to get their labour artificially cheap, so that they could let their factories at very high rents for work that could be done more healthily and more to the advantage of the community elsewhere. If the Government can afford to buy land for the working, classes, let it make more play- grounds and breathing-spaces. Every pound so spent now will yield an income of national health and happiness for ever. The only cure for the misery of large towns is to have no one there who cannot earn a good deal. Highly-skilled workmen can pay their way well enough, and those unskilled workers who are really necessary for the work of the towns would get high enough wages to compensate them for the dearness of house-room, if only their labour were scarce. But as it is, London in particular is 184 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEKATION CONFERENCE. crowded with shiftless people. Some of them have been attracted by the rumours of the rich charities there. Some have come hoping to better their condition, but have miscalculated their powers and failed. But many more have descended to their present unhappy condition through ill-health, or through the action of causes which are constantly at work, and tend in the course of a few generations to enfeeble the physical, if not also the moral, constitution of the in- habitants of very large towns. Thus the supply of unskilled labour is so much in excess of the needs of London, that it has to compete for employment in several of the world-industries, especially the clothing industries. The wages in these are determined by the com- petition of other places, where there are no high rents to be paid ; and are therefore insufficient to pay for house-room fit for human beings in London. My remedies are two. The first is to enforce sanitary regulations in London, with rapidly-increasing stringency. I would have it given to be understood that the law will be put in force with special strictness in the case of those who come to London in future : the object of this being to deter agricultural labour, and labourers and uneducated immigrants from other countries, from coming to London unless they have some special reason for believing that they will get on well there. This might cause great hardship, unless accompanied by my second remedy, which is that liberal and vigorous action be taken to help those who are in London and are not wanted there to move themselves and their work to industrial villages, where they can get house-room cheaply, and fresh air for nothing. Each of these remedies have great dangers and difficulties, but these will be much diminished if the two are applied together. I will venture to ask those who think the second remedy of import- ance, to see if they cannot help the society, which (I have recently learnt) has been formed for promoting Industrial Villages ; its offices are at 12 Southampton Street, Strand. Its task is most difficult, and wants the aid of all the best practical knowledge that is to be had. B. The Interdependence of Industries. ‘ There is a partnership in industries. No single large industry can be depressed without injury to other industries; still less can any great group of industries. Each industry, when prosperous, buys and consumes the produce probably of most (certainly of very many) other industries, and if industry A. fail and is in difficulty, industries B. and C.and D., which used to sell to it, will not be able to sell that THURSDAY MORNING. 185 which they had produced in reliance on A.’s demand, and in future they will stand idle till industry A. recovers, because in default of A. there will be no one to buy the commodities which they create. Then, as industry B. buys of C. D., &c., the adversity of B. tells on C. D., &c., and as these buy of E. F., &c., the efiect is propagated through the whole alphabet. And in a certain sense it rebounds. Z. feels the want caused by the diminished custom of A. B. and C., and so it does not earn so much ; in consequence it cannot lay out so much on the produce of A. B. and C., and so these do not earn so much either.’ — Bagehot, Lombard Street, pp. 125-6. C. A Standard of Purchasing Power. Government already does work of the kind desired in regard to the lithe commutation tables. But instead of dealing with wheat, barley, and oats, it would deal with all important commodities. It would publish their prices once a month or once a year; it would reckon the importance of each commodity as proportioned to the total sum spent on it ; and then by simple arithmetic deduce the change in the purchasing power of gold. Borrowings could then, at the option of the contracting parties, be reckoned in Government units. On this plan, if A. lends B. 1,000^. at per cent, interest, and after some years the j)urchasing power of money had risen by an eighth, B. would ha.ve to pay as interest, not 45^., but a sum that had the same purchasing power as 45^. had at the time of borrowing, i.e. 40^., and so on. The plan would have to win its way into general use ; but when once it had become familiar, none but gamblers would lend or borrow on any other terms, at all events for long periods. The scheme has no claims to theoretic perfection, but only to being a great improvement on our present methods, and obtainable with little trouble. A perfectly exact measure of purchasing power is not only unattainable but even unthinkable. The same change of prices affects the purchasing power of money to different persons in different ways. For one who can seldom afford to have meat, a rise of one-fourth in the price of bread accompanied by a fall of one-fourth in that of meat means a fall in the purchasing power of money : his wages will not go so far as before. While to his richer neighbour, who spends twice as much on meat as on bread, the change acts the other way. The Government would of course take account only of the total consump- tion of the whole nation ; but even so, it would be troubled by con- stant changes in the way in which the nation spent its income. The estimate of the importance of different commodities would have to be 186 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. recast from time to time. The only room for differences of opinion would be as to what commodities should be taken account of. It would probably be best to follow the ordinary method of taking very little account of any but raw commodities. Manufactured commo- dities and personal services are always changing their character, and are not easily priced. Manufactured tend to fall in value relatively to raw commodities ; and at present, at all events, personal services tend to rise ; so that the errors made by omitting both probably nearly neutralise one another. Simplicity and definiteness are in this case far more important than theoretic accuracy. Those wha make the returns should work in the open day, so that they could not, if they would, be subject to many influences. This plan, though strange at first sight, would really be much simpler than bimetallism, while its influence in steadying industry would be incomparably greater. D. Theories and Facts about Wages. {Rejjrinted from the Annual of the Wholesale Co-operation Society for 1885.) I. I have been asked to give an account of the doctrines as to wages held by the past and present generations of economists, with some statement of the actual facts of the case. It is difl&cult to treat such large questions in a short space ; but I hope to be able to give the main outlines of them. We hear a great deal about the supplanting of old-fashioned theories of wages by newer and truer doctrines. But in fact the change in the theory itself has not been very great. Although a good deal of new work has been added, and the old work has been developed, yet but very little has been destroyed. Almost everything that was ever said by the great economists of the first half of the century is true now if properly understood. Much of it will remain true for ever, or at all events till the glorious time comes when people are willing to work as hard from a sense of duty as now they work for pay. There has been a great change ; but it has not been in the theory itself, it has been in understanding how it is to be applied, and how it is not to be applied. At the beginning of the century, when the great economists, Malthus and Bicardo, wrote, the world was in a miserable condition, which, thank God, has passed away. The general principles which they laid down were almost all true ; but their way of expressing them was coloured by the peculiar character of the facts among which they lived. It required a great mental effort to grasp the principles of their reasoning; and the effort was made by but few of their THUESDAY MORNINa. 187 followers. But it was easy to take hold of isolated sentences and to repeat them without the conditions implied in the context. And this was done. Political Economy became fashionable. In Parliament and the counting-house, in the pulpit and the press, the authority of Political Economy was invoked for all kinds of purposes ; but before all and above all, for the purpose of keeping the working-man in his place. Nearly all the greatest economists have been earnest and fear- less friends of the working classes ; they have been impelled to the study of economics chiefly by a desire to see how far it was possible to diminish the evils of poverty. But Bicardo had very little sympathy one way or the other ; and many of those who made them- selves a reputation by the confldence with which they misunderstood parts of what he said, were partisans of capital. The reputation of Economic Science has sufiered and is sufiering for the misdoings of its camp followers. 2. At the beginning of the century the prices of things consumed by the labourer, taken one with another, were nearly double what they are now. And meanwhile the average money wages of manual labour have nearly doubled. There has not indeed been a very great rise in the wages of all occupations; the improvement is chiefly due to the fact that then there were very few skilled workers, while now there are comparatively few who are entiiely unskilled. The average income for each man, woman, and child in the manual labour classes was about 12^. then, and is not less than 20^. now. These classes have now none too much of the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life ; but then they had less than a third of what they have now. Starvation and disease ran riot in the land. Some causes of this misery were seen clearly enough by everyone, without aid from the economists. The great war with France had cost about fifteen hundred million pounds ; and that was probably a good deal more than the value of everything that was left in the country, except the land. The imperial taxes were 20 per cent, of the total income of the country ; the mere interest on the debt was 10 per cent, of it. Next an unparalleled series of bad harvests had made wheat terribly dear : it was frequently over 6?. a quarter, and once over 10^. But besides all this, the administrators of the Poor Law were raising up new evils by attempting to relieve suffering indiscrimin- ately. What they really did was to discriminate against the industrious and in favour of the dissolute. Farmers sometimes had to turn away hard-working men who had saved a little money, and make them live on that, in order to make room for drones forced on them by the parish. The industrious were so much worse provided for 188 INDUSTEIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. than tliose who went to the parish, that in time independent labourers almost ceased to exist. Wages were lowered all round and eked out by parish pay. He got on best who was the best adept at the arts of imposition. In the South, where the system was carried to the greatest lengths, the labourer has never recovered from the injury thus done to his character and wages. A hundred years ago wages were higher in the South than in the North of England ; now they are half as much again in the North as in the South. In these and other ways the Poor Laws did evil. Mischief was done, not by the amount of relief given, but by its being given in the wrong way and to the wrong persons, so as to cause the survival of the worst in place of the best. Probably half of all the lives of extreme misery and want in the country are due to this cause The nation at large did not get to see this last cause of misery till 1834 ; but the economists saw it earlier. They looked at the history of England, and found that the working population had been well off when it had been increasing slowly in number, and badly off when it had been increasiug fast. They studied the history of wages, and found that wages were once really high; it was just after the black death had destroyed a great part of the population. Again, they knew that from 1700 to 1760 population had been almost sta- tionary, and their wages had steadily risen. But from 1760 onwards numbers had increased fast, and misery had increased faster. Trade, indeed, had grown, and there had been a marvellous series of me- chanical inventions, but these had been able to do little to diminish the difficulty of getting food. The economists looked abroad, and they saw poverty wherever there was a dense population. If in any happy valley they found everyone well off, they found then, what we find now, a custom that only one son out of each family should marry. They found that in England before 1760 it was not very easy for a man to get a house for himself while he was quite young ; he had generally to go on a good while living with other young men in his father’s or employer’s house before he could see his way to marry. But since then manufacturers had made so many new openings that it had become the habit for everyone to marry when he wanted to, and to trust to luck. And then later on the Poor Law officers made life pretty easy to the father of a large family, if he would only give up all attempts to help^himself and cringe enough to them. Mean- while, as bread grew dearer, cultivation was creeping up the hillsides. Wheat was grown on miserable land that would not give eight bushels an acre, though more labour had been spent on it than was wanted to raise twenty or thirty bushels on fairly good land. 3. The economists saw all this ; and they thought rightly, that at THUESDAY MOENIXa. 189 that particular time there was no truth more important, none on which the philanthropist should insist with more earnestness, than what they called the law of Diminishing Return. This was : — The natural law of the fertility of land is that, other things being equal, an increased application of capital and labour to land will not increase in like proportion the raw produce raised from it. They went on to apply this to the question of wages. If twenty men are employed on a farm and a twenty-first wants to be taken on, he will produce less than the others did, and therefore the farmer cannot afford to pay him so much ; and he must therefore take a less quantity of corn as wages. (I say a less quantity of corn so as to avoid all trouble about changes in the price of corn.) The next step will be for the farmer to lower everybody else’s wages to his level. The next step will be for the landlord to say to the farmer, ‘ You get your labour for lower wages (at all events when measured in corn), and so you can afford to pay me more rent ; if you do not agree to pay it, I will find someone else who will.’ A rise of rents and a fall of wages is therefore, they argued, the necessary consequence of an excessive growth of population. He who truly loves the people will urge them not to marry early. Now the first sentence of this reasoning has the clause ^ other things being equal,’ and the conclusions may be invalid if other things are not equal. The economists knew of this condition, but they did not pay much attention to it : and this not so much because they were careless as because it had then no great practical import- ance. No one, however sagacious, would have anticipated the strange combination of causes which have since then lowered the price of corn ; all reasonable expectations were in the other direction. The new machinery was manufacturing things cheaply; but the working-man could not consume many of them himself, and if he wanted to send them abroad and to buy food with them, he had to pay enormous taxes for doing so. The economists were convinced of the advantages of free trade, but they had no hope that the landed interests which then ruled the country could be made to allow it. And even with free trade they did not expect to be able to buy large supplies of corn cheaply, for the wheat lands of America were then chiefly on the poor soil of the Atlantic border. The middle region of America was but little known, and seemed too far off for extensive trade ; while the richest wheat land of all, that in the North-Western States and California, was less known than the centre of Africa is now. Since then England has adopted free trade, and railways and steamships have come into existence. So great has been the growth of knowledge, of mechanical invention, and of the aid which capital 190 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. affords to labour, that the working-man can buy his bread from abroad at the cost of less labour than he could get it with even in 1760, before the rapid growth of population had set in. The old economists made wonderfully good use of their knowledge as far as it went ; but we, knowing what they could not even guess, can see the way to improving the first part of their doctrine of wages. But before doing this, let us look at the rest of it. 4. Great as was the poverty of the English people then, foreign countries were poorer still. In most of them population was sparse, and therefore food was cheap ; but for all that they were underfed, and could not provide themselves with the sinews of war. France, after her first victories, helped herself along by the forced contribu- tions of others. But the countries of central Europe could not support their own armies without England's aid. Even America, with all her energy and national resources, was not rich ; she could not have subsidised Continental armies. The economists looked for the explanation, and found it chiefly in England's accumulated capital, which, though small when judged by our present standard, was very much greater than that of any other country. Other nations were envious of England, and wanted to follow in her steps ; but they were unable to do so, partly indeed for other reasons, but chiefly because they had not capital enough. Their annual income was required for immediate consumption. There was not in them a large class of people who had a good store of wealth set by, which they did not need to consume at once, and which they could devote to making machines and other things that would aid labour and enable it to produce a larger store of things for future consumption. A special tone was given to their arguments by the facts that capital was scarce everywhere, even in England ; that the efliciency of labour was becoming more and more dependent on the machinery by which it was aided ; and lastly, that some foolish followers of Bousseau were telling the working classes that they would be better off without any capital at all. In consequence, the economists gave extreme prominence to the statements ; first, that labour requires the support of capital, i.e. of good clothes, &c., that have been already produced ; and secondly, that labour requires the aid of capital in the form of factories, stores of raw material, &c. Of course the workman might have supplied his own capital, but in fact he seldom had more than a little store of clothes and furniture, and perhaps a few simple tools of his own — he was dependent for everything else on the savings of others. The labourer received clothes ready to wear, bread ready to eat, or the money with which he could purchase them. The capitalist received THURSDAY MORNING. 191 a spinning of wool into yarn, a weaving of yarn into cloth, or a plough- ing of land, and only in a few cases commodities ready for use, coats ready to be worn, or bread ready to be eaten. Tliere are, no doubt, important exceptions, but the ordinary bargain between employers and employed is that the latter receive things ready for immediate use and the former receive help towards making things that will be of use hereafter. These facts the economists expressed by saying that all labour requires the support of capital, whether owned by the labourer or by someone else ; and that when anyone works for hire, his wages are, as a rule, advanced to him out of his employer’s capital — advanced, that is, without waiting till the things which he is engaged in making are ready for use. These simple statements have been a good deal criticised, but they have never been denied by anyone who has taken them in the sense in which they were meant. The older economists, however, went on to say that the amount of wages was limited by the amount of capital ; and this statement can- not be defended ; at best it is but a slovenly way of talking. It has suggested to some people the notion that the total amount of wages that could be paid in a country in the course of, say, a year, was a fixed sum. If by the threat of a strike, or in any other way, one body of workmen got an increase of wages, they would be told that in consequence other bodies of workmen must lose an amount exactly equal in the aggregate to what they had gained. Those who have said this, have perhaps thought of agricultural produce, which has but one harvest in the year. If all the wheat raised at one harvest is sure to be eaten before the next, and if none can be imported, then it is true that if anyone’s share of the wheat is increased, there will be just so much less for others to have. But this does not justify the statement that the amount of wages payable in a country is fixed by the capital in it, a doctrine which has been called ‘ the vulgar form of the wages fund theory,’ and which was used for partisan purposes by shallow and dogmatic hangers-on of economic science. Unfortunately isolated sentences can be quoted even from the best of the older econo- mists which seem to support this doctrine. The whole spirit of their reasoning was opposed to it, but those who thought any stick good enough to beat the trades unions with, seized eagerly on these care- lessly-worded sentences. 5. Let us, then, look at the doctrine which the economists meant to express by this unfortunate phrase. They saw that if wages rise in one trade without any corresponding increase in the efficiency of work, someone or other must lose what that trade gained. They classed all incomes as rent, profits, and wages. Of course, part of 192 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. the loss might fall on rent ; but the economists could prove that that was not very likely unless population diminished. And, therefore, it must fall on profits or wages, or both. If it fell on profits they argued that capital would shrink ; there would be less accumulated wealth with which to pay wages to labour, and supply it with the requisite raw material, &c. Therefore there would be less efiective demand for labour ; and so, by one route or another, other workers would suffer for the extra gain got by the first group. The complete argument has a good deal more detail, and in whatever form it is expressed, it takes up a great many pages in every thorough economic treatise. But what has just been given is its backbone. Now, when one looks at the argument one finds that there is really nothing in it about a fixed wages fund. There is something in it about there being at any time a definite (not a fixed) wages and profits fund. A world of trouble would have been saved if they had used this phrase from the beginning. The French and German economists, though on the whole they had not done nearly so much good work as the English, have never given any countenance to the doctrine that there is a determinate wages fund. The great difference between the views of wages taken by English economists in the past and the present generation is then this — they all regard wages as paid out of capital ; but while the older economists talked as though wages were limited by the amount of capital that had been already put aside to pay wages with, the younger economists have, for the last ten or fifteen years, put the case in another way. They see that if the eflSciency of industry were increased, and more things were produced, higher wages would be paid at once by draw- ing more rapidly on the stocks already in hand. It might be neces- sary to be a little careful about the stocks of some kinds of raw produce which could not be replenished very quickly. But with a few exceptions the increased supplies would come in so soon that the stores need never run low. Therefore, the younger economists do not speak of wages as limited by capital. But they say that every in- crease of capital raises wages, because it increases the productiveness of industry ; it increases the competition of the capitalist for the aid of labour, and thus lowers the rate of interest and increases that part of the total produce which capital is compelled to resign to labour. 6. I will now put together the new version of the economic doc- trines in my own words, and illustrate it by a reference to facts. First, as to what determines the produce of capital and labour. With equal capital per head, equal individual efliciency, and equal knowledge of the arts of production, the amount of raw produce raised per head is greatest in a rich new country that is well settled THUKSDAY MORNINa. 193 but thinly peopled, and steadily diminishes with every increase in the population. But this abundance of raw produce is not of much use to them unless some of it can be sold at a high price to manufac- turing countries. Unless this can be done, life in a thinly- peopled country is very hard, because nothing except raw produce can be got easily. That is verified by history. The early colonists of America got freedom and plenty of plain food ; but in almost every other re- spect they were worse off than the English agricultural labourer on 155. a week is now. If trade with other places were impossible, the law of the total productiveness of industry, counting in raw and manufactured commodities together, would be generally a law of in- creasing and not of diminishing return. That is to say, an increase in population (accompanied by a corresponding increase of capital) would increase and not diminish the average material well-being — at all events, until the country had become crowded and raw produce had to be raised in very expensive ways. The railway and steamship have improved the condition of all countries, but most of all, those whose population is very thin and those whose population is very thick. As things are, the total necessaries, comforts, and luxuries that can be got by given capital, labour, and intelligence, is perhaps greatest where the population is ten to the square mile, and dimin- ishes very slowly with every increase in the population. But it must be admitted that the advantage that America and Australia have over the crowded countries of Western Europe is not quite so great as appears. Real as well as money wages are, no doubt, higher there than here ; but the work that has to be done to earn them is harder. Even in America itself many of those who can and will work hardest go West, and wages are therefore much higher West than East ; but if the Western men came East they would get more than average wages, and some of the Eastern men who go West find it difficult to get employment. But of course every improvement in knowledge and in the arts of production, as well as every increase in the capital per head, increases the total production per head. So great has been the increase of prosperity in this country, while population has been growing rapidly, that if we could reduce raw and manufactured goods to a common standard of price, we should probably find the average real income of the manual labour classes now higher than was the average income of all, rich and poor together, a century ago. 7. Passing now from the amount of produce per head to the way in which it is distributed, we may first consider the landlord’s share. The old economists, writing when the importation of corn on a large scale was out of the question, said that an increase of population O 194 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. compelled poorer soils to be cultivated, and raised rents ; and they expected a rapid and constant rise of rents in England. It has turned out otherwise. Imported food has been so cheap that agri- cultural rents have sometimes fallen fast. So that agricultural rent proper, i.e. what remains after deducting interest on capital sunk in the land, is now probably not more than it was early in the century. It was then a very important part of the total income of the country — perhaps a sixth part ; while now it is certainly less than a twentieth part. But the increase of wealth and population has raised the value of land for purposes of residence, of railways, mining, &c. ; so that on the whole the owners of land have probably not lost by free trade. 8. After deducting rent from the total produce of industry, there remains what has just been called the Wages and Profits Fund. But profits are made up of two parts — interest, which goes to the owner of capital, and the earnings got by the employer of the capital. There is a growing tendency to class these earnings, which may be called the Earnings of Management, with other kinds of earnings ; so I prefer to speak of this fund as the Earnings and Interest Fund. Just to fix the ideas, I will give a rough estimate as to this. We may take agricultural rent proper and ground rents at about 75 millions. At least 50 millions more are got from foreign investments, which we don’t want to count in here. The rest of the national income, that which constitutes the Earnings and Interest Fund for the labour and capital employed at home, is a little over 1,000 millions. Nearly 250 millions are interest on capital, and nearly 800 millions are earnings of labour. This last sum we may again regard as divided up into about 500 millions for the wages of the working- classes, and nearly 300 millions for the earnings of all other classes, including employers. Of course we might go further, dividing up each of these two parts into the shares of many different grades or classes of labour. Each of these classes of labour has its work in production ; we may call it a factor of production. 9. Well, then, the great law of distribution is, that the more use- ful one factor of production is, and the scarcer it is, the higher will be the rate at which its services are paid. For instance, if two skilled labourers, after allowing for the expense of the machinery they use, can do as much work as five unskilled, they will get as much wages as the five unskilled can get should they stay in the trade. Again, supposing an employer can devise such economic arrangements of machinery, &c., as to make the labour of 500 labourers reach as far as ordinary employers would the labour of 600, then his earnings of management will exceed theirs by the wages of a THUKSDAY MOHNINa. 195 hundred labourers. But he can go on doing this only so long as there are not many employers like him. If there are, they will com- pete with one another, lower the price of their goods, and distribute the benefit of their skill among the community at large. These illus- trations explain the general principle, which we may now state a little more carefully. The total Earnings and Interest Fund depends on the resources of nature and the efficiency of capital and labour acting on it. The larger this is, the more there will be to be divided up, and the larger, other things being equal, will the share of each be. Thus, in a new and rich country interest can be high, and the earnings of all classes of labour, from the employer down to the lowest unskilled labourer, can be high. But, other things being equal, if any one factor of pro- duction increases relatively to the others, it will become in less and less request. If, for instance, capital increases much faster than labour, without there being many inventions to open up new fields for its employment, capital will go a-begging and the rate of interest will fall. If the number of people who want to do clerk s work increases out of proportion to the population, their wages will fall. If the number of unskilled labourers increases relatively to others, they will find difficulty in getting employment ; interest will rise at their expense, and the earnings of employers and of all other kinds of labour will rise at their expense. On the other hand, if the number of unskilled labourers were to diminish sufficiently, then those who did unskilled work would have to be paid good wages. If the total production was not increased, these extra wages would have to be paid out of the shares of capital, and of the higher kinds of labour ; but even so, the great aim would have been attained of making the increase of wealth hurry up the diminution of want a little faster. But, if the diminution of unskilled labour is brought about by in- creasing the efficiency of labour, it will increase production, and there will be a larger fund to be divided up. 10. Now let us apply this general reasoning to the changes in the distribution of wealth in modern England. The leading in- fluence in these changes is, that capital is growing at least twice as fast as population. Population is not quite doubling itself in fifty years, while capital is doubling itself in less than twenty-five. If it had not been for the new uses that are always being found for capital in different forms, it would have been impossible to employ so much with any great advantage. It must have either migrated, or have competed for occupation until it had forced down its price to perhaps one per cent, a year. Even as things are, it has had to submit to a con- tinually decreasing rate of interest ; and its loss has been labour’s gain. 196 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. This change is partly disguised by the fact that when capital is largest its total share of the produce is largest too. For instance, if in California the capital which each workman makes use of is equal in value to his work for one year, while in Lancashire it is equal to his work for ten years, then, though the rate of interest is lower in Lancashire than in California, the fraction of the produce which goes to capital may be six or seven times as large in Lancashire as in Cali- fornia. This accounts for the apparent anomaly, that while the total produce per head is larger in Lancashire, the wages are higher in California. If Lancashire had only as much capital per head as Cali- fornia has, the total produce handed over to capital would of course be less ; but that would be no gain to labour. For production could not be carried on efficiently, labour would have to pay a higher rate of interest for whatever capital it did use, and wages would be much lower than they are. 11. The profits of business include the earnings of management got by the employer, as well as the interest got by his capital. But in spite of exceptional cases to the contrary, earnings of management are falling, just as interest is ; and for the same reasons. This is a special instance of a great fact that has been noticed in America and on the Continent (especially by M. Leroy Beaulieu) as well as in England. It is that the difference between the earnings in different grades of la hour is steadily diminishing. A generation ago so few people got a good education, that for every pound spent on it there might fairly be expected a total return of from perhaps ten to a hundred pounds in after life. But the growth of intelligence has made people more willing to look far ahead ; the standard of educa- tion has risen in all the ranks of life. So that while the I’ate of interest on capital invested in material things is about a quarter less than it was, the interest on capital invested in education has perhaps fallen one-half. For each pound invested in education, there is perhaps not more than half as much returned in extra earning in after life as there used to be. On the other hand, extraordinary natural abilities of every kind find a wider scope and secure higher earnings than ever. If we take as our standard the wages of unskilled labour, there is a steady fall in the earnings that an expensive start in life will secure to people of average ability, whether they be musicians, or painters, or medical men, or lawyers, or, lastly, business men. The fact is much more important, though it attracts much less attention than the fact that in all these occupations people with exceptional ability can make fortunes unheard of till now. 12. Exceptionally favoured men in business get command over THUKSDAY MOENIISG. 197 vast capitals, and are thus able to do great things. But nearly all very rich men owe a good deal of their wealth to judicious and fortunate speculation. These gains are chiefly at the expense, not of the general public, but of less successful speculators. In old times fortunes were more even, and if a man failed, his story was long remembered in his neighbourhood ; so a fairly true average of gains and losses could be struck. Now, those who fail are quickly lost to sight; their losses heap up the conspicuous gains of successful men. Partly for this reason, few people are aware how great a fall there has been in the real average earnings of men of business with a moderate capital and average ability. Parallel changes are going on within the ranks of hired labour. Simple writing, simple machine turning, weaving, and similar occu- pations are sinking in the industrial scale. Almost anyone with a sound body and mind, and with a little training, is fit for them. But they used to get high wages, because an insufficient number of people had had the training. Not long ago a clerk who did the simplest work got the wages of two or three agricultural labourers. Now he gets, in England, hardly more than the wages of one; in Australia, less than the wages of one. But judgment, self-possession, promptness, and shrewdness, are qualities for which the demand is increasing faster than the supply, though that is increasing very fast. Wages are rising steadily in all occupations in which these qualities are wanted in a high degree ; and they are rising most rapidly in occupations which require these together with great powers of physical endurance. Whenever any new kind of skill is wanted, it is at first rare, and must be paid highly. But if it does not require exceptional natural abilities, there will soon be a good supply of it, and wages are likely to fall. This is, in nine cases out of ten, the explanation of any fall there has been in the wages of particular trades during the last fifty years. But meanwhile new trades are always breaking out that re- quire higher abilities and get higher payment. And in spite of the fact that wages are falling in many trades, the average real wages of manual labour are rising rapidly. It must be remembered that 20s. a week now will buy as much as 25s. would twelve years ago. Thus there is a constant tendency for the lower ranks of industry to gain on the higher ; so that a steadily increasing share of the benefits of progress is going to those who have the greatest need to be lifted up. But to this rule there is one great exception. Those who have a poor physique and a weak character — those who are limp in body and mind — are falling, or if not, it is because they are already as low 198 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. as they can go. They are found in greatest numbers wherever there is most wealth, but they are not the products of wealth, any more than thrushes are born of gooseberry trees. There are no feeble people in the Prairies. Some feeble people go there, but they either get back quickly to a large town, or else they die. Charity and sanitary regulations are keeping alive, in our large towns, thousands of such persons, who would have died even fifty years ago. Mean- while economic forces are pressing heavily on them, for they can do nothing but easy monotonous work, most of which can be done as well, or better, by machinery or by children. Public or private charity may palliate their misery, but the only remedy is to prevent such people from coming into existence. It must be remembered that the poorest of the poor are descended from all ranks of society ; probably the upper ranks contribute more than their proportionate share to them. Crime and dissoluteness in one generation often engender disease, feebleness, dissoluteness, and crime for many generations to come. The long chains of evils that thus result cannot be cut short without the active aid of all classes ; but if all classes help wisely but boldly, tenderly but firmly, they can, I believe, do it. 13. It would be out of place here to discuss the institution of private property. Assuming, as I do, that it is to be kept up with- out fundamental change, I think I have shown that though there are still great evils, though there is still much needless misery, yet in the main, and on the whole, the changes at present at work are such as to be desired ; only they are not going fast enough. Fast as is the in- crease in the supply in the higher grades of labour, and the diminu- tion in that of the lower, we want them to be faster. An equal increase in all grades would lower earnings a little, but not much if capital grew fast. But an increase of population may go with a rapid rise in average wages, if the children of each grade are brought up with the intelligence, self-command, and vigour that now belong to the grade above them. Persons in any rank of life who are not in good physical and mental health have no moral right to have children. But in spite of popular Malthusianism, though not in opposition to Malthus’ principles, we may affirm that those who bring up a large healthy family with a thoroughly good physical, mental, and moral training relatively to their own rank in life, do a service to their country. If the children emigrate, they do a still greater service to the world. A good training is not complete if it only makes them efficient producers, it must also make them wise and temperate con- sumers and good citizens. It is to be hoped that all these children will save a little capital THURSDAY MORNINH. 199 of their own, and that some of them will rise from lower ranks to be employers of labour. Everyone who so passes upwards benefits labour in two ways — he diminishes the competition of labour for employment, and he increases the competition for labour on the part of employing and directing power. If small men of business are being pushed out by big men, big men are being pushed out by joint-stock companies and other asso- ciations of little men. These are gradually making the great mass of the nation owners of its most important industries and employers of its ablest and most powerful business men. Among these associations the genuine co-operative societies have the noblest work. Besides his wages and interest on his capital, they are giving the workman high mental and moral aspii’ations ; they afibrd him a real insight into the problems of business, and they help to diminish industrial strife. They are the best of all known means for enabling an increasing share of the income of the country to go into the hands of those who have the greatest need for it and can turn it to the best use. Continuity of Employment and Rates of Wages. By Emma A. Paterson. The continuity of industrial employment and the rates of wages are questions of deep interest, not only to men but also to women, for it appears from the latest census returns that, without including domestic servants, girls and women now constitute one-third of the industrial portion of the popula- tion.^ "-Tliey are often ignored in investigations relating to wages, and truly the amount of their remuneration is in most cases so small, that one might suppose they worked for amuse- ment rather than for a livelihood. Mr. Giffen, in his recent paper on the Progress of the Working Glasses, makes no reference to working- women. All through he speaks of the ‘ working-man,’ and in the list of thirteen industries which he gives as showing a great increase of wages during the last fifty years, trades in which women are employed, with the exception of weaving, do not appear. I can only suppose that he consigns working-women to the ‘ residuum still unimproved ’ mentioned ‘ See Appendix A. p. 206. 200 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. in page 20 of his paper. ‘ Where all are getting on,’ he says on the same page, ‘ it does not seem very practical in those who are getting on slowly to grudge the quicker advance of others.’ Women often doubt whether they are getting on, even slowly, in this matter of remuneration for their work, but I think they cannot be accused of impatience about it, and I believe that until they become more impatient, very little inaprovement will take place in their position. 1 have found, however, during my ten years’ experience in helping to establish Women’s Trade Societies, that many women feel a deep sense of injury and wrong in the fact that their wages reach only one-third or one-fourth of the amount paid to men for any kind of skilled work, though they are not sure upon whose shoulders the blame should be laid.^ I am taking, and I shall deal especially with, that which should be considered the skilled industry of women, leaving out the comparatively rough work, such as sack making and paper- bag making, ranging from 4s. to 7s. per week. Considering the high prices paid by fashionable ladies for their dresses, there seems to be no good reason why West-end dressmakers should not be as well paid as West-end tailors and tailoresses ; yet, in some of the largest West-end houses, time workers re- ceive only i2s. and 14s. per week, and against those amounts must be placed serious deductions at slack seasons, varying from two to three months’ loss of work in the year.^ The West-end upholsteresses succeeded by means of a general petition to the employers, about fourteen years ago, in getting their wages raised to 15s. a week— the only case of that kind I have heard ^ Professor Leone Levi, in his statistics of 1878, of the earnings of the working classes, placed the number of wage-earning women at 3,800,000, and gave the average weekly earnings of every woman of full age at 13s. This high average was obtained by throwing in the very large class of domestic servants — 1,300,000 at the census of 1871. 2 Since writing this paper I have heard it stated, at a meeting, by a large employer in the London bookbinding trade, that since he entered the business the wages of the men have gone up from 30s. to 36s., 38s., and 40s. per week, but that the same amounts are paid to the women as were paid forty years ago— 10s. and 12s. per week. He regretted this, and was glad the women had now formed a trade society, without which those employers who might be willing to pay higher rates could not be protected from the competition of less scrupulous employers. THUESDAY MORNING. 201 of — but they are liable to be out of work for three months of the year. We often hear it said that the workers take no share of the risk of a business, that this is borne wholly by the employer, yet the loss of work from dulness of trade is surely a considerable share in the risk, and it is one not felt by the more highly paid workers — the foremen and overlookers. Holi- days also have to be deducted, for, unlike the salaried class, workpeople are required to pay for these. In many workshops even Christmas Day and the Bank holidays are deducted from the weekly wages. Enforced holidays, such as a week required for removing machinery and material to new premises, are also deducted. Where both men and women are employed it is not an unknown event for the day of the men’s shop-dinner or ‘ beanfeast ’ to be possibly the day of no dinner for the women ; it is not the custom for them to join in these festivities, but as their work cannot go on while the men are absent, the workshop is closed and the women lose a day’s pay. (a) The continuity of industrial em.ployment . — ’The cause which most prejudicially influences this, with regard to women, I consider to be the length of their hours of work. If not all working-women, surely a far larger number than are at present in regular employment might gain it if there were a general reduction of working hours. This has been the experience of men, who have often striven harder for shorter hours than for higher wages. It is supposed to be a peculiar advantage to women that their hours of work are fixed by law, but what is the boon thus afforded ? Twelve hours, with a deduction of two hours for meals — two hours more than the limit men have, in many trades, gained through combination. The Factory Act also provides that in season-trades women may work for fourteen hours, on forty-eight days in a year ; it also legalises employ- ment in workshops until four o’clock on Saturday afternoons, and the fullest advantage of this is taken in most dressmaking, millinery, and tailoring establishments, so that the Saturday half-holiday, supposed to be now general in trades, is still un- known to many workwomen, and no money compensation for the loss of it is given. I have heard one restriction much complained of ; it is that the dinner hour must be taken before 2 p.m. on 202 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. Saturdays, as on other days, so that although the women would prefer to work on until three o’clock and then leave, and have their dinner at home, they are obliged to stay until four and waste an hour wandering about the streets. This is only a small instance, but it is a striking one, of the harassing effect of legislation in matters which could be much better arranged by agreement with the employers. I have but little hope of the reduction of women’s hours of work by legislation; for children such protection may be necessary, but women, in this, as in other matters, must work out their own salvation. I know how strong a pressure is put upon employers by the public with regard to speed, as I have for some years had to do with the management of a women’s printing office. The public is a monster of unreasonable impatience. In counting the days since an order was given, it includes Saturdays, Sundays, and general holidays. It also appears surprised that a dinner hour is necessary. ‘ You should get more hands,’ it calmly says — for that barbarous term is applied, even in these enlightened days, to the men and women who toil for the good of the community. It professes, in the abstract, to wish every worker to have con- stant employment, yet it desires that a small army of unem- ployed ‘ hands ’ should be hanging about, ready to be drawn upon when it wants a piece of work done that in nine cases out of ten might have been ordered at a week’s, instead of a day’s, notice, and this usually in the busiest seasons, immediately before holiday times, when, fortunately for the ‘ hands,’ it is no easy matter to find them. A Member of Parliament, a pro- minent advocate of factory legislation, once ordered an Ulster coat so hurriedly, before going on his summer tour, that the Factory Act had to be broken to get it done in time. Employers are naturally afraid of offending a good customer and of losing work, but if they could say that the ‘hands ’ generally all through a trade absolutely refused to work beyond certain hours, they would have a strong protection against unreasonable demands. The reform must come from the determination of the ‘ hands ’ to assert that they possess also heads, nerves, and digestive organs, all requiring consideration and attention. It is useless THQESDAY MOENING. 203 to plead legal restrictions ; everyone knows bow easily these are evaded. The extensive employment of young girls as ‘ improvers ’ or ‘ learners,’ often without any formal apprenticeship, is a serious evil in women’s trades, and it is one which, so far as I know, can be touched by nothing hut combination. The principal causes prejudicially influencing (6) Wages^ are, I believe, so far as women are concerned : — 1. The want of any common agreement with employers upon rates of payment, especially for piece-work, and, in con- nexion with this, the ignorance of the workwomen as to prices offered for similar work in difterent localities, or even in the same town ; and the want of a fund to fall back upon to enable them to refuse work otfered at starvation wages. 2. The absence of any provision such as trades unions afford for the registration of trade requirements, and for the payment of travelling expenses from a town where an industry may be temporarily overcrowded to another where workers are wanted. 3. The absence in certain trades of any apprenticeship. This is especially complained of in East London tailoring. 4. The competition of married women, who work at home at the lowest rates, and without restriction of hours. 5. The cause assigned by John Stuart Mill, viz. ‘prejudice.’ 6. The demand for cheapness and for low estimates. 7. The cost of overlooking. 8. The prevalence of the sweating system. 9. The diminution in agricultural employment, by which men and women are driven into town trades. The first three of these causes I need not enlarge upon. They have been met with by workmen who have succeeded in bringing about marked improvements through trade organisa- tion, such as I recommend for women. ^ The remedy is, I think, obvious, but here is just one instance with reference to prices. I have heard of an East-end tailoress going to a West-end house, and offering to make waistcoats at two shillings less than * The men’s trades in which Mr. Giifen shows the most marked rises of wages are those that possess the strongest organisations. 204 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. the price usually paid there ; she did this in ignorance arising from the want of communication with other tailoresses. It may he urged that the crowded state of needlework trades and the competition of home workers will be an effectual barrier to organisation. But we must remember that only a portion of working-men are unionists ; these being, however, the steadiest and most skilful workers, they are able to influence the wages and other conditions of employment, so that if some common standard of prices were agreed upon for women’s work, varying, of course, with fluctuations of trade, similar results might be expected. Women who were not sufficiently skilful to earn these prices would probably fall off into other occupations, such as domestic work, here or in the colonies. Cause 5 would, I am convinced, be beneficially influenced by combination, through which women would gain a higher standing in industry; also by the removal of electoral dis- abilities, now, I hope, rapidly approaching. Within the last ten years the Home Secretaries of both great political parties (Sir K. A. Cross and Sir William Vernon Harcourt) have refused to receive deputations of working-women upon questions directly affecting their work, and indirectly affecting their wages — the Factory Act and the appointment of Factory Inspectors — although several deputations of working-men on those questions have been received. ^Prejudice’ and the want of political power may explain this strange fact. Causes 6, 7, 8 and 9 would, I believe, be to a great extent remedied by trades unions, but still more by small experiments in co-operation, such as that described by Mr. H. Broadhurst, M.P., in a most interesting article of recent date,’ and the Working Tailors’ Association in Whitechapel. These would be possible in many, though not in all, women’s trades, and trades unions would afford the organisation necessary for initiating them. I am glad that the workmen Mr. Broadhurst speaks of ‘ will not undertake low-price work.’ Protests against the nastiness of cheap work are much needed in these days, when many people are taking to bargain-hunting and low estimate seeking, as a new form of excitement. I quote in an Appendix ^ ^ Pall Mall Gazette, December 11, 1884. ^ See Appendix B. p. 207. THUESDAY MOENING. 205 some excellent remarks on this subject, from a technical journal which is in itself a specimen of high-class workmanship. The stimulus given to the worker by co-operation in work- shops might diminish the cost of overlooking and ‘ driving,’ now so serious an item ; by bringing the workers and customers into more direct communication it would also powerfully tend to diminish the sweating, or ^ middleman,’ system. I think this directness of contact partly accounts for the fact that the wages of domestic servants and charwomen keep up to a certain level. No sweating is adopted in those industries. One objection that I wish to refer to before closing is fre- quently urged against the higher payment of women and the organisation of their trades. It is that men are the bread- winners for a family, and that women work only for their own support. I answer that women also, when their husbands die, become the bread-winners for families; but both men and women who are in this position have at least the comforting thought that in old age their children will help them, and will not, except at the last extremity, suffer them ^ to go on the parish.’ The large and increasing number of women who reach middle age and old age unmarried have no help of this kind ; therefore it is of especial importance to them that their wages should enable them to make provision for the time 'when they are past work.^ Another singular disadvantage of women is that, as statistics prove, they live longer than men ; ^ consequently, if they want to buy a Gfovernment annuity, they are required to pay a rate of premium higher than the men’s rate. Notwithstanding their greater tenacity of life, work- women as they get into years are often weakly and ailing, and are called upon to pay for medical advice or to resort to dis- pensaries and hospitals, thus burdening the rates, or depending upon private charities kept up by philanthropic people, perhaps by those very employers who have underpaid them for their work. Their ailments, it is said, may be chiefly traced to poor living, close lodging, and overwork. How much, I wonder, of the meat, bacon, ham, eggs, butter, cocoa, coffee, wine, and other articles that Mr. Giffen finds the ‘ masses ’ now obtain ' See Appendix C. p. 207. - ^ See Appendix D. p. 207. 206 INDUSTEIAL KEMUNERATION CONEERENCE. more abundantly than they could fifty years ago, can be pur- chased out of 12s. a week, when there are also rent, coals, light and clothing to be provided, and perhaps an invalid or aged relative to be helped ! A movement in the direction of spreading trade organisa- tion among women has been commenced. It is only in its early stages ; no radical change in the rates of remuneration has yet been attempted, but many cases of small improvements might be cited, and there have been successful temporary com- binations in the mill districts against reductions of wages, such as that at Dewsbury, entirely conducted by women. One important result has been the admission of women as delegates of their trade societies to the Annual Trades Union Congress, and a marked decrease of the hostility formerly shown by workmen towards the work of women— a natural hostility so long as that work assumed the form of totally disorganised competition. A centre of agitation and encouragement has been esta- blished at 36 Grreat Queen Street, Long Acre, where an increas- ing number of inquiries are received from all parts of the country, showing that a feeling in favour of union among work- women is steadily developing. Greneral information about the movement will be found in the Women^s Union Journal and other papers published by the Central League. APPENDICES. A. Industrial Class, Males .... 4,795,178 „ „ Eemales. . . . 1,578,189 Some of the largest industries in which women are employed, in England and Wales : — From the Census Beturns of 1881. Milliners and Dressmakers . . 357,995 Cotton, Flax and Lace . . 355,323 Wool and Worsted . 124,855 Shirtmakers and Seamstresses . 81,865 Mixed Materials, Textile . . 59,893 Tailoresses . 52,980 THUESDAY MOKNINa. 207 Silk 39,694 Shoe and Boot making .... 35,672 Straw Manufacture ..... 27,983 Hosiery ....... 21,510 Earthenware ...... 17,877 Glove Making ...... 13,261 Bookbinding ...... 10,592 Furniture (Upholstery and French Polishing) 10,014 Nail Manufacture ..... 9,138 Hat Manufacture (not straw) 9,072 Box Making ...... 8,718 Tobacco and Cigars ..... 8,575 Paper Manufacture ..... 8,277 There are 53 industries employing from 1,000 to 8,000 female workers, and a large number below 1,000. Domestic servants (women) now number 1,545,302; and women engaged in agriculture, 64,840. B. ‘ Besides compelling ‘ the use of the basest materials, the de- mand for cheapness debases the art of the printer by discouraging any ejQTort at perfection on his part. Instead of doing his work in artistic fashion, with excellence for his aim, the journeyman, harassed by pressure to do his task within a space of time wholly inadequate for its proper performance, produces a result which otherwise he would be ashamed of. No consideration whatever is given to the manner of the work, so long as it is done in as short a time as possible. ‘Not only in printing, but throughout all the industries, the wretched results of the tyranny of competition are seen, and, alas ! workmen go on making cheap and nasty things until they lose the ability to make anything good at all. ‘ Fortunately there are some customers who know good work from bad, and they take pains to seek for it, and are content to pay a fair price for it when found.’ — Gaslon's Circular, 1884. C. Unmarried women 35 years of age and upwards, in England and Wales, 595,971. D. Women aged 70 to 75 . . . . 191,622 Men „ „ .... 158,333 208 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. Discussion. Mrs. Ellis (Huddersfield Pattern Weavers) said that she held in her hand a pamphlet written a short time back by Mr. Gifien, in which he said that pattern weavers in Huddersfield earned I65. per week fifty years ago, and at the present time 25^. To this statement she must give an emphatic denial. To-day the men weavers in Huddersfield did not average more than 20^. The women were paid from 15 to 30 per cent, less than the men, and did not average more than 155. per week. Pattern weavers were the best of weavers, who were expected to earn more than other men. Again, Mr. Gifien said that fifty years ago weavers had 125. per week, and at the present time 205. True, they get more money now than was paid fifty years ago, but that did not prove that they got a fair share of the profits. I may say (continued Mrs. Ellis) I have woven hundreds of yards of the cloth I am wearing at 6 JcZ. per yard ; and if you look at it. Sir (presenting the corner of her mantle to Sir Charles W. Dilke, to the great amusement of the meeting), you will find that most of it is shoddy (great laughter), and the warp is cotton. Certainly there is a bit of good worsted on the face. (Renewed laughter.) I have often heard that the worsted costs 25. 6c?. per pound, but one pound will weave more than a yard. Of course it has to go through other hands than mine, but when it is sold at 95. per yard, I don’t think I get a fair share of the profit. (Applause.) Then, again, since I can remember, which is not quite fifty years ago, the manu- facturers in our district were quite content to live in houses of not more than four rooms, with one maid of all work. (Hear, hear.) But what do we see to-day % We are surrounded with villas that are almost mansions, compared with those their forefathers lived in, and quite a staff of domestic servants. To my mind, manufacturers are not content now if they do not make more money in twenty years than used to be made in fifty. I conclude by saying with a poetess, — We ask a fair price for our labour, . That men may be honest and true, In justice to peer and to peasant WeTl give honour where honour is due, (Loud cheers.) Mr. G. Sedgwick (Boot and Shoe Riveters and Finishers’ Union, Leicester) said that the questions under discussion were of special interest to his trade, which had been revolutionised by the introduc- tion of machinery and subdivision of labour. Under the hand-sewn method of shoemaking a man did all the work at home, and homes THUESDAY MORNING. 209 were thus made workshops for the manufacture of employers’ goods, and he regretted to state that the same evil largely obtained under the new system. The workman had, involuntarily, to lose much of his time going to and from his employer’s shop, and being kept waiting about for work. This not only engendered unsteady habits, but also compelled the mein to work almost day and night, in order to make up for the time so lost. Physical exhaustion naturally followed, and any desire for mental improvement was gone. This state of things could be remedied by the employment of the workmen upon the premises of the employers, thereby bringing about more regular, if not continuous work. The majority of the men in his trade would be very much surprised to hear statements that were made as to the average of their earnings. There were not, he estimated, more than forty-four working weeks in a year. The loss of time incurred in waiting for work fell to the worker by piece. The employer had little or no inducement to facilitate the distribution of work for the benefit of workmen ; if he did, his weekly wage staff would have to be increased. The highest estimate that could be given of the wages of working shoemakers, taking the whole country, was 235. a week, and few gentlemen would say that that was an extravagant wage, likely to be spent in ‘champagne’ or in ‘ legs of mutton for dogs.’ (Hear, hear.) The detestable system of ‘ sweatiug ’ still prevailed in the trade, in which a number of young boys were employed as half- timers. As a member of the Leicester School Board, he had visited the schools attended by half-timers, and he found the boys were often so exhausted that to secure proper attention to the lessons being taught was a most difficult matter, the efforts to make them pass the standards and earn the grants adding mental to physical exhaustion. This evil could be remedied only by inducing the manufacturers, instead of employing men under the ‘ middleman,’ or ‘ sweating ’ system, to have all the workers inside the factories under proper supervision. This would reduce to a minimum the large number of half- taught boys and unskilled men that now bring so much discredit on the trade. (Hear, hear.) He and his fellow- workers did not oppose machinery at all, although its introduction was detrimental to some of the best interests of the workmen ; he did hold that they, as workmen, had a right to participate in the profits that are brought by machinery. It was of no use saying, ‘ Look at the vast good machinery is conferring upon the community ! ’ What good was it to a man to talk about the good you were doing to those who were comparative strangers to him, if you were bringing starvation and misery into his home, by reducing his wage and taking the means of living from him? Machinery and the subdivision of labour P 210 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. combined were destroying the pride that the shoemaker used to have in his work. At one time, no tradesman in the world could be more proud of his work than the working shoemaker ; but, unfortunately, in consequence of the introduction of machinery and the division of labour, this was no longer possible, as the parts of a boot on which a man had to spend conscientious labour were so small that they could not be seen when the boot was made. The es’prit de corps of the old cordwainers was being entirely lost with the new system of manu- facture. There was no reason why a man should not take pride in his work, under a method that paid him to do it in a proper manner. While employers were complaining that we were losing our trade by foreign competition, they did not endeavour to point out why it was going. If they left the boys, just entering the trade, to try and pick it up as best they could, they encouraged unsteadiness and other bad habits, for the boys were compelled to go from shop to shop and from town to town endeavouring to learn a trade, which should have been taught by skilled workmen and under proper tuition. (Hear, hear.) For the workman to know only a small portion of his trade reduced his chance of continuous employment to a minimum, lowered the price of labour, and flooded the labour market. In his opinion, therefore, remediable causes do influence prejudicially — [a) Continuity of industrial employment. (6) The rates of wages, (c) The well-being of the working classes. Whatever statisticians might say, the workmen would never feel content until they had that portion of the profit on their labour which they had honestly earned. (Applause.) Mr. H. W. Rowland (Cab-drivers’ Society) said it might be pre- sumptuous in him to contest propositions laid down by Professor Marshall, but he felt bound to contest a most essential portion of the professor’s paper. A man who had stood well at his university, and taken the stroke oar of the university boat, was able to fight the battle of life better than a mere bookworm. Among workmen, exactly as among university men, a man who took a proper interest in sport did sometimes commit the crime of looking at a sporting paper, and he was as good a man or better in all that concerned the welfare of his fellow-men, as the man who had never seen a boat-race, nor committed the crime of witnessing a running match. Last Sunday he went from one end of London to the other to assist in organising, in one of the poorest parts of London, a public procession with the object of getting a few shillings fora convalescent home some distance from London organised by working people. A member of his society came up to him and said, ‘ You are walking the streets. The people want something to liven them up. If your hospital THURSDAY MORNING. 211 demonstration does nothing else, it gives them a little change. Can you wonder,’ he said, ‘ at the people here having half a crown on ” now and again, and enjoying the excitement of waiting a week or ten days until the event comes off'?’ (Laughter.) Without the sporting press, in his humble judgment, the life of workers would be consider- ably duller than it is now. (No, no.) At Derby on Boxing Day there were 6,000 people on the racecourse watching the game of football. It was a cold and miserable day, and that was the only change that strait-laced Derby had to offer the poor working people on their holiday. If they had gone to the reading-room, 5,800 of them would have had to wait outside for their turn to enter. Could you blame them for reading the sporting papers, and sometimes having half a crown ‘ on ’ a race ? A terrible amount of misery was produced every year by gambling on the London Stock market and the bourses of the world. In two days they had only touched the fringe of the question. Had they had the same opportunity of exposing the tactics of the Stock Exchange and the bourses, as the sporting press gave them of dissecting sporting juggles, they would be in a considerably better position for dealing with the question. The continuity of employment was not a matter so much affected by the con- sideration whether he could live on a shilling a day or his neighbour on Is. 2>d., as it was affected by joint-stock operations to gain 10 per cent, or 15 per cent, by juggling with labour all over the world. The man had not arisen who could lead them out of the difficulty. If he did arise, he would have to thoroughly overhaul the operations of the stock markets of the world. The excitement of Frenchmen on the Paris Bourse exceeded that in the betting ring of English racecourses . (Question.) In his opinion this was the question. The misery was really imposed upon us by the stock markets of the world. The juggling that went on in them had more than anything else to do with the continuity and the proper remuneration of labour all over the world. Mr. Neil McLean (Edinburgh Trades Council) said that those who were forced into competition with the labour of women knew that the tendency of employers was not to raise the wages of women to the level of those of men, but it was rather to lower the wages of men to the level of those of women. In a vast number of industries in which the labour of women was employed, the sweating system prevailed, and this practically set at nought the Factory Acts, as they could not reach the women in their own homes. Indeed, the Factory Acts as they were administered were a farce. Mrs. Paterson recom- mended stopping an hour earlier on Saturdays instead of breaking off for dinner. But in Edinburgh there was no recognised dinner- p 2 212 INDUSTEIAL KEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. hour on Saturdays, and labour was continued for seven and eight consecutive hours without the slightest attempt on the part of the factory inspectors to stop the work. One means of promoting con- tinuity of labour would be a more stringent bankruptcy law. It was to a large extent reckless speculation, that in times of prosperity caused the production of goods in excess of all purchasing power. Crises ensued, rates of wages fell, and many were deprived of employment. A more stringent bankruptcy law would do some- thing to diminish reckless speculation. Mr. Joseph Hope (Scotch Railway Servants) said that Mrs. Paterson gave it as her opinion that reduction of hours would tend to continuity of employment. He believed it was true, and it was equally true with respect to railway servants. If the hours of rail- way servants were reduced, as they ought to be, many more men would be required. Mechanical appliances had involved more work on the part of railway employes. Many pointsmen had six times more to do than they had a few years ago, and their hours had not been reduced. Pointsmen were kept on duty as a rule 12 hours per day, and they had often to work overtime, and these long hours kept down wages, because at the end of the fortnight the managers added up a man’s wages, and they said, ‘ Why, you are the best paid workman in the city.’ And yet the rank and file of the body were among the worst paid, taking into account the long hours worked and the re- sponsible and hazardous nature of their employment. If the hours of the pointsmen and others were reduced, and overtime prevented, the well-being of the whole service would be improved. In this respect no doubt railway servants might do more for themselves than they were doing at present. Railways had been created by the Legislature, and it was its duty, on public grounds, to reduce the hours of railway servants, and to give them better opportunities of reading and think- ing. If something were not done, there would be loud complaint, for, in comparison with other classes, the opportunities and advantages of railway servants were unjustly limited. Mr. A. H. Dyke Acland (Central Co-operative Board) said that if the Conference were to lead to anything practical, one valuable out- come would be careful statistical inquiries, conducted, not by one class of people, but by representatives of all classes, including especially the working classes. Mrs. Paterson alluded to the suggestion made by Mr. Broadhurst in the Fall Mall Gazette the other day as to the direct employment of workmen who co-operated in executing con- tracts. We were always thinking how we could promote the employ- ment of workpeople with their own capital, and all the time many of the co-operative societies had so much money they did not know what to do with it. The problem for society as well as co-operators THUESDAY MOENING. 213 appeared to be, how could this capital be usefully employed for the advantage of working people in carrying on work to be managed by themselves'? Between the years 1862 and 1872 the capital of the co-operators increased about twice as quickly as at the present day. The reason why it was not accumulating so rapidly now was, because the co-operators did not know what to do with the money. Whereas the Industrial and Provident Societies Act allowed each member to hold 200/. of share capital in his society (upon which in nearly all societies 5 per cent, was paid), many societies now were saying to their members, ‘ You shall not leave more than 100/. or 50/. or even 30/. with us.’ So the money which might be saved out of the accumu- lation of dividend on purchases made at the store was thrown back on members and often wasted. This happened even among agricultural labourers. In an out-of-the-way agricultural district there was a store, managed by farm labourers, which did a business of 17,000/. a year, though the village in which it was situated had only a population of 1,100. They had accumulated so much money that they did not really know what to do with it. One member of the store said he had in his house 6/. more a year than he had ever before ; not given to him by anybody, but made for him by the society to which he belonged. Another shareholder said he had ‘ eaten and clothed him- self into a house : ’ what he meant was that he had saved money in dividend on his purchases on food and clothing at the store which had remained at the store at 5 per cent., and with which he had bought a house. This accumulated capital was being now thrown back upon the members because the co-operators did not know what use to make of it. A question well worthy of consideration was, how to utilise such capital in productive or manufacturing enterprise by working people so as to make 5^ per cent, upon it, instead of so many thousand pounds lying comparatively idle at the bankers of the co-operative societies. Several societies had upon 30,000/. to 50,000/. lying idle at their bankers. These societies paid 5 per cent, to their members on their deposit. If a safe 5 or 5-J per cent, could be made by pro- ductive work to supply their own stores there would be tens of thou- sands of pounds forthcoming from the societies for investment. If we w’ere to improve in matters of this kind, thinking people might well occupy themselves with this subject with a view of furthering the important principle of helping people to help themselves. Professor Marshall, in reply, said he agreed with two-thirds of the speech of Mr. Rowland, who, however, was mistaken in regard- ing him as a bookworm. As to thousands of people watching a football match, and keeping up their interest in spite of the bitter cold, it was one of the grandest things in the world. As far as a sporting paper told one how games were carried on, instead of 214 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEEATION CONEEEENCE. encouraging readers to bet upon them, he had nothing to say against it. A reference to his paper would show that on this point he had been misunderstood, and that in what he said about gambling he was not speaking of the working classes chiefly ; he was speaking about the gambling spirit that had invaded the most progressive countries of the world, and was a greater evil for the future than drunkenness ; for though not as great an evil now, it was likely to increase while drunkenness diminished. That conviction was forced upon him fifteen years ago, when h<3 was assisting German working men. He had high ideas of what the Germans would do with their leisure ; to his horror he found that a great many of them spent a great part of it in petty gambling. He also found that working men in America were being tempted away from the noble opportunities before them, and were speculating largely in mines ; even servant girls were doing it. In writing the paper, however, he had not these things so much in view as he had the interruption to industry caused by illegitimate speculation in business ; and that illegitimate speculation was fostered by a habit of gambling which was encouraged even among little children, who would bet on races. He maintained that reckless gambling was in all classes a great evil, and that advancing educa- tion did not stop it, although it did stop drunkenness. It was on this account a much wider and further reaching evil, and it was one that would have to be circumscribed, unless the working classes were prepared to see their industry thrown out of gear a great deal more than it had been. Mrs. Patersois, in reply, said that no one bad disputed the low- ness of women’s wages, and, indeed, as a fact it was generally ad- mitted. She hoped that workmen would do all they could to help women to form societies. The working out of figures in regard to men’s wages was helping trades unions greatly, by showing that trades unions had been able to raise wages, in spite of the declara- tions of professors years ago that they never could do it. As they had done it for men, there was hope that women’s unions would do it for women. It was not necessary to quarrel with statisticians about their figures ; let them enjoy their statistics. Working people knew that trade societies rested on something far deeper than figures — on sympathy, and fellowship, and experience. If workers had listened to those who said that unions would not stand unless based upon strict actuarial calculations, much good would have been left undone, for so high a rate would have been fixed as to deter many from joining ; but workers had learned that figures did not rule everything in these matters. (Hear, hear.) AFTEENOON SESSION. DO ANY REMEDIABLE CAUSES INFLUENCE PREJUDICIALLY THE WELL-BEING OF THE WORKING CLASSES? The Education of Public Opinion. By I^rofessor Beeslt. « PosiTiYiSTS hold that the principal cause influencing preju- dicially the continuity of industrial employment, the rates of wages, and the well-being of the working classes, is the preva- lence of wrong theories as to the organisation of the industrial class and the duties incumbent on its members. Under the title ‘ industrial class ’ I include its two divisions — the capi- talists, or directors of industry, and the labourers. I am pre- cluded from inquiring whether such a division should exist, because that question has been reserved for discussion to-morrow, I will merely say that, in common with the large majority of thinking persons, we regard that division as not only permanent, but advantageous to the commuuity as a whole. What is wanted is not a transference of capital from one set of persons to another, but that those who possess it should use it well. They are not likely to do this as long as the theory prevails that it is their own ; that their title to possess it is one of right as against the rest of the community ; that they can do what they please with it ; and that if they are so good as to devote any portion of it to purposes of a more or less public character, it is a work of supererogation entitling them to extraordinary praise. At present, no capitalist receives any •censure or finds himself in any ill repute if he divides the whole 216 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. of liis profits between the two objects of gaining more wealth and providing comforts and enjoyment for himself. Those who are not quite so selfish too often satisfy their benevolent instincts by giving to what are called charitable and philanthropic schemes money which they have made by hard treatment of their workmen, thus perhaps earning a reputation for great munificence. No serious improvement will take place in the continuity of employment, or the rate of wages, or the well-being of the working classes, until public opinion treats the wealth of the capitalist as a fund entrusted to him by society, to be adminis- tered for the benefit of society, and more especially of that par- ticular group of workers for which he is responsible. I say his wealth, not his capital. The introduction of the latter word does but obscure the truth that the whole of his wealth is entrusted to him for the social purpose above mentioned, and not merely that particular portion of it which, according to Adam Smith, ‘ he expects to afibrd him a revenue ; ’ or, accord- ing to Eicardo, ‘ is employed in production ; ’ or, according to Mill, ‘ is destined to supply productive labour with the shelter, protection, tools, and materials which the work requires, and to feed and otherwise maintain the labourer during the process.’ Looked at from the social point of view (and any other point of view is here repudiated as misleading), this wealth is en- trusted to him, not simply for production, but for production securing adequate comfort and dignity to the producers, includ- ing himself, he being, as it were, the managing partner for the rest. There need be no fear that public opinion will ever grudge him such reasonable superiority in comfort and even luxury as befits his position, as long as the industrial co-operation which he superintends is carried on wisely and prosperously. But it must be understood that the support of the co-operators in as much comfort and dignity as the state of the trust fund will permit is the first charge upon it ; and that they must not be pinched as long as the trustee has carriages, horses, handsome furniture, a cellar of wine, and a staff of domestic servants. The larger profits made during good years, instead of being used for a reckless expansion of the business, or an increased THUESDAY AFTERNOON. 217 scale of personal expenditure, are to be considered and treated as a reserve fund for providing continuous employment and a steady rate of wages in bad times. It may be asked in what respect our ideal capitalist of the future will differ from the manager of a co-operative society of the present day ? Chiefly in this. He will not be an elected oflScer, subject to removal, and more or less fettered by his electors. He will be the hereditary capitalist as he is now, administering his wealth according to his free discretion as he does now. Only he will be judged, and he will judge himself, by a different standard of duty. To the Socialist, who will accept no solution that fails to satisfy his demand for equality, this seems a very insufficient concession. He would rather all were poor together than submit to any hierarchical organisation of society. To this lingering metaphysical superstition we Positivists have often given a conclusive answer. It would be out of place to introduce it on the present occasion ; nor do I care to say more than that if the labourer can be assured a life of sufiScient comfort and dignity he will turn a deaf ear to all subversive theories. A different objection, and one which must be dealt with more fully, will be made by others besides Socialists. How, it will be said, do you expect to induce the hereditary capitalist to take this new view of his duty ? Here, indeed, is the problem. It will not solve itself by merely being left alone. I hope I shall not be listened to with impatience if I say that we must trust mainly to the oldest, the strongest, the most universal, the most beneficent of civilising agencies, the influence of religion — religion systematically promoted by an organised body of teachers. I will not claim this field of usefulness for a new religion only. I believe that the older religions, stimulated by the example of the new one, must and will address themselves to a task so honourable and so urgent, if they would not perish quickly and without dignity. It is, indeed, no light undertaking to attempt to educate public opinion to a higher level. It can only be done gradually ; 218 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. and for that reason, if for no other, it does not commend itself to the advocates of heroic remedies. But the history of civilisa- tion shows that public opinion is capable of such improvement ; and, therefore, there is nothing visionary or unpractical in the expectation that improvement may be carried further. It is not an improvement of individual characters that we are con templating. The goodness or badness of an individual is measured not by any absolute moral standard, but by the moral standard of his time ; and perhaps the proportion of good people relatively to any given population has never much varied. But the standard of conduct, the outward practice which is expected by public opinion, has been rising from primaeval times to the present day. There have been intervals when it has receded under some aspects and for a time. And again, there have been periods of more rapid advance. But looking at history broadly, we may consider the rise to have been steady and con- tinuous, and in every case the agreement of the most enlightened people as to the improvement necessary has preceded its general acceptance by the public. This, then, is what we want — agreement on an ideal of industrial relations. Until that is reached heroic remedies will not be possible ; and when we reach it, they will not be needed. The Socialists unconsciously bear witness to this truth. For although they profess to place some hope in the results of universal suffrage, they hardly conceal their preference for a sudden and violent clutch at power. It cannot be asserted with any confidence that they will not find an opportunity for this. A weak Grovernment, a sheep-like Parliament, and a violent anonymous press, might suddenly plunge us into a European war. In such a crisis revolution of some sort could hardly be escaped ; and no one can feel certain that its most subversive forms would not acquire a momentary ascendency. But with- out such an opportunity the numerical weakness of Socialists, and the anarchy, which in virtue of their principles, must always prevail in their camp, deprive them of all prospect of putting their schemes in practice. In the meantime their energy and social ardour, in many cases really admirable, are wasted, and worse than wasted. For by holding out delusive THUKSDAY AiYEKNOON. 219 hopes of a short cut to a social millennium they divert atten- tion from the longer but safer path. Education of public opinion — that is the first and last word. At the risk of being charged with wandering from the questions proposed, I must say, however briefly, that those questions can- not be considered with much profit iu isolation from much larger and more general ones on which public opinion is in the vaguest state. What, for instance, can we determine about the continuity of industrial employment when there is no agree- ment as to the regulation of production, or whether it should be regLdated at all ? How can we profitably consider the rates of wages until we have settled the theory of wages ? Is the labourer a man with a commodity to sell, or is he a public servant doing his duty to the community, and having a claim to be supported while he is doing it ? The wages he receives, are they an equivalent for the service rendered, or are they the means of enabling him to go on fulfilling his duty as a good citizen to his fellows ? The pay of a soldier, the salary of a Cabinet Minister, are not determined from day to day by competition, nor yet by the degree of valour the one has shown, or the amount of business the other has transacted. Is there any reason why the services of a workman should be re- quited on a different principle ? Lastly, how can we consider the rates of wages unless we at the same time consider the other half of the problem — the share appropriated by the employer ? As to the causes which influence prejudicially the well-being of the working classes, they can hardly be investigated to any purpose except by those who are agreed on what constitutes such well-being. In what respect, if any, does it differ from the well-being of employers ? What conditions go to con- stitute the well-being of any citizen, and what is their order of importance ? When we bear in mind that social phenomena liave at last begun to be studied by scientific methods, we may hope that here too agreement will gradually be reached, as has been the case in other departments of human knowledge to which those methods have been applied. W^hen the best minds have arrived at the same conclusions, a sound public opinion will soon be 220 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONEERENCE. formed, and we shall then have the means we want for in- fluencing the possessors of wealth. Hitherto many of the most accredited economic doctrines, though worked out with irreproachable logic, have started from the unsound assump- tion that the laws of the production of wealth could be studied usefully apart from sociology as a whole. The consequence has been that public opinion, instead of being enlightened by such speculation, has been disastrously led astray. But before taking refuge in revolutionary remedies, or endeavour- ing to supersede voluntary action by State interference, let us try what voluntary action can do when the public mind is not carefully poisoned by erroneous theories. Such a programme has, at all events, this advantage, that those who believe in it can begin to work at it at once, nay, are already working at it without asking leave of anybody. Whereas the Socialist cannot even begin to apply his remedy till he has first fought his way to political power at the polling booth, if not behind barri- cades. Eeligion will afford the principal systematic means of in- fluencing the holders of wealth. But subsidiary means will not be wanting. The refusal of the workman to remain con- tent with his present condition will contribute powerfully to the same result. The spread of education, and the higher scale of comfort reached during the period of prosperity that came to an end some ten years ago, have raised his require- ments. The decrease in the consumption of intoxicating liquors shows that he is struggling to retain the higher level of living which he then learned to relish. And whatever economists may say, as soon as workmen generally refuse to accept a mere subsistence wage, the rate of wages will rise. Again, there is the action of trades unions. Improve the relations of capitalist and labourer as much as you will, there will always remain a need for these standing combinations to put a wholesome, pressure on such employers and labourers as are inclined to defy public opinion. The time will come when the large majority of employers will look to trades unions as a most valuable protection against the greedy competition of the worst members of the employing class. TIIUKSDAY AFTERNOON. 221 Lastly, there is the action of the State. Although we con- demn the intention of the Socialists to use the power of the State if they can get hold of it, even for a moment, to enforce their revolutionary schemes on an unprepared and unwilling community, we are quite willing that when public opinion has grown sufficiently, Grovernment should second it cautiously with such measures as do not outstep its proper sphere. Since a beginning was made by the earliest Factory Acts, there has been an immense amount of legislation for the purpose of pro- tecting the public, and especially the poorer portion of it, against the effects of individual cupidity and unbridled com- petition. Mr. Herbert Spencer has recently compiled a cata- logue of it, which will be read by most people with very different feelings from those of the compiler. There is no doubt room for further progress in this direction. I anticipate the criticism that my remarks have been rather wide of the questions set down for discussion. I would plead in excuse that my paper is a very short one, that I have refrained from saying what I thought likely to be said by others, and, finally, that I have gone to the root of the matter. Do any Remedial Causes Influence Prejudicially the Well being of the Working Classes? By W. J. Harris, M.P. It may be accepted as an axiom that that nation which keeps its whole population employed by the variety of its resources is the most prosperous within itself. Other nations may be able to show a larger amount of accumulated property, but the immense wealth of the few is not, as a rule, any proof of the contentment of the many. On the contrary, when only a few are in possession of great wealth and the many are short of work, it shows an unhealthy state of the body corporate. That this state of things is the case in GK’eat Britain can be undoubtedly asserted at the present time ; and to a larger extent is it so, than at any previous period since the great discoveries of gold, and the great development of 222 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. railways. If any evidence is required to support my assertion, I may quote the words of Mr. Chamberlain, published by him in the Fortnightly Review of December 1883, since which date the facts are only the more evident. Mr. Chamberlain wrote as follows : ‘ Never before was the misery of the very poor more intense, or the conditions of their daily life more hopeless or de- graded.’ And again: ‘But the majority of the toilers and spinners have derived no proportionate advantage from the prosperity which they have helped to create ; while a population equal to that of the whole metropolis has remained constantly in a state of abject destitution and misery.’ I am aware of the reply usually given to the above assertion, namely, that the returns of pauperism disprove it. But everyone who has any- thing to do with the relief of the poor knows ’ well the cause of the decrease is the refusal of outdoor relief. It is also a well- known fact that the associations of working-men, such as trades unions and benefit societies, have taken a large amount of the unemployed labour off the poor rates, and yet the salient fact remains that there is more money spent in actual relief of the poor than there ever was before. In calculating the wages of our working classes at the present time, and the amount they have for their own use, these extra charges on their resources must be taken into account. The compulsory education of children and the subscriptions to trades unions and benefit societies abstract from the present wages part of that advance which economists have successfully proved has taken place during the last thirty or fifty years. When trades unions first became the rule amongst our working classes, political economists were loud in their denunciation of the principles in- volved. The most farseeing among the Free Trade school of thought saw plainly enough that if working-men established rules of labour for themselves, which were intended to advance their own position in the social scale, the competition from foreign countries would ultimately overtake us in our large industries.^ They felt that in order to keep our supremacy we * This feeling also led to the opposition on the part of many free traders to the Factory Act legislation which has done so much to benefit the working classes. THUKSDAY AFTERNOON. 223 required our raw material at the lowest possible price ; our machinery at the lowest price and greatest excellence ; our capital at a low rate of interest, and our wages at a rate not relatively above that of other countries. The workmen agreed with all these conditions except the last. They main-' tained that they had a right to unite in order to raise wages, and the trades unions of this country are still far too popular among working-men for us to think of trying to upset them. It is the system which the men have chosen for themselves, and our political economists will do well at once to acknowledge the will of the people in this respect, and instead of denouncing such associations, to try and connect them with Grovernment action, and to find out in what ways they may be made useful for the furtherance of British industry. The first recommenda- tion I would make, therefore, is that the system of trades unions should be the acknowledged system of labour in this country, and that a department of the Grovernment should be devoted to the gradual improvement of the system, and to the experimental development of both agriculture and manufactures, by means of technical colleges supported from the imperial revenue. The first results of trades unionism which require to be checked are the ‘ strikes ’ and ‘ lock-outs.’ If both the masters and the men formed associations which could be represented in the proposed department of the Grovernment, these two lament- able occurrences might be made impossible by arbitrators appointed by Grovernment itself. Of course all the money that is spent by trades unionists for the support of a ‘ strike ’ is money lost to their class and likewise to the country. Also the losses of the masters either by a ‘ strike ’ or a ‘ lock-out ’ is money wasted, and in every contract which capitalists make, they have to calculate a considerable sum for the contingency. I would pro- pose that manufacturers should be able to make labour contracts with the authorised managers of trades unions for specified work or for fixed wages for a specified limited period. The labour representatives would have the opportunity of investigating the state of trade in the same department in foreign countries, and a fair rate of wages, or piece-work, if preferred, could be at once arranged. The funds of the trades union would be responsible 224 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. for the observance of such a contract. In case wages rose during the completion of the particular contract so as to make the indivi- dual men dissatisfied, their wages would have to be supplemented from the central funds of the trades union. On the other hand, if the wages or price of work in the particular department de- clined, the subscriptions of the contract men to the funds of their unions would have to be proportionately advanced, thus preventing their earning materially more or less than their fellow- men. The results would be that capital would be put into constructive works with more confidence, and that in cases where contracts were taken at a settled price by the trades union authority, the talent of every man engaged would be called forth to discover means by which savings could be effected. Joining the unions must be a matter of option on the part of every man, but when enrolled the bye-laws should be made compulsory by law. The terms of labour ought to be the same for all employers, in a given area, though special allowances would be needed for the superior accommodation of the men. These special allow- ances w^ould act as a premium to employers to provide com- fortable houses for their workpeople. The rate of subscription of the men would need to be fixed at a liberal sum at the com- mencement. Thus I propose to make trades unions rich and legally constituted bodies, who can deal with capitalists and whose contracts will be enforcible by law. If one of the results should be that trades unions became in time the owners of constructive works, and able to undertake contracts of their own, without the intervention of the capitalist, the country has no need to fear such a development, seeing that we might thus be better able to meet foreign competition. The next point to be decided is the position which these bodies should occupy towards their competitors in foreign countries. It is to the interest of both the employers and the employed that those manufactures which can be made in this country, should not be imported free of duty. The opening of our markets to all raw materials, whether of food or manufacture, has been a benefit to the majority of our workmen. The open- THUESDAY AFTERNOON. 225 iDg of our ports to the free introduction of manufactured goods, and even of half-manufactured goods, has been of great dis- advantage to the wage-earning class. It is true that some of these half-manufactured goods are used in certain trades as a means of producing a cheaper finished article, but when an in- ducement arose to produce the same thing in this country, means would probably be found for making it as cheaply here, and, moreover, there are hardly any of our exported goods that require in their manufacture any admixture of foreign substances other than the raw material. It is almost entirely in goods used by ourselves, and almost entirely in those used by the rich, that these foreign additions are necessary. The increase in the import of these manufactured goods from abroad during the free import era is very remarkable. I will compare the imports of certain articles of manufacture for the years 1855 and 1883. Here it is : — Imjjorts of certain Manufactured and Half -manufactured Clocks Articles d 1855 £ . . 120,000 1883 £ 405,000 Watches . 218,000 470,000 Artificial Flowers 71,000 450,000 China Ware 47,000 538,000 Confectionery . — 410,000 Silk Manufactures 1,900,000 11,080,000 Woollen Manufactures 1,045,000 7,780,000 Refined Sugar . 648,000 4,276,000 Sawn-up and Manuf. Wood 3,900,000 11,500,000 Paper 47,000 1,250,000 Flour .... 2,300,000 12,200,000 Glass .... 83,000 1,440,000 Cotton Manufactures 240,000 2,400,000 Gloves 228,000 1,875,000 Lace 88,000 650,000 Linen Manufactures , 68,000 570,000 Musical Instruments . 83,000 718,000 Toys .... 51,000 456,000 Cordage and Twine . 78,000 417,000 P>oots and Shoes 88,000 250,000 Hats and Bonnets 81,000 180,000 * In this list I have deducted the re-exports for 1883. Had I not done so the difference would have been still more pronounced. Q 226 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. During the year 1884, which has been a time of extreme depression in our industries, and when the export of our manu- factures has decreased by nearly 7,000,000L, the import of those manufactured goods from foreign countries which are included in Board of Trade returns has actually increased, thus showing how this trade has intensified the distress. With regard to made-up garments which enter our ports in large quantities from France, Belgium, and Grermany, I would propose an almost prohibitory duty. The import of such goods takes away from the earning power of the wives and daughters of the poor ; and workmen know well how the supplemental earnings of this sort add to the comfort of their families. It is not as though the countries I have mentioned reciprocated by taking similar goods from us to any extent. Nearly all the made-up clothes which we export go to our colonies and the comparatively young countries from which we obtain raw material in exchange. Eetaliation on the part of any of these neighbouring European countries would be most impolitic on their part, seeing that we import far more manufactured goods from them than they do from us. Advert- ing to the list of manufactured goods which I have already given, I will take the case of that one which will be most questioned by my audience as being an article of food — namely, flour. If a duty were placed upon foreign flour the effect would simply be an increase in the milling power at home. It is well to consider attentively the views enunciated in other countries instead of being engrossed by English ideas of Political Economy, which certain irresponsible doctrinaires have laid down for us. I will read an extract from an American newspaper in regard to the very manufacture which we have under considera- tion, and which shows their appreciation of a national necessity which exists for finding profitable employment for workmen in every conceivable way. The extract follows on an interesting account of some enormous flour mills being constructed in Minneapolis, and runs as follows : — * We are glad to chronicle the announcement of such an enter- prise, not only because we are proud of the growth and progress of the manufacturing industries of the great North-west, but for the still THUESDAY AFTEKXOON. 227 better reason that we believe that onr entire surplus wheat crop ought to be exported in the shape of manufactured flour, instead of in its raw state, as the greater proportion of it now is. We hope the day is not far distant when not a bushel of wheat will be ex- ported from this country. It is the life and the vitality of the soil that is exported with the wheat, but which is saved and returned to it in the refuse product of the mill, turned into food for stock. And this, to say nothing of the labour furnished to the army of workmen required to carry on the work growing out of the operations of the great mills required to turn the hundreds of millions of bushels of wheat into the manufactured flour.’ I maintain that the advantages claimed by the Americans for keeping the manufacture in their own country are advan- tages which ought to be to a large extent transferred to the benefit of British workmen. If, in place of importing all this flour, we were only import- ing the raw material. Wheat, free of duty, and making it into flour ourselves, we should at once require to build at least one hundred large flour-mills in this country. There is no difficulty in making wheat into flour here, any more than there is in America, and the bran and pollard which comes on the wheat, would be used in the manufacture of Meat in England, instead of the United States ; thus giving to our farmers a most valuable supply of cattle food which they do not now possess. As to the balance of trade it would be in no way affected, but the very first step we took in the way of a departure from free imports would be followed in the United States by a great reaction from the system of excessive protection. The persons engaged in agriculture and all its connected trades, the holders of railway property and all persons connected with real property other than those engaged in manufacturing industry, would fear further steps on our part, and would vote in favour of a relaxation of their tariff, amounting in time to reciprocal interchange with very moderate duties on those manufactures which both coun- tries can alike produce. A country which raises its revenue by internal taxes, which fall more or less on its industries and on its wage-earning classes, has no right to admit the manufactures which compete with its Q 2 228 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. own, without charging a duty at least equivalent to the amount of taxes so raised. In England we have allowed burdens to remain on the production of food which belonged to the days of pro- tection. It is generally considered right that food in its raw state should enter our ports free ; but if that be so it is the more necessary at the same time to put our farmers in a position to produce it in competition with foreign farmers. The conversion of large tracts of English land into grass, and especially into poor grass, is a disadvantage to the nation, and greatly lessens the employment of labour ; and while fairly re- ducing all agricultural burdens, I would propose to entirely relieve all agricultural land kept in alternate tillage by a return to the occupier of a sum equivalent of all the burdens it now bears. By this means the farmer would he encouraged to keep his land in alternate husbandry, which produces far more food, and em- ploys far more labour, than when laid down to poor grass. It would simply mean that that style of farming would be main- tained which is most conducive to the wealth of the nation and to the prosperity of the labouring classes. With regard to the production of wheat, there are special national considerations which make it desirable to maintain, and if possible increase, our acreage under that crop, and I con- sider that it would be a wise step for the nation to offer a special inducement for its production in years when the average price is less than 45s. per quarter. Of course I shall be told that this is putting money into the landowner’s pocket, but the most superficial reason er must be aware that the farmer would not adopt that style of farming which has become the least bene- ficial to himself unless he received the premium for so doing, and the large increase in the demand for agricultural labourers would undoubtedly tend to raise the scale of farm wages. The landowners, who might receive some benefit, would be those who own land unfit for pasture, and as the rent of this land has gone back to a most unremunerative price (in fact, much of it is running to w^aste) I cannot see that anyone need grudge to them some improvement in their present position. When Cobden advocated the repeal of the duty on foreign corn, his great argument was that the result would be a rise in agri- THUESDAY AFTEENOON. 229 cultural wages in corn-producing countries, and his prediction was fulfilled. Although the length of this paper does not allow me to go further, yet I consider tliere are other forms of industrial pro- perty, such as mines, &c., which should also have relief from taxation, whether it be local or imperial. The means of raising revenue for these purposes shook! be collected from revenue duties on imported foreign manufac- tures, by a small tax on personal property other than that of stock-in-trade, and by an increase in the wine and spirit duties. I consider the result of my recommendations would be that the working classes would receive more remuneration for, and would have more variety in, their labour, without raising the price of any article that is necessary to them. An improve- ment in their dwellings must also be the subject of legislation. I would recommend that import duties should be placed on all manufactured goods coming from foreign countries, without exception, but that they should be divided into classes. For instance, the lightest taxed should be flour, sawn tim.ber, and such-like goods, on whicli a very small amount of labour has been spent. A higher rate should be charged on such manu- factured goods as are consumed in large measure by the upper and middle classes, and a still larger duty on those articles of luxury and complicated workmanship, of which the greater part of the value represents labour. All raw materials, except those which are bounty-fed, ought to be imported free, and if the Cobdenite assertion be well founded, that goods must be paid for with goods, the increase in our imports of raw materials would have to be paid for by the export of our own manu- factures. while the increased prosperity of our farmers would react on our internal trade in such a manner as to create a largely increased exchange of goods at home, which would benefit all classes. I wish, however, to guard myself against all agreement with the Cobdenite writers when I quote any of their opinions. Before concluding this paper, I must add that I consider the Government should arrange special terms with all of the Colo- nies for grants of land for our workmen to emigrate to, and that it might be a mode of investment for trades union funds to 230 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. advance money on mortgage on the holdings of these emigrants in our own Colonies. While advocating discriminating duties against foreign powers, I should strive for the nearest possible approach to free exchange between all parts of the Empire, and if it were necessary for attaining this end that imperial guarantees should be given for capital invested in great pro- ductive works, such as railways, &c., I consider it would be a suitable employment of national credit, provided the materials of construction were largely taken from home or colonial work- shops. Certain of our Colonies are so dependent for their revenue on import duties, that we could only ask them to differentiate them in our favour. A differential duty of even 5 per cent, in our favour would probably be sufficient to keep our trade secure. In conclusion, I believe that every proposal which tends to upset confidence in the holding of property will do incalculable mischief by drawing capital away from the country, and by stopping the outlay of money on those improvements which are now so urgent!}^ needed. Cheap conveyance of real estate is very necessary. Lord Cairns’ Act has provided a means by which the ‘ Law of Entail ’ has lost its piincipal objections, but there is room for further legislation. The poor certainly ought to be able to buy property as easily as the rich, but the rich ought not to be compelled to sell without their own consent what, in most cases, represents the stored-up industry of their ancestors. There is no space in this Paper for me to enter on the Temperance question, but everyone must agree with me in believing that there is great room for improvement in all classes of society. I believe it would be wise as a first step to abolish the power of issuing new licenses for the next ten years, and rather than buying reciprocity at the expense of diminishing the wine and spirit duties, I consider they ought to be largely increased. I acknowledge no ‘ laws of Political Economy ’ except those which for the time being most benefit the greatest number in our own Empire. Foreign countries have shown us no con- THUESDAY AFTERNOON. 231 sideration, and it has become our turn to show our power. The proposals to make the Empire, as far as possible, self- supporting, will undoubtedly come prominently before the electorate. The Food question would in such a case become the battle-ground. I consider this question to be one of immense importance for the working classes themselves to consider without prejudice. No proposal coming from interested persons for the taxa- tion of the raw material of food will be listened to. It is entirely a people’s question, and it will be decided by the people. Foreign nations must be well aware that from a national point of view there is much to be urged in favour of making the Empire self-supporting, and they would therefore do wisely to understand the position, and make timely con- cessions in the direction of reciprocity, before the working classes take the matter into their own hands. I recommend to the working classes of this country to avoid being led away by irresponsible doctrinaires, and to remember that one ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory, and that a practical exam- ination of our fiscal system by men who are not shackled by theory has now become absolutely necessary to the well-being of the whole nation. The Conditions of Industrial Prosperity. ' By ^Y. H. Houldsw^okth, M.P. I HAVE been asked to reply to the question, ‘ Do any artificial or remediable causes influence prejudicially (1) the stability of industrial employment, (2) the steadiness of rates of wages ? ’ But the first question is — How much ‘ stability ’ is to be expected in industrial employments ? and, secondly, Is ‘ steadi- ness ’ in ‘ rates of wages ’ either possible or desirable ? In fact, before we begin to form theories on industrial questions, we ought clearly to comprehend the conditions which 232 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEKATION CONFERENCE. govern trade of every kind in every place. And when these are understood they must not be lost sight of. All subsidiary questions must revolve round them and bear constant reference to them. A doctor cannot prescribe for a human being with any chance of success unless he pays attention to the laws, physical, mental, and moral, which govern human life. A farmer cannot till his ground with any good prospect of a crop unless he works in harmony with Nature. The primary conditions of a problem must be taken into account in its solution. Doctrinaires sometimes forget these. The practical man never does. He refers every new question to them, and generally finds that they settle, at once and for ever, one-half of the puzzles which are propounded to him. The first condition which industry demands in order that it may live and grow is freedom — freedom to spring where it likes, to flow where it likes, to alter its course as it likes, to disappear if it likes. ‘ Noli me tangere ’ is the true password of industry. And to the thousand voices which from time to time press on us nostrums for the revival of dying trade, the only real and sensible answer is, ‘ Why can’t you let it alone ? ’ If you meddle with it you will most likely kill it altogether. History is full of examples. Hive it fresh air and perfect freedom to move ; then there if not here, in the future if not now, in its own way, and in accordance with the laws of its own being, it will spring into vigour again. Follow it, but do not attempt to guide it or control it. Make use of it wherever its beneficent streams will naturally flow, but do not attempt to dam it up here or direct it there by artificial obstacles, contrary to its own nature and in opposition to its own laws. The effect of such an attempt has always been and always will be to check its flow, to reduce its volume, ultimately to dry up its source. In endeavouring to irrigate your own little patch of ground contrary to Nature, you will rob your neighbours and not enrich yourself. Freedom, then, must be allowed to industry. And if so, a study of the natural laws which will govern its course becomes all the more important. It is to no purpose that we try to evolve a scheme for the better regulation of meteorological phenomena, when we know that ‘the wind bloweth where it THUESDAY AFTERNOOX. 233 listeth,’ and that forces are at work in the world of cloud and storm which are free to act according to their own nature, and which brook no restraint except such as their own laws impose. In like manner, it is no use endeavouring to obtain results in the world of trade which are incompatible with the primary principles which govern trade. It is better to learn these principles thoroughly, to study their action, to regulate our course by them, and to moderate our expectations, and even our desires, within reasonable limits — in other words, to descend from the Utopian to the obtainable. All industry is governed by the great law of supply and demand. This law is to trade what the law of gravitation is to matter. One of its first effects is to cause fluctuation. Trade changes its character, its volume, its intensity, and its value, according to the ever-varying proportion between demand and supply. Demand is ever changing ; so is supply. Every variation in the one or the other makes a corresponding varia- tion (perceived or unperceived) in values, in cost, in wages, and in profits. How, then, is it possible to have any ‘ stability of industrial employment,’ or any ‘ steadiness in rates of wages ’ ? As I have said, it is a question whether, if stability and steadiness (that is, no falls, but also no rises) were possible, it were desirable. The instability and unsteadiness of trade are its best stimulant. A sailor might as well expect stability and steadiness on the ocean, a perpetual calm or an ever-favouring breeze, as the man of business, be he capitalist or workman, expect regular trade and regular work, regular profits and regular wages. Whatever calling in life we take up, we must accept it with its conditions, and the great condition of industrial life is change. But I shall probably be told that I am evading the real issue, and the question will still be pressed upon me. Are there not ‘ artificial and remediable causes ’ in operation at the present time which make industrial employment specially unstable, and the rates of wages specially unsteady ? 234 INDUSTEIAL KEMUNEKATION CONFEEENCE. I do not think there are. Trade is bad, and yet people are not going out of it. Trade is unremunerative now in compa- rison with previous periods, yet the working classes are putting their savings into it. Our exports and imports have increased duriog the last ten years up to 1883, in which year they stood at a higher total figure than they had ever done before, and at a higher proportion per head of population except in the years 1872, 1873, and 1874. The average earnings of the working classes have increased by 12 per cent, during the last seventeen years, as shown by Professor Levi in his late report. Altogether, though there have been fluctuations, aod though undoubtedly at present trade is depressed, yet there is nothing in the statistics to which I have access seriously to cause alarm. But even if things were worse than they are, can it be said that artificial ‘ remediable causes’ are at work to produce them? I know of none. The only cause at work is the old one of supply and demand. I shall be told that hostile tariffs are causing the present depression. But is this a remediable cause ? Propositions have been made for removing it. But will they succeed ? It must be remembered that those countries which have adopted and maintain a protectionist policy against our manu- factures are prospering and growing rich ; or at least they think so, which is the same thing. It must also be remembered that retaliatory tariffs can only be imposed by England with any appreciable result on food and raw material, as the importation of other articles is still small in extent or value. But would the imposition of a duty on American corn or on American cotton force the American manufacturer to admit English-made goods ? The parties affected by the two sets of tariffs are not the same. How, then, can you get a reciprocal effect ? The American farmer or cotton-planter might cry out ; but the American manufacturer would resist to the utmost his mono- poly being interfered with. On the other hand, our last state would be worse than the first. For with dearer corn and dearer cotton the cost of our manufactures would be enhanced, till we should lose the advantage we now enjoy over our protectionist competitors in neutral markets. THUKSDAY AFTERNOON. 235 Only two suggestions occur to me. They are not new, but being founded upon the great law which regulates trade, they cannot be too often insisted upon. The first is, open new markets. The second is, produce as cheaply as you can. Good trade depends upon a large and wide demand, and upon a cheap supply. Every new market you can open and every reduction you can make in cost goes directly to improve trade. In carrying out the first suggestion a wise Government can do much. In carrying out the second, intelligent and enlightened workpeople can do more. It is to our colonies and dependencies, or to countries where free trade is guaranteed, that we must look for the markets of the future. Our exports to foreign countries have consider- ably decreased during the last ten years. But this decrease has been almost compensated for by the increase in our exports to our colonies — chiefiy to India, Australia, and Africa. During the present depressed times, the cost of our produc- tions is being reduced in every direction. The future of agri- culture in this country is unfortunately not bright. But other industrial employments are only at present going through the trough of the sea, and will in my opinion soon appear, as before, on the crest of another wave, if only our rulers will be wise and patriotic and our people continue to be industrious. Home and Foreign Policy: oi\ How to Restore Pros- perity to a Distressed and Anxious People. By Stephen Harding. The practical knowledge I have of the subject here, and what I have learned from a short residence in New Zealand and from a recent visit to Canada with its ma<>-nificent wheat- growing lands in the north-west, and also the wheat country of the United States, convince me that the English farmer, unless he is put upon equal terms, will never be able to 236 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATJON CONEERENCE. successfully compete with his modern rival on those vast, rich alluvial plains. It is a fallacy to attribute all our past success to free trade, my opinion being quite the other way — that any success we have had has been in spite of, rather than the result of, free trade ; for we must go back and re- member the enormous amount of commercial activity that was called into existence in laying down the plant, &c., in order to open up these vast regions. So long as that activity lasted the demand was great, the supply limited, and the country flourish- ing ; but when the supply exceeded the demand, then free trade became a curse and a cause of distress. We should be wrong in laying down a liard-and-fast line for all time ; circumstances vary, and what might be a blessing at one time becomes the reverse at another. We have been too long under the domina- tion of mere theorists ; if we are to have a return of prosperity, we must come back to the first principles of common sense. I therefore strongly advocate equal taxation in home and foreign produce. A fair field and no favour is what this country wants and demands — a living for the tiller of the soil ; a flourishing commerce ; a peaceful and contented people. To advance this state of things we want a confederation of all classes with the object of assisting and protecting any one class that may, from no fault of its own, be overtaken and threatened with destruction. Depend upon it, the sooner we see and recognise our interests to be identical in all classes, the better it will be for the country generally. This is no party question, but one that affects the whole tax-paying community. As it is necessary to levy taxes, let this be done in the least objectionable way. Let the foreigner be treated the same as the home producer. If the former wishes to enjoy the advantages of our markets he must be called upon to contribute his share of the taxes. We ask no more, and shall not be satisfied with anything less. Let us see how the case now stands with reference to the cultivator of the soil. He has had ten of the most unfavourable seasons ever known ; the crops have been bad and prices low. If the land had been his own the farmer’s loss would still have been a heavy one. He has neither the will nor the means to continue employing his THUESDAY AFTERNOON. 237 usual number of labourers, consequently the land ceases to grow wheat, and the hands that would have been employed, if that could be grown at a remunerative price, have to emigrate or migrate to our towns to lower the wages there. What is the use of a cheap loaf if it is produced by depriving the people of their labour and the means of buying it ? To say it is a matter only between landlord and tenant would be to advocate the doctrine that a manufacturer or tradesman, upon loss of custom or lower- ing of profits, should not discharge any of his employes or re- duce their wages, but should look to the landlord for a reduction of rent. Such an idea is too absurd for any unbiassed practical mind. If 50 per cent, of the land sown to wheat during the seven years preceding 1884 had not only been rent free but free of taxes also, it would not have paid, at the price, to have grown it. Perhaps Mr. Bright will tell us what the farmers are to do under such circumstances. Is he not aware that India is now supplying us largely with wheat, and that if it is admitted free it must very much reduce our labourers’ wages here. If foreign produce is to continue to be admitted duty free, let us be consistent and allow our own produce to be untaxed and free also. I should say that a tax upon imports would be more likely to slightly reduce the value of foreign land than to raise the value of our own. We are all agreed that it is necessary to maintain a standing army and navy, yet we are throwing out of cultivation the land that could support them in time of war, and are driving out of the country the men who should form the natural source for filling our ranks. At whatever cost, we must return to our normal state and grow at least 4,000,000 acres of wheat, this being about the amount grown ten years ago. It is now reduced to only 2,750,588 acres. The farmers will not sow unless they have some guarantee that they will get a fair return for their labour, and they can only get that, not by robbing the landowners, but by the Govern- ment taxing the imports. It may be necessary to charge these sometimes more, sometimes less, than the home producers ; that must depend upon circumstances. One thing is certain — the farmers do not want a dear loaf ; what they contend is that the mass of the people would be better off with the loaf at GcZ. than 238 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. they are now. Again, there is scarcely a country that has adopted free trade in the sense or nonsense in which we have. Are we so conceited as a nation as to think that we are the only ones in the right ? Why, foreigners, although they are well pleased, as we might expect them to be, with the result, are nevertheless laughing at our folly, for which we have so dearly paid. For years past the labourer has fared much better than his em- ployer ; whilst the former has been living upon his labour, the latter has had to subsist upon his capital or charity, both of which are now nearly exhausted. I do not suppose it is gene- rally known, but such is the fact, that for many years past the general public have been partly fed at the expense of the culti- vator of the soil ; that is, the people have obtained their bread at a much less price than the actual first cost. Such a state of things cannot go on for ever. It reminds me of an occurrence some years ago, when a very superior luncheon was provided at a shilling a-head ; a lady standing at my side remarked upon its excellence and cheapness, and could not understand how it could be done for the money. I suggested that it would be possible to get it even cheaper at a friend’s, and informed her that the society of which we were members was acting to us as a semi-friend by paying one-half the cost. What that society willingly did for once, the farmers of England have most un- willingly done for years past in the matter of bread. It has been calculated that before wheat can be fit for the consumer there is a local tax paid of at least 4s. per quarter, 3L on a fat bullock, and 5s. on a fat sheep ; if the same tax were levied on the imports it would amount to 12 millions. We should then see a change for the better in the general condition of the country. The million labourers who have been divorced from the soil would be again required at good wages, and the desired acreage of wheat would be again sown. The party advo- cating the nationalisation of the land, the abolition of land- lordism, and the cutting up of the country into small holdings, are neither landowners themselves nor have they any practical knowledge of the subject. All that tenants want is security for capital invested and improvements made. Even the twelve- months’ notice given by the late Act is a great hardship in THUESDAY AFTEENOON. 239 the case of a tenant on a poor arable farm, for the sooner he quits the less he will lose ; on the other hand, land should be made as free to buy and sell as any other commodity. Primo- geniture and entail should be abolished, and the men who have grown rich by the industry of the people should pay taxes in proportion — that is to say, those that have the capital should pay the principal part of the taxes. For instance, I would repeal the death dues — probate at least : for I look upon it as a legal robbery, unnecessary and harassing at a time of dire distress. Then, again, if it is necessary to raise *9,000,000^. on tobacco and snuff, and about 30,000,000^. on spirits, beer, &c., to induce people to be moderate and sober, are not those who abstain, and who now escape the tax, better able to pay than the others that do ? I do not object to the one paying, but what I do object to is, the others not paying in proportion in some other way ; but as the abstainers are likely, perhaps, to become our future capitalists, we can legitimately tax their income, which tax should be on a sliding scale : those under 500?. a year are now taxed enough, those having 10,000?. a year should pay half as much again, and so on up to the man with the highest income. We could very well, under the head of Property and Income Tax, raise 30,000,000?. instead of, as now, 12,000,000?. Let us adopt some such programme as this, and only vote at the next election for those members pledged to its adoption, and we should see our dear old country again take the proud position she so justly deserves and formerly held. Now let us see the effect and result of the present distress. Our necessity appears to have been America's opportunity, which she has made very good use of. While we have been sleeping under the narcotic of free trade, she has been quietly and peaceably undermining the stability of this country by first of all taking our cash, and then in our despair many people follow. The result has been that she has added to her population over 1,000,000 a year for the last ten years, whose value must he more than enough to pay indirectly the whole of the United States’ debt twice over. Such being the case, can we be sur- prised to find that they are enabled to reduce their debt directly 240 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONEERENCE. over 30 millions a year ? Another point to be taken into account is that in 1873 one-half of their public debt was held abroad. To-day nine-tenths of it is held by themselves. Their country is so vast and so rich in everything man can want or wish for, that it will be only a short time before they will be able to do for the manufacturer, merchant, and artisan what they have already done for the labourer and cultivator of the English soil. There is nothing that this country exports but what in a few years they will be in a position to export to us. So long as those almost boundless virgin wheat lands of the North-west were kept out of the market for want of communica- tion, and labour was turned to the more speculative business of gold-mining or sheep-raising, so long did it pay to grow the wheat here. All that has now passed away, never to return, and our policy must be rearranged to the altered circumstances before we can expect to reap the benefits of which we now stand so much in need. Discussion. Mr. Patrick Geddes (Edinburgh Social Union) said, without con- testing any of the statements or proposals of the papers dealing with the well-being of the working classes, he desired to call attention to a serious omission in almost all of them. While these dealt admirably in some respects with the question of nominal wages, they did not at all adequately discuss the underlying and essential question of real wages, which he had hoped to take up. Nor did they suffi- ciently face the immediate and pressing question ; — How are we to act from this day forward, without waiting for those social and legis- lative changes, however desirable, which would necessarily need time to come into operation^ How were we to do something forthwith for the real well-being of the working class 1 What immediate and practical means had we already in our own hands for raising it? Parliament might help us some day, certainly not much this year, nor next. Let it be supposed that all desired legislative changes were certainly coming in five years hence, and he fancied that political reformers, however sanguine, would gladly discount their hopes for that. Suppose, too, all would be well when we realised the ideal adjustments of capital and labour which not only Thomas Carlyle, but the great socialist Lassalle, all sanguine as he was, put two cen- turies off, and which he did not think even Mr. Hyndman saw hope of 7 THUESDAY AFTERNOON. 241 within the present century ; the question still remained, What can we do here and now 1 The politician constantly said, ‘ J ust wait till these reforms of mine have come into operation ; ’ but even if it were true that when reforms did come into operation all were ever well, that should not suffice us. However good a time is coming, those next three years were the best that remained to us of life, yet they bid fair to be lean and poor enough. Could we not do something now ? What were we to do in these years of waiting for the people who had to live among present facts and not on future hopes ? Politics were all very well for the intelligent working man, and he must go in for them, but what could his wife and children care for them 1 They only saw their father when he was reading his newspaper or going to meetings. Let us look at the surroundings of their lives. What most men thought the greatest scientific advance of the century was summed up in the statement that life is modified by its surroundings ; that was very different from the current notion that life is mainly modified by Acts of Parliament. What were the actual surroundings of life for the working classes, not men only, but, in the order of human, national, social, and, therefore, also political importance — first for the children, next for the women, and then for workmen themselves? Dirty little narrow streets, jerry houses overcrowded and ill- ventilated, jerry furniture, parks generally so far away as to be of little use ; little playground for the children but the gutter ; little repose for the women but to gossip about the street doors ; no refuge for the weary men but to loaf at the street corner, if they did not muddle at the public house. And what were the best political and social reforms, or the most complete improvements of real wages ever going to do for them but improve those surroundings which made life ? They wanted better houses, and more inside them and more outside them. Parliamentary votes and Bills, and raised money wages alike’could never do more for them in this world than help towards getting these ; so let us work towards getting something of them now. That was what the Society he represented was working for ; and, unlike a good many of the societies represented there, they were getting a good deal of what they wanted every day, — not living merely in agitation or on hope. This Society was trying to improve the actual dwellings of the poor in Edinburgh. It was bringing cheap and good art and beauty and culture into every-day life, so making pleasanter both work and play ; and providing cheap pictures, casts, flowers, &c. It w'as also helping education, not only by lecturing and the like, but by preparing gymnasia, &c. ; and it helped recreation, for their crusade against drink took the form of providing something better. The main material causes which hindered the well-being of the 11 242 INDUSTEIAL KEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. poor were bad housing — unwholesome and comfortless ; lack of edu- cation ; lack of cheap and simple yet real pleasure ; and how were these to be remedied except by working at housing, at art, at educa- tion, at recreation ? It would be asked : How about the prevalent destitution ? They were taking up that too — trying to organise benevolent agencies, and better still, not simply putting down on paper fine schemes for the organisation of labour, but trying some of them in practice. And so, when the time for political action in any of these respects came, they would be ready for it too, readier far than those who had been only talking meanwhile. The tendency of thus raising the standard of comfort was to produce a real action upon the distribution of wealth, and upon the population question, so that they claimed to be facing the problem not only of how to maintain the people, but how to maintain them well. They would furnish inquirers with particulars of their schemes, only asking that they might be given a fair trial. (Applause.) Mr. George Macdonald (Social Democratic Federation) said as a working man and a trades unionist, apart from being a socialist, he had taken great interest in the debate. Mr. Owen advocated State-aided emigration. If it were right to call upon the State to assist emigration, it must also be right to call upon it to build houses for the poor of this country. Six millions invested in houses would produce work for several thousands of people at 27s. a week, according to Mr. Hoyle. If the people had produced so much wealth, there was no need for them to work so hard ; so let there be a general holiday. If people wished to get over a river they used a bridge, but that was only the means. In that way they meant to use the Government of to-day, as a means of getting over the distress of to- day. It was said that the working classes spent money in following the fashion. It was impossible for them to help themselves. In a slop shop, or a second-hand shop, all the clothes for sale are in the fashion. With respect to food, the poor had shops, not for the sale of poultry and such like, but for the sale of sheep^s heads, entrails, and the refuse that was left by the other classes of society. The whole system must be changed. The workers had no interest in that which they are required to do to procure them food. Profit-mongering must be done away with. If they had produced so much more than was necessary to support them, why should so many of them be starving to-day ? Why should it be necessary to call a Conference to consider the question 'i Were we not living in the nineteenth century, after nearly 1,900 years of the Christian doctrine — live and let five? One gentleman proposed to tax the trades unions. They taxed themselves to enable them to protect themselves from the capitalists. THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 243 There were too many idlers in this country. Why did he try to work ten or twelve hours a day ; was there not enough wealth in the country to support us all It was because the greedy few had taken so large a share, and left the crumbs for the others. They were asked to confer amongst themselves ; let those rich people confer amongst themselves, and say how long this system of white slavery — worse than any of the ancient systems — was to exist. They might talk of bettering the labouring classes, but that would never be done until their rights as citizens were fully recognised, until it was determined that one man should not live on another man’s labour. One gentle- man said the socialists had got a grand idea and scheme, under which they were to take over the means of production and control it. Under that system the active and strong would take possession of the wealth, and the idle and vicious would be thrown into prison. Where was a better place for them ? There was no fear that in any future constitution the idle and vicious would be neglected. We should take precious good care of them. What we had to do was not so much to consider how the present system could be kept working smoothly for a little longer, as to say that the system of private ownership must be put an end to. Captain Halford Thompson, F.S.S. (Exeter Chamber of Com- merce), said it was a formidable thing for one holding fair trade principles to address an assembly like that, where so many dis- tinguished political economists were present, who looked upon all attempts to throw doubt upon so called free trade as sacrilege. However, Mr. Harris had had the pluck to attack it, and those who thought with that gentleman must not flinch from doing the same. He agreed with Mr. Harris that we should recognise no laws of political economy which did not benefit the greatest number of our own Empire. He believed that the industrial classes would hereafter discover that in blindly following the theory that they were doing good to them- selves in importing any amount of manufactured goods into this country, they were really supporting a theory against their own interest. The theory was greatly to the interest of the rich and the non-producing classes, but not of the industrial classes. There was no doubt that the rich man got his luxuries cheaper by this system ; to a cei*tain extent the industrial classes might get things rather cheaper, but he was very much struck by a remark made the previous day on that point. It was all very well, remarked the speaker, to say that boots were cheaper, but he did not like to pay for brown paper. He hoped that those boots said to contain it were not of English make ; but if they were, it was because things were driven down by foreign competition. (A Voice: They are English.) He 244 INDUSTKIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. was very sorry to hear it. They were met to see if there were no remedy for the present distress, and also whether anything could be done to ensure continuity of employment. They had heard a great many remedies suggested, some of which he hoped would be of great use ; but he maintained that there was one great bar to our continuity of employment, and one great cause of the distress — the immense quantity of foreign manufactured goods coming into this country. He cordially endorsed the attack which had been made by several speakers on those absurd theories of political economists. He had studied the import statistics, and prepared a table which tallied almost exactly with that given by Mr. Harris. In 1883, 64 millions’ worth of manufactured goods came into this country, and 20 millions’ worth of half-manufactured goods. The latter portion had done us some good, but they could just as well have been wholly manufac- tured here. We must remember that that 84 millions’ worth of goods could have been manufactured in this country, and it was that home trade which he wished to see kept, and the proceeds go into our pockets instead of the pockets of the foreigner. If we could keep up that, and also develop our colonial trade so as to have the whole in our own hands, we could almost afford to snap our fingers at the rest of Europe if it tried to retaliate ; but, in fact, Europe could not retaliate, as it had more to lose than we had. The only way he could see in which we could retain our home trade was by entirely altering our fiscal plan, and putting a duty on foreign goods. He wished to see the bond between this country and our colonies strengthened, and not reduced, and that could only be done by giving them some advantage over outsiders. The colonies could not afford to remove their import duties. on our manufactures, but so long as they charged the outsiders, say, 10 per cent, more than they did our- selves, it came to much the same thing as if they admitted our goods free and charged the outsiders 10 per cent. He did not for one moment deny tlie immense advantage that free trade was to this country in the first instance, but circumstances altered cases, and we were very much in the position of a good billiard player and a bad one. When the two played, the bad player had points given him by the other ; but when the bad player had learnt the game he did not get the points. When we first adopted free trade it was a game at which foreigners would not play until we gave them points. Now others had got our machinery, &c., and if we continued to give them points we should lose the game. He hoped they would consider the matter well, and not believe all the theories they heard from a set of irresponsible enthusiasts, but accept that which would redound to the welfare of the greatest number of the community. THUESDAY AFTEENOON. 245 Mr. H. J. Pettifer (Workmen’s Association for the Defence of British Industry) said he was on the same side as the gentleman who had just spoken. He had brought a little extract, which was the fii'st to turn his attention in the direction of fair trade or protec- tion. It was only a few lines : — ‘ Those who speak of the selfishness of protection as a whole can never have taken the trouble to examine the arguments by which it is supported in America and Australia. In these countries it is no mere national delusion ; it is a system adopted with open eyes as one couducive to the country’s welfare, in spite of objections known to all, in spite of pocket losses that came home to all. If it is, as we in England believe, a folly, it is at all events a sublime one, full of self-sacrifice, illustrative of a certain nobility in the natural heart. The Australian diggers and Western farmers in America are setting a grand example to the world of self-sacrifice for a national object. Hundreds and thousands of rough men are content to live, they and their families, upon less than they might otherwise enjoy, in order that the condition of the mass of their countrymen may continue raised above that of their fellow-toilers in old England.’ This was from Greater Britain^ the well-known work of the President of the Conference. The opening of our markets to raw materials had been of great benefit to our working classes, and he was not one of those who would be in favour of putting a single penny duty on food or raw material coming into this country. Trade was very much depressed, and he did not think we should benefit much by putting duties on those things. Some time ago a man, after running along a London street late one night, became quite exhausted. As he was leaning against some railings a man came to him and asked him what was the matter. He replied that a thief had snatched his watch and he had tried to catch him, but could not run a step further. The other man said, ‘ Are you sure you can’t run any further?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then I’ll take your hat.’ (Laughter.) That was exactly the remedy proposed by Mr. Chaplin and Mr. Lowther for the present distress. Those gentlemen said trade was very depressed, the working-man had little work and less money, and they proposed to remedy that by taking his cheap loaf. (Hear, hear.) But we would not have that. (Applause.) One gentleman said he was opposed to the political economists, and yet his remedy was the same as that suggested byPichard Cobden. In a speech made in the House of Commons in February 1842 he said : — ‘ The question resolves itself into a very narrow compass. If you find that there are exclusive burdens on the land, do not put a tax upon the bread of the people, but remove the burdens.’ 246 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. Some of the gentlemen were of opinion that that would benefit the farmer very little, but Cobden provided for that. He suggested in a speech made in London on December 11, 1844, that rents should be fixed on a sliding scale, to be determined by the price of wheat in the open market, so that the more a farmer got for his wheat the more rent he would pay, and vice versa. He believed that the free importation of manufactured goods had been a great disadvantage to the wage-earners of this country, and the depression of the present day was almost entirely due to it. Let us go back to the time when every trade and branch of industry was prosperous, when every man who wanted work could get it. That was from 1871 to 1874. How was that ? Simply because for that time we had a sort of artificial protection. France and Germany had not recovered from the effects of the war. Just as they recovered, so the trade of England went steadily down. The amount of manufactured goods coming in was 60 millions’ worth, but that was a mere fleabite. It was not the amount of goods coming into this country that workmen cared about, but it was the price at which they came that caused the mischief. The year before last there were only 46,000 Waltham watches imported, but they brought down the price of the English watches, although much inferior to them. Even the price at which an article could be sold abroad ruled our markets, although the article never entered our markets. An ironmaster making a tender had to know the prices in Belgium, and send in his tender accordingly. He was a protectionist, and he could not help being so because he was a trades unionist. On his card of membership it said ‘ Electroplaters’ Trade Protection Society.’ The members bound themselves to protect each other against their employers and fellow- workmen, but they did not offer any protection against the cheap labour of the Continent. He could not see what difference it could make whether a foreigner came here, or stopped at home and worked longer hours than we did : the result in both cases was the same. He had the right to demand that his trade union should protect him in the one case as much as in the other. Mr. John Morley, M.P., said so much had been introduced into the discussion about the Cobdenite writers, so-called irresponsible doctrinaires, and other advocates of free trade, that he was impelled to submit one or two points to the Conference. Mr. Pettifer had said that he had been converted by a paragraph in a book which set forth that the American protectionists declared that they would not allow their toilers to sink to the level of the toilers in the old country. [Mr. Pettifer : It was from Sir Charles Dilke’s Greater Britain.^ Yes ; but Sir Charles Dilke was setting forth the point THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 247 of view of the American and Yictorian protectionists. Mr. Pettifer might have remembered that at the present moment the wage receiver in the United States is not one atom better off in the majority of cases than the wage receiver here. It was not to be denied as a matter of fact that the iron-workers at Pittsburgh are much worse off than those at Wolverhampton. (‘ Tell us how.') It was not for him to explain why ; he was dealing with an argument that Mr. Pettifer supported by an example which did not make in favour of his position. (Hear, hear.) Captain Thomp- son said that we should devote our whole energies to our home trade, and let foreign trade take care of itself. That sounded very well, and very domestic and agreeable, but he would like to know what would become of half the industrial population of our country if we were to lose that foreign trade which Captain Thompson and Mr. Harris would undoubtedly injure and, for aught they cared, destroy. One gentleman said if the colonies were to federate, there would be a great alliance and great interchange of com- modities in consequence. Was there any probability of such a thing? Was it not clear that it was the protectionist policy of Canada and of Victoria which made federation impossible? Those colonies would not consent to give up the control of their own tariffs. To think that federation would ameliorate the condition of things in this country was a great delusion. Mr. Harris said that all raw materials should be imported free. Had that gentleman considered fully what were raw materials ? Was yarn to be considered a raw material ? It was the raw material of the spinning industry. Aniline dyes were the raw material for the dyers. Were they to be considered raw materials ? Those were incidental and secondary points, but they went to show that Mr. Harris had not thoroughly looked round the scheme which he had propounded. They were told that a limited protection — he used the fairest word he could — would be good for the distress in English industry. What English industry was at present most depressed and was the cause of distress in other industries? It was the shipping industry. Members of the Society of Amalgamated Engineers knew that the great stress upon its funds was due to the fact that only one-third the amount of shipbuilding was now going on as compared with last year. So many commodities entered into shipbuilding — so much ironwork and woodwork — that a great number of subsidiary trades and an enormous portion of the industrial population were affected by depression in that single industry. Nothing could be so evident as that to limit the exchange of commodities, and to check the importation of foreign goods, manu- factured or raw material, into this country, was to depress the 248 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. shipping trade. Foreign countries had shown us no consideration, and it was our turn to do — what ? To exercise our power to injure ourselves for the sake of repaying them ? That was a power the use of which he hoped nothing would induce the industries represented in the Conference to sanction. (Applause.) Mr. W. J. Harris, M.P., said that his reply to Mr. Morley, M.P., must necessarily be short. Mr. Morley had laid great stress on his contention that if we limited in any manner the quantity of manu- factured goods which we received, it would tend to our shipping having less employment ; but he seemed to forget that if we con- sumed less of foreign manufactures we should manufacture a larger quantity at home. The consequence would be that we should import a larger quantity of the raw materials which mostly came from distant parts of the world, and we should mostly live on that which only came from Antwerp, Boulogne, and Rotterdam. Consequently our shipping interests would be gainers instead of losers. All knew how important our shipping industry had been to the nation, and he wished to point out that it was the only industry in which we had had real free trade. The foreigner, for his own sake, had been satisfied to ac- cord to us free exchange in ships, and our natural advantages had gained for us a great supremacy. This was a proof of the soundness of perfectly free exchange if it could be ever gained; but it was an illusion to suppose that it could. Already foreign countries by means of bounties, &c., were endeavouring to wrest from us this one arm of our strength. With regard to the present great depression in our shipping, he hoped and believed that it was not a permanent de- pression, but that it would gradually pass away. The profits that had been made in shipping were large some years since. It was hardly recognised why they had been so large. The great stimulus had been brought about by the bad harvests, and by the discourage- ment of corn production in this country. The quantity of corn which had to be brought from abroad to supply this deficiency had made a great demand for shipping, and had led to over-production. It was therefore the failure on the part of an internal industry which caused the development of our shipbuilding, and this was in no way due to the fiscal system of our country. Cobdenites were apt to value our success as a nation by adding our imports and exports together and taking the result. It was a most fallacious test. A bad harvest caused immense imports, while a good one required small imports. And it had never been proved that the nations which sup- plied us took our goods as payment in exchange; in fact, the contrary was manifest. The real value of our foreign trade might be better seen by taking the value of exports for the last year, say THQESDAY AFTERNOON. 249 235.000. 000^. About 15,000,000/. of this was coal and raw iron, which could be more usefully used at home, and were an abstraction from our national wealth. This would leave 220,000,000/. as the value. Taking from this the value of exports to our own colonies (which fair traders would not only keep but encourage to the utmost), say about 90,000,000/., the result would be 130,000,000/. Seeing that some 90,000,000/. out of this were manufactured and half manu- factured goods which might be made at home, the result was about 40.000. 000/. per annum as the real export value of our foreign trade. An increase in the growth of farm j)roduce in this country to the extent of only 20 per cent., brought about by the unburdening of the land, would tend more to the advantage of our industrial occupations than the whole balance of our foreign trade ; but it must be equally re- membered that our foreign trade would certainly not suffer in the countries which supplied us with raw materials and took manufac- tures from us. In fact, on Cobdenite principles the export trade to such countries would be largely increased if it were true that ‘ goods always paid for goods.’ As to any nations retaliating against us on account of our imposing moderate duties on their manufactures, there could only be four European nations that could be very materially affected, and these four nations send to us far more manufactures than we send to them. It would therefore be most impolitic for them to retaliate. As to the United States retaliating, the effect of import duties would have exactly the opposite effect in that country. The whole of the population who are devoted to the production and carriage of the raw materials and food with which they supply us so largely would fear our taking further measures in the same direction, and the result would be a reciprocal treaty, with equal duties between ourselves and that country, which w^ould be very much to our ad- vantage. Time would only allow of his saying that no argument of Mr. Morley’s had shaken him in the slightest, and he maintained that every part of his paper was unassailable. A gentleman in the body of the hall had reproached him for undervaluing the laws of political economy, and had asked him ‘ why he did not value this as much as the laws of gravitation.’ His reply to that was that the laws of gravitation were created by the Almighty, but the laws of political economy only emanated from man. (Applause.) Mr. Harding, in reply, said he would admit that free trade had been a blessing to this country, but he would have us remember the state of the world at the time when it was so. At that time our colonies were not opened up, and there was a great demand for everything that we could produce. Even the great wide lands of North-west Canada were about that time a sealed book. Let us re- 250 INDUSTEIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. member also the amount of commercial activity required to open that vast district. What was good then is the reverse now. He charged free trade with being the cause of all the distress we were now suffering from ; for did it not deprive the people of the means to pro- cure the necessaries of life by the foreigner underselling the home produce 1 If it only required the labour of one man to produce the necessaries of life for seven persons, that showed that the other six must be producing or living in luxury. The working classes could not improve their own condition legitimately without improving that of the capitalist. As long as we kept up a standing army and navy at a considerable cost, was it not fair that we should tax the foreigner to the same extent as the home producer % It had been calculated that a farmer paid a tax of 4s. on a quarter of wheat, 3Z. on a fat bullock before he sold it, and 5s. on a sheep. He asked that we should tax the foreigner on the same terms as the English producer. He had lately been to America and seen what they were doing there, and he could say that if we went on in our present way there would soon be as great distress amongst the merchants as among the labourers. Our home policy was of much more importance than our foreign policy. Some advocates had suggested the distribution of wealth by the equalisation of capital, and said that each person would have about 249?. That was very fallacious, as the calculation was made upon the basis of a going concern. If the value were realised, would there not be a depreciation of property 1 What would be the use of the palaces we saw on every hand 1 What was equal to-day would be unequal to- morrow. Whilst we were standing still with respect to our national debt^ the Americans were reducing theirs at a great rate, over 30,000,000 dols. a year ; and nine-tenths of it was held by themselves, although in 1872 one-half of it was held abroad, and largely by Englishmen. They were going ahead, whilst we were going back or standing still. The Chairman said it was quite clear that sufficient account had not been taken by some speakers of the fact that the United States had possessed — although they were now beginning to lose that ad- vantage — enormous tracts of unoccupied and valuable land. With that advantage their great increase of population and of production would have taken place whatever their commercial system might have been. THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 251 How far do Bemediahle Causes Influence Prejudicially the Well-being of the Working Classes f By Sedley Taylor, M.A. {Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge^) Under an industrial system carried on for the purpose of exctiange, the price of the finished article, after covering every outlay incurred in the purchase of raw materials, maintenance of machinery &c., must supply the remuneration of all the persons who have collaborated in its production. In any in- dustrial establishment, therefore, it is the sum total of sales, less that of outgoings incident to the process of manufacture, which constitutes the ultimate remuneration-fund for all human services rendered within it ; including, of course, the supply of capital, as well as every application of brain-power, manual dexterity and muscular strength in all departments of direction and work. The well-being, as a body, of the entire staff which supplies these services must, therefore, in any given establishment, depend on the amount of this remuneration- fund. Similarly, the well-being of each separate class of collaborators must depend on the portion of the remuneration- fund allotted to it, and individual well-being on the amount which the ultimate distribution of that portion brings to each man. Inasmuch, then, as the amount of the remuneration-fund measures, cceteris paribus, the prosperity of an industrial concern, and that amount largely depends on the vigour and skill with which every part of the industrial process is performed, it would seem eminently desirable, in the interest of a success- ful result, that the two following conditions should be satisfied : — (1) That every collaborator should be made and kept aware that the fund available for joint remuneration is the direct result of the concerted efforts of each and all. (2) That the share falling to each grade of collaborators should be allotted 252 INDUSTKIAL KEMUNEEATION CONEEEENCE. on such a scale, and distributed on such principles, as to enlist the full exertion of each man’s physical, mental and moral faculties, with a direct view to a prosperous result. Any arrangement, therefore, which practically concealed from an important section of collaborators the direct bearing of their work on the joint final issue, would affect prejudicially the well-being of the concern which employed them, and with it necessarily their own. Further, even were there no such con- cealment, any obstacle which prevented them from regularly obtaining what they regarded as their equitable share of the ultimate joint result, would discourage zealous effort and lead to the same consequences. I contend that this is precisely the effect produced by the established system of remunerating labour. The workmen employed in an industrial establishment are paid either by time or by the piece. In neither case is there any obvious connexion between the amount of their earn- ings and the prosperity of the employing concern. They have no share in its direction ; in the case of private undertakings they are, as a rule, sedulously excluded from all knowledge of the state of its affairs. Further, the rates of their time or piece-work wages are avowedly fixed, not on any considerations of equity, but by the varying vicissitudes of a never-ending struggle, in which one side strives to pay as little, and the other to obtain as much, as possible. It would almost seem as if the system had been deliberately planned to withhold from workmen all insight into the connexion between effort and its natural reward ; or, should they attain such knowledge, at any rate to prevent its having any stimulating effect upon their conduct. I have tried to show that, in the ways just indicated, the ordinary system of remunerating labour constitutes a cause influencing prejudicially the well-being of the working classes, since it impairs the efficiency of industry itself, on which their well-being so essentially depends. I will next try to prove that — in the language of the question to which my paper supplies one out of many possible answers — this cause is a ‘ remediable ’ one. THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 253 It is well-known how, in 1842, the Paris house-painter, Leclaire, commenced the practice of allotting to his workmen — independently of and in addition to ordinary wages paid at full market rates — a share of the net profits realised in his estab- lishment. His example was followed in 1843 by M. Laroche- Joubert, paper-maker at Angouleme, and in 1844 by the Paris and Orleans Kailway Company. About ten years later the system was adopted by two great Parisian insurance companies, tlie Compagnie d’Assurances Generates and the Union, and sub- sequently by other establishments. Profit-sharing has made, since the Franco-German war, considerably greater headway in France thf n it had done up to that time. In 1879 a French society, consisting exclusively of employers of labour, was established ‘ to facilitate the practical study of the various systems under which workmen participate in profits.* The periodical Bulletin ^ published by this society announces the names of new firms which have adopted profit-sharing, prints in extenso regulations in respect to it, and generally acts as the organ of the movement. As will readily be imagined, there exist between these houses great differences in respect to the modes in which they have organised the profit-sharing principle. Some allot to their employes an invariable percentage of the net profits, others fix the rate of participation from year to year. The majority distribute the employes’ share of profits among them in proportion to wages or salaries, but in a certain number of them length of service in the house constitutes a title to a larger participation. Of much importance are the varying conditions under which the share allotted to labour actually reaches the hands of the beneficiaries. Some houses pay it to them at once in cash ; some retain it altogether for purposes of investment ; others hand over a part each year in ready money and invest the remainder with a view of eventually securing to each beneficiary an accumulated capital sum or a retiring life-pension. ' Bulletin de la Participation a/ax Benefices. Paris, Chaix. 254 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. In a paper presented last year to the French Association for the Advancement of the Sciences, M. Chaix, the great Paris railway printer and publisher, who is also vice-president of the Participation Society, gave a tabular conspectus of the arrange- ments adopted in 49 profit-sharing establishments. A few facts taken from this source will give numerical precision to the statements which I have just made. M. Chaix’ list comprises 44 undertakings in France, 2 in Alsace, 2 in Switzerland, and 1 in Holland ; but the enumera- tion is not intended to be exhaustive even with respect to French participating establishments, much less, of course, to those in other countries. Of these 49 concerns, which represent a great variety of different businesses carried on both on a large and a small scale, 36 allot to their employes a fixed and 13 a varying percentage on net profits ; 35 distribute this share in proportion to annual wages received ; 9 in proportion to wages and stand- ing jointly; 1 in proportion to standing only; 4 as the employer may from time to time determine. Nine concerns practise unreserved cash distribution ; 23 entire retention for investment; 17 a mixed system. Of the 23 concerns which have adopted entire retention, 20 apply the workmen’s dividends to constitute accumulated capitals ; 3 to obtain retiring pensions. Of the 17 which follow a mixed system, 13 invest the retained portion for capitalisation and 4 for pensions. Four houses are mentioned which permit a verification of the accounts on the side of the participants, and 14 which have established con- sultative committees with workman-representation. In regard to what is of course the pivot of the system, the percentage on profits actually allotted to labour in these under- takings, M. Chaix has been able to state the result with tabular brevity in only 23 out of his 49 cases. In 11 other instances he found a detailed note indispensable to make clear the rate of participation in each several case. With regard to the re- maining 15 concerns no information on this point is given in his 'table. Taking the 23 first-named cases, at the head of which stands the munificently endowed Maison Leclaire, we find the following results : — THUKSDAY AFTERNOON. 255 Percentage on profits allotted Number of undertakings. to labour. 1 75 1 50 1 33 2 25 3 15 4 .10 4 5 2 4 2 3 1 2i 2 2 To the workman the ratio which his share in profits bears to his annual wages is more interesting than that borne by the entire labour-dividend to the total net profits realised. I will, therefore, add that in some houses the share in profits allotted to a workman has, under favourable circumstances, reached a maximum of more than 20 per cent, on annual wages, which ^re always paid at full market rates. The Compagnie d’ Assur- ances Grenerales has allotted as much as from 25 to 30 per cent, on wages in an exceptionally good year. On the other hand, highly distinguished houses have in bad years been reduced to a very restricted participation or to none. Thus in the year of the Russo-Turkish war a house in Switzerland, which five vears before had allotted 28^ per cent, on wages, found itself reduced to no participation at all. In the ten years down to 1882, however, it had allotted an annual average of nearly 15 per cent., and thus afforded the participating workmen the means of preparing to meet bad trade by systematic saving. The literature of profit-sharing affords, in my judgment, decisive evidence that, within the limits of its application, that system has invigorated industry by stimulating individual and corporate effort, and that it has done this by directly connect- ing the workman’s labour with a portion of the workman’s reward. It has, therefore, within corresponding limits, counter- worked the cause of diminished well-being on the part of the working classes dwelt on at the opening of this paper, and so proved that cause to be ‘ remediable ’ by actually remedying it. 256 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. The rationale of profit-sharing is a very simple and obvious one. We may safely assume that a man who knows that the excellence of the work which he performs has a direct influence on the remuneration to be received for it, will make far more zealous efforts than one who has no such assurance. A house, therefore, which besides regular marked wages offers a substan- tial share of annual net profits, may count on securing better work than it would obtain if it followed the ordinary routine. This expectation, that a direct interest in ultimate results will stimulate to improved exertion, and thus open an entirely new source of profit, is the economic basis on which the participat- ing system rests. A moral gain to the workman in passing from the position of a mere wage-earner to that of an associate in profits is also clearly involved in the new arrangement. In endeavouring to convey, within the narrowed limits of space, some idea of what the attained results of profit-sharing are, I find myself debarred, by the very extent of the subject, from entering upon a detailed treatment of it. A volume of 1 70 pages,^ in which I have described a few of the most im- portant cases of its application, gives but an imperfect view of what it has achieved. To go into any one of these cases with intelligible fulness is here impossible. The main point which I have to make out to the satisfaction of the Conference is, after all, that profit-sharing has commended itself in actual trial both to masters and men, and this I hope to show by pro- ducing a series of brief testimonies in its favour from witnesses of undoubted competence. From M. Marquot, j unior managing partner of the Maison Leclaire, I requested, for the purposes of the present paper, an answer to a specific question, viz., whether the participating system had in the experience of that house actually led to en- hanced profits. In his reply, dated Dec. 8 last, M. Marquot cited the following facts, as affording an answer to my ques- tion : — In 1882 the working painters, who received 75 centimes per hour, asked of the City of Paris, which fixes the wages of work- men in the building trades, to be paid 80 centimes per hour. * Profit- Sharing. Kegan Paul, Trench and Co. 1884. THUESDAY AFTERNOON. 257 The request was granted from Nov. 1, 1882, onwards, but no increase was made in the sums to be paid for the finished work. The advance in wages would therefore have to be made good out of profits. In notifying to their workmen the^increased rate of wages, the managing partners of the Maison Leclaire drew attention to this fact, and explained that, if the rate of participation at the year’s end was to be maintained at its previous level, the workmen must, by additional care in avoid- ing bad work, waste of materials and loss of time, succeed in making up the difference. The practical answer given by the workmen to this appeal is shown by the following figures. For the year 1881 the rate of participation had been, in round numbers, 20 per cent, on wages received. For 1882 it was 22-|- per cent. The rise in wages took place on Nov. 1 of the latter year. The results of 1883 brought a participation of 23^ per cent. ‘ I am fully persuaded,’ writes M. Marquot, ‘ that if we had not had profit-sharing, our balance-sheet for that year would have shown a diminution at least equal to the reduction im- posed ; whereas instead of that we have obtained an enhanced result.’ In the firm Billon et Isaac, ^ a joint-stock company manu- facturing parts of the mechanism of musical boxes at Greneva, Switzerland, the results of profit-sharing have been studied both by the managing director and by the workmen with a very unusual degree of care and intelligence. I, therefore, addressed to M. Billon and to the participating workmen independent requests for a brief statement of their present views on the action of the system in that establishment. The answers which I received will be found in an appendix to this paper. I will quote here only a few sentences from each. M. Billon writes : — Since the year 1871, when we introduced this principle, it has not ceased to produce its good effects, material and moral. In the good years our workmen have put forth redoubled activity in order to * See Profit-Sharing, pp. 33-39. S 258 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. increase the profits. In the bad years, such as that through which we are passing now, they willingly lend themselves to the efforts which we make to attain a more economical production, being aware that it is to their interest to support the house. Our workmen, therefore, possess a knowledge of the diflS.culties of business, a thing as useful to them as to the employer. The very real advantage which employers derive from participa- tion well applied consists in having on their side the goodwill and zeal of the workmen, who, without this principle of union, main- tain an indifferent or even a hostile attitude towards the results of business. . . . The share in profits which we allot to our workmen is no sacrifice to our house, since we find it made up for by the good quality of the work obtained, and by economies of time and materials, a source which yields incontestable surplus profits. The opinion sent to me by the participating workmen bears 85 signatures, representing every man present at the meeting at which it was agreed upon. No divergent view was expressed, and only three men out of the entire body were absent from the meeting. In order to guard against a possible misapprehension of a passage to be cited from this opinion, I will premise that in the firm Billon et Isaac one-half of the share in profits assigned to labour is distributed unreservedly in cash, and the remaining half compulsorily invested in purchase of AL shares in the house. These shares receive in due course both fixed interest and also a share of profits. Each workman, therefore, partici- pates through two distinct channels, first on the score of his labour, and next on that of his pecuniary stake in the esta- blishment. This point cleared, I proceed to a quotation from the work- men’s opinion : — Becoming, in virtue of the shares acquired by means of obligatory thrift, co-proprietors of the establishment in which we work, we are bound together by a strong feeling of unity, and it is to our interest to avoid useless expenditure of time, to execute work with all possible intelligence, and to economise the tools, materials &c., which are entrusted to us. In consequence we find these results : that the workman is morally raised ; that saving for evil days (sick- THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 259 ness, want of employment, &c.) is facilitated, and that a friendly understanding between masters and men is established. Thanks to a good administration, all those questions which appear to present serious difficulty have, in our house, been satisfactorily solved by participation. Before passing from testimonies now for the first time published to some recently delivered before a French Commis- sion of Inquiry, I will cite a paragraph from an unsolicited letter written to me by M. Groffinon, head of an important industrial establishment ^ at Paris, who has recently been appointed Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur in recognition of his services as one of the earliest and most persistent pioneers of profit- sharing. The following results have, M. Groffinon affirms, been fully established by long experience in his establishment ; — 1. The quality of the products, or of the works executed, is better ; this is incontestable. 2. A notable economy is realised in regard to the fixed machinery, or rolling stock. 3. More active manual labour is obtained, besides a reduction in the costs of superintendence. A participating house, therefore (adds M. Goffinon), should, and according to our experience actually does, carry on production better, more economically, and with greater expedition ; the logical result of which is the increase of its custom. In the summer of 1883 an extra-Parliamentary commission, appointed by the French Minister of the Interior, M. Waldeck- Kousseau, to examine the question of workmen’s associations, devoted eight sittings to the subject of profit-sharing. The heads of twenty-four participating concerns gave evidence in person, and seven others sent in written depositions. From the statements made by a few of the most important among these witnesses, I extract a sentence or two of leading testimony in favour of profit-sharing. This evidence is wholly additional to that collected in my book. * Goffinon et Barbas, Plumbers, Sanitary Engineers, Sec,, 86 Boulevard de Strasbourg, Paris. 260 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. Paper-Mills at Angouleme and elsewhere. (M. Laroche-Joubert.)^ I have studied the question in all its aspects. Perfection is, it is true, not for this world ; but, if there be anything which approaches it, I believe that profit-sharing is the system which presents the smallest inconveniences. . . . The unity of feeling created by participation makes all my workmen superintend each other — a superintendence far more real than could be that exercised by employes paid the highest wages to overlook without being interested. . . . It is not to be supposed that the master has in consequence of adopting participation given away a part of his profits ; not at all : he has done a very good stroke of business, and this is the fact of which we must try to convince those who are not in favour of the system. Suez Canal Company, 5 rue Charras, Paris. (M. Ferdinand de Lessees. )2 From the initiation of the Suez Canal, we occupied ourselves in organising profit-sharing in favour of our employes. We went to work in a very simple way. It is statutahly provided that 2 per cent, shall be annually distributed among the participating employes, and this year (1883) they received after the general meeting 600,000 frs., (^25,000). A committee composed of employes attends to those of their comrades who are assailed by disease, distress, or inability to work. These institutions maintain a complete unity of feeling between the company and its staff. We have been in a position to receive proofs of the zeal and devotion of our agents, and have only to congratulate ourselves on what we have done. Calico Manufactory, Maromme, Seine-Inferieure. (M. BESSELI^1VRE.)^ What I desire to prove is that in industry on a great scale, where the superintendence is less active than in industry on a small scale, it is to the interest of the employer to take his workmen into association. This measure will cost him nothing. The workman who knows that he is acting on his own account, and that his earnings will grow all the more the better and the more promptly he executes his task, will make efforts which are certain to increase the profits of the establishment. . . . An experience of nearly six years permits me ^ Enquete de la Commission Extra- Parlementaire des Associations Ouvrieres. Paris ; Imprimerie Nationale, 1883, vol. ii. pp. 45, 50, 51-52. * Ibid. pp. 143-144. ® Ibid pp. 189, 193. THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 261 to add that the results obtained from participation have in all points of view surpassed my forecasts. Had space permitted I could easily have added, from the same sources, many other favourable verdicts. It is also true that a few of the witnesses described their workmen, or parti- cular sections of them, as uninfluenced by the stimulus of profit-sharing. The balance of opinion was, however, over- whelmingly in favour of the system. The effect on French industrial opinion of the evidence given before the Minister of the Interior’s commission has been very considerable. As summary proof of this I may refer to statements made on July 13 last^ at a banquet given by the associated trade societies of France — a body corresponding to our trades unionist organisation. Besides representatives from trade societies in the metropolis and many parts of France there were present, by special invitation, the Minister of the Interior, members of the Legislature and of the Paris munici- pality, officers of chambers of commerce and of employers’ associations, &c. The chairman, M. Veyssier, a working painter, after speak- ing of the benefits which might be looked for from co- operative production, said : — The principle of association pure and simple is not yet sufficiently well defined for workmen in general to risk entering upon it. Those unprepared for that step would frankly accept the position of collabo- rators interested in the profits of an establishment under an individual master. It would be the most efficacious mode of attaching them to the house in which they worked, of making them contribute to its prosperity, of maintaining it in good repute, and of enabling the master to depend with certainty on having his plans thoroughly understood by those who were to execute them. The chairman subsequently made a categorical demand on the workmen’s part for ‘ an extension of the practice of partici- pation in the profits of enterprise, the examples of which are very encouraging for employers inclined to imitate them.’ The Minister of the Interior observed that, when workmen endeavoured to secure an increased share in the results of * ‘Z<9 Moniteur des Syyidicats Ouvriers^ Troisifeme Annee, Num^ro 94. 262 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. enterprise by forcing up wages, they adopted an a 'priori and, therefore, necessarily arbitrary procedure, which might even bring destruction upon an industry exposed to foreign competi- tion, and so dry up a national source of wealth. What they claimed was practically conceded, in a form which lent itself to all the variations of the market, by participation in profits. ‘ You,’ said the Minister, addressing the trade societies, ‘ have the power of doing much for its development, for if by your union you succeed in establishing a powerful representation of labour, your voice will be listened to. Capital will understand that, when you ask for a more just remuneration, you concur- rently offer it a guarantee. I believe, then, that trade societies will soon place at the head of their reforms, in the list of their claims, participation in the profits of every enterprise, as being the most equitable remuneration of labour.’ On December 21 last^ at a meeting called by the Masters’ Association in the Building Trades, the Minister of the Interior pressed the same topic on employers of labour. He declared himself the ‘ decided partisan ’ of profit-sharing, which ‘ made the workman a source of increased profit both to himself and to his employer, attached the workman to the house, and estab- lished among all concerned a more and more intimate collabo- ration.’ I close at this point a necessarily incomplete sketch of profit-sharing and of the position which it has won for itself in France. That British industry also stands in urgent need of such a means of conciliation was the settled opinion of one to whose profoundly sincere and impartial mind men of all classes have long looked for guidance. In his work on Pauperismy published in 1871, the late Postmaster- Gfeneral used these words : — It is vain to expect any marked improvement in the general economic condition of the country, as long as the production of wealth involves a keen conflict of opposing pecuniary interests. . . . All experience shows that there can be no hope of introducing more harmonious relations, unless employers and employed are both made * ‘Xe Monitevr des Syndicats Owriers,' Troisieme Annee, Numero 117. THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 263 to feel that they have an immediate and direct interest in the success of the work in which they are engaged.^ Mr. Fawcett was one of the earliest and staunchest suppor- ters of profit-sharing ; he attributed a constantly increasing importance to its extension, and I am convinced that had his life been continued, his voice would have been raised on its behalf at this Conference. In fact, he long since assured me that nothing but the obligations of his ministerial position prevented him from joining me in an active propaganda in its favour. I rejoice to be able to leave the subject of profit-sharing in the hands of the Conference, with so strong a recommendation from so universally trusted a source. APPENDICES. I. Letter from M. J ean Billon, Managing Director of the Joint-Stock Company, Billon et Isaac, Geneva, Switzerland. I willingly comply with the request which you have addressed to me in regard to the present working of participation in our factory. Since the year 1871, when we introduced that principle, it has not ceased to produce its good effects material and moral. In the good years oim workmen have put forth redoubled activity in order to increase the profits. In the bad years, such as that through which we are passing now, they willingly lend themselves to the efforts which we make to attain a more economical production, being aware that it is to their interest to support the house. Our workmen, therefore, possess a knowledge of the difficulties of business, a thing as useful to them as to the employer. The very real advantage which employers derive from participa- tion well applied, consists in having on their side the goodwill and zeal of the workmen, who, without this principle of union, maintain an indifferent, or even a hostile attitude towards the results of business. We have so identified ourselves with participation that we no longer understand industry carried on without the application of this beneficent principle, which establishes community of interests between masters and men, between capital and labour. P. 164. 264 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEEATION CONEEEENCE. One of the great difficulties by which manufacturers are beset is that of having to meet, on the one side, the requirements of customers who are constantly calling for reductions of price in order to reach a larger number of consumers, and on the other, the demand for increase of wages made by workmen whose wants are becoming greater. Participation partly solves this difficulty by giving to the claims of the workmen a legitimate satisfaction without increase of wages. Such increase may entail on a country the loss of an important industry, as we have had the opportunity of seeing and convincing ourselves at Geneva, in regard to several branches of jewelry and clock-making. We will quote here the very correct opinion on participation given by M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the French economist and publicist, who was formerly opposed to the system : — ‘ Participation in profits is to wages what salt and pepper are to bread and meat, a relish, a stimulant. ... It is destined, not to suppress wages, but in some sort to supply their complement and coping-stone. . . . ’ We will say, by way of conclusion, that the share in profits which we allot to our workmen is no sacrifice to our house, since we find it made up for by the good quality of the work obtained, and by economies of time and materials, a source which yields incontestable surplus profits. Geneva, Dec. 12, 1884. II. Letter from Eighty -five Fartici'pating Workmen of the Maison Billon et Isaac. We are happy to be able to tell you that the manner in which M. Billon has organised participation has corresponded favourably to the legitimate expectations of the workmen Becoming, in virtue of the shares acquired by obligatory thrift, co-proprietors of the establishment in which we work, we are bound together by a strong feeling of unity, and it is to our interest to avoid useless expenditure of time, to execute work with all possible intelli- gence, and to economise the tools, materials, &c., which are entrusted to us. In consequence we find these results : that the workman is morally raised, that saving for evil days (sickness, want of employ- ment, &c.) is facilitated, and that a friendly understanding between masters and men is established. Thanks to a good administration, all those questions which appear to present serious difficulty have, in our house, been satisfactorily solved by participation. THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 265 If the workman finds his advantage in the system, what we have just said shows that the master does so too. Many objections have been made against participation, and of late this one : — When a master admits this principle into his house he lowers the daily wages in proportion to the share of profits which he allots. This is an erroneous statement in respect to the house which employs us. But were anyone to maintain that it is preferable to increase wages rather than give a share in profits, we should answer No ! because participation has the advantage of enforcing thrift, and of counteracting the general tendency to increase outlay in proportion to increased earnings, without leaving anything for bad times. Obligatory saving and well-understood individual interest have had a happy influence on many of our colleagues, who have become more conscientious and more laborious. We are convinced that, admitted generally, participation will be a powerful means of breaking down the barriers between masters and men, and of thus solving, in a certain measure, the social question. Geneva, Bee. 10, 1884. Do any Remediable Causes Influence Prejudicially the Well-being of the Working Classes? By Benjamin Jones, of the Co-operative Wholesale Society. (^The numhers in hracTtets, thus (1), refer to the notes, Sfc. in the Apiyendix, p. 276.) By well-being, I understand to be meant prosperity, comfort, and happiness. The remediable causes may be divided into two : first, an insufficient share in the income of the country ; and second, an inefficient expenditure of that share. Both these causes can be removed by the exertions of the working classes themselves ; but they can be removed much more quickly, with the aid and sympathy of other classes. The present annual income of the country is estimated at one thousand two hundred millions sterling (1). This is about equal to 35^. per year per head of the population ; to about 80L per year per head of the population alleged to be engaged in some occupation or employment; and to 170^. per year per family. If the income was actually distributed in something 266 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEEATION CONEEEENCE. like the above proportions, and was efiSciently expended, the amount is sufficient to ensure comfort to everybody. The average cost of maintaining indoor paupers is 10^. per head per year, without reckoning the cost of buildings, or the cost of management (2). There are scores of thousands of honest, hard-working families whose incomes do not amount to so much as 1 0^. per head per year (3). Out of their incomes, too, they have not only to provide food and clothing, hut rent, firing, light, and schooling. They also have to buy their goods retail at enhanced prices, while the poor-law officials buy their goods at wholesale prices. These families must, therefore, live on less than what the guardians consider as absolutely necessary to keep paupers barely in existence. Yet the produce of their labour ought to afford them a larger income : for, when these workers are removed to another district, to perform the same duties, with the same energy and intelligence, they receive much larger payments (4). If some of the working classes receive too little in return for their labour, it follows that somebody else is receiving too much ; and these persons are, apparently, among the rent receivers and monopolists, the capitalists, and those whom econo- mists describe as receiving remuneration for management ; which includes, not only managers and other holders of superior positions, but all capitalists who are employers of labour, or are directly engaged in business operations (5). They are said to receive their shares of the national income through the action of the economic law of supply and demand; and working- people are also said to receive their portions through the action of the same law. As this law has invariably been held up as a rule by which people are compelled to be guided, as it is inva- riably said that people must not grumble so long as they receive all that the action of this law will give them, and as it is asserted that the law is just and beneficent in its action, no one can fairly complain, however badly the shoe may pinch, if working people apply this same law on their own behalf, to obtain an increased share of the produce of their labour. Applied intelligently and judiciously, it will be found possible to reduce the remuneration of capital, to reduce the re- THUESDAY AFTERNOON. 267 muneration of management, and to increase the wages of the workers. The wages of the workers can be increased by extending the practice of keeping working-class children at school till fourteen or sixteen years of age ; by the adoption of shorter hours of labour; by the discontinuance of the practice of married women and mothers going out to work ; by t u better adjustment of each year’s supply of new labour in the different classes of work, so as to prevent overstocking on the one hand, or a short supply on the other ; by superior technical training ; and, perhaps, by a practice of learning two trades, of different characters, so that when one is overstocked, there may be a chance of turning to the other (6). The remuneration of management can be reduced by the higher education of the working classes, which will increase the supply of competent persons for superior positions in proportion to the demand ; and by the formation of Co-operative Associations, where the principal positions will be filled by the selection of the fittest, thus giving the humblest a chance, where now only a few specially favoured ones are allowed it (7). The interest, or profits, on capital can be reduced almost to zero, by the working classes accumulating their own capital, and using it, as far as is necessary, in providing joint self-employment. Capital in the hands of non-workers would then have to be loaned mostly to Associations, and the rate would gradually get lower and lower, until it is conceivable that some would be gladly lent, on perfect security, at no interest, solely for the advantage of receiving it back again at some future time, with- out having the trouble and risk of taking care of it in the interval (8). Kent receivers and monopolists stand to some extent in a class apart. By rent receivers, I do not mean the people who simply receive rents equivalent to interest on moneys actually expended in improvements and buildings. These are in the same position as other capitalists, and the supply and demand principle fully meets their case. But I mean those who, in consequence of their privileged positions as landowners, absorb a large share of the national produce by the appropriation of 268 INDUSTEIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. what is now usually called the unearned increment. This class of rent receivers, together with monopolists generally, can only have their portions reduced by the working classes taking their proper position in the councils of the nation, and sending sufficient members of their own class to Parliament, to insist upon equitable legislation and administration. The greatest intelligence, the highest skill, the strictest honesty, and the most energetic industry, are powerless to improve the well-being of our class, unless the Government is conducted with knowledge, wisdom, integrity and justice (9). By the abolition of inequitable monopolies, and by the equitable administration of national affairs, the working classes would benefit to the extent to which they would be relieved of charges they now have to bear, and by the public executive rendering them additional and improved services. By a re- duction in the rates of interest on capital, the working classes would be benefited to the extent to which they used the capital of others, either directly as borrowers, or indirectly as consumers. By the reduction of the remuneration of manage- ment, the working classes would be benefited to the extent to which they were consumers of the articles persons in such positions helped to produce. By the establishment of co- operative associations, some of the working classes would further benefit by the greater share of lucrative and superior positions which would fall to their lot, by the practice of selecting the most capable men for those positions ; and all would benefit from the greater success which would result through the adoption of this practice. By the direct increase in the wages of the workers, the working classes would benefit to the extent to which other classes consumed their pro- ductions. The total income of the working classes could thus be at least doubled without inflicting the slightest injustice on anybody. Besides this increased income, there is to be considered the additional income that could be derived by a more efficient use of our natural resources. It has been asserted that five hundred millions sterling could be profitably applied to the higher cultivation of the land (10). A general practice of THQESDAY AFTEKNOON. 269 equity would encourage the rapid application of this capital, for persons would then feel secure of receiving their just reward. It would also encourage increased efficiency in most trades ; for there is a great difference in the results from a body of men driven to work, and a body of men working freely, with their hearts in their work. The progress of invention, too, is likely to continue adding to the comforts and enjoyments of life, without adding to its labour (11 ). In the foregoing part, the working classes have been looked at as producers. They must now be looked at as consumers. An increased efficiency in the expenditure of their incomes can be secured as follows : — By supplying their wants through co-operative stores, they reduce to a minimum the costs of distributing their food, clothing, &c., which, by the present system of competitive trading, is conducted in anything but an economical manner ( 12 ). A still more important point is to avoid imprudent marriages and large families. Nothing is so certain as that it is unwise to marry if a man cannot bear the expense of decently maintaining a wife ; and it is equally certain that, say, 30s. a week will not keep a man, his wife, and half-a- dozen children so comfortably as it would keep a man, his wife, and two or three children. With a large family, the mother often lives a life of wretchedness and slavery ; and is unable fco pay those attentions to her husband that would make life sweeter for both of them. The food, clothing, and schooling of six, as compared with that of two, the doctors’ bills, the nursing, and the crowded-out home, must be items on the wrong side of the account, altogether out of proportion to the pleasure that the existence of the additional children can be supposed to confer on the parents (13). The existence of the Eoyal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes speaks to the prevalence of bad and insuf- ficient dwellings. The direct benefits of any reduction in rents would be included in the estimated increased income previously mentioned. But the increased comfort, pleasure, health, energy, and intelligence, which result from good, roomy 270 INDUSTKIAL REMUNEKATION CONFERENCE. dwellings, would, when obtained, be a distinct additional gain, and would mean an increased efficiency in expenditure. Im- proved dwellings, both in town and country, can be obtained by means of co-operation. It is possible in twenty-five years to make all the working people who care for it the owners of their own dwellings, with very little, if any, additional expendi- ture beyond the weekly rents now paid by them (14). One thing, however, will have to be done — at any rate in the country. The men who, as magistrates, commit to prison the man who happens to have no place to lay his head ; and, as landlords, refuse either to build dwellings, or let others build them, will have to cease their dog-in-the-manger policy, and must be compelled to permit their erection. Excessive drinking is another item which I consider sepa- rately on account of its extent. It is estimated that the working classes expend one hundred millions sterling a year, either directly in payment for drink, or indirectly by loss of work, &c. All money spent in drink is not completely wasted. So far as it gives pleasure it may be well spent. But when the drink causes pain, wretchedness, and worse evils, the money is badly spent. The cost of excessive drinking, together with the working time lost thereby, and the loss of home pleasures, must therefore be added to the list of inefficient expenditure (15). Very little improvement in the well-being of our class can take place without providence. By this I don’t mean the penurious system of thrift which is so often recommended to the poor by those who are wealthy. I don’t believe that a man does good or gets good by doing without a pot of beer or a pipe of tobacco merely to enable him to save another sovereign. But by providence I mean a judicious and careful provision for the requirements and contingencies of civilised life. Sick and burial insurance, membership of trades unions, annuities for old age, abolition of the tallyman, and ceasing to take credit for articles of daily consumption, are items that are receiving constantly increasing support. A higher standard, however, must be set up, to which our people will grow steadily, if slowly. Numbers have already grown to it, and even passed it. In addition to what have been enumerated, the possessions of a THUKSDAY AFTERNOON. 271 working-man ought to include a comfortable, well-furnished, freehold dwelling, the amount of capital necessary to provide self-employment, and a sufficient sum to equip each child when it begins to labour for its own subsistence (16). Until men get into this position, they are justified in exercising thrift of a fairly severe character. But I would not go so far as to sacri- fice all, or most, of present day enjoyments for the prospect of future ease and pleasure. The future may never come, and if it does, the penurious man may have become paralysed to all pleasures. Attention to domestic economy is of great importance. Most working men know the difference between a clever house- wife and an inferior one. The value got out of the husband’s earnings by one as compared with the other is immense. A good general knowledge of the relative values of different kinds of food and clothing, of cookery, and of the other essentials for health would add a great deal to the total efficiency of the incomes of the working classes. Associated homes are closely connected with this question. They are as yet very unpopular in England, and may always continue so ; but if adopted, women could be relieved of much household drudgery, the pleasures of home could be largely increased, and all the surroundings could be improved and brightened, without one penny extra cost or a single particle of disadvantage. These benefits would result from division of labour and by enjoying in common those of their possessions which could be used in this manner without private disadvantage (17). By a general adoption of prudence in marriage, of tempe- rance in strong drinks, of habits of providence, of improved domestic economy, of the use of co-operative stores, and of improved dwellings, the spending power of working class incomes would be increased by at least 40 per cent. Part of a man’s income can well be devoted to shortening his hours of labour ; or as it would be usually put, he can work less, and so earn less. If the time is not excessively shortened, he will be able to recoup some portion of his so-called lost time, by the increased energy and skill he could put into his work. His so-called leisure hours should be partly used in looking 272 INDUSTKIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. after the interests of the public, both in local and national affairs. The practice of holding Town Council meetings, and that of other organised bodies, in the evenings, would enable working men to take a fair share of this work. Doing it, would also help to break down those stiff social barriers which are bad for both rich and poor. Community of feeling, and identity of tastes, might well be considered better rules for the selection of friends, than the possession or non-possession of wealth. The range of choice of amusements for working people has been very limited ; but it is rapidly widening, and will soon be varied enough to suit everybody. The great difficulty remain- ing in connexion with recreation, is how to spend Sunday, It is almost a compulsory choice now* between Bible and beer. There ought to be other choices open for those who do not care to be so extremely limited. The opening of museums, libraries, and newsrooms on Sundays, with proper provision for the attendants having a holiday during the week, would not hurt anybody, and would do good to thousands (18). With increased wealth and culture among the working classes, we may look forward to an increased love of the beautiful among them. This might be accelerated, if steps were taken to improve the public and semi-public property in working class districts. Perhaps it will convey distinctly what I mean, by suggesting that Mr. Kuskin would be more likely to improve the artistic tastes of the nation, if, instead of hindering its growth among the working classes by preventing the construction of railways in picturesque localities, he would help to prevent railway companies erecting hideous, foul, dripping viaducts in thickly populated neighbourhoods. Rail- ways need not necessarily be ugly ; and the cost of building an attractive viaduct as compared with the cost of an ugly one, makes a very minute difference in the total. Railway com- panies should remember that if monopolies have their rights, they also have their duties (19). There is a class below the ordinary working class that re- quires notice — Mr. Bright’s famous ‘ residuum.’ This class com- prises criminals, paupers, casuals, and those just above them, who have some self-respect and power of work left, which causes THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 273 them to labour fitfully, so as to provide the means of existence. It is largely recruited from all classes, although the working class is usually charged by the others with being the sole source of supply. The problem of dealing with them is a difficult one. Intelligent benevolence may do a great deal to alleviate their misery, but it cannot do much to raise them up. Efforts have been made, and are being made, which, if successful, would mean thrusting them above the heads of members of the un- skilled working class, who, by their prudence and industry, would not deserve to be so treated. In charity, as well as other things, considerations of equity should prevail ; and for benevo- lent persons to help into positions of prosperity and comfort people who have for perhaps half a lifetime led drunken and dissolute lives, is to put a premium on extravagance and im- providence, which acts as a direct discouragement to the weaker portion of working people, who see such acts of unjust and senti- mental partiality perpetrated (20). Men and women who have fallen, should be encouraged and stimulated to rise by their own efforts, but should not be pitchforked into renewed pros- perity. At the very best, few of the older ones can be re- claimed. Habits once formed are difficult to break. While, therefore, one would wish success to every effort, we must rely more on prevention than cure. If the young ones can be trained to better things, an improvement must follow, for the old ones will die out. To the young, the nation owes a duty. It is the godfather and godmother who has to train up its godchildren when the parents do not or cannot do it. So long as these godchildren of the State are not treated better than ordinary working class children are treated, nobody can justly complain, no evil will be done, and society will be benefited. Having sketched the methods of increasing working class incomes, and of increasing the spending power of those incomes, there remains the question, how are people to be induced to use these methods ? There is only one way. They must be instructed and educated. At last, our children are receiving a sound elementary education. To give them an opportunity of realising all the blessings that life can bestow, they need higher training in (a) technical knowledge ; (b) in T 274 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. culture; (c) in the moral and economic value of equity; and {d) in the power which is derived from association, the necessity for being associated, the objects for which people ought to unite, and the relative advantages and disadvantages in the different phases of life, of individual freedom as com- pared with association. Technical schools should be provided for both boys and girls, and should include in their teaching every class of work, whether of a domestic, commercial, or manufacturing character. The steps already taken deserve encouragement, but pro- vision for instruction should be speedily made general all over the country ; and Government grants, together with local rates in aid, ought to be used to effect it (21). Working-men ought to have in this, as in all other matters, a proper share in the direction of the work. It will be all the more successful with adequate representative management. Culture is needed to enable us to obtain all the happiness that may be derived from our surroundings, and has the addi- tional advantage of tending to place all men on a level in con- duct and social intercourse. The system of evening lectures by university men seems to meet the necessities of the case, if they can be given in sufficiently numerous centres, and if people will more generally attend them. It they succeed in inducing some people to derive pleasure from scientific pursuits which may in- crease the sum of human knowledge, and lead to inventions of permanent usefulness, a double benefit will have been secured (22). The practice of equity needs teaching to all classes (23), perhaps less to the working class than to those above them. It ought to be made a compulsory subject in all schools, colleges, and universities, and its teaching ought to occupy more of the time of our Church clergymen and dissenting ministers. There is, I think, a distinct economic value attached to the practice of equity, equivalent to its moral value. It is obscured by the general custom of taking advantage of one another. When every man is an Ishmaelite, there must be a great waste of power. If all treated each other by the rule of 'Doing to others as you would like others to do to you,’ there would be a THUKSDAY AFTERNOON. 275 large force set at liberty, which could be devoted to more pro- fitable uses than those of attack and defence. Teaching the power, objects, and necessity of association is absolutely necessary for making a good citizen ; and together with equity ought to form part of the secondary education of every child. Teaching it, involves an accurate perception of the value of imperial, national, and local government ; and of voluntary associations of all kinds, whether for benevolent, social, or industrial purposes. It would be a teaching of what we co-operators understand as ‘ complete co-operation.’ While it would rigidly respect the individual liberty of citizens, it would enable them to obtain all the undoubted advantages which flow from equitable association, chief among which may be placed the emancipation from the thraldom and tyranny of individuals ; who, abusing the power which the existing social system has placed in their hands, have used it mercilessly, while they have neglected the duties which morally, if not legally, devolved upon them (24). Until we can get these subjects included in our national educational system (25) we must rely on voluntary effort. It will be another addition to the numerous proofs of the capacity of British workmen, if they succeed in evolving a system of teaching the principles of equitable association, which, when put into practice, mean general peace, prosperity, and happi- ness. The attempt is being made, and, so far, there has been fair progress. The work is great, and the workers are few. Members of other classes with plenty of leisure can here find plenty of work. It is much harder than almsgiving, or doing things for people. It means teaching people how to do things for themselves. There is a great tax on the patience, and very little gratification of man’s vanity ; but the worker would have a nobler reward in the consciousness of having done something which would solidly promote the national well being. It would redound to their credit if, sinking class selfishness, men of edu- cation and leisure would come forward, and teach their less favoured brethren. Our path would be smoothed and straight- ened. But with the help of other classes, or without their help, the work will be done. The path may be longer and more 276 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEKATION CONFEEENCE. rugged, but the same sterling qualities which have raised up so many working-men to devote themselves to the well-being of their class, will raise up increasing numbers, until the work is fully accomplished. APPENDICES. Note 1. Page 102. Total estimated income of the country. This amount of one thousand two hundred millions is given by Mr. Giffen in his Progress of the Working Classes in the last half century y p. 27, but he supplies no data for the estimate. Note 2. Page 102. Cost of maintenance of indoor paupers. The thirteenth annual report of the Local Government Board gives the following details, among others, of pauperism, pp. xvi. and xvii. : Mean number of paupers in England and Wales, in-doors, in 1883 182,932 Cost of in-door maintenance of ditto in 1883 . . £1,869,505 Workhouse and other loans repaid and interest . £430,185 Salaries and rations of officers, and superannuations £1,117,705 Other expenses of, or immediately connected with, relief £1,303,416 Note 3. Page 102. Families whose incomes do not exceed 10^. per head per year. In England and Wales there are on the average three children under twelve and a half years of age to each married woman under forty-five years of age. In Scotland and Ireland the proportion will be somewhat larger. There must, therefore, be a large proportion of the working classes in families of five and six, where the father is the only bread-winner. In all such families where the father’s wages do not amount to U. a week all the year round, they must come in the above category. As it is a well-known fact that the number of adult workers with less than an average N. a week income can be counted by the million, no further proof of my statement will be needed. It is too modest, and should read ‘ hundreds of thousands.’ Note 4. Page 102. The produce of their labour ought to afford them a larger income. The migration of a Dorsetshire labourer to a Lancashire or THUESDAY AFTEENOON. 277 Northumberland farm would enable the man to nearly double his wages. Love of bis native place, apathy, ignorance, and lack of money to pay removal expenses, combine to keep him at home. Similar motives operate to produce inequalities in the wages of other classes in different districts, to a greater extent than the inequalities in the cost of living would produce. The low wages mean an in- creased share to the landlord, and in some cases to the employer. Note 5. Page 102. If the loorking- classes receive too little, somebody else must receive too much. Aimold Toynbee in his lectures on Progress and Poverty, p. 39, estimates the value of the unearned increment in land at sixty millions a year. Members of the working classes have few opportunities of occu- pying lucrative positions. All superior positions in national and local government, in the army and navy, in the church, and in the legal and medical professions, are occupied solely by members of the other classes. It is almost exactly the same in commerce and industry. The opinion of John Stuart Mill will be gathered by the follow- ing extract from Chapters on Socialism, published by Miss Taylor in the Fortnightly Review, February 1879, p. 226. ‘ Since the human race has no means of enjoyable existence, or of existence at all, but what it derives from its own labour and absti- nence, there would be no ground for complaint against society if every one who was willing to undergo a fair share of this labour and absti- nence could attain a fair share of the fruits. But is this the fact % Is it not the reverse of the fact % The reward, instead of being propor- tioned to the labour and abstinence of the individual, is almost in an inverse ratio to it : those who receive the least, labour and abstain the most. ‘ The very idea of distributive justice, or of any proportionality between success and merit, or between success and exertion, is in the present state of society so manifestly chimerical as to be relegated to the regions of romance. ‘ The most powerful of all the determining circumstances is birth. The great majority are what they were born to be. Some are born rich without work, others are born to a position in which they can become rich by work, the great majority are born to hard work and poverty throughout life, numbers to indigence.’ 278 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. Note 6. Page 103. The ivages of the workers can he increased. The practice of keeping children at school to a later age has been gradually growing since the Elementary Schools Act of 1870. It has already had a beneficial efiect on wages. If, on the average, our children were kept at school an additional year, 550,000 children would be kept off the labour market, and this would of course ulti- mately affect the supply of adult labour. It is true there would be an outcry against the folly of teaching working-class children so well j and how much better it would be if they were at work ; but what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander ! Well-to-do people keep their children at school for years after working-class children of the same age have been earning their daily bread, and neither parents nor children seem the worse for it. The adoption of shorter hours of labour would raise even a greater outcry. It would be said that there is nothing for it but the impor- tation of coolies or Chinese. If they were imported they would not be used to much advantage. They would die off rapidly under the in- fluence of the climate. Public opinion, too, would be against the degradation of the nation by an infusion of such inferior elements. Then the imported labourers could not fall into the places of native workers and work with natives. They could not keep up either in time or skill. The whole machine would be disorganised, and what might be gained in money would be lost in efficiency. The same re- marks would not apply with the same force to importation of labour from other European countries, but still they would apply, and the workers here have this advantage, that through their trades unions they can influence French and German workers to be steadfast in their demands for somewhere near what native workers themselves ask for. The following statement of the estimated number of spindles per worker in different countries will support the above view — it is taken by Mr. Jeans from Mulhall’s Progress of the World : — Cotton spindles per operative. Great Britain United States Germany France Russia Austria India . 83 66 46 24 20 20 20 THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 279 It is further supported by the following extract from the paper read to the Statistical Society in December last, on Home and Foreign Labour, by Mr. Jeans ; — ‘ With reference to the quantity of work capable of being produced by workmen of different nationalities under conditions as far as possi- ble similar and parallel in every respect, the best information that I have found is that communicated to the Institute of Civil Engineers only a few months ago by Mr. Charles 0. Budge, as the results of his own experience in the execution of engineering contracts in different countries. ‘ In these tables the labour dealt with was : — ‘ (1) Earthwork. ‘ (2) Ordinary bricklaying. ‘ (3) Hammer-squared rubble (dressing and setting only). ‘ (4) Painting on new work. ‘ The results are herewith tabulated : — ‘No. 1. — Earthwork. ^ Side cutting excavated and removed to embankment ; the nature of the soil, the lift, and the lead, being approximately the same in each case. Showing the amount of work done in a given time, average EngUsh quantity being unity Cost of unit of work (labour only) English average being imity Englishmen ..... Frenchmen, Belgians, Germans . Southern Europeans Hottentot half-breeds . Kaffirs, Zulus, &c. Stronger Indian races . Inferior „ ... 1-00 0*75 to 0-90 0-60 „ 0-85 0-50 „ 0-80 0-40 „ 0-70 0-40 „ 0-70 0-26 „ 0-40 1-00 0-90 to 1*00 0-60 „ 0-80 0-90 „ 1-25 0-80 „ 1-00 0-25 „ 0-60 0-20 „ 0-50 ‘ No. 11. — Ordinary Bricklaying. The amount of work done in a given time, average English quan- tity being unity Cost of unit of work (skilled labour only), English average being unity Englishmen . • • • • 1-00 1-00 Frenchmen, men, &c. . Germans, Dutch- 0-80 to 1-00 0-80 to 1-00 Natives of India (best class) 0-40 „ 0-50 0-50 „ 0-65 (inferior) . 0-30 „ 0-40 0-43 „ 0 60 280 INDUSTKIAL REMUNEKATION CONFERENCE. ‘No. III. — Hammer- Squared Rubble (Dressing and Setting only). Englishmen 1-00 1-00 Frenchmen, Germans, &c. . 0-75 to 0-90 0-90 to 1-00 Southern Europeans 0-55 „ 0-70 0-70 „ 0-80 Natives of India (best class) 0-40 „ 0-60 0-65 „ 0-80 „ (inferior) . 0-33 „ 0-50 0-60 „ 0-80 ‘No. IV. — Painting on New Work. Englishmen ..... 1-00 1-00 Natives of India .... 0-40 to 0-60 0*60 to 0-80 ‘ It is not necessary to offer any comments on the foregoing figures, which show clearly the comparative capacity of workmen in different countries for doing work that is so greatly dependent on strength and energy. With reference to the cost of such work, Mr. Budge disputes the late Mr. Brassey’s conclusion that difference of wages does not materially affect the price of work, contending that if Mr. Brassey meant that wages generally adjust themselves to the ability of the workmen his statement was certainly open to question,” and setting foi*th, with reference to “ that class of work in which manual labour is the chief ingredient,” that the result arrived at is, “ in general, this : that the lower the wage, the lower is the price of work, though of course not in the same proportion.” ’ It is possible to combine shorter hours of labour, at the full pre- vious wages, with increased net profits to capital, and without an in- crease in the selling price of the goods. For instance, a cotton spin- ning mill running night and day six days a week, with relays of hands every six hours, would work 144 hours a week as against 56 hours usually worked. Assuming a capital of 100,000/. the 56-hours-a-week wages would be 11,000/. a year. The sum written off plant would be 5,000/. per year, and at 8 per cent, the dividend to capital would be 8,000/. a year. The total would be 24,000/. The production would be increased in the proportion of 56 : 144, so that the amount available for depreciation of plant and payment of dividend would be increased to 33,400/., or a surplus of 20,400/. a year. But the addi- tional sum required to pay the four sets of workers the same wages for 36 hours’ work as they received before for 56 hours will take 15,700/., leaving a surplus of 4,700/., which would give an in- creased dividend to capital of 4y^^ per cent, per annum. There would still be large savings from cost of management, and rates and taxes being spread over a larger production, which would probably meet all extra expenses of gas and repairs that might be incurred. Of course, all trades could not be manipulated in this manner* THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 281 But we want to rectify injustice, and give to every man his due. Men engaged in transport seem to suffer especially from long hours. Yet the injustice could be remedied sometimes without even those who profit by the injustice very much feeling the cost of the remedy. The following figures have been extracted from the London and North- Western Railway Company’s balance sheet, and an estimate made, based on the hours of labour now worked, as shown in the return published by the Amalgamated Railway Servants, of the difference that would be made in the profit of that great Company by the appli- cation of the eight-hours system without any reduction in wages : — Estimated Difference to the London and North-Western Rail- way Company by Paying Present Wages for an 8-Hours Day. Department Present Wages Basis of 8 Hours £ £ Maintenance of way, salaries 20,018 20,018 „ wages 136,112 164,000 Locomotive power, salaries . 19,985 19,985 „ wages . 225,699 271,000 „ repairs and renew- als, wages 88,079 98,000 Carriages and wagons, repairs and renewals, salaries .... 4,149 4,149 Ditto, wages ..... 57,251 64,000 Traffic department, coaching, salaries and wages 230,779 288,000 General charges, salaries 33,508 33,508 Traffic department, merchandise. salaries and wages .... 416,285 520,000 Totals .... £1,231,865 £1,482,660 Balance .... 250,795 £1,482,660 £1,482,660 This additional expenditure would reduce the net revenue by 10 per cent., which would be equal to ^ per cent, on the whole capital, and nearly equal to 1^ per cent, on the ordinary stock of the Com- pany. This is supposing there is no increased efficiency in the work through the shorter hours of labour, but a prolonged experience has convinced me that an eight-hours’ labour will give better proportionate results than a longer day will do. It is an undeniable fact that those who receive the highest remu- neration give the least number of hours’ labour in return for it. The weekly hours of labour of professional men, public officials, and heads of businesses, will not exceed 33 hours after holidays are reckoned off. The best situated of our artisans work 54 hours a week, and lose 282 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. their pay if they lose their time. Other workers are employed 60, 90, and as many as 105 hours a week. In London itself men will often work 90 hours for from 175. to 205. a week of wages. The discontinuance of the practice of married women and mothers going out to work would meet with opposition from mill-owners, but would be looked upon with satisfaction by the greater and better part of the nation. It is absolutely needed, if working people are to be happy. At least 500,000 women now at work could then be looking to the comfort of their homes, instead of leaving them in a state of wretchedness. The proper adjustment of the new supply of labour year by year is a part of a big question. The workers know very little of the in- fluences that are at work, causing ebbs and flows in the prosperity of different trades. This is a Government question : the Board of Trade ought to supply not only to employers, but to the trades unions and other organised bodies, the fullest statistical and other informa- tion on all matters affecting their well-being. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Many a disastrous break in trade could have been prevented by a timely warning to the men of what was likely to happen. The general establishment of technical schools would afford an opportunity for men to become familiar with more than one trade. It is possible that considerable distress could be prevented if men be- came more adaptable, and when one trade did not supply employment were able to turn to another. The idea may not perhaps be a popular one, but it would benefit more than it would harm. If the law of supply and demand has any effect, there must be a rise of wages from the contraction of the supply of labour by the carry- ing out of the above suggestions. Employers not infrequently take notice of this law when it tells against the workmen. It is for working- men to take notice of it when the state of affairs is in their favour. Note 7. Page 103. The remuneration of management can he reduced. Mr. Giffen (page 27, Progress of Working Classes), says the greatest part of the increase of wealth during the last half century has gone to the working classes and the next greatest part to remune- ration for management. Whether the first part be true or not, the second undoubtedly is, and there have been comparatively few among whom the grand total has been divided. There is here an immensely fertile field for energetic workmen. They can multiply their wages, obtain easier and pleasanter employment, and work less hours. Yet by taking less remuneration than is now taken by the present occu- THUESDAY AFTEKNOON. 283 piers of these pleasant positions, they can confer benefits on their fellow-workmen. Fair payment must of course be made for responsi- bilities and talents, but after all has been thus allowed, a very great saving can be effected. It is almost impossible to do so without the accumulation of working class capital, and its investment in co-opera- tive associations ; but with these conditions success is certain. An Oldham joint-stock spinning company, with 100,000^. capital, will spend 700?. to 1,000?. a year for management salaries, and fees of directors. The shareholders will supply about 50,000?., and will borrow the remainder at or 5 per cent, per annum. They then take all the profits. This is not an ideal form of co-operation. It does not satisfy my ideas of equity, but it is a step in the right direc- tion, and all steps must be encouraged and welcomed. The profits are diffused among 200 or 300 men instead of being concentrated in the pockets of one or two. I have within the past few weeks noticed the following dividends declared for the Christmas quarter : — Croft Bank Co. . .15 per cent, per annum. Duke . . . • 16f Parkside . . .10 Boyton . . . .13^ Sun Mill ... 10 There are over ninety joint-stock spinning companies in and around Oldham, with a capital of seven to eight millions sterling. They have nearly crushed out the private master spinners by the energy and skill with which they have taken up every mechanical improvement, and taken advantage of market fluctuations. They have their own banking and insurance companies, and have a joint cotton-buying Agency in Liverpool to keep in check the cotton brokers. Working- men in Oldham and its immediate neighbourhood have, during the last twenty years, secured more positions of control and management than have been accomplished by all the working-men in the country during any previous twenty years. The ideal of co-operation is to secure the equitable treatment of all interests. But this is difficult of attainment until the nation has re- ceived a better training in the meaning of equity. All classes more or less desire to get the advantage. It has often been asked : How are you going to apply your co-operative ideas to the management of railways ? A management could be devised which would probably do away with the supposed necessity for the State taking over the railways. I dislike the idea of all organisations being managed from one Government centre. Voluntary associations for every purpose, with full liberty on equitable terms for individuals to leave them and JJ 5J 284 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. join them, would better meet the exigencies of national life. There would be more flexibility in satisf}dng the varying wants of the people. A method of managing the railway companies would be to allow everybody concerned a voice in their management through duly elected representatives. At present only shareholders are allowed a direct voice. But the employes and the customers have interests in the railways which, although at present ignored, would warrant them in having a share of the management allotted to them. The basis would be the amount of capital invested by shareholders, the amount of trade done by the customers, and the capitalised value of the wages of the employes reckoned at the same rate as the dividends allowed to capital. This would be nearly perfect. Each class could elect its own representatives ; the passengers would be the most difficult to arrange, but it could be got over. The proportions on the London and North-Western Eailway would be as follows : — Shareholders . . . management. Employes .... » » Customers .... » » There is great difficulty in establishing co-operative productive associations, owing to the prejudice that exists against them. Mr. Broadhurst at the Oxford Co-operative Congress in 1882, told how he and some others started a masons’ association, which came to grief solely because architects would not give it a chance of competing for business. Still there is a deal of co-operative production success- fully conducted in the country, and it is likely to increase rapidly, Worhing-men Co-operators (page 102) gives the facts as follows : — Capital employed Annual production Number of employes £ £ Co-operative wholesale societies’ works ..... 60,000 180,000 1,200 Co-operative corn mills 500,000 1,800,000 300 Other productive associations 120,000 200,000 800 Domestic productions (such as shoemaking and tailoring) by co-operative societies 120,000 900,000 4,000 Totals £800,000 £3,080,000 6,300 Trades unions have a means of helping forward co-operative pro- duction which no other body of working men has. Every union has a certain number of men on donation, whose weekly drawings form a serious drain on the funds. Taking the Ironfounders, who number THUESDAY AFTERNOON. 285 12,000 members, a levy of 2^. per member would produce 1,200^. This sum would start a small stove and fire-grate factory. Men on donation could be invited to work at this factory until they could get regular employment elsewhere, on condition of being paid half wages in cash, and to take a share of the profits in lieu of the re- mainder. The Labourers’ union could be invited to supply labourers on the same terms. The produce would be sold at the best obtain- able prices, and the men would have a powerful lever to effect a successful result, since they could overcome prejudice by appealing to the cupidity of the purchasers through selling cheaply in case of need. They could do this if needed with impunity, because of their peculiar mode of paying wages and their relations to the union. No long time would elapse before fair working profits could be made. The process could be repeated by making fresh levies, as well as by using the union’s share of the profits, including the saved donations. There is no reason why the example of Oldham cannot be followed in many trades. It only needs the application of similar intelligence, energy, and perseverance. There are economists who think that the best men generally succeed in getting the best positions. The wish is evidently father to the thought, but while I am convinced that such a state of things would be equally beneficial to all the nation, I am equally convinced that it rarely happens in actual life. It does not depend so much on a man’s talent and capacity as on circumstances, wLether he is a humble laboui’er at low wages with long hours, or occupies a superior position with short hours and high remuneration. Some of the cleverest men I have known have been in receipt of low wages for hard work ; and some of the silliest men I have known have been in comfortable positions with short hours, easy work, and handsome remuneration. The common practice is for employers to put sons, nephews, and other relatives into superior positions regardless of their abilities ; and when these employers retire, if they have no relatives to take the business they sell it to the highest bidder, regardless of his capacity to keep the concern successful, and usually regardless of the fate of their workpeople. If co-operative associations did nothing beyond affording all talent a chance of rising to the top it would be worth adopting, and the economic advantage of having the best men in superior positions must, in a state of free trade, ultimately elbow private trade, with its system of favouritism, out of existence. The tendency of the times is in favour of everybody interested in a business having a share in its management and benefiting from its success. Co-operators only differ from multitudes of other people in formally acknowledging the existence of this tendency, and in 286 INDUSTKIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. earnestly advocating it, instead of silently drifting with the tide of public opinion in its favour. Note 8. Page 103. Interest on cajntal can he reduced almost to zero. There is a favourite axiom among wealthy people that capital is cosmopolitan ; it has wings, and can fly from one country to another. This is partially true. If the idea of the value of capital being so very reduced causes alarm, and induces people to say they will invest their money abroad, there is no objection to their doing so. It may in fact be absolutely necessary for them to take this step, unless they are willing to work as well as invest capital. The working classes can very well do without outside capital, if they will only save their own. Wealthy people will, however, prefer to live in England even if all their capital is invested abroad, because with a practice of universal equity, and the general possession by its people of some wealth and great comfort, it will be the safest and pleasantest country in the world in which to make a home. If they make England their home, their income must be remitted here ; and they will be only too glad to let bankers take care of it for nothing, or even pay them for doing so, rather than have it stored up in their own homes. It would not take very many years for working people to acquire all the capital they need without the necessity of saving any of their wages, if they will adopt the simple device originated by the early co-operators, of keeping their own shop and accumulating the profits. Estimating their expenditure on food, fuel, and clothing at three hundred millions a year, the application of co-operation would save, at a minimum estimate, twenty-four millions a year. This sum steadily accumulated at 5 per cent, compound interest would amount in forty years to 3,360,000,000/. The salvation of the working classes is in their own hands. By using their savings in purchasing railway shares and company shares of all kinds, giving preference to those in which they may be concerned as employes, they could use their power as shareholders to improve their positions as workers, and to secure a full share in all the emoluments arising from the undertaking. At present they invest largely in savings’ banks at a small rate of interest, and throw away all the power the possession of this money would give them if they knew how to use it. Their eyes want opening, and their ears unstopping. THUKSDAY AFTEKNOON. 287 Note 9. Page 103. Monopolies can only he restricted or abolished by luorking people taking their fidl share in the government of the country. To obtain full benefit, working people must not only fully share in imperial government, but in local government, and in all organisa- tions for the public good. A glance at the progress of public opinion, as shown in the following extracts, will satisfy most people that the time is not far distant when this state of things will be brought about : — ‘ Large masses of men, acting in obedience to the word of com- mand, may, perhaps, not always be instructed to abstain from violence. Some of the agitators of the trades unions have already threatened to reproduce the procession of 1780 to the Houses of Parliament, if they can induce Mr. Bright, like Lord George Gordon, to receive their petition at the door of the House of Commons.’ — Times Summary, 1866. ‘ Notwithstanding the progress of democracy, Englishmen are not yet prepared to be governed by the vicious agency of political clubs.’ — Times Summary, 1867. ‘ The personal character and social position of the members of the reformed House of Commons have reassured, and perhaps permanently reassured, many anxious politicians. There are as many rich men and men of family as in any former Parliament; and candidates belonging to the working class, or affecting specially to represent it, were uniformly unsuccessful.’ — Times Summary, 1868. ‘ Unfortunately, their (agricultural labourers) deficient education exposes them to the temptation of revolutionary theories, and some of them readily accept the suggestion that they have a claim, not to larger wages or to better houses, but to a share in the land.’ — Times Summary, 1872. ‘ The advent of the democracy to power will, we believe, be marked by a more just, more generous, and more far-seeing policy towards our kin beyond the sea than is embodied in the recent actions of the Colonial Office. Nor are we less hopeful that in our relations with other nations the English democracy will be found more straightforward in its actions, more ready to define its wants, more tenacious of its own dignity, and more mindful of the just claims of others than this country has recently shown itself.’ — Times Leader, Jan. 1, 1885. The working classes cannot be properly represented in Parliament until provision is made, either by voluntary or legislative action, to maintain the representatives while serving their terms of office. The 288 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. wealthy classes have hitherto uniformly resisted proposals to pay mem- bers of Parliament. Non-payment means in some cases indirect and excessive payment. It also means the preservation to the wealthy classes of the monopoly of legislative and administrative functions ; and this involves a certainty of class interests being more or less un- fairly served. Besides, however much members of the upper classes may sympathise with, and desire to help, the working classes, they cannot do so effectively without actively associating on an equal footing with members of the working classes, who ‘ have gone thro’ the grinding of the mill,’ and know all its good and bad character- istics. The exigencies of party warfare, which have done so much for the working classes in the past, are likely to continue to serve them in the future. The time is not far distant when this point will be con- ceded. A strong symptom is the publication by the Times^ on November 28, 1884, of a list of the countries that pay their legislators. This list is worthy giving. Argentine Confederation £700 0 0 per year. Belgium . 16 16 0 per month during session. Brazil, Senators . 360 0 0 for the session. „ Deputies . . 240 0 0 „ and travelling expenses. Canada ^1,000 for any session extending over 30 days, and ten cents per mile for tra- velling expenses. France . £450 0 0 per year. Holland 166 0 0 per year and travelling expenses. Mexico ^2,000 per year. Norway 0 13 4 per day and travelling expenses. Portugal 0 10 0 per day. United States £1,000 0 0 per year and travelling expenses. The question of vested interests is a vexed one. Yet working people must study it carefully so as to avoid committing injustice. It is easy to comprehend the principle that it is unwise to remedy one injustice by committing another of equal or greater proportions. This would be granted and acted upon. But it is not so easy to define other points connected with this subject. For instance, if a person or body of persons obtain from Parliament a monopoly on certain terms, and subsequently discover they have made a bad THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 289 bargain, they come to Parliament again, and ask it to amend the grant. This is usually acceded to. But if the parties have made an exceptionally good bargain at the expense of the public, and the public wish for it to be made more equitable, there is at once raised a cry of spoliation. Such questions require fully discussing. Work- ing people will not knowingly commit injustice, but they will insist upon themselves having justice. There are other ways of making monopolies less profitable, such as by taking advantage of scientific inventions and not conceding any further legal protection to the monopolists. The improved steam transit with foreign countries, the frozen meat process, the projected Dutch enterprise for building special milk- carrying steamers to supply the London markets, have all tended, or are tending, to destroy a great portion of the value of the land mono- poly in England. Care only has to be exercised that the landlords, under the pretence of seeking the public good, do not raise up barriers to the free exercise of these means, and so once more im- prove the value of their special privileges. It would pay landlords to periodically cause the importation of diseased cattle or infected milk and butter, so as to induce the public to consent to the pro- hibiting or restricting of their import. Of course landlords are too honourable to indulge in such practices, but the fact that it would pay is somewhat curious, and ought not to be lost sight of. Perhaps the best and surest way with monopolies is to extinguish them by a gradual process, so as to inflict as little suffering as possible. This cannot always be done ; and there is to be guarded against the possibility of other monopolies and privileges of an obnoxious character growing up unobserved as fast as the older ones are ex- tinguished. Note 10. Page 268. Higher cultivation of land. It is worth noting here, that while the land is starved for capital owing to absurd restrictions and the maintenance of in- equitable privileges, there are some landlords going about the country trying to persuade working-men that a tax on corn would improve the demand for labour and raise wages. It would certainly raise rents. If these men would attract capital to the land, the demand for labour would be quickly stimulated, and even the landlords would gain by it. u 290 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. Note 11. Page 269. The 'progress of i'nvention is likely to continue adding to the comforts and enjoyments of life. If a good case can ever be made out in favour of monopolies, it is when it will enable a man to reap the fruits of a beneficial invention which may have cost him great toil, thought, and money. Yet it is in these cases that we have men of social position declaring that it is not right to grant even temporary monopolies to inventors. As it is, this class of men rarely get their just reward. If their inventions are of value, there are usually some men with money who basely try to rob the inventors of their profits, by either making up a close imita- tion, or by disputing the validity of the patent. In both cases, unless the inventor has money, or can get a moneyed man to back him up, he goes to the wall ; and if he fights and wins, he still loses largely by the battle. Perhaps the only ways out of this system of social robbery are the formation of a co-operative association for the protection of inventions, and a greater respect for justice among all classes. The existence of an association ready and able to defend its members, would deter many men who would otherwise eagerly pounce on a defenceless weak individual. When all the people receive technical instruction and receive the full benefits of their skill and industry, the progress of invention must necessarily be stimulated, since so many more people will be on the look-out than in our present dormant state. The greater the progress of invention, and the greater will be the possibilities of increased well- being for the people. Note 12. Page 269. Supplying their wants through co-operative stores. This has been alluded to in note 8. The actual amount of work- ing class co-operative store-keeping is stated by Working Men Go- operators, pages 30, 78-83, to be as follows at the end of the year 1882 Number of retail societies . . . 1,200 Number of members .... 640,000 Share and loan capital .... ^8,000,000 Annual sales ..... ^25,500,000 Annual profits ..... £2,100,000 There are also stated to be two co-operative wholesale societies formed of the retail societies, consisting of 490,403 individual members. Their united position was as follows at the end of 1883 : — THUKSDAY AFTERNOON. 291 £ Capital ....... 874,236 Reserve Fund ...... 62,288 Annual Sales ...... 5,749,887 They have three boot and shoe works, one soap works, one biscuit and sweet works, one pig-killing and ham-curing factory, and six steamships. They have their own places of business, in addition to the above enumerated workshops, in seven places in England, three in Scotland, seven in Ireland, one in France, one in Germany, one in Denmark, and one in America. The two concerns were originated and are managed by working men. The profit intercepted by co-operators, and which would other- wise go to private firms, is included in the estimate of increased in- come. But there are additional savings over and above these, which make a further gain to the workman co-operator. These are greater efficiency in management, resulting in increased profits ; and greater freedom from loss by adulteration and other forms of cheating. The expenses of management in both retail and wholesale co-operative stores is notoriously much below similar expenses in private firms, and is principally caused by co-operators having their customers ready to their hands, while competitive traders have to hunt up cus- tomers and fight for them against other traders. The average ex - penses of retail stores will be fully one-third less than the average expenses of private shopkeepers, while the expenses of the two whole- sale societies are not half the amount of private wholesale firms in proportion to the business done. It is also to the credit of co- operators, and part of the benefits of co-operation, that they were the pioneers of shorter hours for shopmen, and were the first to give a weekly half-holiday to them. The following extracts from the Local Government Board’s Report for 1883-4 (pp. cx. and cxi.) will give some idea of the prevalence of adulteration, and the consequent value of co-operation as a safe- guard : — Samples analysed in 1883 . . . . 19,648 Samples found adulterated .... 2,955 Percentage of adulterations .... 15 ’04 The Report says : — ‘ On a former occasion we gave the grounds for a calculation that Londoners pay between 70,000^. and 80,000?. a year for water sold under the name of milk, and we are inclined to think that the estimate was by no means excessive. We find that the public analyst for Plumstead calculates that in that single district 292 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. the milkmen receive between 7,000/. and 8,000/. for water, while the fines for adulteration imposed on them collectively amounts to about 100/. annually.’ Note 13. Page 269. Imprudent marriages and large families. False modesty ought not to be allowed to prevent a thorough investigation into these two important questions. Peal wisdom consists in acquiring an accurate perception of the truth, and then acting upon it. No one ought to be shocked at human beings using the reasoning powers they are blessed with, rather than continuing to act as if they possessed no more reason than wild beasts. It is all the more ridiculous to do so, as human beings are in the daily habit of regu- lating with the most scientific precision the increase in the population of pigs, sheep, horses, and cattle. The late Joseph Kay, in Free Trade in Land, p. 178, says : ‘A poor man in Germany, Holland, France, and Switzerland is, from his education, intelligent enough to be able to calculate his chances. He knows, when he begins his life, that if he defers his marriage for some years, he will be able to save, and to acquire land.’ ‘ The consequence is, that the poor of these countries do not marry nearly so early in life as the English poor, and do not rear such large families.’ The whole question ought to be thoroughly discussed in a becom- ing spirit, in both its physiological, social, and economic aspects. If there were no choice between improvident marriages with large families and the glaring immorality which is so prevalent in our large cities, and which seems to be the machinery by which the young men of our well-to-do classes avoid too early marriages, I should prefer to see things left as they are, as the lesser of two evils. But I am convinced there is more than one way out of the difficulty j and ways which need not shock any unprejudiced and impartial mind. Early marriages — say twenty-three or twenty-four for the man, and twenty-one to twenty-three for the woman — with small families, seem to me the most likely to be productive of happiness. There is a double advantage : in taking away the temptation to immorality on the one hand; and, on the other, by seeing one’s children settled in life before old age will have made one anxious about their future welfare. THUESDAY AFTERNOON. 293 Note 14. Page 270. Improved dwellings. An investigation of the balance-sheet of the Waterlow Dwellings Company early last year, brought out this result : that by borrowing half the required capital from the Government at per cent, per annum, and obtaining the remainder from the public at 5 per cent, per annum, working people could be supplied with dwellings of ‘ Water- low ’ quality and at ‘ Waterlow ’ charges, and at the end of twenty-five years they could be conveyed to the tenants as their sole property free of incumbrance. The profits over and above the interest payable on the capital were sufficient to pay off the capital in the twenty-five years. Similar or even better results would follow in most towns and cities. On the basis of the above facts, a suggestion has been made for the formation of companies for the express purpose of turning working-class people into the owners of their own dwellings, without any further payments than their ordinary rents. An additional idea was appended, viz., that instead of conveying the freehold of a distinct dwelling, each tenant should take stock certificates in the Company to the value of a dwelling, which would authorise the holder to either occupy or draw interest at his option. This suggestion was stated by a solicitor to be ‘ a capital device for doing away with the heavy legal charges incurred in the transfer of real or leasehold property.’ It has a further advantage of enabling a man to change his residence without feeling tied down by the possession of a free- hold in an inconvenient locality. Here is a wonderfully wide field open to wealthy philanthropists, if they care to work in it. Note 15. Page 270. Cost of excessive drinking must he regarded as hiefficient expenditure. While this is strictly true of the individual, it must not be over- looked, that the State derives a large portion of its revenue from the taxation of drink. This would have to be made up from other sources ; and so far as these fresh sources afiected the working classes, the amount thus paid for taxes must be deducted from the total saving by the cessation of excessive drinking. Note 16. Page 271. A higher standard of providence must he set up. in Note 14 it is shown how easily, by means of co-operation, a man can become the owner of his own dwelling; and in Note 8 it is shown how easily, by co-operating for the supply of his food, fuel, 294 INDUSTEIAL REMUNEEATION CONEEEENCE. furniture, and clothing, he can become possessed of large amo.unts of capital, without saving anything from his weekly wages. The standard set up is not at all too high to be reached in the lifetime of a fairly prosperous working man ; and therefore it ought not to take long to raise the mass of the nation up to the standard. It must also be borne in mind that the task is much easier for the second generation, because they have their fathers’ accumulations to help them. While I have a great respect for the precept, ‘ Honour thy father and thy mother,’ I think the duties of parents to children are much greater than are the duties of children to parents. Children are not consulted before they are brought into the world, so a sense of justice demands that every effort shall be made to render their existence enjoyable. To train them well, and to equip them with all the tools necessary to gain a sufficient income for this purpose, is the least that can be done in fulfilment of a parent’s duty. Note 17. Page 271. Associated homes. It is worth while expressing one’s opinion in favour of these institutions, even at the expense of being taken for a visionary. Every man knows the immense benefit that has resulted from division of labour. The home has not been free from direct invasion. Cotton and wool used to be spun and woven at home ; now it is not. Stock- ings used to be almost universally knitted at home; now the practice in England is rare. Most articles of underclothing used to be made at home, the practice is becoming less frequent, owing to the inven- tion of sewing machines. The home has also been invaded by labour- saving machinery, such as these sewing machines and wringing machines. The fact of so many changes having occurred in domestic life, impels one to ask. Why should there not be others ? The work of women would be made much lighter by division of labour. In an associated home, one could cook, another could nurse, a third could act as chamber-maid, a fourth could be the waitress, and so on. Those who wished to do nothing, and could afford the luxury, could pay their poorer or more energetic sisters to do the work for them. Note 18. Page 272. Opening museums, libraries, &c., on Sundays. The Norwood Review of December 13, 1884, says that the Upper Norwood Baptist Chapel authorities have determined to open their school during service hours on Sunday evenings for the free use of THUESDAY AFTERNOON. 295 those who may not care to go to church or chapel. In the school, books, magazines, and instrumental music are provided. This is a fair proof of the increasing liberality of opinion on this question. Note 19 . Page 272 . Love of the beautiful. The idea of Mr. Ruskin and others of keeping scenes of natural beauty for the sole enjoyment of the wealthy few, or of the small number of local poor, will not help him in his cherished object of spreading a love of the beautiful among the people. In his objection to the construction of railways in picturesque localities, he overlooks the fact that they sometimes do look beautiful, and actually improve the landscape. There is an instance close to his old home, in the via- duct crossing Dulwich on the line from Peckham to Streatham. In- stead of preventing the erection of railways, he would be much more useful, and receive much more support, if he insisted on them being constructed with a regard to appearances. Town working people have few chances of seeing beautiful things, only when they leave their homes and take a railway journey. The habit of railway travelling for pleasure is rapidly increasing among them. To me, with my town-bred notions, the sight of a train gliding rapidly along, now in a straight line, now in a graceful curve, with the steam curling slowly along in fantastic shapes, or perhaps being blown fiercely away, has far more of the beautiful in it, than the sight of a herd of cows troop- ing along a country lane, and making the way impassable to foot passengers by the filth they leave behind 'them. Perhaps similar associations are at work in both cases. The imagination of the town- dweller is stimulated by the actual power visible in a railway train, to dream of man’s strength and the possibility of unnumbered pleasures being derived from future discoveries ; while the sight of the cows may stimulate the countryman to dream of fields of golden corn, of overfiowing harvests, punctual rent payers, and an enlarged bank balance. We want in our poorer districts more men of the stamp of the Rev. S. A. Barnett, of Whitechapel, who in ministering with his devoted band of assistants to the well-being of the people, feels he is helping to do this by giving them opportunities of seeing and appre- ciating what is beautiful. Note 20 . Page 273 . Thrusting up the residuum. I consider this is done unduly, by trying to provide this class of people with lodgings at less than the market price, and by systematically 296 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFEEENCE. supplying them with food at less than cost, while steady, persevering working people have to put up with worse food and worse lodgings at current prices. This is being done at the east-end of London, and probably elsewhere. Its tendency must be to make these people more satisfied with their half-vagabond life. Note 21. Page 274. Technical schools. Mr. John Slagg, M.P., in an article on Technical Instruction in the Wholesale Society's Annual for 1885, says : — ‘ One of the most staunch and able advocates of a national system of technical instruction and apprenticeship schools, on the G-erman and Swiss plans, was the late Mr. Scott-Pussell. In his work entitled Systematic Technical Education he attempted to estimate what would be required. He assumed that in 1869 (fifteen years ago), we needed at once 1,750 schools with 600,000 scholars and 10,500 teachers, and he assures us that “ when the State shall have founded in England one great technical university with 100 chairs, fifteen local technical colleges with twenty -five professors to each, and 300 science and trade schools with from five to twenty-five teachers in each, it will have provided only for the teaching of 250,000, or one quarter of a million out of ten million and a quarter of the youth wanting knowledge and skill.” He further states that “ to do this limited work well one million per annum is necessary, or Al. per head per annum from Government, in addition to local aid.” He tells us else- where that the schools would be attended by youths from thirteen to fifteen, the colleges by those from sixteen to eighteen, and the univer- sity by those who had completed their college education at eighteen. Mr. Scott-Russell’s estimate of the annual cost of the State university is 195,000Z., obtained as follows : — £ Annual grant from the Government . . 150,000 Annual vote from the City .... 15,000 Students’ fees ...... 25,000 Endowments ...... 5,000 Total £195,000 Por each of the technical colleges he assumes that 20,000^. will be required annually from Government, making 300,000^. ; half a million will suffice for 20 first-class schools at 5,000?. each ; 100 second-class schools costing 2,000?. a year each ; and 180 third-class schools in- volving an annual Government outlay of 1,200?. each; the balance of 50,000?. will be required for museums, libraries, &c. The buildings. THUESDAY AFTEKNOON. 297 he tells us, should be provided by the town, and “ 100,000^. is the least sum that can adequately fulfil the purpose (of erecting a college) for a populous, industrious, wealthy town. In like manner for the schools 5,000^. is the least sum that can be expended,” or say 4,500,000?. in buildings, and 150,000?. in annual cost. These figures are interesting as showing the probable expenditure we should have to face in creating a national system of technical instruction, com- mensurate in scale with what has been attempted by some of the minor German States or by a small canton in Switzerland. The out- lay necessary to provide for the technical instruction of the country upon a truly liberal basis would, of course, be infinitely greater.’ Note 22. Page 274. Cidture. The following is an extract from an article by Mr. R. D. Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Cambridge University extension scheme, published in the Wholesale Society’s Annual for 1885 : — ‘ If it were necessary or even desirable to divide life and the preparation for life into parts, it would perhaps be roughly accurate to call the preparation for bread-winning, technical education ; and the preparation for the leisure of life, culture. ‘ Life, however, cannot be broken up into parts, wholly distinct and separate from one another. Success in bread- winning often depends largely upon other circumstances than mere technical know- ledge. Not that technical knowledge is unimportant, it is indeed indispensable; but other circumstances also are of the highest im- portance. ‘ The mental acuteness and ability to take broad views, which come of definite mental training and wide knowledge; the incor- ruptible integrity and delight in honest work that come of the culti- vation of the moral qualities ; the sense of beauty of form and colour that artistic training gives ; all these, and more, influence in subtle ways a man’s working life. ‘ The need for something to give fulness and tone to life, although often overlaid, is never wholly absent. ‘ How to get the best possible out of the working and leisure moments, so as to feel that life is good and worth having — that is the real problem. Large numbers of working men feel this. ‘ In the glorious history of England, in her beautiful literatm^e and the literature of other countries, in the wonderful results of science, there are materials for the fullest mental cultivation. ‘ “ Go with mean people,” says Emerson, “ and you think life is 298 INDUSTKIAL REMUNEKATION CONFERENCE. mean. Then read Plutarch, and the world is a proud place, peopled with men of positive quality, with heroes and demigods standing around us who will not let us sleep.” In the best books we may enjoy the company of the wisest, wittiest, and noblest men the world has seen. ‘ There are practical benefits that come of widespread knowledge which it is not always easy to specify or estimate. Some years ago, the coal miners of the country met in conference to consider a ques- tion afiecting the interests of the coal trade. The bulk of the mem- bers of the conference advocated a certain course which was opposed by the Northumberland representatives. Eventually the view taken by the latter proved to be the sound one, and the singular circum- stance that the Northumberland pitmen so generally took the accu- rate view of the case is attributed by them to the fact that a course of university lectures on political economy had been delivered at a number of pit villages to audiences numbering about 1,300 pitmen. ‘ For the successful carrying on of co-operative production, men of the widest knowledge and training are absolutely necessary, and there can be little doubt that the taking up of the question of education by co-operative societies will give vigour and stability to the co operative movement.’ Note 23. Page 274. The iwactice of equity needs teaching to all classes. Working-men know this, in many instances, to their great sorrow. Employers of labour forget that they are simply parts of a gi'eat whole. They either ignore or do not know the beautiful teachings of S. Paul, which, for their edification I will briefly refer to : — ‘ But now are they many members, yet but one body. . . .’ ‘ If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body. . . and if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body. . . are they therefore not of the body 1 If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling . . . ? ’ ‘ And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need. of thee ; nor again, the head to the feet,— I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary. . . But God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked, that there should be no schism in the body ; but that the members should care for one another ’ (1 Corinthians xii.). The following rules exist among others in a large London firm, employing over 2,000 hands : — THUESDAY AFTERNOON. 299 ‘ Any employe found with matches in his possession will be instantly dismissed, no excuse being accepted.’ ‘ Any employe talking to a discharged employe will be instantly dismissed.’ These rules scarcely can be kept. Fancy a smoker wishing to enjoy a pipe on his way to work, or on his way home, not being allowed to carry a match. Where is the justice % Fancy a man being met in the street by a discharged employe, who stops him and says, ‘ How do you do 1 ’ He must look the other way, and pass without a w'ord, although the two may have been intimate friends. I lately engaged a young man who was dismissed under the second rule. Not being able to give credence to the stated cause of dismissal, the firm was written to as follows : — ‘ London, December 1, 1884. ‘ Mr. has applied to us for a situation, and states that he was lately in your employ, but discharged for a breach in your rule, viz., “ Talking to a discharged employe.” Will you kindly inform us if this was the only reason, and if you consider him in every other respect suitable for a position as . Should this be the only reason we might give him employment.’ To this the following reply was received : — ‘ London, December 2, 1884 ‘ In reply to your letter dated the 1st inst., I have to acquaint you that was employed by this firm as a in the depart- ment from October 9, 1882, until October 25, 1884, when he was dismissed for the reason stated by him. He was found honest, sober, industrious, and a very good ’ Some of the brickmakers in Kent have to sign agreements at the beginning of every year which bind them not to work for any other firm or employer up to the ensuing September, but the firm does not bind itself to find the men work, neither does it give them a signed agreement. With very great difficulty I have obtained a copy of the agreement, which is appended. I have known of thoroughly good honest men emigrating rather than continue to sign this one-sided document. It is a pity there is no trades union to induce fair play on the part of the masters. Copy of Agreement . — The said Labourer, in consideration of the payment of the wages mentioned in the Schedule below, doth hereby covenant, contract, and agree with the said Company to perform any of the works, and at the prices therein specified, and at such times as he may be requii’ed, and in accordance with the provisions of the 300 INDUSTEIAL KEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. * Factory Acts/ between the above date and the Ninth day of Sep- tember next. And further that he will not work with or for any other person or persons whomsoever during the said term, without the consent (in writing) of the said Company ; and shall and will make or do his part in such capacity as aforesaid in making as many bricks as can reasonably be made in the aforesaid season. The bricks are to be well made, subject to the inspection and approval of the Managers and Foremen ; and also that he shall during the said term execute and perform all the orders and directions of the said Company, or their Managers, or Foremen ; and protect the bricks and property of the said Company from damage in any way whatsoever. And it is further agreed between the parties to this Agreement, that the said Company shall not be responsible for any delay or loss of time arising from accidents to machinery or other causes, more especially from any dispute, should any arise, between the said Com- pany and any persons engaged in any part of the manufacture, not being work upon which the said Labourer may be engaged ; and also that the said Company shall be at liberty to deduct all rent that may be due to the said Company for any house, premises, or land which the said Labourer may occupy as Tenant under the said Company. Provided always that in the event of the said Labourer proving at any time to be incapacitated by illness, or incompetent to carry out and properly execute any work which he may be called upon to per- form under this Agxeement, that then it shall be lawful for the said Company to discharge the said Labourer forthwith, and thereupon this Agreement shall cease and be of no effect. And it is also agreed that the said Company shall be at liberty to deduct all fines and costs incurred by any infringement of the Factory Acts ; also a fine of Five Shillings whenever the said Labourer shall be found intoxicated during the hours of working ; and likewise any money lent or advanced on account by the said Company to the said Labourer may be deducted by them at any time. As Witness the hands of the said parties the day and year first above written. Schedule op Prices Eeferred to in the Above Agreement. £ s. d. For moulding and making bricks, at per thousand (to be paid at the end of the season when the bricks are properly crowded) ........ For steam mills (open hacks), at per thousand . For steam mills (covered hacks), at per thousand For day labour, per day 0 2 6 THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 301 £ s. d. (Time from 6 A.M. till half -past 5 p.m. Half-hour break- fast, 1 hour dinner.) For digging earth, 28 yards run, at per thousand . .007 For „ each 30 yards run afterwards at per thousand 002 For burning and crowding bricks, at per thousand Sorting bricks, at per thousand 0 0 8 Tm’ning (6-i cubic feet to the thousand), at per 100,000 . 0 18 0 Barge loading, at per thousand The economic loss by neglecting to practice the principle of equity is glaringly shown in the case of railway companies. The amount of money spent in useless Parliamentary contests is well known. The still greater amount spent in annoying and hurting one another and the public is not known so generally. The following cutting from the Times of January 5, 1885, is very suggestive : — ■ ‘ A Railway Truce. — The rivalry between the Great- Western and South-Western Railway Companies, occasioned by the many competitive points at which their lines meet, has ended. Both com- panies have issued circulars to their respective staffs instructing them to do all in their power to assist in each other’s business. This now happy state of affairs has been induced by the great outlay to which these companies’ shareholders have been subjected in consequence of opposing each other’s private Bills.’ Note 24. Page 275. Teaching the j^ower of union. Co-operators are hard at work trying to do this in a regular and systematic manner. Among the leaders there is a unanimous feeling that it is absolutely necessary, and no stone will be left unturned to diffuse a general knowledge of ‘ Complete Co-operation.’ Mr. A. H. D. Acland, in an article on Education of Co-operators in the Wholesale Society's Annual for 1885, says : — ‘ Co-operators have a great advantage. Each society is inde- pendent, belongs to a definite town or village, and the members know one another, at least to some extent. What is done for education is easily utilised by any or all of the members. At any rate, co-operators have taken advantage of the comparative ease with which they can deal with their funds to spend money on education, and they have done this with the feeling that without co-operative education co- operative progress of the best kind was improbable, if not impossible. ‘ It is to be hoped that this feeling of the immense importance of education for those members of co-operative societies who wish to lift the societies on to a higher level, and to utilise all their members’ 302 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. savings instead of refusing them and throwing them back, is a growing one. The business capacity, the energy, and the tact requisite for the co-operative leaders of the future will not come without a very solid addition to that education which finishes with the sixth standard in the national school, or at the age of fifteen or sixteen in one of our secondary schools. There is an education wanted for our young adults — a development of their intelligence is required, and in this work co-operative societies may take a most important part. Besides what may be called the business point of view, namely, that which considers how the interest of each society may be forwarded, there is another more general point of view which many co-operators will not neglect. Just as in many a village or town, by doing away with debt and encouraging thrift, the co-operative society has raised the physical and moral condition of hundreds of people, so it may do a great deal more for its neighbourhood, at a most trifling cost to each individual member, by promoting educational work. Hardly any thoughtful co-operator will deny this. The difficulty is how to show this to members, and how to settle what is really the best kind of education for adults at which to aim. ‘ Hitherto the money granted by societies has been chiefly spent on libraries, news-rooms, and popular lectures. In proportion as these facilities, in which co-operators have often led the way, are granted conveniently and easily for all members by the municipali- ties, as they ought to be and will be in time in all our great towns, societies ought to turn their attention from what is being done for them out of the rates which they are paying, and ought to lead the way in some other direction. It is no good trying to keep up a rivalry with what the citizens, as a body, can provide, and ought to provide. It is generally becoming clear to those co-operative leaders who really have grasped the importance of education (for there are some who care very little about it), that co-operators have a special work to do in training their own members, first in the more special principles of their own movement, and then in the more general principles which grow to some extent out of these, and may be con- sidered to be concerned with the life of an ordinary English citizen. ‘ The education of co-operators and the education of good citizens, then, the one leading into or out of the other — these are the special objects to be aimed at. But people will say, ‘ Where there is a will there’s a way. If a young fellow wants to educate himself as he grows into middle life, he can do it ; there are plenty of books about. Why should societies trouble about it ] ’ This is a profoundly untrue doctrine. If a young man’s progress be carefully watched, how little makes the difference as to the direction in which he is trained. Good THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 303 lectures, sound advice, the contact with a capable and sympathetic guide, may be of infinite value to a young man, to give him the start in the right direction. The Board Schools are preparing the ground. Co-operative societies may sow much good seed in this ground if they choose. ‘ The great object of the co-operative movement is to make working people happier and more comfortable, and to give them more time and opportunity to think about their lives and duties as citizens of our great and important country. To be free from debt, to have some money saved, to be encouraged to self-education of every kind, to learn habits of forethought, to help our social progress, are steps in the right du-ection. For ordinary practical people this one thing is at least important — to educate the citizens, the voters, to a higher level of intelligence, to a greater sense of responsibility, to a fuller know- ledge of what opinions they really hold, whether those opinions are sound, and why they hold them. ‘ One special point may be worth insisting on here. There are growing up in many of our great towns local colleges, or university colleges as they are sometimes called, which are specially meant for the education of the people, which aim at making better workmen and better citizens. There are also many boards of trustees or governors, which are being remodelled from time to time, that have the management of sums of money which are intended for the edu- cation of the working classes. The boards of management of these local colleges or trusts will never carry out their work in the most effective way till they admit as an essential part of their body genuine recognised, and trusted representatives of the working people them- selves, that is to say, representative working-men elected by trades unions, friendly societies, trade councils, co-operative societies and the like. Such men, trusted by their own fellows and accustomed constantly to be with them and to address them, would do something by sug- gestions of what was desired by working people, but would do a great deal more by getting into close friendly relations with other governors with professors and teachers, and would then return to their fellow working-men who knew them, and carry far more weight than anyone else could in recommending the work to their serious attention.’ Note 25 . Page 275 . These subjects ought to he included in our national system of education. The principal objection that will rise to the lips of an ordinary middle-class man will be, ^ We do too much already for the children 304 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEKATION CONFEEENCE. of working-men ; they already receive too much help from public money.’ This has been so often said, and is so generally believed, that the Co-operative Wholesale Society thought it worth their while to have an investigation into the relative amounts of public money, including endowments, rates, and imperial grants devoted to the education of the children of the working classes, and to the children of the classes above them. The following is the result published in the Wholesale Society^ s Annual for 1885 : — The total amount spent on working-class education is equal to 155. 4(i. per head per annum for every child of school age. This includes cost of buildings, voluntary subscriptions, rates, and Govern- ment grants. The total amount spent on the education of children of the other classes is equal to Zl. 35. per annum per head of the children of school age. The conclusion come to is, that ‘ the working classes can equitably demand the thorough education of their children, even though the expense to the nation is increased by fifteen millions a year, without being justly subjected to the reproach of receiving more than their fair share of the nation’s money.’ Profit-Sharing and Co-operative Production. By Edwakd W. Greening, of the Labour Association. Public opinion has recently been attracted to all questions relating to the improvement of the working classes, and the belief that a change in the present system of employment is necessary is rapidly spreading among all students of social questions. Some time ago political economists believed that if freedom of action for the individual and freedom of international trade were thoroughly established, other social evils would cure them- selves, or be cured through the effect of unrestricted competition in arousing the energy of every one. This theory is found to be fallacious, and unrestricted competition is acknowledged to produce many evils, social and commercial. In this paper it is proposed to discuss these evils and the THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 305 attempts made to remedy them, and also to point out, as far as possible, where these effects have succeeded and where failed. One of the first effects of competition on the manufacturer is to produce in him a desire to manufacture goods at a lower cost than his rivals, in order to undersell them, and thus secure to himself as large a share of trade as possible. The lowering of the cost of production becomes in this way so important that almost every other consideration is sacrificed to it. This fierce competition reduces the prices of all manufactured articles, and to meet these reductions employers of labour have lowered the rate of wages wherever possible, and would have done so further had not the workers refused to submit. Instead of carrying out the doctrines of the free traders and competing against one another in the labour market, a large portion of the workers had formed themselves into trades unions for maintaining the rate of wages. These unions are combinations of men, who agree among themselves not to work under a certain amount. Although formed regardless of the principles of the Manchester school of economists, and almost unanimously condemned by them, these unions have become strong, wealthy, and in most cases are quite able to hold their ground. No one will deny that they have been instrumental in keeping up wages during a period when the prices of nearly all commodities have been steadily going down. The manufacturers having thus been prevented by the unions from reducing wages, have had to find other means of lowering the cost of production. This they have succeeded in doing by the meritorious process of offering large rewards to the inventors of labour-saving appliances, and also it must be acknowledged with regret, by sometimes lowering the standard of quality in manufactures by adulteration and other frauds on the purchasers. Trades unions are for the most part fighting organisations, saving the workers from the crush of modern competition. After all, they are but a temporary remedy for one of the many evils of our present system of pro- duction. A number of intelligent manufacturers have felt that, apart from any philanthropic considerations, to merely pay men a weekly wage is not the best way of inducing them to give their X 306 INDUSTEIAL KEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. lieads and hearts to their work. This feeling has led to the adoption, by some, of the principle of profit-sharing, by which the employer undertakes to pay the workpeople a share of the profits of the workshop, beyond their wages. In many cases the workers’ share of the profit is capitalised, so as to provide a fund for old age, sickness, and death. Mr. Sedley Taylor, in his work on profit-sharing, gives instances of the success of this system. The results prove it to be based on sound commercial principles. Several manufacturers working on this system have found their portion of the profits has been larger than the whole was previous to arranging to share with the workpeople. This increase of profit is clearly due to the fact of the workers having a direct interest in the results of their industry. Profit- sharing also effects a large saving in cost of supervision. The provident workman will see that his careless fellow-worker does his best to economise time and materials. Many of the firms which have adopted this system have risen to the first rank in their trade, and it has contributed largely to the material and moral welfare of the workers. Without doubt, therefore, profit-sharing is a step in the right direction, but the work- shops based upon co-operative principles prove that much more can be effected by giving the worker a larger interest in success than a mere share in the profits. Profit-sharing, pure and simple, appeals chiefly to the instinct of self-preservation and to a desire for material improvement. It is far from being the highest instinct to which an appeal can be made. A sense of responsibility is created by the ownership of property, and a natural pride is excited if the possibility of a share in their workshops, or the tools and machinery with which they labour, and the management of the concern is opened up to them. It is sometimes stated that working-men have not sufficient capacity for conducting large commercial enterprises. This objection is met by the successful establishment and organisa- tion of the Industrial Joint-Stock Mills at Oldham and else- where, by the success of the Industrial Co-operative Stores throughout the country, and more especially by the wonderful success of the few co-operative workshops in England and Scotland. To this paper are appended tables showing the THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 307 results of both these classes of workshops, owned and managed almost entirely by working-men. The establishment and development of co-operative workshops based upon the co- partnership of the workers is the most effectual way of elevating the working population and improving the quality of English manufactures. Any real co-operative system would provide all the following conditions, viz. : — 1. A reasonable limit to the charge for the use of capital. 2. After this charge has been met, the profit should be divided in a fixed proportion between the workers and the shareholders. 3. The share list should be open to all workers, who should also be compelled to invest at least a portion of their profits in the society, not only as a provision against sickness, old age, and death, but also to give them a permanent interest in the welfare of their society. 4. Every shareholding worker should have a voice in the election of the directorate and managers, and an opportunity of obtaining any of the highest positions in the society. It is most important that the first dividend on capital should be limited to a fixed amount, as fluctuating dividends cause a constant rise and fall in the price of shares. At Oldham, where the dividends are declared solely on shares, speculative buying and selling obtains to a large extent among the industrial classes, and several of the public houses there are stock exchanges on a small scale. No one will desire to see working-men develop into gambling speculators. This rising and falling in the price of shares causes panics, during which many of the workers, through fear, improvidence, or misfortune, lose their shares, while their luckier neighbours increase their holdings. So extensively is this done that in the Oldham Mills not more than 2 per cent, of the shares of any one mill are now held by the workers in that mill. On the other hand, it is important that shareholders should receive a share of profit beyond their fixed dividend, bearing some agreed proportion to the profits divided among the workers. Without this provision the share- holders might become interested only by making their dividend safe by large reserves and other means. 308 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONEERENCE. After what has been said on profit-sharing, little need be urged in support of a large portion of the profits being divided among the workers according to the amount of wages they receive, and it should be remembered that, by paying a portion of this sum in shares, a provision is made for making every worker a shareholder in his workshop and interested in its results. By giving the workers a voice in the management of their factories a better article will be produced. Workmen take a pride in producing a good article. A speculative manu- facturer produces to sell. Utility and beauty are quite secondary considerations with him. In proof of the practicability of co-operative production there will be found in the appendix to this paper a list of societies based on the principle of labour association, with the tabulated results for the year 1883, as collected by the Central Co-operative Board. The result comes out thus : — £ Share capital of the 15 societies . . . 71,521 Profits in 1883 8,825 Losses in 1883 . . . . . . 134 The profits being rather over 12 per cent., after deducting the losses. The included societies embrace one large cotton mill, which, with a capital of 25,74U., made a loss of 90l. Had it not been for this, the other 14 societies which recognise labour would have shown over 19 per cent, average profit on the share capitals they employ. If further proof were necessary, reference might be made to the success of co- operative workshops in France, which are generally on a much larger scale than in England. It might have been expected that the working-men who founded these societies would have appropriated the largest portion of the profits for the benefit of the workers. Strange to say, this has not been so, and by far the larger portion of the profits of these workshops are given to the capitalists and to the consumers or purchasers of the goods. Grenerally speaking, a dividend of at least 7^ per cent, and upwards has to be made for the capitalists before the worker shares at all ; and often the purchasers are given a bonus of as much in the pound on their purchases as the workers receive on their wages. THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 309 This system of giving a share of the profits to the customers, although undoubtedly based upon true co-operative principles, as it tends to lessen the antagonism between the buyer and seller, and to interest the customers in the success of the works, thus inducing them to give as large a portion of their trade as possible to the co-operative workshop, has certainly been carried too far in most of the productive co-operative societies ; but in flitm’e a much larger proportion of the profits should be devoted to the workers, and less to the capitalist and the consumer. But that the working-men should have voluntarily erred in the direction of favouring capitalists and consumers is only another proof that they have a sufficient sense of the importance of fairly remunerating the owners of property to entitle them to be entrusted with an important part in the management of the industries of the country. All who will carefully compare the position of the workers in a co-operative workshop with those employed with a private manufacturer will realise that the interests which labour asso- ciation creates in the mind of the worker will cause him to study many questions which he would not otherwise care about. In fact, labour association is destined to exercise a great educa- tional work among the industrial population, which must even- tually raise them from the present thraldom of an existence on mere weekly wages into thinking citizens, who will feel they have a real interest in the welfare of the State. APPENDIX. No. L— Oldham Joint-Stock Mills. A recent return gives 71 mills, showing the following results £ Paid on share capital . . 2,976,556 Loan and debenture capital . . . . . 1,915,636 Mortgages . . . . 610,735 Reserve funds (less losses) . 45,853 Total . . £5,548,780 £ Average sales per annum . 5,464,430 „ wages paid ditto. . 651,448 „ trade expenses . 1,.300,188 „ annual profit, being at the rate of about 9^ per cent. . 273,936 No. V.— Showing Results of Work in Fifteen Co-operative Workshops during the year 1883. 310 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. 1 'a -M a P4 a Ph c« ■4^ a P^ 'Ph a o o ■^s -il(M 03 a a o 1—1 oq o ;h 455 P' a Sh" a 44) a o 23 03 23 23 o 23 03 .a 4.5 rH Hci' CO 03 M ^ a <30 rP . HH »0 o Q bo .s a £ 03 03 P^ o 6 o o o O O bJD ho .s .s ‘fH 'fH a a -tJ +5 o o a a a 'a § § as 'o a o ft W a ho T3 ^ o ^ ‘S rt M P ^ o ^ K W ri4 yt u 23 <13 03 02 M M 03 03 '^.2 .2 03 03 03 bo a •S a ■y O a q-i a a 03 ’_j 3 c» . o a3 |S t 2 . 2 ^ ^ a I'g® ^ s a S,jS S -M t3 03 ^ ^ ^ 23 03 03 a o c« 23 .a ^ '^IXKXiCOR THUKSDAY AFTEEXOON. 311 No. 11 . — Co-operative Stores. Summary of Returns for 1883, made ly the Co-ojoeratire Central Board. Numbei- of Stores Membei-s (1883) Share and Loan Capital Reserve Funds Sales (1883) Net profit after allowing 5 per cent, interest on capital 1,211 618,994 ^8,416,914 £291,638 26,289,722 £2,247,431 No. III. — Co-operative Corn Mills. Number of Mem- bers (1883) Share and Loan Capital employed Reserve Funds Sales (1883) Net Profit 14,206 £427,875 £10,692 1,317,516 46,388 No. IV. — Co-operative Wholesale Societies’ Workshops. Average Capital employed Sales for 1883 Net Profits for 1883 £47,769 £145,294 £2,628 Our Industrial System : Its Effects upon the Well-being of the Working Classes. By J. M. Chekkie, of the Scottish Land Eestoration League. An inquiry into the system by which the products of industry are distributed among the various persons and classes of the community, must be a matter of primary importance under any conditions of trade and commerce, but occurring as it does at present, when the country generally, and even the whole manufacturing and commercial world, are feeling the bitter effects of severe and prolonged depression of trade while the markets are glutted with commodities, it cannot fail to possess an intense and vital interest. The pressure of our industrial system, by its increasing in- tensity upon the community, is thus apprising us in unmistak- 312 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. able language that the time is at hand when it shall become intolerable because of the inevitable suffering produced by it. To effect a just and peaceable solution of the difficulty, it is incumbent upon all who interest themselves in social and political affairs, to bring to bear as much enlightenment and impartiality as can be mustered, and to give expression to whatever views and conclusions truthful and earnest investiga- tion may elicit, irrespective of the blow that may be inflicted upon conventional doctrines. The volume of trade and commerce having expanded enor- mously during the past decade, and having become greatly restricted by comparison last year with preceding years, the collapse has aroused a spirit of investigation everywhere to endeavour to trace the cause, and, if possible, to devise a remedy against its recurrence. In the course of the past twelve months, since the fall in values of industrial products began to manifest itself seriously, an unlimited amount of criticism and discussion has taken place upon the cause and cure of trade depression. Considering how little the question has been advanced by the great bulk of the published matter, it is not unreasonable to attribute the great diversity of opinions expressed, and the general failure of the critics to solve the problem, to the need of a wider diffusion of more exact knowledge of the sound principles which underlie the economics of industry, on which alone can the cause and cure of depression of trade be effectually determined. In order to clearly understand why, under present conditions, increased facilities of production and distribution should pro- duce glut, depression, and privation to multitudes of people, instead of increased wealth, leisure, and enjoyment, a brief inves- tigation into the nature of commodities, and the manner in which industry is controlled and directed, is necessary. I may premise that the illustrations and arguments herein used to demonstrate the effects of our industrial system, and to remedy its defects, appeared in the columns of The Iron and Goat Trades Review^ some months ago, in a correspondence on the Prospects of Trade, in which I participated. The commodities in use for the promotion of the comfort THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 313 and happiness of mankind may be divided into two classes, called primary and secondary commodities. The first class comprises those absolutely indispensable to human existence, viz. food and drink ; with raiment and shelter coming next in importance as necessaries. The second class embraces all other commodities, which are merely instruments for the production and distribution of the primary commodities. Consequently, if we regard a State as a Community, the primary and essential object to be accomplished by its members should be the suffi- cient production of the great prime commodity, food. Griven food in abundance for all, the other secondary commodities can be easily produced in quantities commensurate with the require- ments of the community ; for, as real wealth consists of a surplus of the primary commodities, or the power to command a supply of them, no difficulty could ever be experienced by the possessor of food, to exchange his prime and absolutely indis- pensable commodity for those in the second class, which, how- ever useful they may be as instruments, could, at a pinch, be done without. Food can therefore never be over-produced; for, as that constitutes the foundation of the wealth of the world, the more that exists, or that can be produced, the more com- fort, enjoyment, and leisure should people experience. It is quite different, however, with the secondary commodities. Only a limited quantity of them is needed for the requirements of society. All excess of production of these is misdirected labour, and places the producer at a disadvantage when he wishes to exchange — as he must of necessity exchange — his commodity for food. It is precisely in the production of secondary commodities where industrial crises occur. If, in- stead of raising food, the prime essential of life, people are compelled by our industrial system to devote their energies to the production of secondary articles far in excess of the require- ments of society, it is very evident that, as these articles cannot of themselves support life, nor be exchanged easily, if at all, for the prime commodities which do support life, those engaged in this misdirected labour must experience depression of trade, culminating in stagnation and starvation. The extensive existing depression characteristic of most 314 INDUSTKIAL KEMUNEEATION CONFERENCE. branches of manufacturing industry, which is so keenly felt by both employers and workmen, is therefore due to the fact that the natural opportunities to produce the primary commodity, food, being denied by land monopoly to the great bulk of the people, the only remaining outlet for labour is the manufacture of secondary commodities. The consequence is that an enor- mous surplus of labour and capital is directed to the production of the goods belonging to the second class, such as, for example, iron, steel, coal, rails, ships, spades, sickles, ploughs, copper, tin, &c. A fierce and desperate competition to be first in the market is the inevitable result of this state of things. Profits and wages are forcibly reduced in the direction of a minimum, or to the vanishing point. No advancement of science or im- provement in practice can avert the disastrous collapse of manufacturing industry, from which the community is now suffering, as paralysis is infallibly the end of the subsisting erroneous system. The condition of manufacturing industry is thus dependant entirely upon the wants of those who produce the prime commodity, food, or who command its supply. All manufactured products existing in excess of these wants repre- sent misdirected labour, and create a tendency in the market towards dulness of trade, profits converted into losses, work into idleness, and low or no wages to workmen. Hence it is manifest that the food producers, or those who command the supply of food, are masters of the situation. A quarter of wheat is always a quarter of wheat in its ability to sustain life, but a secondary product which may at one time be exchanged for this measure of food, may at another be exchangeable only for less than half, or even unexchangeable altogether. When the last stage is reached, it is obvious that starvation is imminent. The production of the two classes of commodities is thus seen to bring about very dissimilar effects. On the one hand, an unlimited creation of food, with equal opportunities to all to participate in its production, places the community in a position of abundance, comfort, and ease ; on the other, a plethora of articles which cannot be exchanged for food, reduces the community to a condition of destitution and misery. THUESDAY AFTERNOON. 315 The universal cry for increased demand, and for new or extended markets for commodities, arises from the false position of manufacturing industry which has just been explained. Actuated by the desperate straits to which trade has been driven, we attempt to coerce other nations into taking our goods whether they will or not. The material forces of the Grovernment are not infrequently employed in such missions, regardless of the injustice thereby inflicted upon other peoples. But all such attempts to interfere with the operation of the economic laws underlying industrial affairs, cannot possibly avert the ultimate disaster inevitably attending the application of false principles, however, at a great sacrifice of wealth and honour, they may postpone its advent. Increased demand is equivalent to increased consumption, but it is a mistake to believe, as is very commonly believed, that consumption is the cause of wealth. Quite the contrary, conservation of commodities is the cause of wealth. If the secondary commodities now existing could last for ever, and no more were required, the result would be a total cessation of all manufacturing industry. According to current opinions and conditions this would be regarded as an unspeakable calamity ; this would be depression of trade with a vengeance ! The toiling millions would no longer throng our ironworks, factories, shipyards, coalpits, and other scenes of industry ; capitalists who cannot find employment for their money now would be joined by all manufacturing capitalists whatever. But the policy pursued by individuals is to prolong the life of industrial products, and save repairs or renewal. And rightly so ; the national policy should be identical. Instead, therefore, of desiderating the wearing out or destruction of existing manu- factured articles, or calling for opportunities to bestow labour upon the creation of new ones, sound policy requires rather that as little labour as possible be diverted in this direction, reserv- ing the greatest proportion practicable for the raising of that which, in proportion to its abundance, increases the well-being of mankind. In like manner it might be shown that if the existing supply of food could be assumed to suffice for all time, labour 316 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNERATION CONEERENCE. could be dispensed with altogether. In such an eventuality those who now command its supply could monopolise it, and leave the rest of the human race to die of starvation. This inequality of positions points to the absolute necessity of reforming our system, in order that all shall enjoy equally the opportunities provided by nature to raise the means of subsistence. It is now demonstrated beyond a doubt that the beneficiaries by the existing erroneous system of industry are, — (1) land- owners, mine-owners, and other owners of the raw material of nature, who exact rents and royalties before this raw material is allowed to be utilised for the benefit of the community ; (2) capitalist manufacturers, who have been in a position to profit by the unnatural excessive competition created by the system existing among the masses of the people, since they can compel them to sell their labour at any rates of wages obtainable, as well as drive many out of the labour market altogether. Notwithstanding the enormous aggregate to which national wealth has attained, the two classes referred to have absorbed an excessive share of it — the amount of the share being in pro- portion to their power of appropriating it, and inversely as the extent of their labour in creating it. The advances in land values all over the kingdom, especially in towns and cities ; the higher royalties demanded for working the minerals of the earth ; the rents of fishings and shootings ; the amount of money paid to landowners for ground required for railways, and canals, and other indispensable public purposes ; the high price of agricultural produce affected by rent, and not so immediately affected by foreign imports ; all testify that the power of appropriating the wealth created by the labour of the community lies in the possession of the raw material of nature, without which man could not exist. The alleged freedom of contract which landlords maintain determines the relations of landlord and tenant, and employer and employed, is a fallacy ; it does not and cannot exist under present con- ditions. To effect an adequately beneficial alteration in our indus- trial system, the revelation of the cause of our present difficul- THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 317 ties, indicates that the remedy to be applied must be such as will destroy this cause. The production of primary commodities must be fostered to such an extent as will cause a restriction in the production of secondary commodities to the limits of the requirements of society. The opposite course has hitherto been taken. Landlords have thrown land out of cultivation rather than accept less than the rents they desired. The people thus expelled from agriculture swelled the already congested towns, creating lower wages and higher rents. Multitudes of vacant spaces in towns are also allowed to lie idle for years, in the expectation that the necessities of the people will, by-and-by, compel the payment of the exorbitant prices or rents demanded. Why landholders have not been com- pelled by Grovernment either to utilise properly the lands they hold, or give them up, can only find a response in the fact that landholders predominate in the Legislature, and that they regard land merely as an instrument of taxation against the labour of the people. An impartial investigation into the economics of industry thus indicates pretty clearly what course ought to be taken to suppress the gigantic evils flowing from the existing con- ditions of industry. The plan to be adopted is very simple, and is one operated upon by the landlords themselves towards their tenants. In letting a mineral field, for example, the owner, besides stipulating for a lordship per ton on the output, establishes a fixed rent per annum. The object of the fixed rent is to compel the lessee to work the minerals ; otherwise, the markets might at times not offer sufficient inducement to continue, and, without the fixed rent as a goad, the lessee could cease operations with impunity, just as a landholder himself does when rents are not to his mind. The cure for industrial diseases is therefore a taxation one. The whole existing system of levying taxes for local and im- perial purposes should be abolished as wrong in principle, and needlessly expensive in practice. It bears entirely upon the labour of the country, and the revenues from these taxes are manipulated by the non-producing classes for the use and benefit, to an enormous extent, of those who think their vested 318 INDUSTEIAL KEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. interests entitle them to live upon these revenues. The most grievous burden, however, upon the labour of the community is the vast amount of money exacted by the ‘ landowners, mine- owners, and other owners of the raw material of nature, who exact rents and royalties ’ for granting the privilege of utilising the soil and its contents. The amount of such rents and royal- ties is computed to approach 300,000,000^ per annum, a sum, it will be admitted, large enough to produce a very prejudicial effect upon the public welfare. There is also to be taken into account as a loss to the nation, the lands allowed to lie waste, uncultivated, or not utilised, at the all-powerful caprice of owners of monopoly, and the loss of the produce of the labour of those who do nothing because they live upon the produce of the labour of others. By abolishing the present erroneous system of taxation, and substituting a direct tax upon land values, and upon all mineral lordships and other sources of royalties and lordships, the public burdens would be shifted from labour on to privilege, instead of bearing upon labour and exempting privilege. As land is the basis of human life, and the source of all wealth by the application of labour, it proves itself pre-eminently to be the sole standard of taxation by which to measure each individual’s contribution to the common fund of the community. A tax upon current land values would, like the mineral lessor’s fixed rent referred to, act as a preven- tive upon the ‘ dogs-in-the-manger,’ who will not utilise land themselves nor allow others to use it. But in order to determine and secure each individual’s exact contribution to the State or community, the amount of the land tax would have to be 20s. per £ of the current annual value, as ascertained by open and fair competition — and no subletting permitted. After defraying the necessary expenses of local and imperial administration, the surplus, which would be large, would be available for the beneficial use of the com- munity. Many institutions now depending upon the pre- carious support of subscriptions and voluntary contributions could be thoroughly established and equipped. The widow and the orphan ; the infirm, through disease, accident, or infirmity ; the poor and unfortunate, could all be adequately cared for, THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 319 and not allowed, as thousands of them are, to languish for years in privation and misery. Friendly societies and other associations for benevolent objects, upon which working men depend for relief in distress — but which are found too often to be broken reeds — could then give place to a national system of insurance, relief, or super- annuation, applicable to all persons — a system founded upon individual right and free from the taint of pauperism. Hitherto the non-producing classes and members of the aristocracy and officialdom generally have been provided from the State revenues with incomes, compensations, and pensions without feeling demoralised and pauperised ; it does not appear at all clear then how the workers run any more risk of pauperism and demoralisation by receiving back part of their own earn- ings ! By imposing the land tax proposed, landholders can still retain their lands, subject to the payment of the tax to the State ; but as obviously land will thus be thrown open to all men on equal terms, monopoly will lose its baneful power, land will be cultivated to the fullest extent, more people will revert to agriculture, food supply will increase, land values will rise, but the whole increased surplus revenues will go back, in one form or another, to the creators of them — viz. the people. All the wealth that the land of our country can yield to labour will thus be available to the whole community, and no more can be expected. The change effected would be marvellously great and beneficial. Intensity of labour in the right direction would result in increased wealth and enjoyment — in marked contrast to its present fruits, poverty and misery. Depression in trade as now existing would be an impossibility ; the worker would always receive the full reward of his labour ; the mono- poly of the landholder and the capitalist manufacturer being neutralised, the first by the tax of 20s. per £ on land values, the second by the absence of that death-and-life com- petition among the people to obtain the means of bare sub- sistence. The appropriation of land values by means of the tax of 20s. per £ for the use and benefit of the entire community is the remedy proposed for the evils due to the existing system 320 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. of land tenure, and the consequent evils affecting our industrial system. Peasant proprietary is but an extension of landlordism, and would not ameliorate the condition of the great mass of the people who are not, and never can be, peasant proprietors. The scheme of the Government by which, under the Land Purchase Bill, public money is to be taken to buy up Irish landlords and substitute others, commits a grievous wrong upon the labouring interests of the country, while it extends and endeavours to perpetuate that system of landlordism which has for long been the curse, not only of Ireland, but of the whole of the United Kingdom. It has been truly characterised as a ‘ Landlord Relief Bill,’ at the cost of the taxpayers. In carrying into practical operation this reform in the incidence of taxation, the question arises as to how permanent improvements upon land are to be treated, such as houses, factories, fences, drains, &c. The ruling principle is at once clear and simple. Determine the intrinsic value of these improvements, allow a fair per- centage of interest on that value to the proprietor, and the surplus rent is the amount of tax payable to the State. For example, suppose a house, shop, or factory let at lOOL rent, and the intrinsic value of the structure is found to be 800^. ; if 6 per cent, be allowed as a fair and reasonable return to the proprietor (and that is more than property holders aver they get) the rent to the owner would be 48^. free of taxes, and 52/. would be the land tax to the State. As already explained, this tax of 52/. would not be lost, as after bearing its share of the expenses of Government, the balance, in common with all other similar balances, would come back to the community for beneficial public uses. Land monopoly, it is plain, has been and is now the chief factor in creating unjust inequalities among the people — in dividing them into oppressors and oppressed; into idle rich and toiling poor ; into contented and discontented ; into the supporters of existing unjust power and privilege, and those who would free themselves from class trammels. Classes are thus unavoidably set against each other so long as law is not synonymous with justice. Until law and justice are one. THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 321 society cannot be fused into one great class only, with interests and aims that do not conflict but harmonise. We feel the day is breaking, And see with inward ken, A future rich with blessings Dawn, for wiser, happier men. APPENDIX. Total Exports prom the United Kingdom. . , . £ 1883 . . 305,437,070 1855 . . 116,791,300 Increase . . 188,645,770 = 16 1^ per cent. Total Imports to the United Kingdom. £ 1883 . . 426,891,579 1855 . . 143,542,850 Increase . . 283,348,729 = 197^ per cent. Imports op Food. Tons 1840 . 7,882,550 1855 . 12,623,232 1883 . 76,817,026 = 5081^ per cent, over 1855. Production op Coal and Pig Iron. Coal. Tons 1882 . . 156,499,977 1855 . . 61,453,079 Increase 95,046,898 = 154|- per cent. Pig Iron. Tons 1882 . 8,586,680 1855 . 3,218,154 Increase 5,368,526 = 167 per cent. Shipbuilding. 1877 1883 Tons Tons Iron vessels . 530,000 933,744 Steel „ 1,118 166,428 531,118 1,100,172 = increase 107 per cent. Y 322 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. Population. 1881 35,246,562 1851 27,745,949 Increase .... 7,500,613 = 27 per cent. Glasgow Dwellings. One apartment houses 1880 . 35,843] Per cent. 74-31 Two • • . 52,693 j Three „ • • . 17,746 14-89 Four „ . 6,623 5-57 Five „ . . 6,223 5-23 Total , , . 119,128 100-00 The value of ground in Glasgow varies from about 155. per square yard in the outskirts to 100^. or more per square yard in the central parts. Compared with agricultural rent of 3^. per acre, the rise in value represented by the price of IZ. per yard, calculating the annual return at 5 per cent., is 8,066 per cent. ; by 50Z. per yard, 403,333 per cent. ; by lOOZ. }>er yard, 806,666 per cent., and so on. The Botanic Gardens ground, now valued at 155. per square yard, has increased in value since it was feued sixty-six years ago 2,135 per cent. ; while compared with agricultural rent of 3Z. per acre, the increase is 6,050 per cent. Acreage of Land under Crops. 1868 1883 Corn crops acres . 11,659,855 . 10,326,518 - 1,33.3,337 Green crops acres 4,865,057 4,708,934 - 156,123 Grass and other crops acres 29,448,984 .3.5,421,427 + 5,972,443 Total acres 45,973,896 50,456,879 + 4,482,983 Estimated Annual Land Values of the United Kingdom. Per acre £ Cultivated land . . 50 million acres at £3 = 150,000,000 Town „ . . i „ „ £200 = 100,000,000 AVaste lands, bogs, moors, &c. 26^ „ „ IO 5 . = 13,500,000 Total . . 77 million acres 263,500,000 To this estimate have to be added the large revenues derived from lordships and royalties on minerals of all sorts, and the pro- bability is that 300,000, OOOZ. per annum is approximate to the amount of the tax that land monopoly excises from the products of labour. THUKSDAY AFTERNOON. 323 A Delegate wished to ask one question of Mr. Jones. How did it come about that Rochdale, the Elysium of co-operation, with a population of 109,000, had to pay 32,000/. in poor rates, which was equal to 65 . per head of the population ; whereas Ashton-under- Lyne, M’here co-operation did not flourish, with a population of 130,000, paid only 18,000/. in poor rates, which was at the rate of 2s. Ilf/, per head 1 Mr. B. Jones, in reply, said he could only refer the gentleman who had put the question to the volume of the Co-operative News, where the whole subject had been completely thrashed out. Discussion. Professor Beesly (Positivist Society) wished to oflfer a few words by way of criticism on the paper of Mr. Sedley Taylor. He did not know how far the system of profit-sharing might please capitalists, but he thought it was not likely to be accepted very generally by workmen as a satisfactory solution of the labour question ; and he was very sure it ought not to satisfy them. What was the workman’s complaint It was that of the increased value given by labour to the raw material or to the unfinished article the capitalist appro- priated to himself an excessive portion, which he called his profit, and which he employed for his own advantage — either by extending his business or by giving himself certain enjoyments. The workman would not complain if his employer devoted a reasonable portion of his profit to the welfare of those who were in his service. This he might do by direct or indirect means : he might lay it by as a reserve fund, within his own control, but destined for use in worse timas in order to keep up an equal level of wages. But the employer did no such thing : he took all he could get hold of, and claimed the right to use it for his own advantage ; and he did so. The profit- sharing capitalist said in eftect to his workmen : ‘ The profit I have been in the habit of taking I still intend to take. I mean to stick to it, and to use it for my own advantage. I do not intend to let you have any share of it, direct or indirect ; nor do I mean to put by a reserve fund to enable me to keep up your wages in bad times. But I tell you what I will do : if you like to work harder, and take more care of my tools and my materials, and so create an additional profit, then I am willing to allow you, not the whole of the additional profit, but a portion of it.’ Mr. Taylor had insisted again and again that the employer’s profits would be increased by this arrangement. That was the only argument by which he hoped to induce employers to adopt it. So far as that additional profit was the result of economy Y 2 324 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. in material and tools, there was nothing to be said against it : waste was a very bad thing, and should be discoin-aged on moral as well as on material grounds. But what did economy of time mean on which Mr. Taylor had dwelt so strongly? It meant just this, that more work was to be got in the twenty-four hours out of the workman than now : either there would be an increase of the hours of labour, and he was convinced that this would be the result of a general system of profit-sharing ; or, if the hours were allowed to remain nominally the same, the labour would be more severe, and a greater amount of it would be crowded into the same number of hours to the great fatigue and distress of the workman. What had become of the comparison between the larger wages paid now and those received in years gone by for labour in trades chiefly depending upon machinery, such as the cotton trade ? There was no comparison, because the increased speeding of machinery, and along with it the increased labour got out of the workman, caused more distress and exhaustion of mind and body to him than before. (Hear, hear.) It was not desirable that workmen should work harder. They worked too hard already for their health, happiness, and dignity. There might be men who were attracted by the prospect of harder work and a share of fluctuating profits, even though it was only 2 per cent., as appeared to be the case sometimes. But what the bulk of the workmen wanted — and not only the bulk but the best of them — was lighter work and unfluctuating wages. There was only one way by which the workman could get a larger share of the fruits of his labour ; and that was by all non- workmen consenting to take a smaller share of them. (Hear, hear.) Miss Mary H. Hart (Decorative Co-operators’ Association) read extracts from a paper treating of Obstacles to Industrial Beform. The following is the paper : — The biographer of Leclaire in his opening chapter remarks that before knowing that great captain of industry he had talked about labour, and workshops, and profits, and capital, as a blind man talks about colours. This candid confession cannot surprise any man who, like M. Chas. Robert, has clearly grasped the secret of Leclaire’s success ; and who has mastered the varied changes which brought that captain’s industrial regiment to its present organised perfection. The gi-eat Frenchman knew human nature. In steady pursuit of truth he learned that to inspire confidence in others he must repose trust ; that to rule well he must be the servant of all ; that to get his lawful rights he must concede rights to those who served him, that duty alone secured happiness ; and that the very joy of a life worth living lay in the spirit of self-surrender to the common THUKSDAY AFTERYOOX. 325 weal : in a word, he sought the right path, and took pains Avhen found at any cost to walk in it. Were not the faithlessness of the world and the lack of imagination every day painfully forced upon one’s observation, it would be a matter of profound astonishment to any thoughtful mind that all large employers of industry — when they knew the story — should not resolve, if only for the sake of peace and security, to rise to the high moral level of the noble-hearted French- man, and take a more equitable view of the natural rights of that large section of the human family who have only their labour to live by : at present is he not the victim of strikes as well as too frequently the object of the constant ill-will and suspicion of his employes ? With capital, influence, and experience at his command what might he not accomplish ? As the representative of a board of directors whose object in pro- moting the Decorative Co-operators’ Association ^ is to develop an industrial partnership worthy of its French model, I propose to set forth a few of the obstacles that beset the path of the industrial reformer. In the internal organisation difficulties vanish with com- parative ease when the workers understand that the interests of all are associated in one common band ; slowly in some cases, but sooner or later in all, the bondage of mere wage labour becomes transformed into the service of freedom ; and the kindly testimony of a nobleman volunteered the other day to the effect that the painters in his dining- room ‘ were doing the work in half the time of any he had before met with,’ is only one out of the many satisfactory reports that daily encourage us. The main obstacle does not rest with the workman as some would have us believe ; faults he may have, because he is only human, and he shares the frailty common to all grades of society. What I want to do is to bring the question home to the conscience of the public, to inquire whether no blame lies at the door of the consumer 1 All persons who keep their eyes and ears open must be aware that the word ‘ cheap ’ is in everybody’s mouth ; this rage for ‘ cheapness ’ has grown to the extent of downright immorality. In one way or another the great majority are trying to get thirteenpence halfpenny for a shilling, and if they imagine they get more, they are profoundly happy, they never stop to think that some unfortunate person must be robbed ! The consequence is that this ‘ ignoi-ance of demand ’ on the part of the public has produced, and tends every day to increase, ‘ adulterated supply ’ ; and the purchaser ignorant of the value of the real article commits a double wrong — he either encou- rages scamped work and pays dearly for it, or else he has bought defrauded labour, and is in all piobability putting very high profits ’ 405, Oxford Street, W. 326 INDUSTRIAL REIVIUNERATION CONFERENCE. into tlie pocket of the thief. Leclaire was awake to this form of greed in human nature, and before instituting reforms which exposed him alike to the ill-will of the Government, as well as the suspicion of other employers, took the precaution of issuing fearlessly a number of pamphlets exposing the secrets of a dozen ways in which large pro- fits could be secured on scamped work, or literally on ‘ an adulterated article.’ Leclaire’s tracts on the subject have not reached me, but I will epitomise a few of these methods, restricting myself to the indus- tries with which I have made myself acquainted. The demand on the part of the public for estimates for every de- scription of work, with probably the intention — and certainly in most cases the result — of accepting the lowest tender, leads on all hands to deterioration in the quality of the work. Honourable firms undertake it at the lowest posvsible profit, and often the prospect of none at all, in order to keep in the market, and have in turn to hurry the work un- duly, in order that the small margin left may not be converted into a loss, doing all the time, however, the best they can for the client with the narrow means at their disposal. The excellence of work which depends for its quality more on individual labour than on the material used, must consequently suffer much, if not in appearance at first, certainly in lasting quality. In the case, however, of men who are less scrupulous, and make as large a profit as possible out of everything and everybody — no matter whom, the client or the work- man — and who are satisfied if their work appear when finished just good enough to pass and to enable them to get their money with the minimum of discontent from the client, something more is done. Every obligation in the contract which can possibly be evaded is so much the more gain. Labour is starved and cheap material supplied. Work which at completion is out of sight is left in a disgraceful state, to be most likely a source of danger or of future expense ; and the whole is scamped in various ways. Take the building trades for example. Who has not heard of the ‘ jerry ’ builder, who runs up rows of houses of inferior half-burned and shapeless bricks, cemented with a composition miscalled mortar, into which composition the maximum of road sweepings and the minimum of lime and sand usually enter ; which houses he scarcely dare build alone, so he places them in rows for mutual support. Let us call such support ‘corrupt association.’ Into far better houses than these, however, the scamp- ing workman enters, and driven by the necessity of squeezing every possible penny out of the work, he falls to and does his best to make its quality correspond with the low value of his master’s contract. The carpenter uses green unseasoned wood, put together with ill- fitting joints and in the roughest manner ; trusting to his fellow- THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 327 labourer the painter to smother over many of his sins. His timbers are thick enough to keep in place under ordinary strain, and that is all. Any abnormal stress may be followed by a coroner’s inquest, but what cares he — his bill is paid ? The painter forgets as many of the coats contracted for as he is able, and omits to make much prepara- tion for those he does put on, with the probable result of flaking or peeling ofi* under the slightest heat. He ‘ puts on two coats at once,’ as he calls it, by daubing on his colour with extra thickness, its shrinking, softness, cracking &c., being as nought to him. Neither does he mind the long continuance of its smell ; why should delicate persons object to the smell of turpentine — he does not ? And what if the sticky and resinous varnish he uses leave the woodwork or the staircase walls in the condition of a fly-paper h People should pay a price enabling him to get a varnish made of good gum, and not con- sisting principally of boiled oil ! After all, his staircase wall smells better than the papered walls left in the bedrooms by his friend the paperhanger, who did not take care to use size quite free from decay, and paste exempt from sourness. The gilder decorates the drawing-room with gold, certainly not of twenty-two carat fineness, and if it will not clean up after a year or two’s discoloration from gas, what matter to him % He has by that time reduced many another room to a similar condition. Then comes the furnisher with his cheap carpets, the wool distributed on the surface of which is w'arranted not to be rubbed off* under some months’ wear ; with his sofas and chairs, honestly made, insomuch as every joint is visible, and eager to show its interior construction — the stuffing in the seats being, moreover, of rare excellence in his eyes because quite one- tenth of the quantity of horse-hair supposed to exist might actually be found under the aesthetic covers, but who cares— it is out of sight 1 The value of horse-hair, too, varies from fourpence per pound to a sum six times that amount. Stuffed furniture supplied by the cheap pretentious shops, when it comes into the hands of a respectable firm for restuffing, often reveals a nest of unnamable rubbish ; and the vile stuff* is quickly burned by those who know the unsanitary nature of its composition : such practical knowledge needs no scien- tific education. The upholsterer calls this ‘ sweepings,’ and truly it might be the accumulation of all the sweeping of slop shops and rag warehouses. It is a pity a specimen of this ‘ stuffing ’ did not find its way into the unsanitary houses that were to be seen in the Health Exhibition. It might have been ‘ risky ’ to the health of visitors in pursuit of knowledge, but ocular demonstration would have proved to the sanitarian that where he was spending two or three hundred pounds on his drains, his wife might be importing fever germs in a 328 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. new velvet -covered sofa. Is it not humiliating that men of honour should be even expected to compete with labour of this description ? It is true, nevertheless, that to all these drawbacks of unscrupulous competition is the conscientious employer exposed. How will it fare with the wage-earning class if they are to be left to solve the problem by themselves % 1 put this question because I have been told by a well-meaning employer, in a copiously dashed epistle, that our efforts in the labour field are misdirected, that we are expending them on those who ought to be able to take care of themselves ; and what is to become of the helpless women and children \ That question I will dispose of at the close of my paper, though, by-the-by, the women in Oxford Street who share the woi-k will share in the profits. First, let me put another and ask — Can we any of us literally take care of ourselves : are we not mutually dependent on one another? The possessor of the most brilliant thoughts before he can give them to the world at large is dependent on manufacturer, stationer, printer, publisher — in fact a regular army of labour, before those thoughts can reach the public ; the same applies to the inventor, who, if he be with- out capital, is at the mercy of the cunning man. To my mind the ‘ haves ’ in the world are responsible more or less for the condition of the ‘ have-nots.’ But, left to take care of himself, what is the actual fate of even the skilled artisan ? He simply becomes the victim of the greed, the cunning, and the ignorance of his fellow-men — the ignorant but ^ cheap-loving ’ purchaser often putting double profits into the pocket of the man who has extorted the article out of the defenceless workman at half its market value. This is the lot of an unfoi-tunate class of men who have come under my notice during the last iwo years, often spoken of as ‘ garret masters.’ They include in their ranks a large number of highly skilled artisans whose productions are to be found in the mansions of the wealthy. These productions comprise all kinds of furniture ‘ picked up ’ (as the phrase goes), consisting chiefly of marqueterie, Chippendale, carved work, Ac. ; a great age attaches to it all, and consequently it commands a corre- sponding exchange \alue. The extraordinary thing is that the ‘ supply ’ of these venerable articles de luxe never ceases. So long as there is a ‘ demand ’for a cabinet onc-hundred years old the ‘ supply ’ is ‘ picked up for the eager pui chaser ; and why ? Because, strange to relate at so great a lapse of time, the producer is close at hand ! — as one of these men remarked to me the other day : ‘ I make nothing new.’ I have ascertained that as much as 500 or 600 per cent, is often made by the vendor of these articles ; one pair of ‘ very old ’ cabinets, for instance, that cost the opulent purchaser 350Z. the producer had received for them a few months before 40/., making THUKSDAY AFTERNOON. 329 perhaps a profit on his labour of from 6^. to lOZ. In most cases, how- ever, he regards ‘ profits ’ as a sort of windfall ; he cannot depend upon them, as — with, of course, honourable exceptions — he is too often beaten down even on written orders to the extent of 20 per cent. Instances of this kind might be multiplied did time permit ; but let us look at the sort of things that happen at the cheap pretentious shops, mainly dependent on these men for every-day articles of furniture. A man that I know took a small article of a new design, his own pattern, to one of these shops ; was asked his price per dozen, told to leave it and to call again. He did so, to receive the information that a man had been found who would produce the article at H. a dozen less, and that he might take his work away ! Thus was the man robbed of his invention and defrauded of his prospective labour. Only last week I, unknowingly at the time, sadly interfered with a profitable bargain by purchasing of one of these men at an equitable price a coveted article. The extortioner when he found it was sold, wanted to have it reproduced at half its value, the sum in fact that he had previously ofiered for such an article and might possibly have beaten the man down to. But into whose pocket does this price of defrauded labour go ? Not into the customer’s. Here is an example : an order was given by a customer at a so-called cheap shop to make a piece of furniture, and the work was put into the hands of a skilled workman to be executed at a price named. The article when finished satisfied the customer, who repeated the order ; but when the workman delivered the duplicate the tradesman found all manner of fault with a view to reducing the price, ofiering 25 per cent, under the sum bargained for. The angry man carried off his work, and knowing where its companion piece was lodged, took it home and fitted it in its place to the perfect satisfaction of its owner, to whom the now comforted man confided his story. The gentleman inquired the sum he was to have been paid for his labour, wrote out a cheque for the amount plus a sum representing 37 j per cent., remarking that ‘ he had been saved several pounds’ — a sum representing 57^ per cent, on the transaction. This story proves that the unscrupulous tradesman, after securing for himself a profit of 95 per cent., tried to defraud the workman of an additional 25 per cent, to transfer into his own pocket. Perpetually these defenceless men, after executing orders taken at the lowest price, are, on the delivery of their work, ‘ beaten down ’ under the pretext that it is faulty, and are forced by their need to yield to their extortioner. But Friday and Saturday are the dreaded days with these unfortunate sons of toil ; then it is that they are forced into the ‘ cheapest market ’ — a market shunned till the last moment — this place is called the ‘ dog’s home,’ it is their last resource. 330 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFEEENCE. There to the fullest extent cunning gets the better of skill — oppor-> tunity makes the thief — the workman is robbed not only of his own labour but even of the value of the labour of the men he has paid at U nion prices. Over-production ! I hear some one say ; if so, who is responsible for it ? Surely those who, whether with knowledge or in ignorance, are literally in league together through encouraging the spirit of greed to crush the producer and to defraud him of the fruits of his labour — labour, the just price of which would enable him, the producer, and others in like need, to enjoy the luxuries of furniture as well as a home in which to house it. Would that the ‘ rapping spirits ’ whose communications have hitherto been of a somewhat questionable nature — would that these messengers would take a lodging in such furniture both old and new, and ‘ rap out’ thewrongs- of all the ugly stories attaching to their history ! Never before did I dream that I could serve the living by finding a market for the pro- ductions of their dead ancestors ; now I am open to such orders, and will thankfully ‘ pick up ’ old cabinets, &c., in the service of humanity! Let me commend my hearers to the study of M. Zola’s recent novel Au Bonheur des Dames, a work not palatable to the refined taste, but one that exposes the greed of monster monopoly, a monopoly held by men whom Punch in scathing verses has recently satirised as the ‘ flintivits ’ of trade, traders who without incurring the cost of production lay themselves out to undertake contracts, which contracts are executed at the cost of the little men they enslave and demoralise. It is a nefarious form of competition that impedes reform and i& eating at the very heart of commercial morality. The object of this paper is to expose obstacles to reform ; everybody knows the reform I advocate ; for when, thanks mainly to the trust and devotion of my two colleagues, Mr. Albert Grey and Mr. Cameron Corbett, words on this subject have ripened into deeds, life becomes inevitably an active propaganda of the principle of sharing. ‘ Now ’ (as Emerson wrote fifty years ago) ‘ every man takes care that his neighbour is not cheating him,’ thus self intent he is often to be caught in the very act of cheating his neighbour. Can legislation alter this ] The State may restrain the fury of the tiger in man, but can it eradicate the cunning of the ape % No. ‘ But,’ predicts the moral essayist, ‘ a time comes when a man cares that he is not cheating his neighbour, then every- thing goes right, the market cart is transformed into the chariot of the sun — and verily the transformation scene will come — for, let a faith- less world deny it, the warm, living grasp of Truth is after all stronger than the cold, iron grip of greed.’ Those who doubt this assertion have only to cross the Channel and take a ticket to Guise to have ocular proof of what is within the reach of any manufacturer with THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 331 capital at his command. There, in a bend of the river Oise we may see the Associated Home and all its adjuncts that minister to the human needs of the 1,400 workers who labour in the Associated Workshops on the other side of the river. To every member of that human family is secured from birth to death the equivalent of riches : in childhood all have equal chances of physical, mental, and moral development; the fruit of every man’s labour is secured to him through mutual service rendered ; study and recreation are within the reach of all, for the joy of life is not crushed out of their existence ; in sickness there is all needful help at hand; and old age finds the workers living in honourable independence. There, too, the freedom of all is enlarged ; bolts and bars unneeded, because all have learned to respect the rights of others, consequently flowers and even ripe fruit are exempt from juvenile depredation in the extensive pleasure grounds that are the property of all. The original sole proprietor, without impoverishing himself, has enriched all, and that too without patronage to the workers or help from the State ; and moreover we hear no cry there about ‘ helpless women and children,’ because men and women are helping one another. Such is the substantial monu- ment of the great living humanitarian, M. Godin, the founder of the Social Palace of Guise. I adopt the word humanitarian advisedly because of the frequently mistaken use of the word philanthropist. Philanthropy is often spoken of as if it were the luxury of a privileged few, who exercise it as a sort of work of supererogation : whereas true love to man ought to be as free as the air we breathe ; the * luxury of giving ’ ought to be within the reach of all. Nor will coaxing appeal to the ‘ haves ’ of society to surrender one iota to the ‘ have-nots ’ ; coaxing can prevail on many a man to give that which he does not want, but the majesty of sharing is reserved for the man of lofty soul, who, roused by the enthusiasm of humanity, shall cast aside the pinchbeck chains of class conventionality and ascend the ladder of social progress. Mere rank will cease to fascinate him, for holding out the hand of fellowship to the man below, he will in the spirit of true democracy confess ‘ that man is as good as I am ’ ; and hand in hand as man and brother both will ascend the ladder through the dynamic force of love and duty. Human rights, the heritage of all, can be attained only through the performance of human duties, but let us not fear, God lives ; in many ways He is writing His moral Law in the hearts of living men, and exactly in proportion as we obediently follow such Divine leading, will He, the ever-present Father of all, through such consecrated human effort, ‘ help the poor unto their right, that the man of the earth be no more exalted against them.’ 332 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERaTION CO^’EEEENCE. Mr. W. J. Strachan (Hull Trades Council) considered the profit- sharing principle as promulgated by Mr. Sedley Taylor would not tend altogether to the advantage of the working classes. He had himself seen it carried on upon a very small scale, and had observed that instead of elevating the moral tone, it increased the selfishness of men. If, instead of looking to themselves, they were animated by the higher principles laid down by Mr. Frederic Harrison — viz. love to their fellow-men as the highest motive which could prompt them — they would rise above selfishness. The great dilficulty was this : under the profit-sharing principle an old man would come very poorly ofi‘ if his earnings were to depend wholly upon the work he did. The paper read by Mr. Jones was an admirable one ; it was very com- prehensive ; working-men would do well to peruse it carefully ; and he believed that much good would come of it. He certainly, in a sense, believed in profit-sharing, he thought it was only a right thing — there were firms carrying out the principle at the present time — and could be conducted on equitable lines by employers generally if only they were animated by a less selfish spirit than they displayed now ; happily in all cases there are exceptions. Instead of studying them- selves, and spending their lives in personal and social enjoyment, and entirely putting aside the interest of the workmen who were de- pendent upon them, they should consider the happiness of their employes and endeavour to promote their welfare. There was plenty of room for doing that in the town from which he came, where many of the employers had, and were amassing, fortunes, and bought large mansions and estates. Something had been said about taxing flour. It seemed to him that, if such a tax were imposed, it would have a serious effect upon the people and millers at any rate ; for the system of milling during the last twelve months, instead of benefiting the workmen, had tended to diminish their wages. Improved machinery, far from being an advantage to them, had proved the reverse ; for now, instead of receiving a fair rate of wages, where modern machinery is applied, the average has diminished from 30 to 35 per cent. More work is done by fewer and less skilful hands, and the gain by the change is the mill-owner’s. This reduction pressed hardly upon the workers. On the whole, he could not fall in with the system of profit-sharing because he believed it would have an injurious efiect upon the working classes who might participate. Mr. J. S. Murchie (Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners) said that one or two points had occurred to him during the reading of Mr. Sedley Taylor’s paper which he would mention as they had not been referred to in the course of discussion. One was : How were they to ascertain the profits of employers 1 There had THURSDAY AUTERNOON. 333 been a strike in Manchester wholly due to such information being withheld. The workmen claimed an advance, but the employers replied that their profits would not allow of their complying with the demand. The difiiculty then arose how to get the necessary know- ledge on that point. Formerly there existed a board of arbitration composed of an equal number of employers and of workmen, six on each side. At that board monthly reports were submitted, and other evidence was brought forward showing the state of trade throughout the country, especially within the locality in respect of which an advance of wages was claimed. All that the employers could be got to say was, ‘ Our profits will not admit of our making the advance ; ’ and all that the umpire could say under the circumstances was, ‘Well, gentlemen, I am bound to accept your word for it.’ It was not nice or decorous to say to employers, ‘We workmen do not believe you.’ The latter, therefore, simply presented their side of the case, and they had never yet been able to ascertain the amount of the em- ployers’ profits, although the investigator would have been pledged not to reveal the result of his investigation except to the umpire. It would be a difficulty to get them to admit what their profits were, much less hand them over to the investigation of working-men, which would be necessary under any system of profit-sharing. With regard to workmen on the Continent, he did not know much about them ; but it would seem from Mr. Sedley Taylor’s paper that the condition of labour there was different from its condition in England. In his own trade the continuity of labour was not now what it had been in the days of our forefathers ; it was now an uncommon thing for a man to be found in a shop for more than eighteen months or two years together, whereas fifty years ago men used to live and die in the service of one firm. That was not so nowadays with a shifting trade like his. When a man went to his work in the morn- ing, he did not know whether he might not be discharged at night. As for profit-sharing, he would like to know what was a man’s share when the probable results of an enterprise could not be ascertained until the end of the year. Those were the difficulties which Mr. Sedley Taylor would have to get over before he could carry out his idea ; if he could not meet them, they would form a fatal objection. His own opinion was that production on the co-operative plan would be the only solution of the problem as between capital and labour AVorkmen would have to employ themselves. He had in his mind’s- eye a very good illustrative case, which he had been asked to mention by a gentleman who was not likely to be called upon to speak. In Manchester there was a co-operative printing society, and nearly every workman connected with it had a share in the concern. At 334 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. the end of each half-year they divided per cent, to the share- holders, and the remainder of the profits went in three portions : one going to the shareholders again, another to the workmen — a per- centage of their wages — and the third portion to those who traded with them. That experience led him to the conclusion that the present difficulty could be solved only by co-operative production. The Chairman : Mr. Sedley Taylor is good enough to forego his right to reply. I ought to say for him, in reference to what fell from the last speaker, who said he did not think as an English workman that profit-sharing could exist in this country, that, as a matter of fact, it does exist to a considerable extent. Miss Hart represents a very successful profit-sharing establishment, and there are many others in certain trades. Mr. Sedley Taylor explained that when it was estimated there would be no time for reply, he made his waiver conditionally on there being no attack made on the paper which might require a reply The Chairman ; We must give up possession of the hall in two or three minutes, as it is wanted for another purpose. Mr. Taylor must make his reply in writing, and it will appear in full in the Eeport of the Proceedings. i^Tlie Conference then adjourned^ Mr. Sedley Taylor writes : — I avail myself of the opportunity afforded me to write a few words in reference to criticisms made on my paper by Professor Beesly, Mr. Strachan, and Mr. Murchie. Professor Beesly is perfectly right in saying that I have repre- sented profit-sharing as a source of material benefit to employer as well as to employed. Capitalists in general are, indeed, hardly likely to introduce it unless it offers them some tangible inducement to alter the established mode of remunerating labour. I should, how- ever, sincerely rejoice if they proved willing to try the system on the basis of assigning to their employes the entire additional profits realised in consequence of the stimulus of participation ; and I cer- tainly regret having neglected to draw attention in my paper to the moral grounds on which that course may be recommended. My critic is of opinion that the result of a general system of profit-sharing would be severer and more distressing labour. I should anticipate an opposite consequence — more intelligent and thoughtful work per- formed with greater cheerfulness and, therefore, with less tendency to overstrain. The experience hitherto obtained unquestionably points in this direction. The existence of great preventable waste in many branches of industry is generally recognised; and its removal, combined TIIUESDAY AFTEENOON. 335 with reduction in the cost of superintendence, thus constitutes an admitted source whence additional remuneration might accrue to more careful workers. I cannot, therefore, think, with Professor Beesly, that only by the diminution of the non-workmen’s share a single room at a cruel rent, and work was more difficult for them to get now, as they came from a place of such had repute, and they fell into the hands of those who sweat the last drop out of man, and woman, and child, for wages which are the food only of despair. And the darkness and the diit, the bad food and the sickness, and the want of water, were worse than before ; and the crowding and the companionship of the court robbed them of the last shreds of self- respect. Then the drink demon seized upon them. Of course there was a public-house at both ends of the court. There they fled, one and all, for shelter, and warmth, and society, and forgetfulness. And they came out in deeper debt, with inflamed senses and burning brains, and with an unsatisfled craving for drink they would do any- thing to satiate. And in a few months the father was in prison, the wife dying, the son a criminal, and the daughters on the streets. And the preacher truly adds — Multiply this history by half a million, and you will be beneath the truth. In the two classes of facts I have now set briefly before you — the compulsory depopulation of the country districts, and the over-population of the towns, with the consequent crowded tenements, competition wages, misery, starvation, and crime — we see cause and effect clearly in action. And when we re- member the countless attractions of a rural life, and the almost invariable affection of the settled countryman for his native place, we may be sure that it is compulsion that drives men away from it. Joseph Arch tells us that the labourer’s dream is ‘ to secure his homestead to himself.^ Let us render this dream a reality, and we shall, I believe, have solved the great problem we have before us. And surely it is no such great thing to do — no such terrible and unimaginable monstrosity — that every English working-man should be able to secure a sufficient plot of his native soil on fair terms, to live and work and die on ! Almost every one who now writes on the subject, be he Tory, Whig, or Eadical, admits that every labourer should have a plot of land, that it would be an immense benefit to himself and to the whole community ; and they admit that labourers eagerly long for it, and are both willing and able to pay a fair price for it ; but none of them ever propose any means of enabling him 380 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. to have it, much less give him a right to claim it ; and not one in a thousand ever rises above the idea of allotments as the one thing needful. Even so late as October last, and from such a Eadical as Sir Charles Dilke, an increase of allotments was the only suggestion for the labourers’ benefit! It is necessary, therefore, to say a word or two on this matter. Allotments, I venture to say, are the very worst mode of utilising land for the labourer, and from our point of view absolutely useless. Can their advocates be aware that Mill, in his Political Economy,'^ condemns them absolutely as tending to keep down wages, so that, if general, they would not benefit the labourer ? But apart from this they are bad, because ( 1 ) they are always too small ; (2) they are almost always let at a higher rent than the farmer pays for the same land, often twice, sometimes six, or even ten times as much I (3) they are always let on a yearly tenure, and therefore cannot be permanently im- proved ; (4) they are always at a greater or less distance from the labourer’s dwelling, and he cannot therefore utilise all his spare time and that of his family, or apply his house sewage and refuse to them; (5) being unenclosed, he cannot keep pigs or poultry on them, or even cultivate any choice crops. For these reasons I consider the allotment system absolutely condemned so far as any real and permanent elevation of the labourer is concerned ; yet the fact that even under these cruelly disadvan- tageous conditions they are sought after, and so cultivated that a considerable profit is made from them, indicates what would be the result had these men a sufficient plot of land on which to live, at a fair rent and on a secure tenure. From evidence given before the ‘Women’s and Children’s Employment Com- mission’ in 1868, it was proved that cottagers obtained a return from such allotments of 16L an acre above the ordinary farm rent, and it was estimated that if every agricultural labourer above twenty years of age possessed half-acre or quarter-acre allotments, the annual value of the produce would be between three and four millions of pounds. What, then, would be the value of the produce if they had one or two acre plots on which to live permanently ? It may be safely stated ’ Book II. chap. xii. par. 4. FEIDAY MOKNING. 381 that such plots would be made to produce more than double the amount per acre of the allotments ; and if a labourer can cultivate in overtime a quarter or half- acre allotment, often at half a mile or more from his cottage, he could cultivate with greater ease an acre or even two acres of garden land at his own door, since he could utilise every quarter-hour, every five minutes even, of spare time, which otherwise would be wasted ; he would save the time and labour of walking to and from his allotment, which in the aggregate must be often nearly as great as the time and labour bestowed upon it; besides which, numerous half-hours and spare minutes would be devoted to it by his wife and children, which under the allotment system are necessarily wasted. As an example of what can be done, take the case of the Annandale Estate in Dumfriesshire, where, as Mr. Brodrick ^ tells us, — Leases of twenty-one years were offered at ordinary farm rents to deserving labom-ers, carefully selected for their character, who built their own cottages, at a cost to themselves varying from 2D. to 40^., exclusive of labour, while the landlord supplied timber, stone, &c., at a cost of about 22Z. These houses were not grouped in villages, but chiefly situated along roads, with plots of from two to six acres attached to each, or the addition of grass for a cow. All the work for these little farms was done at by-hours and by members of the family, the cottager buying roots from the farmer, and producing in return milk, butter, and pork, besides rearing calves. Among such peasant farmers pauperism soon ceased to exist, and many of them soon bettered themselves in life. It was also particularly observed that habits of marketing and the constant demands on thrift and fore- thought brought out new virtues and powers in the wives. In fact, the moral effects of the system in fostering industry, sobriety, and contentment were described as no less satisfactory than its economical success. Again, the same writer tells us that on several estates in Cheshire it is the practice to let plots of land ranging from two and a half to three and a half acres with each cottage at an ordinary farm rent. This practice, which is but the revival of a custom once almost universal amongst the peasantry of England, * English Land and English Landlords, p. 237. 382 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. is found to be fraught with manifold advantages. The most obvious of these is an abundant supply of milk for the farm labourers’ children, who in many districts grow up without tasting the natural diet of childhood. But the habits of thrift and forethought encouraged by cowkeeping and dairying, on however small a scale, constitute a moral advantage of great importance. On Lord Tollemache’s estate in Cheshire, where the system has been long established and carefully managed, its results have been eminently beneficial, and attended by none of the drawbacks so often magnified into insuperable difficulties by the opponents of cottage farming. Of course the amount of land required and the use it was put to would vary according to th3 soil and local circumstances. Sometimes fruit would be grown, sometimes vegetables ; in some cases pig-feeding or poultry-keeping would be most advanta- geous ; and that even wheat may be grown by labourers better than by farmers was shown by the Eev. W. C. Stubbs, in Buck- inghamshire, who let out his glebe to labourers in half-acre allotments, and they produced more than one and a half times as much wheat as the surrounding farmers, and actually a higher average than the great experimental farmer, Mr. Lawes ! ^ The general success and great advantages of occupying ownership, whether of small plots or of good-sized farms, have been demonstrated by an overwhelming mass of evidence in most European countries. The celebrated Arthur Young, from his personal observations, deduced the now celebrated axiom, ‘ The magic of property turns land ioto gold ; ’ though, as he himself elsewhere shows, and as all economists are aware, it is not ‘ property,’ but ‘ secure possession,’ which has the magical effect. Hence Arthur Young’s second axiom, ‘ Give a man secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden ; give him a nine years’ lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.’ So that we may be sure that the best examples of what peasant farms can show under a few benevo- lent landlords, by no means come up to the effects that would be produced by secure occupying oivnership. ' The Land and the Labourers, by Rev. C. W. Stubbs, Vicar of Gran- borough. W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. 1881. FRIDAY MORNING. 383 But the most important thing we have now to consider is that, along with the well-being, independence, and comfort which the secure possession of a plot of land gives to a labourer, a general rise of wages is sure to follow so soon as the system becomes at all general. In his remarkable work. Six Cen- turies of Work and Wages, Prof. Thorold Eogers states as an undisputed fact that, ‘ in a country of small agricultural pro- prietors, hired labour is always absolutely and relatively dearer ; ’ and it evidently must be so, for the labourer is no longer dependent, day by day and week by week, on wages as his only safeguard against starvation. Not only does he at once become a small capitalist, but he has the means of labouring profitably for himself if equally profitable or more profitable work is not offered him. For the first time in our modern era the labourer, when the land is open to him, will be in a condition to make a really ‘ free contract ’ with his employer. He will not, as now, be forced to accept the bare subsistence wages offered him or starve ; and, accordingly, wages will rise, and will approach if they do not ever quite reach their natural standard — the whole produce which a labourer, having free access to land, can raise from it. Here, then, we have a real solution of the problem before us, because not only will the possession of land benefit the labourers who possess it, but, by raising the rate of wages of unskilled labour, and therefore of all labour, it will benefit to an almost equal extent those who do not possess it. Let us then, before pointing out the exact means by which this great reform can be brought about, consider a few of the objections usually brought against any measure for giving to the people at large that which in individual cases is invariably beneficial to them- selves and to the community. Mr. Jefferies, in his amusing and suggestive work, Hodge and his Masters, gives several ex- amples of labourers who tried to live on three or four acres of land, and who almost all failed. But this was to be expected. They had too much to supplement wages, too little to live on. These failures will soon right themselves when men can have land in any quantities that may suit their circumstances. Another labourer mentioned by ^Ir. Jefferies took thirty acres of 384 INDUSTEIAL KEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. land at an acre, for which a farmer had just before paid 30s. an acre, and he failed ! No wonder. But it is not so certain that he would have failed if he had paid 30s., and had had the land on a perpetual tenure at that rent. Then say others, ‘If the labourer has land he will be too independent, and will not work.’ That objection is answered by every experiment which has yet been tried. Besides, it is no objection. We want them to be independent. We want them to refuse to work for starvation wages — and that is mostly what the objectors mean ; but for adequate wages they are and will ever be the best of workers, and they will be always on the spot, attached to the land, and ready to aid in its cultivation. Let us listen to another of Mr. Jefferies’ sayings about ‘ Hodge : ’ ‘ The settled agricultural labourer, of all others, has the least inducement to strike or leave his work. The longer he can stay in one place the better for him in many ways. His fruit-trees which he planted years ago are coming to perfection, and bear sufficient fruit in good years not only for food, but to bring him in a good sum of hard cash. The soil of the garden, long manured and dug, is twice as fertile as when he first disturbed the earth. The hedges have grown high and kept off the bitter wind. In short, the place is home, and he sits under his own vine and his own fig tree. It is not to his advantage to leave this and go miles away.’ And this was written, remember, of a yearly tenancy, with -all its disadvantages and uncertainties! How much more forcibly does every word of it apply when the home thus created is the man’s own, and he feels as secure and independent in it as the parson in his glebe or the squire in his hall. Another objection is, that we want to get people away from the overcrowded towns, and these people would starve if put upon land in the country. But it is forgotten that the over- crowding of towns is due very largely to the influx of country- men for the last ten or twenty years ; and it is certain that were land now open to them in their native parishes, numbers of these would return to take advantage of it. And if at first only those who had saved a little money went back, these would decrease the competition among those who remained, and before FRIDAY MORNING. 385 many years had passed I venture to say that a considerable proportion of the countrymen who have been forced into towns would find their way back again to the country. Again, it is objected, capital is required to farm on however small a scale, and how are the labourers to obtain it ? This is the weakest of all objections. Labour creates capital, and it is certain that nothing induces the labourer to save like the prospect of being thereby enabled to secure land and ‘ a home- stead of his very own.’ In my opinion nothing is so likely to make peasant farming a failure as any scheme to enable peasants to borrow capital with which to commence. They would then begin work on a scale to which they had not been accustomed, they would not have learnt by experience the innumerable economies and details of management which alone make farming a success, and in many cases they would soon fall hopelessly into debt. I ask for the labourer, not charity or loans, but fair opportunity and equal justice. Let him always begin on a small scale, with an acre of land to occupy his overtime and the spare hours of his family. When this succeeds, and he has saved a little capital or built a cottage, let him, if he wishes, have an acre more. The few who show exceptional skill, and industry, and thrift, and who save money enough to stock a small farm, of say ten or fifteen acres, should be able to obtain such a farm, always paying for it the fair agricultural rent, but having it on a secure — practically on a perpetual tenure.^ In order to bring about this great system of free occupying ownership, which would certainly raise wages over the whole country and thus greatly diminish pauperism, while the in- oreased production of food and elevation of the labourers would do more to renovate trade than any extension of foreign markets, we have only to give the labourer and the public generally the benefit of that principle which the Legislature always applies in the case of great industrial undertakings — viz. * In a small tract, Horn to Experiment in Land Nationalimtion,l\\?ivQ shown how such farms may be advantageously created on Crown Land, Corporation Esiates, and Commons ; while the beneficial results of such peasant-farms are exhibited by illustrative cases given in a book on Land Nationalimtion, its Necessity and its Aims, and, more fully, in the works of Mill, Kay, Thornton Brodrick, Howitt, Laing, Laveleye, and Sismondi. 386 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. empower land to be taken for the purpose, whenever required, at a fair valuation. Without attempting to dictate any special method of doing this as being exclusively the right one, I will sketch out a mode of proceeding which appears to me at once simple and practical, reducing officialism to a minimum, and giving the fullest play to local authority. After enacting that, in order that the maximum amount of labour may be expended on the land, and the greatest amount of produce be obtained from it, every British subject of adult age may (once only) claim a portion of land for personal occupation, at a fair rent and on a secure tenure ; the vestry or other local au- thority in every rural parish will be directed to appoint annually four men of knowledge and integrity to act as land assessors, two of them to be chosen from the class of farmers, and two from that of labourers. Any labourer or other person wanting a plot of land for personal occupation shall send in a form of notice (to be obtained gratis at the post office) to the person then occu- pying the land desired to be taken, naming the assessor chosen to represent him, and requesting the said occupier to name an assessor as his representative, and to fix a day for them all to meet upon the land in question and settle the matter. Each party will thereupon state his wishes and objections, and the assessors will decide — (1) the exact site of the plot of land to be allotted ; (2) its quantity; (3) the annual rent to be paid for it on the basis of the average rental paid for similar land on the same farm or in the immediate neighbourhood ; (4) the amount of compensation due to the present occupier for un- exhausted improvements upon the plot of land in question. If the two assessors are unable to agree upon any of these points, the clergyman of the parish is to act as umpire, and to give a final decision, unless the vestry have appointed a special umpire to act in all such cases. A fixed fee (say 10s. each) to be paid the assessors for each award. Their decision to be inserted in a reference book kept for the purpose by the umpire, and the plot to be marked out on the ground and on the parish copy of Ordnance map by the district surveyor. The rents of all such plots may be collected by the rate-collector of the district, and FRIDAY MORNING. 387 the amount, less a small percentage for collection, paid to the landowner. Certain general principles would be laid down for the guidance of the assessors, subject to which the greatest possible freedom should be allowed in 'the choice of land, since no one can decide the situation and quality of land most useful to a labourer or mechanic so well as the man who is to occupy it and make it his home. The chief limitations necessary would be, that all pieces thus allotted should be ordinary agricultural land adjoining some public highway, and that they should not be granted very near to an existing farmhouse or other dwelling, if the occupier or owner thereof has any valid objection, and if land equally suitable can be had a little further away. Any trade or occupation constituting a nuisance might also be forbidden. The usual size of the lots at first granted should be one acre, with a frontage to the road about half, and not less than one- third the depth, but lots of two or more acres up to five might be taken, if special reasons existed why such lots would be more useful to the applicant. The amount assessed as compensation for improvements would have to be paid before entering on the land, and the rent should be collected half-yearly. The as- sessor’s fees should be paid out of the rates, on the ground that every labourer thus settled on the land would be an insurance against pauperism, and in many ways a benefit to the whole community. The holdings would be perpetual so long as the rent was paid ; and the rents would be fixed for, say, thirty- three years, and then only raised if the general agricultural rent of the locality had risen, and in the same proportion. The actual occupier of the land would be responsible for the rent, and no subtenancy or mortgage on the land would be valid, but the right of occupancy might be transferred, bequeathed or sold with the house or other improvements, just as an improved leasehold or copyhold may be transferred now. Under this arrangement the tenant would have the most perfect security for all his improve- ments and the full enjoyment of all the products of his labour, while the landlord would have his rent amply secured and regularly paid, and would, moreover, receive whatever ‘ unearned increment ’ might accrue to the land from social development c c 2 388 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. until such time as this unearned increment, in the case of all land whatever, is taken by the State for the benefit of those who create it, or until complete nationalisation of all land is effected. On this point my own opinions are well known, but the great question we are now discussing cannot wait for so vast and so radical a change in public opinion as is necessary to bring it about. But by the method now advocated no attack whatever is made on private property in land, and no new principle is introduced. Every petty branch railway, even if calculated only to put money into the pockets of promoters, lawyers, engineers, and land speculators, has powers given it of compulsorily taking land ; and we only ask that the same power may be granted to the people at large in order to bring about a more healthy and natural distribution of the population, and a greater and more varied production from the soil. There is absolutely no difference of opinion as to this being a good thing in itself, but no one has yet ventured to point out how it may be brought about — not here and there on isolated patches of charity lands, nor on estates purchased by land asso- ciations for the purpose, and which, besides being miserably inadequate, would almost certainly fail — but over the whole length and breadth of the country, enabling every labourer to have his acre of land, and his home near to his native village, or to the farm on which he labours, and affording to every man who has been obliged to leave his native place the opportunity of returning to it under new and happier auspices. And this can all be done without taking away any man’s property, or interfering with his legal and equitable rights, without any loans or advances of public money, without calling to our aid the obstructive powers of a single commissioner at a salary of 5,0001. a year, or requiring the expenditure of a yard of red tape, or the assistance of a single lawyer in any part of the operation. Moreover, the plan would ensure its own success by its selective action on the men who would benefit by it. A little money would be required to pay for the improvements and to secure payment of the first half-year’s rent, and this would ensure that only the industrious and thrifty labourers would first take land, and these would be certain to convert even FEIDAY MORNING . 389 the barren est acres into fertile gardens. In order to have more land, a man must have saved more money ; and if it is objected that it is not the already well -to-do, hut the miserable and the starving that we want to get on to the land, the reply is, that the only sure and permanently successful way to get them there is to let those who are better off and more experienced go first ; for by their going the fierce competition for work will be lessened, wages will rise, those who were out of work or on starvation wages will find their condition improved ; and hav- ing in the now bright future the glad vision of a ‘ homestead of their own,’ many will work and save until they too can join their friends in the old native village, and end their lives amid the scenes of their early youth. One of the objections often made against any proposal to raise general wages is that, if better off, the poor will multiply more rapidly, will thus increase competition for work, and soon become as bad off as before. But there never was a more superficial or a more unfounded objection than this, since the universal testimony of all inquirers is, that by improving the status of the labourer, and raising his standard of comfort, you increase his morality and delay the period of marriage. When a ‘ homestead of his own ’ is within reach of every young labourer by a few years of industry and self-denial, and when in every part of the country many have attained to it, no decent country girl will marry a man who has not secured it ; and thus the period of marriage will be put off, at first two or three, and soon, as wages and the standard of comfort rise, perhaps four or five years. Now this will check the increase of population in two distinct ways. By delaying the average period of marriage, say, five years, the average length of each generation is increased to that extent, and the time required to double the population is greatly lengthened. Even, therefore, if the average produc- tiveness of such marriages remained the same, the mere later marriage-period would materially check the rate of increase. But Mr. Francis Gralton ^ has shown, by a careful series of observations among healthy country families, that a delay of the age of marriage from 17 to 22 diminishes the average ^ Inquiries into Human Faculty^ p. 320. 1883. 390 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. fertility of such marriages in the proportion of 6 to 5. Combining these two effects together, there will be a very considerable diminution of the rate of increase, an object of great importance in itself, but rendered doubly important when it is brought about by an increase of material well-being, and an elevation at once in the social and moral status of society. Another objection will no doubt be made to these proposals in the form of the time-honoured dogma — ‘ You cannot abolish poverty by Act of Parliament ; ’ and with extreme inconsistency the fierce opponents of laissez-faire as a general doctrine will uphold it now, and ask to have the relations of the land and the people ‘ let alone.’ But I, who am an upholder of the true doctrine of laissez-faire^ am quite ready to agree that Parlia- ment can do little or nothing by positive compulsory enactments, by ordering people to do this and not to do that, by limiting their freedom to work and live as they please within the limits of equal freedom to others. But when an Act of Parliament is a great liberating act, when it strikes the shackles from the slave and sets him free to labour for himself, when it throws down the artificial and immoral barriers Ybat have long kept willing arms from labouring on their native soil, when it enables the thousands who have been driven from the country to the overcrowded towns to return again to the scenes of their youth, and secures to every industrious labourer the possession of a fair share of the wealth which he creates, such an Act is almost unlimited in its power of doing good to suffering humanity. Here, then, is my solution of the problem of the unequal distribution of wealth that prevails among us. I have traced it to its roots in the power which one part of the community is allowed to possess of forbidding to all the rest the free use of their native soil. This is the great political injustice which, as I anticipated would be the case, is the fundamental cause of the widespread poverty in the midst of our abounding wealth, and of almost all the crying evils of our complex society. Like all injustice in the primary relations of man and man, its evil influence is universal in its range and appalling in its amount. FEIDAY MORNING. 391 It permeates our wlioie civilisation, and so contaminates it that all the powers of nature which during the past century science has enlisted in our service, have intensified, rather than di- minished, the sum of human labour ; and have done so little to improve the condition of our labourers, that one in fifteen of our whole population and one in nine of the population of our capital city actually die in union workhouses ! And this can represent only a fraction, probably a small fraction, of the pauperism in our midst ! Briefly to sum up : I claim for the proposal now made — (1) That it goes to the very root of the matter, since by rendering a large number of labourers less dependent on daily wages as their only means of obtaining food, it would imme- diately and necessarily raise the standard of wages ; and this is absolutely the only means (except charity pure and simple) by which the labouring classes may at once be enabled more fully to share in the products of industry. (2) It does this in the simplest conceivable way, by throw- ing down the barriers which now prevent labour from flowing over the land. (3) It would enable every labourer, by industry and thrift, to realise his highest aspiration — ‘ a homestead of his own.’ (4) It would largely increase the food-supply of the country, especially in dairy-produce, poultry, fruit, and vegetables, now to the amount of thirty-eight millions annually imported from abroad. (5) It would, by a self-acting gradual process, withdraw the congested populations of the towns back to the rural districts from which they have so largely come ; and would at the same time benefit those who remained by both raising their wages and lowering their rents. (6) It would completely settle both the Irish and the High- land land questions, by satisfying the just claims of the labourers and cottiers in one country, and the crofters in the other ; and would open up to human industry extensive areas of both countries, once cultivated, but now devoted exclusively to cattle, sheep, or game. (7) It would also bring about a great moral reform, since all 392 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. experience proves that the possession of land on a secure tenure is the best incentive to sobriety, industry, and thrift. (8) And, lastly, all this can be effected without any financial operation or increased taxation, and with no greater interference with landed property than is allowed to many of the speculations of capitalists of far less general utility. I therefore confidently submit to this Conference that the object we all have at heart may be best attained by taking the necessary steps to instruct the working classes, and especially the two and a half millions of labourers who are now enfran- chised, as to the only means, at once effectual and equitable, by which they may more fully share in the products of in- dustry. It will then be in their power to return representatives who will give effect to their just demands, to the extent and in the manner here indicated, and thus, in all probability, save our country from a social revolution which may bring misery and ruin to thousands, and whose end, whether for good or evil, it is impossible to foresee. Land Nationalisation. By Emeritus Professor F. W. Newman, of the Land Nationalisation Society. The Society for Land Nationalisation, under the belief that every step it can gain in its own direction conduces to your interest, conceived the desire to address you ; and, believing that you kindly assent, requested me, who am one of their Vice-Presidents, to draw up a statement which might roughly express their thought. Living on the west coast of England, I cannot write as one who conveys to you the very words of our Executive, from whom distance separates me ; yet I hope I shall in no important matter fail of executing the task which they lay on me. A very large, an undesirably large, fraction of English workmen live by wages, whether as labourers on the soil or as mechanics ; and your question (I understand) is. How may FRIDAY MORNING. 393 wages be kept from falling ? or how. when possible and reason- able, may their rise be insured ? In trying to throw light on this question, I beg leave to state previously (in my own name, for into this topic our Land Nationalisation Society cannot enter), that unless a workman has learnt how to spend money well, I could not congratulate him on a rise of wages. In my conviction his first business is to spend his wages justly, giving to his wife (if he have a wife) the wages due to her as his housemaid and cook and nurse of his children, before he spends a penny on his own mere indulgence. If he spend on intoxi- cating drink and on tobacco, it very often happens that the higher wages he gets the worse is his own condition, and the more unjust he is to his wife and children. Bear with me in saying this much by parenthesis. Now, what causes make wages rise and sustain their rise ? Two causes must be named ; first, the prosperity of employers, which enables them to pay more to the employed, and in- duces them to desire extending their business by increasing the number of their workmen ; secondly, the deficiency of men eager for employment, and through destitution willing to work for the existing wage or even for something lower. Whatever makes employers richer and compete with one another for workmen, tends to raise wages. This is too evident to need proof. Abundance of capital and good markets for the masters, on the one hand, and on the other a slack supply of destitute men looking for employment, tend to high wages. On each of these topics there is much for you to consider. If I address town workmen I need not ask whether wages are not lowered by an influx of rustic lads. Notoriously the rural acres do not support their new births. The population of towns increases rapidly and unfairly by country people streaming in. When a town-capitalist, like the late Alderman Mechi, betakes himself to high-farming, he spends largely on every acre and needs four or five men where only one sufficed before. If high-farming were at all general, this would arrest the influx of countrymen to the towns and the beating down of wages by their competition. Notoriously our soil is underculti- vated ; there ought to be a vast expenditure of capital upon 394 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEKATION CONFEEENCE. it. English capital abounds. In order to find investments for it, it is largely sent abroad, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer is now hoping to reduce the 3 per cents, to 2^ ; such is the glut of capital. Why is it not spent on the soil ? Because of the unjust power of landlords, also because of the crippling of landlords themselves by entail, by mortgages, and by family settlements. Here I can only treat of the landlords’ power. The law is the same in the three kingdoms : the Irish landlord lias only the same legal power as the English landlord, and Mr. Gladstone has avowed that in Ireland the landlords have been appropriating to themselves the fruit of the tenants’ industry. In England and Scotland no tenant who spends freely on the soil has any security that here, any more than in Ireland, he will be able to avoid the confiscation of his natural and moral rights by the landlord. In Scotland most painful warnings have been given to tenants how dangerous is high-farming. Landlords are less and less able to get tenants to risk large capital, and even to accept farms on a common scale at existing rents. Farmers and landlords also, into whose hands farms are thrown, change arable land into pasture, in order to manage with fewer hands ; thus, worse than ever, driving countrymen into the towns. A still more monstrous and un- endurable practice seems to be on the increase — that of turning the cultivated region into a wilderness, a deer park, from which they calculate on a sporting rent from rich men who will pay more than a farmer’s rent. This process ejects nearly all the human population, and, instead of supplying food to the nation and ‘ soldiers to the king,’ according to a landlord’s feudal duty, floods the towns with men and bids us buy food from abroad. Political economists for fifty years and more have trumpeted the superiority of large farms held under landlords, have cast contempt and reproof on small freeholders, often indeed con- founding them with Irish cottiers in a common condemnation. But the small properties of France, Belgium, and the Channel Islands have opened the eyes of many : large farms under a landlord are less and less possible : small properties in which the same man is landlord and cultivator are now more and FRIDAY MORNING. 395 more wished for. If this system were actively promoted, we know from the experience of the Channel Islands that our land could sustain a far larger rural population, and, after feeding it, send more food to the town markets than it now sends. This also would arrest the influx of country competitors for town wages ; but this also is a system at present impossible, partly from the unwillingness of landlords, partly because entails embarrass them. Thus the mismanagement of the English soil, as a result of our evil law of land tenure, draws after it a com- petition which beats down town wages. Our Society, which aims at recovering the land for the State (that is, for the nation as a community, not for the Executive authority), if its programme were fully carried out would abolish the landlord entirely, and substitute occupying cultivators holding under the State and owning, not the soil itself, but whatever has been added to the soil by human industry. But obviously time is necessary to explain to our millions a scheme so new and to attain the support necessary. Our earnest desire is already to move in the right direction, to propagate truth, and forbid the establishment of erroneous principles in any efforts to remedy the evils which cannot be denied. In the Bill of Mr. Jesse Collings for commencing the Parliamentary establishment of small free proprietors we rejoice. Every step in that direction thrusts the landlords’ power back, and begins a process of keeping rustics at home. But while our Executive goes on annexing fresh and fresh territory to the empire, they will spend many millions annually on army and navy, and many a ten millions on war upon war. Without wholly new principles they will go on, grudging half a million to establish an English independent peasantry, while they spend twenty millions on Imperial ambition. Your voices are wanted to insist that home interests shall be made paramount over Imperialism, and that our taxes sliall be spent for the benefit of our people at home ; also that a short, sharp, effective stop shall be put to deer parks and the expulsion of human population. Besides, we wish to warn you against the false and mischievous doctrine which strives to obliterate the legal distinction be- tween land and movable property. For a moment I speak for 396 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEKATION CONFEEENCE. myself (not for our Society) in insisting that a limit ought tO' be set, and a severe one, at the earliest possible date, to the quantity of land of which an individual may be lord. Five hun- dred acres of rural land, one acre of town land, seem to me enough for one man. But our Society distinctly disavows the doctrine that land ought to be freely saleable like railway scrip. Land being necessary to human life, the landlord never can justly be the owner, he is only the chief; but others always have rights in the land as well as he. Anyone may own a stick, or a coat, or a book, for the test of ownership is that he may destroy the article without injuring anyone. But if a landlord could destroy his land by letting in the sea upon it^ he would have no right so to do, plainly for the reason just given, that right in the land belongs to others as well as to the lord. Unless you, who are the most numerous class, learn clearly and insist on this cardinal distinction of land, forbidding it rightly to be called property of an individual, there is much danger that the mercantile class will (under pretence of reform) introduce new mischiefs. Their rich men are eager to buy up large estates, and pretend that to ease this process is a great reform. Workmen in the country must be well aware how hard it is for a peasant, however industrious, intelligent, and virtuous,, ever to rise into a higher position. His wages are artificially kept down by the power of the landlord to sponge the farmer, so that any prosperity of the farmer, instead of raising the peasants, is liable to be drained off by the landlord. But even if a peasant received a large legacy, he would seldom be able to buy a freehold with it. The aim of our Society is to establish a state of things in which small independent plots of land shall be procurable everywhere. So much I have said on one side of the topic from which I started. I go back to remark that while the retention of rustic folk in the country is one matter to be studied by you, it is evil to forget the other side of the question : How may your employers be enriched and be able to pay higher wages ? If they pine and droop they will at last close their works, sacrifice their fixed capital, and transfer the rest to some foreign soil, FRIDAY MORNING. 397 and then those of you who called capital your enemy would learn too late that it was your best friend. But what now undermines the prosperity of so many employers ? Foreign competition. Since 1 848 a great change has passed over the European continent, politically and commercially : the great American Eepublic also has made mighty strides. Foreign manufacturers now supply very many markets and practically supersede British goods. England has overvalued her foreign trade and undervalued her home trade. Our manufacturers cannot hope for much prosperity until the mass of our people are the chief purchasers of their goods. An immense impetus will he given when of the 150 millions annually spent in in- toxicating drink, 130 millions at least are spent on useful articles. Besides, if small dairy farms, fruit farms, poultry farms are multiplied through peasant freeholds, the rural dis- tricts will be an ever-growing market, far more valuable to our great industries than distant markets can he, and evidently more secure. Nor shall we need half or a quarter of what we receive from America in solid food. Wheat alone we shall always be glad to receive largely, because our climate is less favourable for it ; but if we are again to have any high pros- perity, imported food must become, as of old, the exception, and the bulk of our provisions be home-grown. To attain this end also you must aid us in restricting and abolishing the land- lords’ power. Discussion. Mr. J. E. Williams (Social Democratic Federation) said he re- joiced that that sitting would be occupied by a fair fight between the socialist party on the one side and the individualist party on the other. The combatants should be forced to declare themselves one thing or the other; and Mr. Balfour and Mr. Wallace ought to make their choice between joining either the socialist or the individualist camp. For himself he maintained that we must sweep away both the landlords and the capitalist party, because the nationalisation of the land alone would not benefit the people. He and his friends the socialists, therefore, were determined to have a ‘ go ’ at both these classes of robbers. He would ask Mr. Wallace to consider very seriously whether, if we left all the machinery, all the railways, all large factories, and all the mines of the country in the hands of the 398 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. rich capitalists, the working classes would still continue to be op* pressed. We must either say that the Government had no right to interfere with anything, or we must admit that the socialists were right in declaring that the State must equally interfere between the landlord and the capitalist on the one hand, and the labourer on the other. The Tory and the Liberal parties were fast dying out. The Eadicals were the men who to-day stood in the way of reform, and thus reminded him of Dickens’ Oliver Twist. In Oliver Twist there was a character known as the ‘ Artful Dodger,’ who first stole a pocket-handkerchief, and then diverted attention from himself by raising a hue and cry after Oliver Twist. The Radical to-day was the ‘ Artfid Dodger ’ (great laughter), who went up and down this country telling the people to take hold of the landlord thief, but to let the greater thief, the capitalist, go scot-free. (Laughter.) Instances were numerous where socialistic laws had been strenuously opposed by the Radical party, but no reform had ever, he affirmed, been carried in the interest of workers which had not been socialistic in its character. The Factories Acts, for example, were passed to curb the power and restrain the greed of the capitalist class, though strenu- ously opposed by John Bright. Then there was the Adulteration Act, and while this was before the House again John Bright opposed it, and declared that if such a measure was passed he would go from one end of England to the other advising the middle classes to leave the country. Would that he had done so, and that they had left the country ! for we could well spare them ; but the measure had to be passed, in spite of the opposition of John Bright ; for it was plainly seen that such was the greed of the capitalist class that they did not mind poisoning the people for the sake of profit. Again, there was the Mines Regulation Act. This was passed to save the lives of the men who by their labour created the wealth that was taken by the capitalist class. The robbery involved in landlordism was more palpable to the sight. We readily saw the injury done to the people when land was left uncultivated, but we did not so easily discern the robbery committed by the capitalist class, who were very artful, and plundered the people every hour of their lives, though the victims might not always know of it. The machinery of our factories was to-day used against the labourers instead of being used in their interest. Take, for instance, a strike that took place in the lace trade at Long Eaton, Nottingham. The men and women struck against a reduction in wages. The masters declared that if the workers would not give in they would remove the whole of the machinery to Glasgow, and they did remove part of it. In a social- istic community^ the master would not have been allowed to move FKIDAY MOENING. 399 the machinery, and therefore it would not have been used to make the workers work for a starvation rate of wages. This was but one of many instances where machinery was used to the detriment of the workers. Socialists declared that the present rotten system, therefore, could only be got rid of by sweeping away both landlords and capitalists. Being met with a remonstrance from a delegate against his attack on classes, Mr. Williams retorted that his inter- rupter felt probably more tenderly towards capitalists than towards landlords. He was vehemently insisting that there must be no half- and-half reform, and no shrinking, on account of any cry about raising class hatreds, from denouncing the men who made the workers suffer, when he was warned by the Chair that his allotted time had expired, and left the platform amidst loud cheering. Mr. George Bernard Shaw (Fabian Society) said he was not quite clear as to what was meant by the phrase ‘ distribution of land ’ in the question before the Conference ; he could only suppose that it meant the division of the land by hedges, fences, and the like. He was not practically acquainted with farming, but he had observed, whilst walking through the country, that agricultural operations consisted largely in dragging heavy implements, such as ploughs and harrows, to and fro through the fields. It seemed a matter of simple arithmetic that the smaller the field was, the oftener the plough had to be turned, and consequently the longer and more laborious the operation of ploughing. The late Professor Fawcett had stated that a steam cultivator could plough one field of ten acres in two-thirds of the time and at half the expense of ploughing two fields of five acres each. Consequently, subdivision of the land, as advocated by Pro- fessor Wallace, would impair the production of wealth and the welfare of the community when the wheat supply and other cereal crops had to be raised. On the other hand, in the case of kitchen- gardens and fruit-gardens, which were pleasant appendages to dwellings and needed no ploughing, subdivision was probably an advantage. Garden palings took up little room, did no harm, and concentrated the attention of the cultivator on his plot. Farming, then, should be co-operative, whilst kitchen-gardening might be left to individual enterprise. The advisability of a more general distri- bution of the land, in the sense of subdivision, evidently depended on circumstances : the real question at issue was one of access to the land. All the land of the country being now in the hands of a class, the people were practically slaves of that class. If the capital and the land were put under the management of State officials, whose tenure of their offices depended on their doing their work satisfac- torily, he believed it would be quite as well managed as by private 400 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. enterprise. This was shown by the present working of the Post Office, which was efficient because any shortcomings would incon- venience the public, especially the ruling classes, and would be at once visited upon the officials. The inefficiency of the Admiralty and other Government departments was due to the fact that, as the public did not directly suffer by it, and as those who did would injure their prospects of promotion by complaining, the officials had no inte- rest in doing their business well, and were so far from being ashamed of doing it badly, that they were actually in the habit of citing their own incompetence as an example of the danger of entrusting the management of any business whatever to the State. It should, however, be borne in mind that a servant of the State did not mean a man paid by the Government. Every useful worker was a servant of the State, which is properly the whole community. It might seem far-fetched to many persons to call a grocer a State servant, though he certainly was one, but perhaps the instance of a member of Parlia- ment’s private secretary might seem less strained : such a secretary was not paid by the Government; but if his employer became premier, the services of the secretary were sometimes rewarded by the State with a peerage. On the general question of the welfare of the community no reasonable defence could be advanced of the existence of any class that consumed the product of the national industry without rendering any service to the nation in return. It was the desire of the President that nothing should be said that might give pain to particular classes. He was about to refer to a modern class — the burglars ; but if there was a burglar present, he begged him to believe that he cast no reflection upon his profession (laughter), and that he was not unmindful of his great skill and enterprise ; his risks — so much greater than those of the most speculative capitalist, extending as they did to risk of liberty and life (laughter) ; his abstinence ; or, finally, of the great number of people to whom he gave employment, including criminal attorneys, policemen, turnkeys, gaolers, builders of gaols, and, it might be, the hangman. He did not wish to hurt the feelings of shareholders, who drew interest year after year, and, if they sold out, expected to get the original investment back again, or of landlords, who did nothing for the rents they received, any more than he wished to pain the burglars. He would merely point out that all three inflicted on the community an injury of precisely the same nature (laughter). We must stop this state of things before we could reform our present condition. It would be said that to expropriate the landlord and capitalist would be unjust, immoral, confiscation, and so forth; but the truth was that it was absolutely immoral to allow them any FKIDAY MORNlNa. 401 longer to confiscate daily the labour of others for whom they did nothing. Political economists, who were supposed to understand these things, would render a service if they would state the laws of rent and interest in their true light, as relations between one man and another, instead of obscuring the matter by stating the law of rent as a relation betv/een one piece of land which pays rent and another piece which does not pay rent, and the law of wages as a relation between the normal rate of wages in one trade and the normal rate in another, thereby producing a law which is true, but which obscures the ethical aspect of the case by concealing the immoral relation between the worker and the employer who exploits his labour. Mr. liOWNDES (Liberty and Property Defence League) said that he desired to accentuate the remarks of Mr. Williams as to the necessity for making clear the issue that there was no room in the future for the mere State socialist, that the fight lay between indi- vidualists and socialists pure and simple. If the challenge were accepted, they were prepared to fight the matter out thoroughly on the individualist basis. The individualist movement was not con- fined, as Mr. Williams had suggested, to capitalists and to those who had something to lose. So strongly was the individualist movement taken up by the working classes that, on the idea of a club being mooted yesterday, over a hundred bond fide working men had sent in their names as members. (A Voice : How much whisky do you give them ?) All along there had been considerable difficulty in discussing social questions, because socialists had been divided into so many camps that you never knew what doctrine you might have to face. It would be better if they would formulate the principles for which they were prepared to fight. Mr. Williams was willing to take advantage of the ground gained by the State socialists in the Education Acts and the Factory Acts. Individualists did not desire to go back to the bad old times antecedent to the Factory Acts, but they believed that the disappearance of the evils which the Acts were intended to remedy, and which they had the credit of having reme- died, was not due to the Factory Acts, but was due to the improved moral sense of the community. (Bosh !) Harriet Martineau de- clared at the time of the passing of the Acts that the evils complained of were diminishing. Individualists believed that if the Acts were repealed, and if offences were left to the common law of the country and public opinion, and to the agents and officials appointed by employers and workers, things would be in a far better condition than they are now. (No, no.) As an Irishman, and one who had enthusiastically approved the Irish Land Act, his knowledge of the D D 402 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. country led him to declare that the only persons who had benefited by the Act were the small money-lenders. It was not until Ireland was on the brink of revolution that we consented to this departure from economic laws. If the result was what he had stated, we ought to pause before we meddled further with settled institutions. Experience proved that the Adulteration Act did not secure us pure food ; and if the common law were properly enforced, it would be sufficient to prevent adulteration without extraneous and extra- ordinary measures. So far as individualism had been tried, tested by results it had done all its warmest advocates could desire. But it had not yet received a fair trial, and was only just struggling into the area of freedom. It was said that socialism had not been tried, but individualism had been tried, and nowhere had it been found wanting. We had been improving year by year; we were better fed, housed, clothed, and educated. Individualism and freedom of contract had drained and fertilised this country, and covered it with a network of railways, and had covered every sea with ships bearing the English flag. Let it be shown, on the other side, what socialism had done. Having had the opportunity of testing the pulse of the Avorking classes in London during the last three years, he believed that, although socialism had tainted them in some degree, it had not altered the conviction of the great majority that it was utterly inadmissible. Mr. John Wilson (Durham Miners) said it was a happy accident that he was called upon to follow the last speaker, because he was in entire antagonism to what Mr. Lowndes called freedom of contract. The reason was that he had received so much benefit as a miner from unionism and from State legislation. As no one would call a flock of sheep bad because there was a diseased one among them, so no one could say that working-men supported the Liberty and Property Defence League simply because 100 men had given in their names as members of a club. In Durham there were 60,000 men in and about the mines, and Mr. Lowndes would have hard work if he went from Barnard Castle to Sunderland, and from Darlington to Gateshead, to find one man who would approve of his doctrine. (A Voice : John Bryce.) He did not belong to the miners’ union; he was turned out of office because he lent himself to the Liberty and Property Defence League ; and John Pringle, his coadjutor, had to fly to America to find a place to live in. What did freedom of contract mean ? There could not be freedom of contract between himself and a man of six feet and sixteen stone in weight, or between a highway- man with a pistol in his hand and himself unarmed, or between a capitalist and a workman dependent upon his day’s toil for his day’s FEIDAY MORNING. 403 living. He did not ask that the law should step in, and as with a knife divide the 1,000^. of the capitalist and give him a share. As by the force of co-operation, and by the power of their unions, miners had worked their way to the advantageous position they now held, so in the future they would work at their social amelioration by their own efforts. Mr. Lowndes appeared to think that individualism operating thus, and the instincts of humanity, would have brought about the results attributed to the Factory Acts. As one who went down the pit at. an early age, before the passing of the Mines Acts, who had to pick up what learning he could get after working twelve and fourteen hours a day in the pit, and who often fell asleep when trying to educate himself, he could only ask, if the instincts of humanity were capable of doing what was claimed for them, why they did not shorten the working hours of lads before those instincts were quickened by the passing of the Acts 1 There might be a time in the future when, as Mr. Spencer said, the moral sense would be educated to such a tone that it would give every man his right ; but that time was not yet. Until that time arrived we must shape the moral sense, and make statutes to guard the weak through the strong arm of the law against those who could not protect themselves. Whatever might be said about individualism, unionism had enabled them in the north to work out a large amount of amelioration, and had brought to them a large amount of benefit. There was an aspect of the land question which had a special interest for miners, and that was connected with royalty rents. If there was anything that called for interference it was these rents. If Mr. L. Bell had drawn specific attention to facts that had been made known in the Northern Echo, which was no mean authority on the question, he would have rendered useful service. It was said that in 1883, in the Cleveland district, 400,000^. were paid in royalty rents to landlords. Workmen and capitalists were contending with each other, one for greater profits, and the other for higher wages ; but they might join to bring about a reduction or the abolition of royalty rents. If the 400,000^. drawn last year were divided between capitalists and workmen, it would have gone far to prevent the distress now prevailing in Durham. He was treasurer of the Durham Miners’ Union, which week after- week had been giving 8s. or 9s. to 600 or 700 men out of employment, who were thus, by the benevolence of their fellow-workmen, kept off the poor rate. If this 400,000^. were divided between employers and workmen, in place of destitution there might be prosperity. What right had the landlord to the mineral % Did he place it ther e ? It was placed there by an All-wise Providence for the benefit of the entire people, and it belonged to no single man. One way to divide » D 2 404 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. more equitably the wealth of this country was to let the land of the country belong to the people of the country. He was a land nationaliser. The only true and righteous way of settling the land question was to place the land in the hands of the nation. As Mr. Shaw, of the Fabian Society, said, the land could be managed as well and as profitably by State officials as by individuals. (‘ Better.’) There ought to be only one landlord, the people, and all the benefit ought to go to them. If it did they would feel the burdens of taxa- tion less, and their real wages, and not their money wages merely, would be permanently raised. (Applause.) Mr. R. Rowland (North Yorkshire and Cleveland Miners) said they had been told they must be either individualists or socialists pure and simple, but he claimed to be a composition of both. There was much that the State could do for a man, but there was far more that he could do for himself ; and what a man could do for himself the State ought not to do for him. It was not possible to make the people of this country wise, or virtuous, or good by Act of Parlia- ment. Any improvement of the people, if it was to be permanent, must come from themselves. All that was asked of the State was that it should remove all hindrances to their advancement, and give all a fair field and no favour. If the individualists and the socialists would go into the North of England and study the institutions there established, both would be converted. His main object in rising was to express his conviction of the intense importance of the land ques- tion. Other causes might have contributed to bring about the present depression of trade, and the consequent suffering and misery by which they were surrounded; but the greatest cause was the iniquitous system of land tenure with which the nation was cursed. It was a burning shame that there should be thousands of men, honest and industrious, anxious to work for their families and to give their children a fair start in life, that were utterly unable to do it because they could not find work ; and yet there were hundreds of thousands of acres of land lying idle that might be cultivated at a profit. The only use it was being put to was to provide game for a few persons who cared more for pleasure than they did for the welfare of the toiling masses who were starving for want of the food that the land ought to produce. All were agreed that the present land laws did not tend to increase the prosperity of the country ; even the most bigoted advocate of the present system would not say that of them. As for land nationalisation, he did not see his way clear to that. He did not object on account of what were called the rights of property. Property had rights, and it was their duty to recognise them ; but above the rights of property there was the right of the people to be FKIDAY MORNING. 405 fed. Whatever system of land tenure would best promote that right was the system we ought to try to get introduced. He objected to land nationalisation because he believed it was false in principle, and would be injurious in action. We ought to compel the cultiva- tion of all land that can be cultivated with profit. The State ought to say to every individual possessing land that was not usefully employed, whether it were 5 acres or 5,000 acres, ‘ This land has been given by the Creator for the good of the people ; and, unless you are prepared to cultivate it, or in some other way make it as useful as possible, we are prepared to give it to some one who will.’ We wanted fixity of tenure, and not year to year tenancies. The transfer of land ought to be made easy and cheap. And, speaking generally, our land laws ought to be so amended that they would tend to pro- mote the prosperity of the people, and that the land might add to our wealth all that it was capable of producing. Until this desirable result was achieved he hoped none of them would cease to agitate. The Rev. H. Solly (Artisans’ Technical Association) said there was no doubt, as had been already urged, that the want of technical education had a great deal to do with remuneration for labour, and with the lack of continuity in employment. But we could not get any thorough technical education unless we dealt thoroughly and fairly with its apprenticeship question. We must have an efiective appren- ticeship system, with indentures pledging the master to see that the apprentice attended technical classes and examinations, if we were to have efficient technical training for our artisans. Notwithstanding all that had been said and done about overcrowding in towns, there did not yet seem to be any general perception of the folly of under- taking to build houses for the working classes on land that cost from 1^. to 4Z. a yard in London, instead of on land worth only from 15^. to 30^. an acre within forty miles of London. Existing evils, both in town and country, could be to a large extent remedied by housing the working classes in the country ; and therefore the public were being asked to support an effort to establish industrial villages, on such portions of land as could be got on moderate terms, and where the residents could be surrounded with all needful appliances both for work and for recreation. More than fifty years ago the experi- ment was tried with success in Holland, and in former times village communities were an important unit in national life. Land was to be got now in all directions at a cheap price. In Essex 60,000 acres were overgrown with weeds. There were seven miles of farms north of Cambridge to let. Landlords by scores were having to take farms into their own hands. Mr. Saunders had told them what the Wiltshire labourer said he could do if he could only get ten acres of land to 406 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. cultivate. Many other witnesses told the same tale. Hence the cultivation of land would be made the basis of the scheme he advo- cated, but it was not made the basis of livelihood. Many domestic industries could be carried on in connection with the cultivation of the soil, such as lace-making, straw-plaiting, stocking-knitting, basket- making, &c., which could not furnish a livelihood by themselves, but would be a valuable supplement to the family earnings. And, vice versd, a man whose chief occupation was sedentary, as tailor, shoe- maker, &c., would find the cultivation of a garden or allotment ground useful in both a pecuniary and sanitary point of view. Then, again, many industries, now carried on in large towns, might be as profitably conducted in village factories, to the great advantage, moral and physical, of the workers, in well-ordered, healthful village communi- ties. In whatever way we judiciously helped people to get out of the towns on to the land, we should vastly improve their condition ; but plans for this purpose might be mischievous unless they were carried out under proper covenants and arrangements. It would, foi* instance, be fatal to the welfare of the working classes if they were to have the land for cultivation as freeholds. But they must indeed have continuity of tenure and absolute security for the fruit of their exertions so long as they did their duty by the land. There must also be stringent pro- visions against overcrowding in the dwellings and subdivisions of the land, as well as security against the size of each village being increased beyond a certain limit. Otherwise all the old evils would come over again. Ample provision must also be made for rational recreation both in summer and winter. The Society he referred to aimed at directing capital into this channel, and getting houses built upon land suitable for cultivation and under the above conditions. In like manner, good drainage, water supply, and ventilation would be well looked after. In this way it was believed we might relieve the overcrowding of London and of the larger towns, while at the same time we removed much of the distress of the agricultural districts. The prospectus of the Society was being distributed in the hall, and further information could be obtained at the ofiSce, 12 Southampton Street, Strand. Mr. Robert Taylor (Secretary, Assington Agricultural Associa- tion) said that the question engaging attention had reference to the cultivation of the land of the country, and he hoped some practical result would follow these deliberations. Over fifty years ago the late Mr. John Gurdon, a large landed proprietor, of Assington, Suffolk, desirous of improving the condition of some agricultural labourers, not only allowed them several acres of land rent-free for cultivation, but also some capital to work the same free of interest; and it is FKIDAY MORNING. 407 gratifying to know that the men not only succeeded in their under- taking, but repaid the advances and hired the land, and that they or their successors have carried it on to this day, though no profits have been divided during the past five or six depressing agricultural years. In 1853 Mr. Gurdon let twenty-five other men have a second farm of 105 acres ; they subscribed 87/. lOs. between them, and the landlord lent them 400/. free of interest; he preparing certain rules, amongst them being one that all the shares should be of equal value, that the profits should be equally divided, and that as far as possible members should be employed on the farm to the number required. Subse- quently other lands were added, a few new shares allotted, and the loan paid off. The subscribed capital in 1872 amounted to 142/, 10^., and the holding to 223 acres. The total profit on the working for thirty years exceeded 3,000/. Unfortunately no provision had been made in the rules for a reserve fund to meet bad seasons or adverse markets, so that in 1883 the shareholders of the second venture found the want of capital was ruining their prospects, and they appealed for advice and pecuniary assistance to get in their crops to a society in London of which he was one of the honorary secretaries, viz. the Guild of Co-operators. This body suggested, after getting full particulars of their position, that the society should be wound up and a new one formed on a proper basis, labour taking its share of profits, with a capital of 2,500/. in 1/. shares, and registered under the Industi-ial and Provident Societies Act. This has been done, and after every liability of the old shareholders had been met, a balance remained equal to about 17/. for each 3/. lOs. share; but during the height of their prosperity the shares had obtained a money value of over 50/. each. Mr. Taylor continued : We have been carrying on the farm for a short year, and, as anticipated, have lost a little money, partly because our share list is 800/. short of requirements, all preachers not being practisers. All classes of sympathisers with the agricultural labourer are to be found in the subscription list, from the Marquis of Ripon, whose cheque for one hundred shares reached me whilst his lordship was yet in India, to the humble village labourer or member of distributive co-operative stores, who apply the profits received upon their purchases to the productive element of the move- ment. One of the latter class, from Reading, says, ‘ We are neglecting agriculture by keeping back its “ life-blood,” capital ; and we are thereby surely undermining the foundation of our national prosperity.’ The farming association at Assington is doing good in many ways, notably by cultivating the land in the interest of the landlord ; secondly, in giving employment to ten heads of families, or say a popu- lation of fifty souls ; and thirdly, the prosperity of the villa nrp harness- 408 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFEEENCE. maker, shoeing-smith, implement-maker, and other trades is promoted. Such being the case for a small quantity of land, what might not be done with the 70,000 acres now out of cultivation in the county of Essex alone, if the question were grappled with firmly by the capitalist or the philanthropist ? My own opinion is that our large towns and cities would speedily lose the agricultural portion of their population who have been unduly competing in the labour market, to the advantage of nobody in particular, but to the great harm of those whose services they have displaced. Then, I trust, we shall hear no more of the sad realities depicted by the Rev. Stopford Brooke in the paper read this morning by Dr. Wallace, of the labourer, his wife, his son, and two daughters, who had drifted into London after being turned out of their cottage-home in the country. Work being bad, he says they each went from bad to worse, and in a few months the lather was in prison, the wife dying, the son a criminal, and the daughters on the streets. Pray let us do our best to bring about a better state of things. England has not only the land, but sufiScient capital profitably 'to work it ; the question is engaging the attention of many of the distributive co-operative societies, who have thousands of surplus capital they are at their wits’ end what to do with, though many, I may add, have given a helping hand to my own association ; and I trust the outcome of this Conference will put tens of thousands of acres of land again under cultivation, to the mutual advantage of everybody connected with so great an industry. (Applause.) Mr. David Holmes (Northern Counties Weavers) said he was forced to the conclusion that there was a good deal more to be said by some one upon the land question. There was a total absence of information in the paper of Professor Newman as to the method and the machinery by which he would transfer land and nationalise it. This was an important part of the business, because if you were to take the land unceremoniously, that would not be for the good of the greatest number. He could have wished that Mr. Williams would have drawn a distinction between the right to personal property and the right to property in land. He would respect as scrupulously as any one the rights of a man in artificial property, in anything he could by law remove ; but the land was another kind of property entirely. It was national. It was not amenable to the laws of supply and demand. You could not make it less or more. You could not in- crease it, whatever demand you might make upon it. It was there before the owners were born, and it would be there after they were gone. Did the advocates of individualism seriously contend that the working population were to be kept in their present position, and that the unearned increment was to continue to go into the pockets of FEIDAY MORNING. 409 private individuals 'I — this great increase that was taking place, not from any efforts of theirs, but from the operation of natural law and the increasing demands made upon it by a growing population. The unearned increment due to this cause ought not to belong to any one man or to a particular class. There was no escaping from this, and in a general way he would say the sooner we set about effecting a change in the land laws the better. In a period of twenty years our population had increased by 7,000,000, and our agricultural labour- ing population had decreased by 300,000. We had 7,000,000 more mouths to feed, and 300,000 fewer cultivators to feed them. In these circumstances fair traders would have difficulty in persuading us to put any tax on the importation of food. Whilst this increase of popu- lation went on, and the cultivation of the land declined, there must be a flow of the unemployed from the agricultural districts to the indus- trial districts, thus flooding the labour market. It was certain agricultural labourers did not want to be thus driven from their homes, and experience showed they would not leave them if they could possibly help it, and certainly not to put up with privation in the towns. The people were driven into the urban districts against their will because they could not find the means of subsistence. The un- earned increment went into the pockets of a few, and this was the profit-lifting which grinds down wages. He would ask Professor Newman to lay before them some scheme by wffiich he would trans- fer land from its present owners to the State. Major Craigie (Local Taxation Committee) said it was necessary that some one having a tolerably intimate acquaintance with the conditions of agriculture should say a few words in reply to the hypo- thesis on which several papers proceeded, that it would be a great advantage and would result in increased production were we to cut up and redistribute land of this country in small and minute portions. He could not find that either the experience of English or foreign farming, or the laws that were known to regulate the question of pro- duction, gave any ground for the belief that by this remodelling and reducing of our agricultural units we should increase the food supply of this counti y. On the contrary, we should decrease it. By abandon- ing the system of agriculture on a mixed scale which now obtained in England, embracing both large and small farms, each in suitable dis- tricts, we should lessen the result to the community as a whole. Which of all peoples in the world were the poorest 1 Those that depended most entirely upon the cultivation of the land. The larger the percentage of any people engaged in agriculture the poorer the community. Think of the miserable culture of peasants on the many million farms of India, with the poorest of all cultivation and the 410 INDUSTKIAL REMUNEKATION CONFERENCE. smallest production, ground down as peasants without capital of their own must be by the money-lender, and producing on their five-acre plots some 9^ bushels of wheat to the acre to our 28 or 30 ! Could any country be named that produced anything like so large an amount per acre as England did all round? There was no country in which the cultivation of the soil could obtain, as by our system of landlord and tenant he could obtain here, a loan of capital at 2^ or 3 per cent. This he could do in England owing to the system of tenure whereby the cultivator paid rent for his land without having to lock up his capital in its purchase. If the land was ever to be violently taken from one set of owners without compensation, and handed as a free gift to the new cultivators, how was it proposed they should get the working capital requisite for cultivation ? He denied that the land they were talking so much about was properly described as a natural product. In the sense in which we knew it, and in which they meant it to be redistributed, it was not a simple but a composite and an artificial production. It had been made fit for cultivation only by a large ex- penditure of capital on roads, drains, fences, houses, tillage. To deny this was to ignore the facts of the case. What the land would have been without this expenditure might be seen in some parts of the Highlands, or the West of Ireland, or in the prairies of America. The value of land was virtually created by the added capital. Labour.’) It did not increase in value without capital and labour being expended upon it. Most certainly land so improved was an artificial production, and you could not deal with rent as anything but a composite payment, whereof interest on capital sunk was a large and material factor. The heavy taxation of land in England was one great reason why the old peasant proprietary, the class of yeomen, had so nearly disappeared ; they were overwhelmed by exceptional and grinding taxes, which fell most heavily upon the small owners. Land could certainly not be profitably cultivated, at all events in small holdings, so long as it was severely, inequitably, and unjustly taxed. If we wished to increase the number of small owners — and he for one would not be sorry to see that if it were practicable — we must reduce that most impolitic and absurd tax upon the production of home-grown food which we now impose by our mode of levying rates upon the land. These taxes were little thought of because it was imagined they fell only on a particular class of persons, who were fancied to be wealthy and able to bear the burden. But there were still, it should not be forgotten, as many as 300,000 landowners in the United Kingdom, of whom not two-thirds owned 10 acres apiece, and four- fifths were owners of estates under 100 acres. Our present taxation of land prevented capital being placed in the soil to raise I'KIDAY MORNING. 411 food for the sustentation of the country. We could not, he felt sure,, raise the food supply by simply cutting up the land of England in five and ten-acre plots ; the country that did that would be certain to be- come a poor and retrograding country : but if we wanted gradually to encourage the holding of land by a larger number of small owners than at present, we must lighten the taxation which the land now bears. Mr. Ball (Agricultural Labourers’ Union) said that the paper of Mr. Balfour appeared to require more consideration than it was likely to get. If he had been trained in the same school as Mr. Balfour, he might perhaps have written a paper on similar lines ; but if he had been educated like Mr. Balfour, and yet trained as an agricultural labourer, he could not possibly have done so. Undoubtedly he had made a clever apology for things as they are, and an able defence of the existing land system. Mr. Balfour appeared to say on behalf of the landlords, ‘ The land is ours ; we are the landlords ; we are your landlords, and there are no better on the earth.’ The last speaker had referred to the capital necessary to improve the land ; but where did the capital first come from to do it ? The most ancient employ- ment was the cultivation of land ; how was it, then, that capital was so much glorified and labour so much ignored ? (Applause.) As he understood, capital was the product of labour — so much over and above what labour required for its present necessities. If so, then labour was the mother of all wealth, and he claimed for labour a much better share than had yet been given her. Mr. Balfour spoke of the necessity for encouraging the application of capital to the soil . It might be advantageous to inquire what it was that had promoted the accumulation of land in the hands of a few large proprietors. If you swept away every privilege that had been claimed by owners, if you gave to landed property no more privilege, nor power, nor influ- ence than other capital receives, there would not be so much eager- ness to keep up these large estates. It was well known that small holders had been bought out, frequently at enormous prices, in order to clear small holders away, so that the boundaries of the lordship might include every inch of land within them ; and much of the land now paying no interest, on account of the high price it had cost, had ab- sorbed capital thus invested — not invested for the benefit of the masses of the people, but to glorify and satisfy the ambition of a landowner. He had been able to purchase it because he had had plenty of spare wealth to purchase it with, out of rents received from other land. It was said that our landlords had spent more upon permanent improve- ments than the landlords of other countries. Granted that they had ; where did they get it from to spend, and for what reason had it been expended 1 To improve their own surroundings or, from philan- 412 INDUSTEIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. thropic motives, to improve the surroundings of others 1 Those who had been lowly brought up and little educated might perhaps take erroneous views of these matters ; but depend upon it they would have to be looked at from more sides than one. It would be found that owners had improved them estates at the expense of the general public, on whose shoulders they had thrown every burden they could. Something had been said about improved roads. When the roads began to be extensively macadamised, trusts were established and toll-gates were set up, not to benefit the people who used the roads, but to remunerate the landlords for supplying the capital for the improvement ; and a man who owned a horse and cart as a means of making a livelihood was made to pay twice or thrice as much as the man who drove a carriage for pleasure, and did nothing to earn a living. Why did they abolish turnpike trusts ? So that those who used the roads for purposes of pleasure might be exempt from paying anything at all. (No, no.) Well, that was his view of the case. It was said that the Legislature had been steadily working to free agri- culture from hindrances which impeded its natural development. Had such legislation been freely conceded by the landowners ? No ; it had been wrested from them just as labourers would have to wrest from them a more equitable share of the profits that resulted from labour. The last speaker seemed to think it would be a loss to the nation if more of the land were appropriated by small owners. If we only gave them as fair conditions, and as free scope as we had given to the large landowners, the experiment would be more suc- eessful and more satisfactory. All his lifetime we had been trying to make two classes of people in the rural districts, the one rich and the other poor, and much of the mischief of the present day had resulted from this ; and yet it was said that we must continue the system in the hope of gaining some benefit. He did not advise that we should cut up all the land into small holdings, but he did advocate such changes that a man might — if by thrift, industry, and sobriety he could manage to accumulate a little money — have the opportunity of either hiring or purchasing on reasonable terms a plot which he could cultivate with advantage to the community and to no one’s injury. He held that numbers of men would do this if opportunity was given on fair conditions. It was said that the incidence of taxation fell heavily on small owners and occupiers ; and why was thaf? It was because the assessment had been in the hands of rich men, or of men who were under their influence, and those who suffered had no voice in it. (Applause.) Mr. A. Balfour, M.P., said he acquiesced in his long paper being taken as read if he might be allowed a little latitude in reply FRIDAY MORNING. 413 in case his paper were attacked. But it had scarcely been com- mented upon except by the last speaker, and he had not touched the agricultural question as it was treated in the paper. Mr. Ball said that land in England had been driven up to an excessive price by the privileges given to landowners. By implication he thought that it would diminish the value if the land were divided, as in France and Belgium, among a large number of small proprietors. But the prices of land were more excessive in France and Belgium than in England. It was not denied that no landowners had spent more than those of England and Scotland ; but Mr. Ball asked on what they had spent it. Unhesitatingly he affirmed that they had spent more on unre- munerative improvements than the landowners of other countries. He did not refer to improvements made for their own benefit — parks, gardens, and the like ; but he referred to improvements such as draining and fencing, and the building of houses and cottages. No other class had gone to the same extent in spending money unremunera- tively. Scotland,’ and ‘ The Highlands.’) He included the High- lands in speaking of the improvement of dwellings for the people working on the land. Mr. Williams in a lively speech said that the measure that was meted out to the landlords must also be meted out to capitalists. While not agreeing in all that Mr, Williams said he heartily agreed with him in this sentiment. (Hear, hear). If they meant to establish socialism they must establish universally, and not tinker at the system. Mr. Wilson did not say how the proposed division of the royalties between capitalists and miners was to be made. He presumed that if the royalties were abolished the only result would be that the profits of the capitalist would be increased, and the money that he now paid to the landlord he would put into his own pocket. Did Mr. Wilson think that by any operation known to him he could induce the mine owners to hand over to the miners their supposed share of these royalties ^ It was surprising to hear that Mr. Wilson, after he had proposed to appropriate the royalties for the benefit of the miners, was in favour of nationalising the land. Nationalising the Durham coalfields did not mean giving the royalties to the capitalists and the miners, but it meant giving them to the whole country, so that Mr. Wilson’s share would be a small one. Mr. Holmes was anxious to appropriate the ‘ unearned increment ’ of the landlord, but he would find that it was smaller than he thought, and, if he might coin a phrase, it might be called the unearned decre- ment. (‘ The Duke of Westminster ; ’ and laughter.) The Kev. S. Headlam said that the hon. member stated in his paper that land was an almost unsaleable commodity. Did that state- ment apply to the large towns ? 414 INDUSTKIAL KEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. Mr. Balfour said it did not, and the context would show that he was speaking only of agricultural land. Mr. Wallace affirmed that the dependence of labourers upon the farmers for employ- ment was the cause of low wages ; he dealt at length with the magic •of property, and he said the vital point of his scheme was founded upon the assertion of Professor Rogers, to the effect that wages were higher where a peasant proprietary existed. This was spoken of as an un- doubted fact. It might be undoubted by Mr. Rogers, but it was not only doubted, it was known to be untrue by all who had examined what the wages were in countries where a peasant proprietary did exist. France and Belgium were held up as examples of what a peasant pro- prietary could do for a country, and agricultural wages were lower there than here, while on the whole the dwellings of the labouring classes in the agricultural districts were much worse. If the dependence of the labourers on the employer was the cause of low wages, he did not observe that the scheme of Mr. Wallace would get rid of this dependence of the labourers. Mr. Wallace proposed to give them, not allotments, but a perpetual tenure of their small holdings of from one to five acres. Now on such a holding a labourer could not live without having other work ; and it was certain that if he required other work you did not get rid of his dependence, and he was as dependent as if he had no land at all. Nay, he was more so, because the fact of his having the land tied him down to a district of the country, and made it difficult for him to go to a district where higher wages might be got. Therefore, far from making him less dependent you made him more so. This was brought out clearly by an ex- amination of the facts as to France and Belgium. The Channel Islands.’) Well, owing to peculiarities of situation and climate, the industry of the Channel Islands was practically market-gardening, and the islanders had the first command of the London market. Peasant proprietors might perhaps flourish where market-gardening was a prevailing industry ; but in regard to the staple products of agricultui’e, meat and corn, small proprietors had not succeeded, were not succeeding, and would not succeed. Nothing was more absolutely certain from statistics than that, whatever other objections might be raised to the English land system, you cannot raise against it the objection that it does not produce food for the people, because, as a matter of fact, the production of food for the people is not only greater, but far greater in this island than in any other country of the world. As to the expectation that peasant proprietorship would bring about ■a great moral reform, this was not the experience of France. An in- teresting monograph on the agriculture of Normandy had been written by a Frenchman. It was written in an optimist spirit and rRIDAY MORNING. 415 with an evident desii’e to take as favourable a view as he could ; and yet he reported an increase of drunkenness, and dwelt upon other symptoms which he bitterly regretted. The only answer he desired to make on other points was contained in the final paragraph of his paper. Dr. Wallace in reply said the details of the plan for the na- tionalising of the land could not be embodied in a paper confined to general principles, and therefore for the details he must refer Mr. Holmes to the publications of the Land Nationalisation Society. Mr. Williams said that the nationalisation of the land would pro- vide no remedy for the grievances of labourers and mechanics, and would only make capitalists more powerful than now. This assertion, which Mr. Williams gave no facts to support, was demonstrably un- true. What was the source of the power of the capitalist over labour ? It was simply that labour had no other resource but to work for the capitalists, and there was no capital in the country but what was in their possession. The proposal of the Land Nationalisation Society would immediately tend to the creation of a class of small capitalists over the whole country. These capitalists would be able freely to associate and to have in their midst small industries and manufac- tures in which they would invest their joint capitals and employ their surplus labour. The effect of this would be to take the wind out of the sails of the capitalist. His power had depended upon having an unlimited amount of labour. Limit his supply of labour and you limit his power ; and you do this by giving the people free access to the land, thus enabling them to acquire capital and to utilise it by asso- ciation. Referring to Mr. Wilson’s remarks on the evil effects of royalty rents, he had always maintained that if there was one aspect of private property in land which was more atrociously unjust than another, it was that a private individual should be allowed to mo- nopolise not the surface only, but the actual bowels of the earth, which it must be remembered were not merely used, like the surface, but destroyed for ever. (Applause.) The deposits there were held by us as a trust for future generations, and yet we not only allowed individuals to make a profit out of that trust, but we allowed them to export coal and other minerals at the greatest rate possible, there- by preventing the development of the mineral resources of other parts of the world, and at the same time deteriorating the entire country for our successors. What would the next generation say when the coal was exhausted and when they found that our appropriation of it had rendered the country less valuable and less habitable to them? Would they not say that we had betrayed our trust ? What had we gained by it ? Only a host of millionaires who had obtained their wealth 416 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. by exporting their country’s coal. It was absolutely iniquitous that any Government should have allowed this to be done, as much as if they had allowed portions of our land to be sold to a foreign Govern- ment. Both would be the betrayal of a trust. Mr. Balfour had remarked that if the royalties were divided, the miners would get very little. That would be so if the royalties of one district only were divided, but if the royalties of the whole country were in the possession of the Government, it would make a serious diminution in the taxation. Mr. Howland objected to land nationalisation alto- gether, and proposed a scheme of his own under which the State was to interfere in order to prevent good land being kept out of cultiva- tion. Did he think what that involved ? There would have to be an army of inspectors going about the country ; and officialism, jobbery, and corruption would neutralise any good from the scheme. What was wanted was to diminish Governmental action and to leave the free play of supply and demand to attain the desired result. Let the people have the land freely on fair terms and it would not remain uncultivated. There would not be the slightest necessity to have Government inspectors to see that it was cultivated. Major Graigie did not attempt to prove his assertion that the cultivation of small plots would not increase the food supply. On this point, and on that of wages, you could not compare foreign countries with this country unless you knew all the conditions. You must know the conditions^ under which the labourer lived, the price of food, and the effective value of wages ; without these the mere comparison of money wages was utterly valueless. There was an enormous body of facts opposed to Major Craigie. A collection of them from all Europe was given in Mr. J. S. Mill’s Political Economy, and it was proved that with a peasant proprietary there was a scale of living and an amount of comfort and con- tentment which were unknown to the English agricultural labourer, and even to English mechanics. In reply to a good deal of what Mr. Balfour said, he would read a portion of a letter from a clergy- man in Devonshire, the Kev. Mr. Taylor : — ‘ The labourers are leaving the country wholesale, so that now if extra labour is wanted by any more than ordinarily enterprising farmer he can’t get it for love or money. Here is one fact, which will give you some idea of how the labourers live : — One family consisted of father, mother, and six chil- dren under ten ; wages 10s. a week; Is. a week rent. How could this man pay for food, clothing, firing, school-pence, and doctor out of his wages % I don’t know : but his wife told me that when mowing- time came round (in 1883) he was so weak from insufficient food that he could not mow, and so lost a great part of the extra wages which he depended upon for paying his rent, &c.’ This was what the British FRIDAY MORNING. 417 agricultural labourer was reduced to in these times when we are assured he was so well off! (Hear, hear.) Mr. Taylor also gave an interesting account of one working farmer in his parish who made farming pay and did not grumble. He said : — ‘ There is one man here who does not complain and who seems to thrive ; so I interviewed him. “ What is the real cause in your opinion, Mr. Bakers, of this depression ? Is it the low price of produce only 1 “ No, sir, it is the bad farming and extravagance ; they live too fast ; farmers didnT used to live like it. This has been a very good year ; my son there raised 1,200 bushels of barley, and was offered 35. dd. a bushel for it. He wanted 35. 6d. to make it pay, so he ‘ fed ’ it all, and we found it paid him over 45. a bushel, besides all the manure being left on the land. I don’t want no Protection ; I’m all for Free Trade. But there you see, sir, we are always about. We don’t go shooting nor nothing. We looks to everything ourselves, and we makes it pay and pay well, even now. No ! I don’t complain of tithes or poor-rate, because I had my land with them on it. The only thing I complain of is some of the local rates. My brother shared alike with me, and I bought his land of him. He put his money out to interest. Now he has got nothing to pay on that but income tax. I have got all these rates, sanitary, highway, and others besides. I don’t call that fair. But that’s all I have to complain of.” This man farms his own land. It is well manured, well worked, and now very profitable. However bad the year, he never lets the land get foul, and then when a good year comes he gets the return at once. And his labourers are the same for years and years. They live in his own cottages — the best in the place ; they are paid better, and made to work harder, than any and they all stick to him. He is a crotchety old customer and his temper is not angelic, but in his way he has done a good work in the world.’ (Applause.) If such men succeeded in these hard times and under such conditions, there was no reason why others should not do the same under more favourable conditions. It was proposed that they should be allowed to come upon the land by a process of natural selection; and if industrious and thrifty men succeeded, there would soon be numbers of them all over the country. All argument as to the plan not succeeding, came to nothing until it was tried. He could only refer to his book for the proof of facts which had been denied by Mr. Balfour. A considerable part of Mr. Balfour’s paper was devoted to a criticism of the proposals of the Land Nationalisation Society, but they were not fairly repre- sented. It was repeatedly assumed that it was proposed to give every man five acres of land, and it was contended at great length that he could not live upon it. But the Society had never made any E E 418 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. such proposal, and therefore the criticism was entirely beside the mark. The proposal was that the labourer who wished for land should have one acre or two acres in the place where he knew he could get work. It was a most extraordinary statement that a labourer who had this land would be more dependent than now upon an employer. The farmer or the capitalist could not do with- out labour ; he must have it at certain times ; and all experience showed that if you had a settled population of industrious labourers, they were always ready to suit their own time to that of the farmer, and to give him the labour when he wanted it, but at the same time they were not so dependent as to have their wages driven down to starvation point. (Applause.) AFTBENOON SESSION. WOULD THE MORE GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF CAPITAL OR LAND, OR THE STATE MANAGEMENT OF CAPITAL OR LAND, PROMOTE OR IMPAIR THE PRODUCTION OP WEALTH AND THE WELFARE OF THE COMMUNITY? The Question discussed cmd answered. By Lord Bramwell. The first part of the question assumes that a more general dis- tribution of capital or land can by some means be brought about. For otherwise it would be to discuss what would result from what cannot take place. I cannot agree to that assump- tion ; I cannot at least agree that it can be brought about by any means which would cause it to promote the production of wealth and the welfare of the community. The general distribution of capital and land in a commu- nity is the result of natural causes, and could be altered only by legislation, which would be mischievous, and impair the produc- tion of wealth and the welfare of the community. There are two men, one born healthy, strong, intelligent, indus- trious,thrifty — the other sickly, weak, dull, idle and improvident. These two men will certainly be differently off in life. So will their children and children’s children, even if the State should make itself heir to all deceased persons. One of the two men will be poor, the other rich. How is a more general distribu- tion of land and capital among such to be brought about ? Is the poor man to be made rich ? How ? Is the rich man to be made less rich ? That can, indeed, be done, but can it be done by any means that would promote the production of wealth and the welfare of the community ? Certainly not. E E 2 420 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. I know, of course, that a law might be made bringing' everything into hotchpot, and dividing the mass into equal shares, one for each member of the community, which certainly would produce a more general distribution of land and capital, but I suppose no one contemplates this. For my own part, I have no superstitious reverence for the institution of separate or private property. Show to me that its abolition would be for the general good, and I would vote for it, letting down the present possessors gently. But my opinion is most clearly the other way, for reasons I shall give at length in answer to the second part of the question. If that institution is to be pre- served, it would be useless to make such a distribution as I have supposed. For at the end of six months there would be a difference in the wealth of members of the community. Some would have wasted their shares, some have increased theirs (unless, indeed, that was forbidden, which would be most disastrous), and it would result that some would be poor and some rich. I cannot suppose, then, that a law directly taking from those who have, and giving to those who want, is expedient. But, unless some such mischievous contrivance is resorted to, there must be an inequality of conditions, and an inequality in which there will be the very poor and the very rich. I say, then, that there are no means by which there can be a more general distribution of land and capital which would promote the wealth and welfare of the community. I do not understand the question to mean whether countries where there is less inequality of wealth are happier — say Prussia, rural Switzerland, or Norway. If it did, I would merely say that I believe that in such countries there is less wealth, but as much and as great poverty, not so squalid, not so offensive, but as great. I do not say that nothing can be indirectly done to lessen the inequalities of conditions and improve that of the poor. Heavy taxes might be put on successions which would allow of the diminution of taxes that fall on the poor. Taxes which fall on their luxuries, but which they will pay to the lessening of their means for necessaries. The motive for saving in the rich would be diminished indeed, which is bad, and there FEIDAY AFTEENOON. 421 would be shifts and evasions to avoid the tax. So also, more of other taxation might be put on the rich. This, however, would be attended with the inconvenience, that one class would furnish the State with funds and another spend them. Education might be made gratuitous. Mr. Fawcett says ‘ No.’ So I suppose allotments of small pieces of land in rural districts might be made more easy. I wish here to notice a passage in Mr. Wallace’s paper : — He suggests that there should be a power of compulsorily taking land for small farms. This does not shock my notions of the respect due to property. The same argument he uses has occurred to me, namely, you may take land for a railway or canal or school, why not for a farm ? My doubt is if the farmer could be found — and the capital ; when they are, I incline to think that the land also can be found. Emigra- tion might be assisted. This, with a prudent restraint on marriage and the bringing into the world of numbers of children, would make the poor less poor. This is most important whatever else can be done, nothing will be effectual for the good of the labourer unless he will help himself by not multiply- ing the numbers of those who possess his possession, and com- pete with each other for its employment. The abolition of the law of primogeniture would probably in time make the rich less rich, and so tend to reduce the inequality of condition at present existing. Whether this abolition is desirable on political considerations I do not say. That a larger number of pro- prietors, if prosperous, would be most beneficial I doubt not. That they cannot be brought into existence by direct legislation I am certain. That they could make a living I much doubt. I offer no opinion on these various matters, as I do not think they bear on the question of a ‘ more general distribution of capital and land.’ I only mention them to show they are not forgotten. As to the other part of the question, viz. : would the State management of capital or land promote or impair the produc- tion of wealth and the welfare of the community, I say, without hesitation, that State management of land or capital would impair such production and welfare. I can only repeat what I have said before, till men are as honest, some may think as 422 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. senseless, as the bees, they will not work for the community as zealously as each works for himself. Consequently the total produce will not be as great in the former as in the latter case. When each man knows that the size of his ration will he the same whether he works or not, and knows that others will shirk, he will shirk too ; and the poverty and misery of all will follow. Besides there is the impossibility of managing such a large national farm or factory. Also such a state of things would have a most depressing, deadening, effect on all, and make life a dull misery. As to the nationalisation of land, I desire to speak of it with all the respect due to those who honestly believe in its desirability. But the scheme is impossible. If a man has the interest in a piece of land for a day, he is for that time a land- owner. I suppose that in any scheme of nationalisation the tenant would have it for a year, that he might sow and reap. I suppose he would pay a rent to the State for it. Suppose lOZ. paid for a piece of land for a year, and suppose the occu- pier said. Let me have it for ten years, and I will give you 20^. a year, ought not the State to accept the offer ? Then suppose he said, Grive it me for ever and I will pay 30L a year ? Again, ought not the State to agree ? He would then be that hateful creature a landowner, subject to a rent-charge. Now suppose the State wanted to do work and had to borrow money, and suppose he offered to give for the redemption of the rent-charge a sum which could not be borrowed for less than 40Z. a year. Again, ought not the State to accept his offer ? Yet in that case he would become a hopelessly unmitigated landlord, one of those whom Mr. G-eorge calls robbers, and a proper object of plunder. Without going into the question of natural rights this is true : when men are united in society all their rules and insti- tutions are artificial. And if any of these is against the general good, it should be . abrogated. But I am satisfied that the institution of private property in land is for the good of society, as is the right of each man to the benefit of his own labour. It gives each man a motive, and the strongest, to make the best of his means and his work. I agree with the late Sir FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 423 W. Siemens, who said, ‘ If an invention lay in the gutter unowned, I would give it to a particular owner, that some one might have a particular interest to develop and push it.’ I believe that the best thing for all is that there should be what I believe the Americans call ‘ the largest pile.’ Though the shares may be unequal, there will be the greatest bulk to divide, the greatest average share, the greatest amount of enjoyment, the greatest individual wealth perhaps, but the least individual poverty. As to the mischievous nonsense about each child being born with a right to share in the land, the short way of dealing with it is this, that he should have a share is it expedient or not ? If expedient, let him have it, whatever his right may be ; if inex- pedient, refuse it, whatever his right may be. Or rather be sure he has no right. It is nonsense to talk of such a right. As I have said, all rights in .a state of society are artificial. It might as well be said he had a natural right to a box at the opera. Mr. Gr. Potter, in a letter to the Times of July 7, recom- mends ‘ the nationalisation of land.’ He seems to suggest it as a remedy for the mischief occasioned by farmers having recourse to pasturage instead of tillage. Now the farmers do this because they get the greatest profit by it, and would con- tinue to do it for that reason, even if they paid no rent for their land. They now get, or ought to get, the fair reward for their capital and personal labour. If they paid no rent, they would get that rent in addition. But I infer that Mr. Potter, in consideration of their having to pay no, or less, rent, would make them revert to tillage instead of pasturage, because, as he says, the gross produce would be greater and the labour employed more. That may be so. Kicardo long ago pointed out that though the net profit from the use of machinery might be greater, yet the gross produce might be less than the gross produce of the same capital using manual labour, and so there might be less for the labourer and other consumers. True. But we use machinery, and this is certain that it is out of net profits that saving takes place and capital increases, and it is also certain that the most disastrous thing for 424 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. what are called the working classes, would be to diminish this increase of capital. But how would Mr. Potter bring about this change ? By a direct law that the farmer should have such a proportion of his land in tillage ? I believe such a thing im- practicable. But farther, what does Mr. Potter contemplate if the farmer is to pay no, or less, rent ? Confiscation ? That nothing shall be received by the landowner ? That if A has sold his railway stock and bought land, and B has sold his land and bought railway stock, A shall lose his land but B keep his rail- way stock ? Why ? It is said that the private ownership of land is robbery, and that every owner of land knows it. This, if honest, is crazy nonsense. All property exists by law, and one is owned as honestly as the other. Are all the members of building societies thieves ? I do not believe this is Mr. Potter’s intention, though it may be that of others. As to them, the only argument I use is that if they attempt to put their opinions into practice they must be fought. But if the farmer is to pay no rent, or less rent, in consideration of his increasing his tillage, and yet the landowner is not to be plundered, where is his compensation to come from ? From general internal taxation, or from a customs duty ? There is no other source. Does Mr. Potter think that either would be for the good of the community ? He quotes with approval a letter which says we pay 150,000,000^. a year for what we might grow at home. But to do that every quarter of wheat which now costs, say 40s., would cost at least 50s., and other things in proportion. For you cannot raise the price of one article of food unless you raise the price of other articles which compete with it. The 150,000,000^. then would cost 187,500,000^., or 37,500,000^. more. Would this be a gain to the country ? I have assumed that gross produce is less under pasturage than under tillage, and that labour is less ; but the liberated labour is sure to be employed on other productions. The Times concisely disposes of Mr. Potter’s idea, by saying that it is protectionist unless it means the robbery of those who chance to own land at present. ‘ People can always be relieved for the moment by stealing other people’s goods.’ Only a word as to that part of the question which asks about FKIDAY AFTERNOON. 425 the State management of capital. It might as well be asked whether the State management of capital and labour at Portland Prison is not as productive and pleasurable as the private management of them. I say capital and labour. They cannot be dissociated. Separately they are useless. Those who manage capital must manage labour. On this subject I refer to a pam- phlet by Mr. Stanley Robertson on ‘ Communism,’ published by the Liberty and Property Defence League. (See Appendix.) I answer the second part of the question peremptorily in the negative. AFFENDIX. Let us concede, then, for argument’s sake, that a State organisation could be created — ©r rather that a group of organisations could be created within each State — which should provide for all the physical wants of the community, and regulate all merely material life, so as to exclude poverty to the utmost, and get rid of most of the ills poverty brings in its train. I will go so far as to suppose that all this could be done without a forcible revolution, though the Conti- nental advocates of schemes of this sort (Collectivists, Socialists, or Communists, as they are called) are commonly reproached with being anarchists, because they are apt to try to carry their projects into effect by violent and subversive means. As a matter of fact, we shall see that the success of such schemes would be by no means anarchic in effect, but, on the contrary, would involve an unheard-of tightening of the chains of authority. For a Collectivist community could only be kept at work on certain very rigid conditions, the acceptance of which would be a very high price to pay, even for the exclusion of poverty. First, it would be necessary that the State should superintend the provision of food, lodging, clothing, and all the material necessaries of life for every citizen, just as the commissariat department of an army provides for the soldiers. NTow, anyone who knows what the administration of an army commissariat is, knows that even such a limited body as an army is most difficult to provide for. In our own army, as a general rule, the supplies are inadequate as often as any extraordinary call is made upon them. In most foreign armies, when the supplies are adequate, they are so much more than adequate as to err on the side of lavishness. The high state of efficiency of the German army is purchased at the cost of a crushing tax on German industry. Now, let us suppose that, instead of a quarter of a million 426 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONEERENCE. of adult men, or even a million, the whole population had to be provided for — some thirty or forty millions, including not only picked and full-grown men, but the aged, the sick, delicate women, and young children. Surely to superintend the distribution of all the physi- cal necessaries of life among such a vast and mixed multitude would tax to the utmost the resources of any State organisation ! Subdivide and distribute the work how you will, surely it will be all but im- possible to guard against the risk of a breakdown at some point of the very complicated machinery ! Under the regime of private enterprise and competition (coarse and cruel as some deem it), supply does somehow adjust itself roughly to demand. But the blunder of a State department would be of necessity irremediable. When the supplies of an army fall short there is free industry to fall back upon, and, when it is deemed necessary to ensure an army against shortness of supplies, free industry is permanently over-taxed. But a Com- munistically organised State would either have no such reserve, or would be compelled permanently to over- work its labourers in order that a reserve might exist. Secondly, the State, if Communistically organised, must of neces- sity control all labour, direct its quantity, test its quality, and compel its performance. Every man, woman, and child should have his or her daily task set and enforced. Under a regime of free industry and private enterprise, ‘ he that will not work neither shall he eat.’ In countries like France, where there is no poor law, the cry of the Communistic agitator is not for maintenance while out of work, but for work to do whether the produce of his work is wanted or no. Our own poor law is a step in the direction of Communism (though not a very long one, and not wholly indefensible), and carries with it the Communist consequence that work for paupers must not only be provided but enforced. A Communistically organised State would be a collection of big workhouses. Those who aspire after such an ideal must have learned the lesson of the English workhouse very im- perfectly indeed. Otherwise they must needs know that there is a margin of the working class (as there is of all humanity) whose aim is to get through life doing the very smallest possible quantity of work. A considerable proportion of our workhouse population consists of tramps and ‘ casuals ’ who are living upon the labour of others, they themselves producing nothing, and doing no more than they needs must in order that they may be fed at the cost of those who produce. And in this lowest deep there is a lower deep : the half criminal or wholly criminal fringe, which actually prefers the gaol to the workhouse, and makes provision for a rainy day by breaking FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 427 windows or street lamps. What room is there for people of this kind in a Collectivist State h Is it not self-evident that a man who will not work of his own accord must either be driven to work by the lash, or thrust out to starve on the roadside ? And if either of these things has to be done, wherein lies the advantage of the new regime over the old ? Thirdly, if the State is to be responsible for proportioning con- sumption to resources, the State must control the increase of the population. If the State is to provide food, and lodging, and clothing, it must have the power of deciding how many persons are to be fed, lodged, and clothed. This is a matter concerning which plain speak- ing is at once difficult and indispensable. Political economists write about restraints on marriage — as if no children were ever born out of' wedlock. The truth is, that wherever restraints on marriage have been imposed, illicit unions and illegitimate births have increased. In order to control population by State authority it would be neces- sary to bring things into the condition satirised by Shakespeare in Measure for Measure. The slaves on American plantations were encouraged to ‘ breed,’ because their offspring would sell at a profit. On the contrary, men and women in a State Communistically organised .... I will not complete the antithesis. In what way would the subjects of a Collectivist State differ from slaves except that they would not be directly subject to a master’s caprices'? And what manner of men would they be who should be entrusted with the organisation and control of the labour thus disciplined'? The ‘captains of industry’ would have far more power than the officers of an army; and what would be the check on them*? We can hardly suppose them appointed by popular election. That pre- supposes freedom. We cannot imagine a plantation of slaves choosing the overseer by universal suffrage. The overseers of the slaves of Communism would have to be chosen by some process of selection other than a vote of the very men and women whom they would have to control, to keep at work, and to restrain from over-multiplying. Now, the first two of these functions are performed, roughly, indeed, and imperfectly, by the Capitalist Employer in a state of freedom. He it is who apportions the work to be done, and decides who shall do it. He it is who turns the lazy and inefficient workman into the street, and promotes the skilful and active labourer. The process by which the capitalist comes to the front is a process of natural selection, and is therefore more effective than any mode of artificial choice could be. — {Communism. By E. Stanley Robertson.) 428 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEEATION CONFEEENCE. Remedies for Social Distress. By Frederic Harrison. The third question before us submits to our judgment two methods proposed for the reorganisation of the industrial system : — the first, by the more general distribution of capital and of land ; the second, by the State management of capital and of land. These two plans are in violent contrast with each other. The former is merely an extension of the present social system, multiplying the holders of private property, imposing on private property no new checks or duties, proposing nothing subversive of our ordinary habits, and nothing but what is common in many countries in the Old and the New World. The second plan involves an entire revolution in the social system ; it would abolish, or at least recast, the oldest institu- tion of civilisation, private property ; and it proposes an indus- trial system w^hich probably has never at any time been at work on any large scale on the face of the earth. But before we can properly consider any large scheme for the reorganisation of our industrial system, we must first be prepared with at least a general answer to the wider question, the question which is the raison d'etre of this Conference : viz. ‘ Does our industrial system need to be reorganised at all ? ’ I shall simply indicate my own answer to this question, and shall then consider the two alternative proposals for reform ; giving in each case results, conclusions, and general estimates, the outcome of my own experiences and studies. I have now for twenty-five years occupied myself with these industrial pro- blems in their various phases, in personal contact with the movements and their leading exponents or directors: trades unions, workmen’s clubs, benefit societies, co-operation, indus- trial partnerships, land nationalisation, socialism, communism. Time does not permit me to enter into details or systematic review of arguments. I shall seek only to lay before the Con- ference my final conclusions and suggestions. FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 429 ‘ Does our industrial system need to be reorganised ? ’ or in words which originated this Conference, ‘Is the present manner whereby the products of industry are distributed satisfactory ? I cannot myself understand how any one who knows what the present manner is, can think that it is satisfactory. To me at least it would be enough to condemn modern society as hardly an advance on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent condition of industry were to be that which we behold, that 90 per cent, of the actual producers of wealth have no home that they can call their own beyond the end of the week ; have no bit of soil, or so much as a room, that belongs to them ; have nothing of value of any kind, except as much old furniture as will go in a cart ; have the precarious chance of weekly wages, which barely suffice to keep them in health ; are housed for the most part in places that no man thinks fit for his horse ; are separated by so narrow a margin from destitution, that a month of bad trade, sickness, or unexpected loss, brings them face to face with hunger and pauperism. In cities, the increasing organisation of factory work makes life more and more crowded, and work more and more a monotonous routine ; in the country, the in- creasing pressure makes rural life continually less free, health- ful, and cheerful ; whilst the prizes and hopes of betterment are now reduced to a minimum. This is the normal state of the average workman in town or country, to which we must add the record of preventable disease, accident, suffering, and social op- pression with its immense yearly roll of death and misery. But below this normal state of the average workman, there is found the great band of the destitute outcasts — the camp-followers of the army of industry — at least one-tenth of the whole proleta- rian population, whose normal condition is one of sickening wretchedness. If this is to be the permanent arrangement of modern society, civilisation must be held to bring a curse on the great majority of mankind. Is the relative area of this extreme misery growing wider or smaller ? Is the normal state of the average workman growing better or worse ? Is the general lot of the upper ranks of the workmen rising or falling? Taking England and our own generation only, I have little doubt that there is some improve- 430 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. ment in all. The proportion of the utterly destitute is distinctly, however slowly, diminishing. The average workman, on the whole, has gained in money-values a real advance. The fortunate minority of the most highly-skilled workmen have gained very considerably. The figures arrayed by consummate economists are far too complete to be doubted. But then this question is by no means settled by figures. After all has been said as to the rise of wages, as to the fall of prices, as to the cheapening of bread and other necessaries, there comes in a series of ques- tions as to housing, as to permanence of employment, as to the general conditions of life in cities ever more crowded, and in country ever more and more inclosed, as to the nature of industry in the sum. These are questions that cannot be settled by statistics and comparative tables. It is impossible to balance a gain of 2d. on the quartern loaf against the growing un- healthiness and discomforts of an increasing city. No one can say if another U^. per hour in wages is the equivalent of increased strain in the industrial milk No one can exactly value all the rush and squeeze of modern organised industry against the personal freedom of the old unorganised labour. These things one has to judge in the concrete, and my own judgment is this : the fortunate minority have gained, even in the sum total, at least as much as any other class in the community ; and they are in the ascendant, in the way to gain more, both positively and relatively. This is due mainly, I hold, to their trades unions and mutual societies. The average majority of workmen have, in the sum total, gained a little ; but far less than the rich or the middle-classes. And that little has been gained at the expense of some evils which are hardly compatible with civilisation. The destitute residuum is, if relatively diminishing, positively increasing in numbers ; and, under the pressure of modern organised life, is in a condition of appalling barbarism. Taking the general condition of the producers of wealth as a whole, it is improving, but somewhat slowly, and even the improvement is of so moderate a kind, and is accompanied with evils so menacing to society, that the future of civilisation itself is at stake. And herein I join hands with very much that is said by the earnest men of the FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 431 genuine Socialist schools, so far as they point out the evils and dangers of our actual system. In particidar, I heartily sympathise with the critical portions of Mr. Henry Greorge’s writings, especially in his latest work, Social Problems, That book seems to me a very powerful, and, in the main, a very just, exposure of the evils of our industrial system ; though I look on his pretended panacea as chimerical and futile. But Mr, Greorge, whose genius and courage I cordially admire, has introduced one very important consideration. He has proved, or rather directed our attention to this, viz., that the evils long familiar to all in the industrial system of Europe are already in full operation in America and other new societies ; that they grow up with wonderful rapidity within a generation under conditions utterly different to those of Europe ; that they are found in primitive communities, in democratic republics, in societies where virgin soil, unbounded liberty, limitless space, social equality, and an absence of all traditions, restrictions, or hindrances whatever, leave an unorganised crowd of free men face to face with Nature. It is impossible, therefore, to attribute these evils to Government, social institutions, laws, or historical conditions. They are the direct growth of modern industrial habits ; and they develop with portentous rapidity directly industry finds a field wherein to organise itself, even in the most free and the most new of all modern societies. Mr. George, I say, has shown us that the evils of our industrial system are the direct product of the industrial system itself. This spectacle of the growth of free industry in America affords a sufficient answer to those who call out for absolute freedom from State interference. In the United States we have State interference at its minimum, and the freedom and independence of the individual citizen at its maximum. And this seems precisely the field where industry breeds the evils of the industrial system with the greatest rapidity. It is here, where the State does the least, and where the individual is most independent, that we have colossal accidents, gigantic frauds, organised plunder, systematic adulteration, the greatest insecurity of property and of person, and commerce fast re- ducing itself to a science of swindling. This should be enough 432 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. to warn us that it is impossible to make an absolute principle of the doctrine of non-interference. Where the State can usefully interfere, and where it cannot, is for each society a matter to be discovered by practical experiment. The sticklers for absolute respect for Liberty and Property have not the courage of their doctrines. If they are logical they should ask for the abolition of all legislation against truck, dangerous struc- tures or practices, unhealthy buildings, oppressive regulations, and fraudulent devices of any kind. They ought even to call for the abolition of all inspection, all compulsion, all monopolies, and all State manufactures, or even regulation of industry in any form. Cab-drivers would be free to charge the unwary what they pleased ; girls and boys would be ill-used in any way short of open violence. The population would grow up a prey to small-pox and all infectious diseases ; the children would be untaught; salesmen would be free to falsify their weights and measures, and to adulterate their goods without check ; sailors would be drowned, pitmen blown to cinders, and trains wrecked entirely at the mercy of certain owners ; and we should have to forward our own letters, and (why not ?) protect our own houses ourselves. Society would be dissolved in the name of the sacred rights of self-help and property. The limits of age, sex, or special industry have no abstract force, apart from convenience. If it degrades a man to have State protection, it must degrade a woman ; if it is good for a young person of 14 to be under compulsion or inspection, it cannot be so evil for a young person of 1 8 or 20 to be so also. If there be any absolute doctrine of non-interference, the age of 12, 14, 17, or 21 cannot override it ; nor does a factory girl of 16 differ so much from a factory lad of 16, or even of 21. Once show a few cases where State control has certainly made industrial life a little more human, and checked some forms of misery, and the abstract doctrine of non-interference is blown to the winds. But cases of successful State control abound in all societies, and notably in ours. The rule of caveat emptor is perfectly observed only by savages. I turn to the first alternative proposal, the more general dis- tribution of capital and land. No one who knows the working- FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 433 man, so to speak, at home, can doubt how great an advance in well-being and independence is the possession of a little capital, a bit of land, however small. Only those who do know him at home can truly judge how great an advance it is. The workmen of such cities as Eochdale, Halifax, Huddersfield, Leeds, Newcastle, and Oldham, where the unions, the co-operative, building, and benefit societies are in strong force, are in an alto- gether different world from that of the average town and country labourer, who on a Friday night is the owner at most of a few shillings and five pounds worth of old fm-niture. The co-opera- tive societies, with their twenty-six millions sterling of annual sales, are only one and the best known of the many agencies. The trades unions, with their large reserve funds, and their accident, sickness, and out-of-work benefits, are but another mode of securing to workmen some of the advantages of reserve capital. All the various forms of insurance and benefit societies, the land and building societies, do the same. The prudent, energetic workman of our northern in- dustrial districts, who can afford to take advantage of all the mutual benefit associations available to him, may be said to be in a position of something like security and comfort. If he is sick, out of work, or meets with an accident to himself or his tools, he is not forced to pawn his bedding ; when he is super- annuated, he is not driven to the poorhouse ; when he dies, he is not buried by the parish. He gets wholesome food, good clothing, and furniture at wholesale prices ; he has a good library and club, a night school, and an annual holiday ; and he comes to be master of a house and garden of his own. This is the bright side of the picture ; but of how few can it be said to be true ! Perhaps, at the most, of 5 per cent, of our total working population ; and of that o per cent, almost the whole are factory artisans, who alone, by their higher wages and the employment of whole families, can afford the needful weekly subscriptions. With the rural labourer the story is very different. How rare is the case where he owns anything, or has the remotest hope of ever owning anything ! Every ordinary misfortune of life — sickness, accident, infirmity, old age — to him means simply parochial relief, charity, the workhouse. He drinks poisonous water, eats 434 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFEEENCE. bad and adulterated food, lives a life without rational amuse- ment, without freedom, without hope. Compare the British labourer with the peasant owner of France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, or America, and he appears to be at the opposite pole of comfort and independence. It would be wasting time to multiply proofs that the more general distribution of capital and of land does promote the welfare of the labourer. Every means which contribute to that end are, in my judgment, an unmixed good, whether they take the form of co-operation, trades unions, benefit, building, insurance, or joint-stock societies, or peasant occupation and holdings. Nay, I go much farther, and I insist that until the working-man — whether in town or in country — has at least as much possessory interest in his home as an average middle-class man now has, and until he can count on so much capital, or its equivalent, as will keep him (if needs be) from destitution for a year at least, the first conditions of civilised industry are wanting. But the question before us is whether the reorganisation of industry and the welfare of the community are to be found in a general distribution of capital and land. And here we are met by two irresistible facts. The first is, that the universal ten- dency of organised industry, rural or urban, is towards the massing, and not the dispersion, of capital. The highly specialised subdivisions of all modern production, the increasing use of complex machinery, and the greater economy of all aggregate operations, make the massing of capital more and more essential to efficient production. In America and in new societies, even more than in the old, the same causes are at work. Increased concentration of capital is an indispensable condition of modern successful industry. Even in rural England, where the concentration of estates seems almost to have reached a maximum, the consolidation of farms goes on ; the big industry is driving out the little. The ancient controversies as to great and little culture of land have now ended in this : that for the largest production of cereals and stock and for the highest scientific farming the big-scale culture at least is indispensable, even if the ownership be subdivided. In urban industry no room is left even for debate. Collective industry has almost FKIDAY AFTERNOON. 435 extinguished individual industry. Factory production has swallowed up home production ; the spinning-wheel, the hand- loom, the village workshop, are now the bows and arrows of modern industry. The middleman, the chapman, the small trader, the petty manufacturer, the private banker, the small builder, the village store, are every day superseded by big companies, central agencies, or big capitalists who are con- solidated companies and agencies in themselves. In the face of this universal law of modern industry, a law the more con- spicuous the more free and virgin be the field of industry, how idle would it be to look for any regeneration of the industrial system to a natural dispersion of capital or land ! In the teeth of universal tendencies such as these, it is rather unnatural to struggle for a revival of the equable distribution of capital and land which marks the ruder types of society. The second objection is a result of the first. As a fact, the possession of capital and of land is reached only by an insigni- ficant fraction of the labour population. After all has been allowed for the work done by trades unions, co-operation, benefit societies, and the like, it touches only a fortunate few. Even the most flourishing and progressive of these movements hardly advance more rapidly than population and the general wealth of the community : in other words, they barely hold their own. Trades unionism may now be said to be, as an efficient move- ment, about fifty years old ; co-operation is forty years old ; most of the mutual-benefit movements are in their second or third generation. It is time that the enthusiasts of each recognised the very narrow limit of their real work. They practically affect the fortunate minority alone. Ninety per cent, of the labour population scarcely feel any direct benefit from them. Co-operation, in particular, has a melancholy failure to acknowledge. Too much lias been made of the fact that a small fraction of the labouring classes (600,000 or 700,000 all told) have learned to buy their tea and sugar in economical ways at stores and clubs. There is n© social millennium in this. Co-operation started forty years ago with a mission, to revolutionise industry, to abolish the wages system, and to produce by associated labour, so that the labourer should F F 2 436 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. share in the profit of his labour. Over and over again the effort has been made to start true co-operative production, all workers sharing the profits. Over and over again it has failed. It has been a cruel disappointment to the noble-hearted men who forty years ago, and since, liave hoped that they had found a new social machine, to see these hopes ruined by the in- domitable force of personal interest and the old Adam of industrial selfishness. One after another all types of co-opera- tive production worthy of the name have disappeared. Here and there a few associated artisans or artists struggle on in a small business where capital is hardly needed. In 1883 the united profits of all productive societies in the kingdom was less than 15,000^. This does not count the flour-mills, which are merely a form of store for the convenient supply of food. What a drop in the ocean of the total earnings of the working classes, 500,000,000^., is this annual profit of 15,000^.! But co-operative employers usually, like other employers, give little but the market rate of wages, and secure the best dividends they can. Why should they not ? they ask ; for they are poor men, trying to rise. Why not indeed ? Only they make it plain that co-operation is simply a name for a joint-stock company ; and the idea that it is about to re- organise modern industry is now an exploded day-dream.^ Trades unionism, which I have known intimately for twenty-five years, is an even more important and efficient engine of industrial improvement, mainly because its indirect influence is at least as great as its direct influence. A trades union usually benefits indirectly quite as many non-members as members, sometimes perhaps twice as many. A powerful trades union often improves the condition of the whole trade. But, at the utmost, trades unions substantially affect only the minority. Of the twelve millions of earners, certainly not one million are in union. In one or two of the most skilled trades, the unionists are the majority ; but, taking the whole labouring population ‘ In 1883, the aggregate dividend paid by these productive societies in England was under 5,000Z. About lOOZ. was devoted to educational and charitable purposes, and about twice as much to labour, apart from capital or purchases. FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 437 of these islands, the unionists are a noere fraction, the aristo- cracy of labour. Nor is this fraction now relati\^ely growing. Trades unionism, in the sum, is not an advancing movement. In two generations now it has shown itself utterly powerless to reach the residuum, or even materially to combine the great average mass. In spite of all the creditable efforts made by the larger unions, and by the annual congress and the like, unionism in its average, and certainly in its lower, types tends rather to sectional and class interests ; it divides trade from trade, members from non -members ; and especially it accentuates that sinister gulf which separates the skilled and well-paid artisan from the unskilled labourer, and from the vast destitute resi- duum. Our industrial competition forces these classes into permanent antagonism. Unionism too often deepens this antagonism into bitter and unsocial war.' It is vain indeed to expect the permanent reorganisation of industry from any one of the movements which tend to the more general distribution of capital or land ; nor is there any reasonable probability that this will come about naturally. The steady logic of facts is towards the concentration of capital and not its distribution ; and all the movements for promoting that distribution but touch the topmost layers ; they scarcely affect the mass, and do nothing for the lowest state of destitu- tion. They leave the general organisation of the industrial system exactly as they find it. They do almost nothing to moralise it, to infuse into it a new spirit ; and they distinctly decline to revolutionise the industrial system itself. Trades unionism indeed, the best and by far the most powerful of these agencies, is a strongly conservative movement, and depends for its activity on the actual industrial system as it is. Compared with the gigantic and deep-seated evils of our present society, these various schemes for the general distribution of capital are mere palliatives, stop-gaps, and insignificant experiments. Nine-tenths of our working people, nine-tenths of their wages, are hardly affected by them at all. I turn to the various proposals for the State management of capital and land, that is to say, to the nationalisation of the soil, ' See the paper prepared by Mr. Lynch. 438 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEKATION CONFERENCE. and Communism pure and simple. There is nothing particu- larly new about the proposals of Mr. Henry George. In the last century, Thomas Spence, in Newcastle, proposed very similar theories, and the Spencean clubs of that period were quite as vigorous as the land nationalisation societies are now. Mr. George has, however, given the discussion a new interest by his eloquence, passion, and his experiences of the new societies across the Atlantic. I have already expressed my admiration of Mr. George’s genius and energy. And I will add this : his dealing with the land question has drawn attention to some important truths, so valuable that if all the rest of his argu- ments were worthless, this would still make him one of the most vigorous social thinkers of our time. The greater part of his criticism of our present distribution of wealth is right in principle, even if exaggerated in statement. He has abun- dantly proved that it is not due to any special conditions of English society, law, or institutions. He has thrown fresh light on the danger of permitting to the owners of the soil in cities the absolute disposal of its surface and the buildings on it. And in particular he has done admirable service in insisting on the necessity for a genuine land tax. I am prepared myself to go with him so far as to see a fifth at least of our national in- come raised by a tax on land and ground-rents, as is usual in most other civilised communities.. But all these proposals are part of the accepted programme of all radical reforms. And Mr. George has done nothing to put them into practical and work- able form. When, however, he goes on to represent the appropriation of the soil in private hands as the cause of all social misery, and the State confiscation of the soil as the panacea for every ill that afflicts society or the working poor, no wilder sophism was ever uttered by a sane man. I will not, in a serious gathering of cultivated men, waste a word on his invocations to the will of God or the rights of man. Eant of this kind is more fitting to a negro camp-meeting than to an industrial inquiry. I come at once to what I hold to be the central error of all land nationalisation theories whatever. It is assumed in all— FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 439 (1) That property in land is something different toto ccelo from any other kind of property. (2) That property in land represents a mere legal right, nothing of real value apart from its arbitrary and fictitious value. (3) That property in land retains its value without any act or expenditure on the part of the owner. (4) That there is some mysterious wickedness about owner- ship of the soil, some social mischief which is not at all shared in by mere permanent occupation of the soil. Every one of these assumptions is false. The appropriation of the soil rests on precisely the same grounds as any other appro- priation. If there is anything wicked and socially mischievous in private property in land, the same wickedness and mischief exist in any other private property. The former is the appropriation of an immovable and the latter of a movable ; but there the dis- tinction ends. There are things far more rare than the soil, and quite as essential to human life. The appropriation of all the salt in India, or of all the coal or wood in England, would create a monopoly far more formidable, and would sooner make the monopolist master of the community than any possible appropriation of the soil. Eaffaelle’s pictures and ancient statues are far more rare than even the soil of these islands. And fuel, ships, or iron are quite as necessary to existence. If property becomes sin, when extended to things of which the supply is limited, the ownership of diamonds, coal, anti- quities, and ancient manuscripts must be even more unholy. To lay down a social law that no one shall own anything which is much wanted by others, would apply in turn to almost every subject of property. Food, building materials, horses, minerals, even books and newspapers, become in certain societies and under certain conditions, things of special desire, and suddenly enrich the fortunate owners. The unearned increment applies to everything in turn. The window of an attic which commands the view of some historical scene, the house in which Shake- speare lived and died, the Times newspaper with the account of the battle of Waterloo, suddenly become a fortune in the hands of some lucky owner. It is as much or as little criminal to own them as to own a bit of soil. If rarity and a general 440 INDUSTEIAL REMUNERATION CONEERENCE. desire to possess them make things incapable of appropriation, the rule should apply to thousands of things besides land. Immense nonsense is afloat respecting ‘ the unearned incre- ment.’ The unearned increment is the result of civilised society which gives special value to various things, quite apart from any act of their possessors. In a besieged city, the fortunate holders of food, in a war, the possessors of ships, saltpetre, guns, and the like, suddenly find that their property has ‘ an unearned incre- ment.’ The buyers of the first edition of the Modern Painters, Turner’s Liber Studiorum, or Tennyson’s poems, are in the same case. Those who have bought a piece of land in a spot where a town begins to rise are in precisely the same position. It may be quite right for the State to prevent the possessors of the soil from hindering the free development of the town. But why should the State confiscate the ‘ unearned increment ’ of the piece of ground, and not the ‘ unearned increment ’ of the book, the grain, or the saltpetre ? Nor is it true that land is a positively limited thing. There are still boundless tracts on the earth’s surface not actually occupied. Land is in no sense so limited as wood, iron, coal, salt, not to speak of Grreek statues and illuminated manuscripts. And in each country, even in ours, the quantity of cultivated and useful land is a constantly fluctuating amount. The land in practical occupation is now probably one-fifth more than it was fifty years ago ; and perhaps one-twentieth less than it was ten years ago. The land of any country in actual occu- pation varies from year to year very largely, far more than iron, coal, wood, or old books and pictures vary in amount. At this hour, there are millions of acres of the soil of these islands which are perfectly at the service of Mr. Greorge and his friends, at a rental of Is. an acre, if he likes to lease them, and to convert them into good farms. It is untrue that the soil even of this island is all allotted out and closed for ever. There are millions of acres still to be had which might be made perfectly service- able to man at an outlay of so much per acre. What is lacking is the capital or the labour willing to convert them. For practical men well know that to convert these waste lands into farms would involve a ruinous loss. It would not pay one per FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 441 cent. Wliy, then, should the ‘ State ’ be required to make an outlay which is certain to prove a ruinous loss ? This brings us to the point that property in the soil repre- sents not a bare legal right to exclude others, but the actual expenditure of capital and labour. The underlying fallacy of Mr. George is to think that land is a thing like the sea, and raising produce from it is a simple process, like catching fish. There are exceptional cases and extreme limits. But an ordinary farm is as much artificial as a house or a factory. Good farm land in England is the work of enormous outlay and labour. In its primitive condition it was moor, swamp, thicket, or sandy wilderness. Perhaps not a twentieth part of this island in its original state (Mr. George would say as God made it) was of any use at all to man. There is hardly an acre of cultivated land in England which has not been made cultivable by a great outlay of labour and capital. It has really been as much built up as a railway or a dock. Immense tracts of fine farm land have been in this very century slowly won from a state of barren wilderness, by continuous labour and the enormous expenditure of capital. The whole of the corn lands recently gained from the open down and moor, forming large parts of eight or ten southern and south-western counties, the vast and fertile regions in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and other North-Eastern counties, redeemed from saltmarsh, fen, and swamp, have been made quite as completely by human industry as a ship or a steam-engine. It is idle to repeat sophistical platitudes that God made the earth, but man made the ship or the engine. The ship and the engine are merely materials found on and in the earth, worked into useful forms, and arranged by human industry to serve man’s wants. So is a farm. No farm in England is in the state in which it is supposed that God left it at the creation of the earth. It has been worked up and re- arranged by human labour extending over centuries. The farm is also, like the ship or the engine, a mass of the earth’s materials so changed and placed that it can grow food. Apart from that labour, an acre, say, in the Bedford Level, or on the Wiltshire Downs, would be as perfectly worthless as an acre on 442 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. the top of Snowdon or on the Groodwin Sands. It is certainly immovable, whilst an engine or a ship, under conditions, and with great expense and labour, is movable. But this is a mere incident. A ship stranded is also immovable ; and so is an engine, in the absence of capital to move it. Hence we find that large portions of the soil of England have every quality possessed by other purely personal property, which Mr. Greorge does not propose to touch. Even he would be scandalised at a proposal to confiscate the ships and engines built and owned by private persons, on the ground that their material was simply a portion of the earth’s soil, which no man has a right to appropriate. Society judges it wise to guarantee property in ships and engines to those whose capital has procured them to be built, in order to encourage citizens to employ their savings in a way useful to the community. On precisely the same grounds it guarantees property in the Bedford Level to those whose capital has procured it to be made. The Bedford Level is no doubt an extreme case. But it is only a matter of degree. Hundreds of thousands of acres in England have been made by human toil, skill, and capital, quite as com- pletely as the Bedford Level was made out of tidal swamps. To a very great degree every cultivated acre in England has also been so made. Clearing of timber and brushwood, of stones, weeds, and other growths, draining, fencing, damming, bridging, making roads, barns, farmsteads and the like, ponds, wells, watercourses, and the hundreds of works without which the land could not bear produce — these costly operations were necessary for every farm alike. If the people, by God’s law, have a right to God’s earth, they can only have a right to that earth in the state in which God created it. Let us assume that Mr. George is right, and that we agree to hand back the soil to the people. It would be grossly unjust to hand it back to them in any other state than a state of nature. Assume that we could replace it in that state, in the state, say, in which Julius Csesar saw it when he came over from Gaul. This island then consisted of pathless tracts of jungle, fen, moor, wood, and heath. The valleys of the great rivers were periodically under water ; the estuaries on the FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 443 coast were boundless salt fens ; the uplands were sandy or stony wildernesses ; there were only two or three varieties of tree ; four or five very common herbs ; and about as many coarse wild fruits. It would be impossible for any but hunters aod coracle boatmen to get about the country ; there would be hardly any food for man or cattle ; neither man nor beast could live anywhere except on patches here and there, mostly in aquatic villages or on detached and stony hills. At the utmost, one- twentieth of the soil could be used for human produce, and that only in the rudest way for a few necessaries. Nineteen-twentieths of the soil would be as absolutely useless for human food as Dartmoor and the Wash are now. That is the condition in which Grod gave the soil of England to the people of England ; and that is the condition in which they should, by Grod’s law, receive it back. To seize it, after centuries and centuries of labour have been, by man’s law, expended in utterly changing its very face and na- ture, would be monstrously unjust. We have lately by legislation remedied what most of us hold to be a cruel injustice in Ireland, where the labour which A had put into the soil was confiscated by B. In Ireland, the mountain-side and the bog had often been won into cultivation and usefulness by the incessant labour of some tenant, or perhaps squatter or bare occupant. Mr. George has justly inveighed against the outrageous in- justice done, when the farm so reclaimed by the labour and capital of the peasant was claimed, plus its improvements, by the mere owner of the soil. We heartily agree with him. On what ground ? Because we find it unjust that the men who may fairly claim the soil should plunder, along with the soil, the visible result of another’s labour and capital. In England it is not the occupant but the owner, or those whom the owner represents, who have expended on the soil that labour which alone has made it useful to man. Mr. George, therefore, is going to do in England exactly what he and we find so monstrous in Ireland. Granted that the soil of England belongs to the people of England. Then he is calling on the people of England not only to seize the soil, but to confiscate the enormous wealth representing the ontlay by which the soil has been transformed. He is going on a colossal scale to repeat 444 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. the injustice which in a very minor form we have just redressed by legislation. Some schools of land nationalisation propose what they call compensation on this confiscation. What they propose is, how- ever, no compensation at all. It is not, and never can be, any kind of equivalent for the capital expended. The strict prairie value of agricultural land in England would hardly amount to one year’s rent. The improved value, representing capital expended in making the prairie cultivable, would usually ex- ceed twenty years’ rent. It may be doubted if 2,000,000, 000^. would go any way in making the soil of England what it is to-day, supposing that it were in the state in which Julius Caesar, or even William the Conqueror, found it. The idea that the owners of the soil simply represent a parchment-right granted ages ago by some sovereign or paramount authority is almost too ridiculous to discuss. There is perhaps not a single enclosed and cultivated acre in England on which human labour has not been expended and paid for far in excess of many years’ rent ; it would be easy to show that in some spots forty, fifty, even a hundred years’ rental would not cover the loss and outlay sunk in making it fertile. We ought to calculate, not merely the bare clearing, draining, and inclosing the particular farm, but the whole of the permanent works needed to make any given district cultivable as it now is — the vast and ancient operations of dyking rivers, estuaries, and watercourses, the road-making, bridge-making, and planting, the sum of those labours which make an English county so utterly unlike the same soil in the days of the Heptarchyh It is as great a difference as that between a frockcoat and a sheep’s fleece. Mr. George might as well claim the coats off our backs, on the ground that God made the sheep, as the farms which have been made by human capital and skill. It is idle to seek now to unravel all the titles to every plot * The works here spoken of are all the beneficial constructions for the permanent improvement of the soil, made at the cost of successive owners of the land. It does not include high roads, bridges, or other works paid for by the parish, the county, or any public body. Everyone knows that in every large property there are occupation roads, bridges, dykes, and other works necessarily paid for by the proprietor. FKIDAY AFTERNOON. 445 in England. The notion that the soil of England is held to-day under grants made by Norman and Tudor kings is obviously childish. It would be easy to show that an immense proportion of it is now held by the assigns of those who paid hard money or money’s worth for it. Somebody gave or paid for the labour; and it would be as idle to trace back the heirs of the original labourers as it would be to find the men who made our coats, or the heirs of the bricklayers who laid the walls of our houses. In civilised society the legal ownership of an article is assumed to represent the value given for the labour expended on it. If every man were liable to have his coat confiscated off his back, unless he could show that he had paid his tailor, that the tailor had paid the clothier, that the clothier had paid the farmer, that the farmer had paid the shepherd, and so on ad infinitum^ civilised society would cease to exist. There is no more reason in land than in anything else for calling on the legal owner to show that he has personally paid the value expended in making the article, be the article coat or farm. As a matter of fact, a very large part of the soil of England has been acquired for value given within recent generations. Even the estates of our peers, whose Norman names excite Mr. George’s democratic sensi- bilities, have usually been acquired, directly or indirectly, through purchases by capitalists or marriage with the children of capitalists. It was amusing to read Mr. George’s denunciations of the London estate of the Duke of Westminster, which he told us was a grant from a Norman king. Everybody knows that it comes by inheritance from a worthy yeoman, who farmed his own estate, and left it in due course to his grandchild. The grandchild’s descendant about a hundred years ago obtained a title. But the right of the Duke to the soil is precisely the same as Mr. George’s right to anything which was left to him by his grandfather. There are no Norman kings in America, and no land-laws made by an aristocracy. And yet precisely the same evils of land monopoly exist there, we are told, and the same policy of confiscation is recommended. Who are the people of England to whom God gave the soil ? Are they the de- scendants of the aborigines, of the first occupants, of the Britons, Saxons, or the mediaeval yeomen ? Have not the Welsh, the 446 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. men of Cornwall, the Highlands, and the West of Ireland the best title to the soil of their ancestors ? And in America God certainly gave the soil to the red-skin ; and by the law of divine justice one would think that New York, Boston, and Chicago should be restored to the remnant still left in the Indian reserves. Absurd panaceas can only be properly exposed by pointing out the absurd consequences which logically they involve. Not only does the owner of a farm represent those who have expended capital in creating it, but the farm would soon cease to exist if the owner did not continue to expend capital in keeping it going. Next to the fallacy that the landlord has done nothing to make the land, comes the fallacy that he does nothing to maintain it. An ordinary estate requires periodical expenditure, amounting at the lowest to 10 per cent, of the rental, and which is often twice, thrice, or four times as much. Official reports from one of the great estates in the kingdom show that in sixteen years nearly three-quarters of a million sterling has been expended. Of late years much of this outlay has been incurred along with a reduction of rents. It may well be that much of this expenditure is in permanent improvements which will ultimately represent increased value. But in England an immense proportion of this ex- penditure has nothing to do with profit or speculation. It is voluntarily made by the duty or pride of ownership, just as parks and gardens are kept up without any view to profit. Farmhouses, farm buildings, cottages, schools, churches, clear- ings, plantations and model farms are placed on the soil by rich landlords out of their capital. The country gains largely by* this ; and the reason that so many parts of England are culti- vated like gardens or home farms is that the owners, having immense capital from resources other than agricultural rents, are able to indulge their pride or their sense of duty by expend- ing enormous sums in improving and beautifying their estates. One landlord in 16 years spent in farms, cottages, &c., 290,000^. Another, in 3 years, 60,000^ Another, in 17 years, 30,000^. (rental reduced). Another has, in 10 years, received 50,000^., out of which he spent on the land 43,000^. without increased FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 447 rental. These improvements are all in country estates, and in dififerent counties.^ Instead of the great peers carrying off the rentals of their farms to be consumed in extravagance, the farms are often kept in their present high condition because vast sums acquired elsewhere are poured into them. I am certainly not prepared to utter one word in detence either of our landed sys- tem or of our concentration of land in a few hands, least of all in defence of the unsocial extravagance of the rich. But on the whole I believe that great landlords in England administer their estates with more sense of public duty than bankers or merchants employ their capital. On the whole I estimate that an annual sum of at least ten millions is needed to keep our agricultural land at a high level of condition, in building, draining, fencing, clearing, planting, in roads, dykes, watercourses, bridges, and so forth. In a country changing so rapidly as ours, and with daily advances in scientific farming, this outlay is required to keep abreast of the general progress. Were this not expended the fer- tility of the land would rapidly deteriorate and ultimately cease altogether. Any large tract of ordinary country left to itself for a generation would return to a state of nature, and in two or three generations it would be as uncultivable and as uninhabitable as the moor or the fen of our ancestors.. An ordinary estate requires a continual expenditure of capital to keep it going, just as a ship, or a railway, or a cotton- mill. The sole justification of ownership of the soil is that this is done by the owner. In England it is done by the * These cases have been given to me privately, and in each case with exact figures supplied from the agent’s office. They belong to a large class of English properties which are owned by men of great wealth and managed on liberal principles, without any idea of exacting the maximum rental. They are not at all the strongest cases to be found. The entire rental of some large estates is expended on the property. I know myself of two properties owned by millionaires, one of 13,000Z., the other 4,000Z. a year, from which for years past no income has been taken off the land. I cite these cases not to claim any merit for the owners, nor as a defence of the landlord system, but to prove a plain economic fact, viz., that a large proportion of the estates in England are managed without any reference to pecuniary profit, and that immense sums are, as a fact, annually spent in improving the land by the owners. The question whence that money comes is a perfectly distinct issue. 448 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. owner, and, on the whole, done well. It is well done mainly because the soil of Eng'land is owned by men, very many of whom are rich apart from their rentals from farms. If an annual outlay of ten millions be taken (for illustration) as the amount required to keep our agricultural land in a high state of productiveness, I shall assume that no less than fifteen mil- lions are annually expended on it now, if we include every kind of outlay — churches, schools, cottages, model farms, houses, gardens, plantations, of every kind : in fact, all that is not ac- complished by public taxation. Where is this ten or fifteen millions annually to come from if the State confiscates the soil ? To throw it on the occupant or farmer is to overburden him, already unable as he is to stock or work his farm from want of capital. He will have, as now, to pay his rent or land tax to the State. Otherwise the State will derive no benefit from confiscation, and will simply make a present of the land to the farmers. But if the farmer, besides pay- ing his rent, is to find the annual outlay for repairs and improve- ments, none but capitalists, or the nominees of capitalists, will be able to farm. Hence, the ten or fifteen millions must come either from the State or from land banks. If from the State, then a large slice of the State’s new land tax will be cut off. And what a prospect of State intervention, jobbery, and mis- management is unfolded by a scheme which puts every farm under the direct management of the State ; which substitutes for all the land agents and landlords in England a huge depart- ment at Whitehall which would have to give an order before any gate, barn, or ditch in the kingdom could be repaired. It has been suggested that the difficulty is met by leasing the State land at a lower rate. This does not meet the case. In the first place, the State will have to see that the sums re- quired for improvements are actually expended. That would involve minute and constant inspection, followed by eviction in case of default. What an endless source of discontent such a system involves ! Again, a large part of the expenditure now made by great landlords is far in excess of what a public de- partment could or would exact from farmers with small capital. Yet if that expenditure is sacrificed the country, at any rate FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 449 the land, would be the loser. Lastly, a large, irregular, and occasional expenditure, which is easily borne by a great capi- talist, is not so readily met by a farmer without capital. A farmer, now paying 200L a year rental, needs, we may suppose, a new house, buildings, and appurtenances, to cost 2,000^. A landlord easily finds that sum. It is a very different thing to call on the farmer to find it, even if his rent be reduced from 200/. to 100/. per annum. The seamen who navigate an ocean steamer could not find the capital to work it, even if their wages were 500/. a year. Suppose, on the other hand, that the State declines so gigantic and so unpopular a task, and that the ten or fifteen millions are found by financial corporations— land banks of some kind. That is to institute a vast system of mortgage over the face of our country. Mortgages are bad enough when created by a landlord ; they are far more ruinous when the farmer or peasant is indebted. The State would be the mere over-lord, receiving the true rent under the name of land tax, as in India or Egypt ; and the cultivator — call him peasant, farmer, or lessee — would be the bond-slave of some money- dealer, who would be his mortgagee and practical master. The place of landlord would be taken by some banking company in London. This is what happens always where the cultivator is without capital, and yet where he has himself to find the sums periodically needed to keep his land in condition. This is why the Egyptian fellah, the Indian ryot, the peasant in Kussia and Eastern Europe generally, is the bond-slave of the money- lender. Even in France, Belgium, or America, where the peasant has unusual qualities of industry and thrift, the poorer class of farmers are bowed down by mortgages and loans. How could it be otherwise ? No magic will get rid of the need for constant outlay to keep the land in condition ; nor will any magic supply the small farmer — call him what you will - with the capital needed. At present he can hardly buy his stock and manure. How is he to find, then, ten or fifteen millions more, if we abolish the landowner, who now finds this sum ? He can only find it by borrowing ; and the lender will be more or less master of him and of his land. G G 450 INDUSTKIAL KEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. Suppose that, by a short Act of Parliament, the payment of rent were abolished, within a generation the present farmers, who, as a rule, have neither large capital, nor the habit of ac- cumulating a large capital, would be deeply in debt for the sums required to renew buildings and develop cultivation. Where there is need for continual outlay of capital, borrowing is the only means by which a class without capital can meet that out- lay, however easy be the terms on which the holders may get the land. The land question is a question of capital. No legislation can create capital where it does not exist, and where the habit of accumulating does not exist. But the nationalisa- tion scheme does not pretend to abolish rent. It only converts rent into land-tax ; that is, it changes the persons to whom rent is payable. Tlie landowner system is a device for getting capital on to the land. If we abolish the landowner, then, as the farmer has not adequate capital, it must come either from the State or from lenders. The English schools of land nationalisation usually proclaim as their aim the formation of a number of small farms leased from the State, with fixity of tenure — in fact, the legislative creation of a system of permanent peasant occupation. There are great social advantages in peasant proprietorship, and in any system where the actual cultivator is in free possession of the soil he tills. I am wholly convinced that to occupying owner- ship, without legal limitation on the extent of the holding, we must ultimately come. But the questions before us are these : First, can we create such a system at a stroke by legislative compulsion ? Secondly, in order to do so, need we start with such a tremendous revolution as abolishing property in land ? Thirdly, when we had done it, would the advantages (apart from the dangers and evils) be at all commensurate ? To these three questions I answer. No ! If every rural labourer in England were suddenly by law declared the absolute owner of ten acres, other conditions re- maining unchanged, within a few years the productiveness of the soil would be reduced by one half, and in a few generations large properties would be again the rule, and the bulk of the labourers would be in a state of dependence. It is impossible, FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 451 in a country like ours, to force society back into the primitive simplicity of Switzerland and Norway, even if it were desirable. It is useless to make peasant proprietors or independent farmers by law, until both have the habits and the capital needed to work such farms or holdings to a profit. Then, when we had ‘ planted our people on the land,’ we should at most have provided for one million of earners out of our twelve millions of earners, for if the holdings were too small, production would be arrested. How should we have improved the condition of the other eleven millions of earners ? To hope that we should have abolished wages, even in agriculture, is an illusion. There is not a country in the world where the wage-receivers do not exceed the pro- prietors tilling their own land. And in a system of peasant ownership the wage-receivers are often worse off than elsewhere. If our soil is to be well cultivated, the lots — call them farms, properties, or holdings — could not, at the outside, exceed a million, and would probably be quite small enough if they amounted to half or a quarter of a million. If these lots are to be well tilled, some one must have full control over each, call him peasant, farmer, owner, lessee, or occupant. Unless such occu- pant has permanent tenure, with full power to transmit to his assigns and successors, he will not put capital into the land Unless he has capital of his own he must borrow it. When he is a systematic borrower he will cease to be a free pro- prietor. And when financial rings hold under mortgages the soil of England, we shall simply have established for the landlords whom we see, and who (in England) live on their estates and usually take some pride in them, invisible money- dealers living in distant cities. What is there in all this to transform industry, reorganise our social system, and offer a millennium to the thirty-five millions of these islands ? Our English schools of land nationalisation adopt the principle merely in name. Mr. Greorge proposes a genuine Communism, so far as land is concerned. If his scheme is to have the grand social results which he claims he must abolish all property in the soil as an institution. It is, according to him, from the sinful institution whereby plots of Grod’s earth are nefariously allotted to private persons in full control that G o 2 452 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. poverty, bad trade, rotten finance, injustice, fraud, and even prostitution, spring. But the practical result of our English land nationalisation movement is, not to abolish, but greatly to strengthen this malignant institution, the appropriation of the soil. The English schools seek to make many more persons the virtual masters of the soil. Nationalisation, in their mouths, is reduced to a phrase. The State is to be declared sole proprietor. Well, that is nothing ; such is now the law of the land, a law acted on daily, when land is taken under the compulsory powers of a thousand Acts of Parliament. But names apart, the new allottees of the farms or plots will be quite as much proprietors, in the anti-social sense of the term, as the Norman barons who now own them. Unless the allottees have permanent occupa- tion, with fixity of tenure, and freedom to transfer, charge, and devise them, the land cannot be properly worked. Some persons or other, by a law of nature, physical nature and human nature alike, must have full control over the soil, unless it is to waste and go to ruin as land does in Turkey or Persia. But permanent occupation, with fixity of tenure and freedom of assignment, is proprietorship in other words. It will exercise over society all the same effects. The new allottees will accumulate estates, and in a few generations will be just as selfish, tyrannical, and indolent as the Norman barons. They will be just as much the enemies of the human race. Why not ? We shall have changed the persons of the proprietors ; but how shall we have changed the proprietor nature ? In- stead of Lord Wolverton, a London banker, or Lord Ardilaun, a Dublin brewer, who care little for the rentals of farms, we should have got a dozen small capitalists who had saved money in iron, and a dozen more who had prospered in coal, butter, or mutton, and who are not likely to be easier landlords.^ * In Professor Newman’s paper, ‘ written on behalf of the Land Nationalisa- tion Society,’ he says : — ‘ The aim of our society is to establish a state of things in which small independent plots of land shall be procurable eveiywhere.’ As the flim to be reached, he speaks of farms ‘ being multiplied through peasant freeholds.’ Now to maintain such a system in England, even if it could be created by law, two things are absolutely necessary — (1) limitation by law of the size of holdings, (2) prohibition against sub-letting. Both of these con- ditions are impossible. To attempt them would lead to an unendurable tyranny. FKIDAY AFTEENOON 453 In what I have said I do not by one word accept the actual land system as satisfactory, or our present social condition as tolerable. I am as eager as any Socialist to transform oui landlordism as a permanent institution and to find a higher standard for our general industrial life. I see certain great advantages, chiefly economical and material, in our present system of landed estates ; but I am very far from believing that these counterbalance its grave social evils. But these are to be dealt with, I hold, by the class of measures long advocated by all schools of radical land reformers. I am as anxious as any man to see a large body of peasant holdings freely springing up on our land. I look for a large body of working farmers, with permanent interest and complete freedom in their own farms. And I see social and moral evils of the worst kind in any system which practically severs (as ours does) the ownership of the soil from any responsibility to superintend its cultivation. That is to say, there are grave evils to society where estates in the mass are simply leased or loaned for hire like money. These evils, however, can be remedied by a reform of the land laws, by abolishing all the legal and social privileges peculiar to the ownership of land, and by a resolute scheme of land taxation. Under such a system of reform it would simply not pay to be the nominal owner of a great estate. A great estate would become a mere burden, and not a very honourable one, except where a man of vast wealth might choose to devote a large part of it to the public service, by keeping up an estate without profit. How- ever, after all the changes, I am not sure that the tillers of the soil will be, in material conditions, quite as well off as many are now who hold under the great Bedford, Devonshire, Port- land, Buccleuch, and Northumberland estates. But, on the whole, the social objections to the maintenance of an indebted, idle, and exclusive squirearchy are so serious, that we should by every legal obstacle limit the formation of a landlord class whose social function is sport, and whose economic func- • tion is to spend what rent remains after keeping the estate in productive efficiency. Economically speaking, there is some social justification for dukes and millionaires as landlords, for they sometimes put almost as much on to the 454 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. land as they draw oft, and they offer types of high agricultural efficiency. It is the squireen, with one or two thousand acres, with no capital, no occupation, and few useful faculties, who is without any raison d'etre ; being, like his own cherished fox, a survival of the iinfittest in modern civilisation. In what I have said I strictly limit myself to England, and to rural estates. If the system cannot be applied to English farms it fails altogether. The social and economical conditions of the greater part of Ireland, and even of Scotland, are so very different ; the social justification of the landlord there is so much less even when it exists at all, that very different reasoning applies to the ill -managed territories of so many Irish and Scotch absentee landlords. I also have been speaking ex- clusively of the soil in country, not in cities. I am quite prepared to see the State, through local authorities, assert in towns a permanent right to control the disposition of the soil in such ways as experience shall prove to be most useful to the public. Abstract rights of property should no more be an obstacle to laying out our cities as health and convenience sug- gest, than they are now in making a railway through an estate. What we want are a set of Lands Clauses Acts applying to any soil in towns, and vesting control over it in proper local authorities. And we shall want very stringent provisions to check owners from doing anything contrary to public interests, or from receiving fanciful compensation for their own laches and obstruction. Even then we ought to see more wisdom and honesty in local authorities before we can confidently entrust to them the work now done for the most part by great landowners. The municipalities of Paris, New York, San Francisco, or Mel- bourne are not model trustees of public interests ; some think that even the Corporation of London and the Metropolitan Board of Works are far from all that is wanted. Is it quite certain that either of them would abolish misery and unhealthy dwellings the moment we had handed over to them the control of the Bedford, Salisbury, Portland, Portman, G-rosvenor, and Cadogan estates ? We may take it at least as certain that in the management of these neither fraud nor oppression is directly charged against FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 455 the noble owners, other than such fraud and oppression as Mr. George finds in the act of owning land at all. To a citizen of Paris, New York, or San Francisco, accustomed to associate municipal government with bribery, rings, corners, and public plunder, such a state of things would appear an impossible utopia. Everyone who knows London can see how unfounded and even ludicrous are invectives against the peers who own considerable districts in our city. Large as these estates are, they do not account for a quarter of the area or the population. So far from these being the districts where suffering is greatest, they are altogether those in which it is least. The central, eastern, northern, and southern districts of London, where tlie dukes do not own a house, are those where the misery and overcrowding are the worst. Misery and overcrowding as great, if not greater, are found in Paris, Berlin, Naples, Lyons, Eouen, New York, and Mel- bourne, where there are no Norman barons, no dukes owning whole quarters. Everybody knows that Mr. George’s famous gates near Euston Square were set up for the convenience, not of the duke, but of the inhabitants of the quarter. They are doubtless a public nuisance, but if the soil belonged to the parish we might have a dozen more set up. This is a specimen of the rhetoric to which Mr. George treats us. Happily our English reformers do not adopt this outlandish style of reform. I am certainly no friend of landlordism as an institution, or of aristocratic social traditions ; I am for radical land reform both in town and country : but justice forces me to say, that amongst our great landowners, both in town and country, are to be found those men who, of all the rich and powerful in England, I will say of all the rich and powerful in Europe, administer their estates with the greatest sense of social duty and responsi- bility to public opinion. And when we have got rid of them, we shall have got rid of much that it will take us a long time to replace. On the whole, whilst we must thank the Land Nationalisa- tion movement for directing attention to many important truths, and whilst we may heartily go along with the spirit which inspires it, we cannot accept the chimerical hopes and the 456 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONEERENCE. blind leap in the dark which it offers ns as a remedy for all indus- trial evils. We should sacrifice for a mere dream all the solid results won by radical reform and practical experiments ; for it would plunge us into a social revolution which might last for generations. The talk about ‘ planting the English people on the soil’ is surely mere words. However successful the plan, it could only plant about one in ten of our families on the soiL The twenty-six millions of Englishmen cannot all be planted on the soil ; they are not Swiss or Norwegian woodcutters, nor are they all desirous of retiring to the country on a competence. And when they were planted on the soil, how would they live and earn a living if they have neither capital nor skill to work it ? We might as well talk of planting the English people in the shops, or warehouses, or offices of England. What would they do when they got into the offices and shops without capital or business habits ? A tailor presented with a cottage and ten acres would starve as quickly as a farmer would starve if presented with a lawyer’s business as a going concern. There are now thousands of farms ‘ on hand ’ because, rent or no rent, there is no one with capital and skill who cares to take them. Of the State management of capital, i.e. of simple Com- munism, I say little now. We have not before us a definite statement of the views propounded by any systematic school of Communism. There are several organised bodies putting for- ward proposals of a more or less Communistic character ; and within our generation we have seen several Socialist movements of a more or less systematic kind. In what I say now I speak of no body in particular. I shall deal with the Socialist and Communist language which is to be heard nowadays in several quarters, both within and without the publicly-constituted bodies. There is not a little floating Socialism current around us. I neither fear nor despise Communism. I am anything but opposed to its motive spirit or its aspirations. I honour its generous instincts, and I sympathise with much in its social aims ; for undoubtedly some of the noblest characters of our day are in sympathy with them, and it counts in its ranks men of heroic devotion to a social ideal. Nor need we undervalue its forces and the future destiny before it. On the continent FEIDAY AFTEENOON. 457 of Europe it is already one of the mighty factors of social evolution. We shall have it here, I doubt not; though hardly in any form that is yet presented to us. But in what form, in what system, with what doctrines, is Communism pre- sented to Englishmen to-day ? The Communism which alone has ever had a serious following — the Communism of Owen, Fourier, Saint Simon, Lassalle, and Karl Marx — had a social system of some kind, a body of logical doctrines, and an ideal of human society, however vague and extravagant. But the Socialism in many quarters now preached amongst us has none of these — neither economical theory, nor social scheme, nor system 'of life of any kind. It offers nothing but invectives against the rich, fancy figures for its statistics, and appeals to the poor to begin a social insurrection. It has no economic, social, or political doctrines. It propounds no intelligible religious principle — no scheme of morality, of government, of institutions, of education, of domestic, industrial, or civic life. Now no real insurrection was ever made by pure anarchists. The people must have something to believe in, to hope for, and work for, before they will seriously rise. Incitements to plunder and to destroy do not touch the people, who need some great moral cause and some ideal in view to stir them profoundly. But Communism, as presented in England, offers no moral cause, no ideal. It has never faced, and has nothing to say about any one of the great social problems, about religion, morality, edu- cation, government, public or domestic duty. It is not Com- munism : it is mere Nihilism. Communism implies the syste- matic organisation of life on the principle of community and not of individualism. This Nihilism, which pretends to be Communism, simply proposes the confiscation of property. How the capital so confiscated is to be worked — under what moral code, by what institutions, and for what social aim — on this it has nothing to say. How can it have ? The small knots of propagandists whom we find here and there — some of them in organised societies, some in the press, the pulpit, or on platforms — seem to have no agreement about these things. Some are ministers of the Gospel ; some profess materialism pure and simple ; others belong to every intermediate phase of opinion. 458 INDUSTKIAL KEMUNERATION CONFEEENCE. Their views about morality, education, government, and society are equally various. Now, although an economist is not bound, as such, to have any moral, religious, or educational programme, a Communist is bound ; for if people are to work in common they must be trained in common. Every serious Socialist or Communist school has provided for this. The interesting part about true Communism is that it so fully realises the impossibility of production on a Communistic basis without a complete set of institutions to mould life generally on a corresponding basis. All true Communists have seen that it is impossible to found a Communistic mode of industry without destroying private life. Hence they begin by attempting to found a set of social, family, and religious institutions to eradicate all traces of individualism. If they do not do this they know that Communism in labour is impossible. But the various groups who in England to-day advocate some vague Communistic proposals do none of these things. They may denounce our social sores, they may call every man who does not agree with them mere bourgeois (to these young gentlemen even trades-unionists and co-operators are all bourgeois — the real English workman does not even know the word bourgeois ) ; but, in the absence of any social scheme, they will not penetrate the body of English workmen. Communism in a systematic form is, perhaps, not advocated amongst us. But Communistic proposals and Socialist schemes have little meaning unless they can be placed on a logical footing. The only Communism which is worth serious notice is that complete Communism which seeks to transform all private property into Collectivism, or common property. It would be strange if English workmen, who have laboured so long and sacrificed so much in order to share with their fellows some of that security and independence which the legitimate use of property gives, and who have organised patiently such powerful agencies for checking the abuses of property, were suddenly to declare for universal confiscation in the blind chance that something might come of it. Trades- unions, co-operative, building, land societies, and the rest would all disappear, for they all imply the institution of property. The numerous associations of which we have here FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 459 the delegates would have no raison d/etre. There would be no hope of a plot of ground for the countryman, of secure tenure of a farm, of a homestead of his own for any of us. There would be no ‘ Union ’ on one side and employer on the other ; no personal relation between any capitalist and any labourer or any farmer. There would be but one employer, one capitalist, one proprietor, one general manager of everything and everybody. That one would be the State. But what is the State in any intelligible sense as sole landlord, sole capitalist, sole manager ? The State, we know, collects taxes and manages the army and the navy, and some persons are not satisfied with the way that these trifles are managed. But what is the meaning of the State, the possessions of which should be the aggregate capital of the kingdom, and the spending depart ments of which would have to pay in earnings alone a thousand millions a year to twelve millions of persons ? And on what principles, by what institutions, and what machinery, is this fabulous task to be accomplished ? As no one has as yet given us any intelligible answer to this problem, it will be wiser to adjourn so vast a question. From all that I have said it will appear that, whilst I hold as strongly as any man that our industrial system is socially unjust and unsound, I look upon none of the industrial schemes I have considered as going to the roots of the question. Our industrial system is vicious, because our moral, religious, and social system is disorganised. It is impossible to regenerate industry until we also regenerate society. Trades unions, co- operation, and all the mutual benefit movements, are useful in their way, but they only touch the surface. Land confiscation could only affect a minority, and would not very clearly benefit them. Land confiscation is only a fragmentary and partial kind of Communism ; and Communism itself, as we hear of it to- day, is only a more sweeping confiscation, and a fragmentary and partial kind of social disorganisation. Property is only one of many social institutions ; and industry is only one of many human duties. To make property a little more common, more accessible, to check some abuses of property here and there, may be exceedingly useful when wisely accomplished ; 460 INDUSTKIAL EEMUNEKATION CONFERENCE. but it cannot in itself alter human nature, life, and society.. Even to abolish property, and to make a strict code for industry,, is only to get rid of one social institution, and to regulate one of many human duties. To expect a millennium from any kind of partial remedy is like giving pills to cure a fever. Industry can only be regenerated by regenerating society. And society can only be regenerated by sound religion, true morality, right education, wise institutions, and good government. The root of the matter is that we can only change the general conditions of industry by changing the spirit in which industry is carried on ; and we can only gain partial and temporary improvements by mending this or that industrial institution. Whilst men as a rule pursue their own desires and interests, the strongest and the most lucky will get the best of it, and the weak and the unfortunate will be cruelly used. And such is the ingenuity of human skill and the force of self- interest, that, alter as we please the mechanical modes in which industry is arranged, the strong and the fortunate soon contrive to turn them to their own advantage. The best proof of this is to be found in Mr. Greorge’s own books, especially in his last. He shows us that the industrial evils he denounces grow to immense proportions where all the social conditions and industrial arrangements are varied, and society begins with a mere tabula rasa. Almost the only point in which the Pacific territories of America originally resembled England was this, that the passion of self-interest was imperfectly controlled by a sense of social duty, and in the case of the States was even abnormally stimulated. Here then, in human nature, without sufficient moral control, is the source of all this evil ; and it is melancholy to see a man of genius labouring by a set of sophisms, each more preposterous than the last, to show that its source is in property in land. If the cause of industrial misery be traced to the passion of self-interest, and to a low sense of social duty, there might seem to be no more to be said. We should have to wait for a general improvement in civilisation. But there is more to bo said. Industry has managed to develop a moral code of its own. In politics, philosophy, art, or manners, in domestic or FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 461 social life, self-interest is not canonised as the principal social duty of man. In industry it is otherwise. For all industrial matters, in modern Europe and America, a moral code has been evolved, which makes the unlimited indulgence of self-interest, pushed to the very verge of liability to law, the supreme social duty of the industrious citizen. To buy cheap, to sell dear, to exhaust the arts of competition, to undersell rivals, to extend business, to develop trade, to lend on the best security, to borrow at the lowest rate, to' introduce every novelty, to double and to halve business at every turn of the market — in a word to create the biggest business in the least time, and to accu- mulate the greatest wealth with the smallest capital — this is seriously taught as the first duty of trading man. Economists, politicians, moralists, and even preachers urge on the enter- prising capitalist that the industrialist does best his duty by society who does best his duty by himself. Banker, merchant, manufacturer, proprietor, tradesman, and workman alike sub- mit to this strange moral law. Almost the only class of capital- ists in this island who do not as a rule accept it are, in truth, those great landlords who are the principal object of modern attack. It is assumed as beyond proof that the rapid increase of business, the great accumulation of wealth, is a good perse — good for the capitalist, good for society. No account is taken of the business ruined, of the workmen thrown out of employ- ment, of the over-production, of the useless, mischievous, rotten trade created, and of all the manifold evils scattered broadcast amongst the producers and everyone within range of the work. It is enough to have made business, to have accumulated wealth, without coming within the grasp of the law. Here, then, is the all-sufficient source of industrial maladies. We have come, in matters industrial, to treat duty to others, and duty to society, as only to be found in duty to self. If all employers were as thoughtful of the general welfare of those they employ as they are now eager to get the most out of them ; if all producers were as anxious for good, sound, and useful pro- duction as they are for paying production ; if those who lend money considered not only the security and the interest, but the purpose for which the money was sought; if those who 462 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. develop new works thought more of the workers than of possible profits, industry would not be what we see it. In other words, the solution of the industrial problem is a moral, social, and religious question. Industry must be moralised — infused with a spirit of social duty from top to bottom, from peer to peasant, from millionaire to pauper. But to moralise society is the business of moralists, preachers, social teachers ; the economist has but little more to add, and his field is not here. But here I must pause. This Conference is no place for moralising or preaching ; neither religion nor social science have their pulpits here. And, for myself, anything I could say I must reserve for another place. State Management of Land. By J. Shield Nicholson, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in the University of Edinburgh. The advantages which might conceivably arise from the State management of land are of two distinct kinds, which may be described as (i.) financial ; (ii.) utilitarian. I. State management with a view to financial gairi . — It seems to be generally admitted, and can easily be proved, that if full compensation, at market values, were given to existing landowners, the bargain would in all probability be a bad one for the State. The present value of any possible future incre- ment is part of the market value, and accordingly the State could only gain through the occurrence of events unforeseen when the market value was calculated. It is impossible to de- termine whether the economic rental of this country — that is, the rent paid for the natural qualities of the land, superiority of situation, &c. — will rise or fall during any future period. The present fall in agricultural rents was never anticipated, and it is at any rate possible that increased facilities in the means of communication, or the adoption of different methods of produc- tion and exchange, may cause an equal fall in ground rents. Apart from other elements of uncertainty, it is impossible to FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 463 foretell the movements of general prices. An appreciation of gold, or, which is the same thing, a general fall in prices, seems at present more than probable, and it would be disastrous for the State to make a vast speculation for the rise in a falling- market, and that is the real meaning of full compensation at market values, with a view to finaucial gain, under present circumstances. The argument against giving less than full compensation does not rest merely on instinctive morality. In a modern society the stability of credit is of the .most vital importance. A serious shock to credit would paralyse the commerce and in- dustry of the country, and the confiscation, or partial confisca- tion, of land could not fail to produce a prolonged commercial crisis. The unearned increment, as it is called, assumes many forms, and to attack one is to threaten all the others. But even confining the attention to rent, those who advocate confiscation cannot have considered how many interests besides those of the nominal owners of large estates are involved. There can be no doubt that any direct gain arising from confiscation would be far more than counterbalanced by the indirect loss arising from the consequent contraction of credit. Apart from this purely economic consideration, full compensation to existing owners is justified on the moral ground that for generations land has entered into the circle of exchangeable commodities, and the defects of the original titles have been purified by contract. It is no doubt true, as a general proposition, that all wealth is the result of labour, and at first sight it seems quite plausible to say that therefore all wealth should form the reward of labour. But under a system of extended and minute division of labour, the only definite meaning to be attached to the right of an individual to enjoy the fruits of his own labour is the right to the fulfilment of the best contract lie can make. There is a very small part of the wealth of any individual which he can claim to have made by his own labour directly ; his only title to the remainder depends on an extended series of contracts, and any direct application of the labour test is absolutely impossible in a modern industrial society. The only legitimate method by which the State can gain from 464 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. a rise in rental is by taxation, and taxes to be equitable must be levied on general principles, which it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss. It is sufficient for the present purpose to state that land is not the only luxury which the actual owners have not made for themselves, and that economic rent is not the only unearned increment, and for further illustration to refer to the learned works of the German socialists. II . — Utilitarian advantages of State management. — Apart, however, from any prospect of financial gain and in spite of the prospect of financial loss. State management may be advocated on grounds which can best be described as utilitarian. The right of compensation being admitted, the State (including local authorities) may in the interests of the community, either (a) purchase certain portions of land and assume the functions of landlord, or (6) diminish the control of private property in land by undertaking the partial management of all land. (a) It is easy to imagine particular cases in which the pur- chase of a portion of land by the State might be of advantage to a limited number of the community. The wealth and power of the State are so great that it can remedy almost any particu- lar evil. But this power of the State, which at first sight seems indefinitely large, is kept within very narrow limits by the fundamental principle that it must be prepared to extend the charitable or beneficial course adopted in any one instance to all similar cases. If, for example, it assumes the functions of landowner in one district of the Highlands, it must act in the same way towards the rest of the Highlands similarly situated, and further, unless very special causes of difference are shown to exist, it must extend the same benefits to the whole class of agricultural labourers throughout the kingdom. Similarly, if land is purchased by the State for the benefit of the poor in one city, land must be purchased in other cities for the same reason. Accordingly, any action of the State in the direction of amelio- rating the condition of the poor by the purchase of land, whether in rural or urban districts, if it is to be equitable must be of very wide extent. It seems hardly necessary to enumerate the difficulties and abuses which would arise from the State be- coming the universal landlord of the poor ; the success of the FKIDAY AFTERNOON. 465 system would depend on the integrity, zeal, and efficiency of the officials appointed, from the head of a department down to the lowest inspector. In fact, all the difficulties involved in State socialism would have to be overcome. If the management were conducted according to rigid ioflexible rules, there would be no scope for variation in particular emergencies, and, if room were left for variation, according to the discretion of officials, there would be equal room for caprice. Much has been written of the abuses of absenteeism, but from its very nature the State would always be an absentee landlord. (6) We seem then to be reduced by a process of rejection of alternatives to State interference with the management of land in general by a curtailment of some of the existing rights of private property or land, as, for example, in rural districts by judicial rents, valuation of improvements, assignment of land, determination of tenancy, &c., and in towns and cities by similar judicial functions so far as applicable to the case. In the limits assigned to this paper I can only examine the rural problem, and that merely in the briefest manner. Partied State raanagement in rural districts, — Agricul- ture is the most important of all industries in this country, and in many ways the general prosperity of the labouring classes depends on the prosperity of agriculture. An increase in the rural population, not due simply to a process of ‘ making work,’ would certainly be advantageous, and an improvement in the condition of the agricultural labourer would be reflected to the towns. At present, whatever may be hoped for as an ideal, agriculture is in this country mainly directed by tenant- farmers, and it cannot be supposed, that whatever facilities for purchase were offered, they would be induced to invest a large part of their capital in the purchase of land. If they did not do so before the recent Acts, which have in- creased the security of their farming capital, it is hardly likely that they will do so now. The most important practical question then that arises is : How far can the State with advan- tage take over any of the functions of the landowners as regards tenant-farming ? The principal points of possible control are the selection of the tenant, the amount of rent, the H u 466 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. determination of the tenancy, and the compensation for im- provements. Selection of the tenant , — At first sight it might appear that the selection of the tenant might be safely left to land- owners and tenants respectively, but in reality several difficult points are involved. The size of the holdings, the nature of the produce, and a group of social considerations must be taken into account. In the Highlands of Scotland at the present time, the essence of the whole agitation on the part of the crofters is a cry for more land. In their view the most im- portant function of a land court will be to effect this object — that is to say, the selection of the tenant is to be handed over to State officials. The demand made is that the large farms and deer-forests should be broken up, and the crofter holdings increased both in size and number. According even to the report of the Crofters’ Commission, which, compared with some views widely prevalent, is comparatively conservative, large powers are to be given to the sheriff for the expansion of the townships. At a recent meeting of landowners in Inverness, a promise has been made to extend the crofter holdings as oppor- tunity arises ; but it is quite clear that a general promise admits of various interpretations, and it is quite possible that legisla- tion may take the direction of applying the principle so ably advocated by Mill of governmental interference with the view of giving effect to the wishes of the parties concerned. Two distinct courses seem possible. The first is to appoint an executive commission to determine as regards every estate how much land is to be given to the crofters under certain conditions, and the other is to fix a minimum size of holding, determined by the produce it can raise and the stock it can carry, and to leave the landlord to his own devices in making the enlarge- ments necessary. Both plans are beset with difficulties. In some cases the extension would involve compulsory emigration, in most there would be a difficulty in providing stock, and in all it would be hard to draw the line between the substantial crofter and the labourer or fisherman who is to receive merely a garden plot. In addition to these difficulties, according to the general principle of beneficial legislation noted above, the FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 467 similar claims of agricultural labourers in other parts of the country must be provided for. A redistribution of land once begun will not stop at the Highlands, even although it is not intended as a precedent. The same circumstances may not be found in other parts of the country, but it is never difficult to find a justification for the extension of a method once adopted. It ought then to be remembered that so far as the Highlanders are worse off than other agricultural labourers, it is due to the subdivision of the holdings on the estates where the landowner has been too weak, too indulgent, or too careless to prevent it, and it seems inevitable that in some manner subdivision must be prevented unless an agrarian crisis on an increasing scale is to recur every other generation. Seeing that on some estates subdivision has been prevented by the strict enforcement of estate regulations, the natural course would appear to be to make the landowners responsible, and if necessary to stimulate them to the observance of the moral law by legal penalties. Rent . — So far as Great Britain is concerned the evidence appears to show that, with the possible exception of a com- paratively small area in the Highlands, there is no need for judicial interference with rent on the ground that monopoly rents are exacted. In England in particular there is a good deal of land which cannot find tenants at nominal rents — in fact ( with the exception noted), the advantage of position in making the bargain as regards rent is decidedly on the side of the farmer. The essence of monopoly is not mere limitation — every form of wealth is limited — but absence of competition, and English lando^vners can no more exact monopoly rents than any other capitalists can exact monopoly profits. Those who are chained down by long leases are of course inclined to appeal to the State, but it is their own fault for embarking on a highly speculative imdertaking. A consideration of the causes on which rent depends {i.e. regarded as a surplus over the expenses of production) will show that it is extremely hazardous to fix rent for a long period. A Government official would be in no better position than a farmer ought to be in the estimation of these causes. If any change is made in the present matter of fixing rents by agreement, it would be better to borrow a H H 2 468 INDUSTEIAL KEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. principle from the French law, according to which a certain amount of gross produce is a condition precedent to the pay- ment of rent, but if the farmers are really anxious to get rid of the speculative element entirely they should adopt a sliding- scale varying with produce, prices, wages, &c. Duration of tenancy and notice to quit . — From the diffi- cidty of moving agricultural capital from one holding to anothet the notice to quit ought to extend over a period long enough to secure the tenant from loss and to put him on fair terms with the landlord. The principle is already recognised, and in the recent Act the period was extended, but with the increasing complexity of agriculture a further extension seems desirable. It is difficult to imagine any reason for a closer approximation to fixity of tenure. The success of agriculture depends on effective competition, and fixity of tenure implies exclusion of competitors. A tenant who is unreasonably and capriciously evicted will, if an efficient farmer, easily find a more amiable landlord elsewhere, and if he is evicted for inefficiency so much the better for the community at large. One of the principal evils which would be involved in general State management would be the practical necessity of fixity of tenure. It must, however, be admitted that such an approximation to ownership might do something towards stimulating the industry and hope of very small tenants, such as the Highland crofters, and long leases seem to offer one of the best solutions of their difficulty. Compensation for improvements . — From whatever point of view the subject be regarded, it seems most important that the maximum of compensation for improvements and security for the investment of capital should be given to the tenant, and it is possible that this object might be best effected by official valuation on the termination of a tenancy. But it seems much more important to determine for what compensation shall be compulsory than the precise amount and the method of valua- tion. The principle of the recent Act should be carried to its logical conclusion, and compensation given for everything ‘ necessary for good husbandry and which does not change the character of the subject.’ If more than this is attempted, the landlords will be deterred from letting their land, and will FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 469 attempt to farm it themselves, which could only be regarded as a national calamity, as every landowner who has farms on his hands will be ready to admit. Landlord cultivation is bailiff cultivation, and a bailiff is an inferior tenant at will. Owing to the sentiment clinging to ownership and the impossibility of moving an estate, the landowner may be made to bear a good many burdens, but the last straw which would induce him to farm his own land should never be placed on his back. It seems, however, that the principle of the Act might be con- siderably extended before this point was reached. It is difficult to conceive why a farmer who makes an improvement which answers the above description, which is necessary for good hus- bandry, and which does not change the character of the subject, should be deprived of compensation because it happens to be what is called permanent, especially as the Act gives him modified permission to drain. So long as the principle of com- pensation is the value, and not the cost, of the improvement, the landowner could not suffer. The agricultural labourer woidd probably gain more from the complete logical extension of the principles of the Act than from any change in the land laws. The cottages of the labourers ought to be included in the requisites of good husbandry, just as much as drains or farm-buildings. The farmer, if he were secure in his invest- ment, would soon find that improved dwellings for his labourers would pay him directly or indirectly. In some cases the im- provement might, under the stimulus of compulsory com- pensation, be undertaken by the labourers themselves. Labour would be attracted to the country, and its efficiency would be increased. The great complaint made to the recent Commission on Agriculture was the deterioration in the labourer on account of the constant migration of the better specimens of the class. The only economic reason why at present the farmer is less con- cerned for the accommodation of his men than of his beasts, is that any improvement in the latter belongs to himself only, whilst he is never sure of reaping the advantage of any ex- penditure upon the former. There can, however, be no doubt that a general improvement in the moral and material well- being of the agricultural labourers would benefit both farmers 470 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. and landlords. Inefficient, careless labour, however cheap, is always costly. A good case, then, seems to be made out for the enforcement by the State of general sanitary conditions, and for giving compensation (valued in the same way as for other improvements) for any improvement in accommodation which exceeds this legal minimum. The provision that the improve- ment in this, as in other cases, should be necessary for good husbandry, would limit the number and size of the cottages according to the requirements of the farm or the estate. Every farm requires a certain number of labourers, and good cottages are as necessary as a good steading ; and if, as in the Highlands, land is let to very small tenants, they should receive full com- pensation for improvements in their dwellings. So long as the compensation is given for value, and not for cost, it could never be very great, but even the bare right to compensation would be an encouragement. As a matter of fact, fixity of tenure is the rule at present in the Highlands, so that whilst the right to compensation would ensure the improvement being made, a claim for compensation in money would very rarely arise. Conclusion . — The conclusion to which the foregoing argu- ment leads is that, on the whole, neither on financial nor on utilitarian grounds can the direct management of land by the State be considered either advantageous or necessary. As far as the ordinary farmer who farms for profit is concerned, all that is required is to make explicit what is equitably implied in the nature of his contract. The interest of the community in the good cultivation of land is too great to allow a landowner to indulge in capricious and restrictive covenants. If he lets his land for agricultural purposes, he ought to give every facility for good cultivation and enterprise. If the farmer by his own labour and capital, and without infringing the general purpose for which the land was let, adds to its letting value, he ought to have a claim for compensation. The landowner could have no cause for complaint, if the option of making the per- manent improvement were always open to him (as is now the case in drainage), and if compensation were always proportioned not to cost but to value. It is absurd to call such an interpre- tation of agricultural contracts an infringement of the principle FKIDAY AFTERNOON. 471 of freedom of contract ; as a matter of fact what is loosely called freedom of contract would be largely increased if the restrictions on the freedom of agricultural enterprise were removed. To the community at large and to the farmer it is a matter of indifference who receives the rent which arises from natural superiority of situation, &c., but it is of the highest importance that the payment of rent to a particular person should not involve indirect loss of any kind. In its indirect effects rent resembles a tax on a commodity, in which the important thing to consider, from a national point of view, is not the direct payment of the tax but the consequent restraint on trade. The present owners have a right to receive rent, or in case of expropriation a full equivalent, but they have no right to impose restraints on what is by far the most important industry in the country ; as Mill says, the claim of the landowners to compensation is indefeasible, but their claim to the land itself is altogether subordinate to the general policy of the State. And when we pass from the capitalist farmers to the smaller tenants and the labourers, something more seems equitably exigible from the landowners. If the present system fails in any respect, two distinct courses are open: (1) the State may buy out the landlords and entrust their duties to its own paid officials ; or (2) the State may impose additional obligations on the present owners. The second course is that suggested by the course of beneficial industrial legislation. The essence of the factory legislation is the responsibility of the capitalist — the State does not itself build model factories or superintend the processes of production, but it lays down general conditions under which alone such production can be carried on, and competition with all its variety and energy is left unfettered. It may be urged in the same way that in cases where the recognised moral responsibility of the landowners fails, it should be efiectively enforced by legal sanctions. The discovery of the best methods must be a work of time, but if the principle is once fully recognised that, from the point of view of the community, rent is paid for the fulfilment of certain functions the delay will not be long. It is not State management that is 472 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. required, but that the landowners should manage properly them- selves. It is difficult to see why a factor appointed by a duke, as the head of a department, should be any better than the factor of the same duke, considered as a responsible landowner. At the same time, just as in the factory legislation the workman is responsible for his own negligence, so in land legislation, on the principles here laid down, an increase in the responsibility of the landowner should not be accompanied by a diminution in the responsibility of the small tenant or labourer. In the two most important matters — sanitation and over-crowding — both must be responsible. The conclusion of the whole matter is : — Make the nominal owner real owner, make the real owner responsible for equitable contracts and good management, and do not pay one rent to landowners for doing nothing and another to State officials for performing their natural duties. [Note. — For a more complete statement of the views expressed in this paper, the writer would refer to his book : Tenant^ s Gain not Landlord's 'Loss, and other Economic Aspects of the Land Question. Edinburgh : , Douglas. And Examination of the Crofters' Commis- sion Report. Blackwood.] NOTE ON DR. WALLACE'S PAPER. By Professor Nicholson. Since I wrote my paper I have read the scheme offered to the Con- ference by Mr. Wallace. It seems to me to be an example of the ‘ good despot ’ fallacy — that is to say, the ‘ knowledge and integrity ’ demanded from the assessors and umpire on the one part, and the obedience and contentedness demanded from the labourers, farmers, and landlords on the other, are more than can be expected of rural human nature at present. Even on starting the scheme, a conflict of claims would arise, which it would be very difficult to settle equitably with the highest knowledge and integrity obtainable in the kingdom. Nothing short of an executive commission could ever undertake a redistribution of land on the scale proposed. Again, suppose the plots have been distributed, and that in any case the labourer cannot pay the rent, will he at once dispose of his holding and depart, or will he require a legal process % With the rule, one man one'plot, will he be able always to sell his holding? If he cannot sell it and cannot pay his rent, what will become of the FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 473 land in the meantime ? How are the plots to be inherited or be- queathed % I think on reflection Mr. Wallace will find that he has only got rid of State management and land laws by assuming a simplicity that does not and cannot exist, and I am quite certain of one thing, that such a scheme, so far from settling the Highland land question, would make matters much worse, by creating a number of additional holdings of the size that has been universally condemned by land- lords, farmers, crofters, and the Royal Commission. Where there is real agrarian distress in the Highlands, it has arisen from the informal adoption of Mr. Wallace’s plot system. The people have been their own assessors, when the landlords have not been strong enough to prevent it, and now they appeal to Government to extend their hold- ings. What the crofters wish for and demand is a good deal more than these small plots. There is a general desire on the part both of landlords and crofters to increase the size of the holdings, but the practical difficulties in the way are very great. In some quarters, e.g., Lewis, emigration, or at least migration, is inevitable. The Crofters Commission made an elaborate attempt to provide for the extension of holdings, but their scheme is generally considered unworkable. It is true that Mr. Wallace does not pin his faith in his plan to the particular method adopted, but my contention is that from the nature of the case nothing but an elaborate system of law and judicial machinery could make such a plan tolerable. Everyone may approve of cultivating ownership in the abstract, but the real difficulty is, how can it be attained % It seems to me that the ideal of land law reform ought not to be to abolish the hire of land, which in all ages has been found useful, but to make contracts for the hire of land equitable — not to eliminate the landlord from the social economy, but to make him feel his responsibility and perform his natural functions. The French Workman's Party on the State Management of Capital and Land. By Adolphe Smith,* F.C.S. In discussing the remuneration of labour, it is only natural to inquire what the workers themselves have to say on the subject. For such a purpose it will, however, be necessary to look beyond ‘ Mr. Smith was especially authorised by the Federation des Trarailleurs socialistes de France to represent their views at the Conference. 474 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. the Channel. Though the English trades unions are admirably organised and are the wealthiest working-class societies in existence, they cannot pretend to have even attempted to solve the social question. As benefit societies, they have rendered immense service, and, by combinations, they have at once raised wages and reduced the hours of labour ; but if by the ex- pedient of strikes and benefit funds they succeed in mitigating the evil effect of our present economic condition, they have not, as a body, sought to remove the cause. The very reverse is the case with foreign workmen. Less practical but more logical, devoted to principle rather than to expediency, and easily carried away by enthusiasm, they have readily accepted proposals attacking the very foundations of society and aiming at the complete regeneration of mankind. Nevertheless, experience soon proved that such dreams cannot be realised in a day, and, even if absolutely correct in theory, can only be the outcome of a slow evolution. In this French workmen have of late years shown great practical common-sense. A few still cherish the hope of immediate revolution and the immediate transformation of society into a Communist community. These tempestuous agitators, the Anarchists and the Impossi bilists, however noisy, represent but an infinite minority, and are honeycombed with police agents, who egg them on to every extravagance, so as to supply a pre- text for their imprisonment. The real Workman’s Party, while upholding an ideal which is quite as advanced, quite as revolu- tionary, as any of these smaller bodies, is far more reasonable in the choice of ways and means. They aim at gradual experi- mental legislation rather than sudden revolution. Taught by experience, by service in the army, by personal participation in war, they realise that the working classes, though numerous, could scarcely, if unaided by foreign complications or the support of the rank and file, withstand the military forces the Government would bring to bear against them. They have consequently resolved, for the present at least, to abandon the barricade for the ballot-box. In this they have met with general support, though such prudent policy was so much opposed to the traditions of the French workmen, that they FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 475 were sneeringly called the ‘ Possibilists.’ This nickname, however, has done them more good than harm, particularly as those who first employed it were soon recognised to be ‘ Impossibilists ’ ! The history and strength of the French Workman’s Party are well worthy of a moment’s consideration. Before describing the ultimate aim and the intermediary measures they advocate, it is necessary to show that they possess sufficient power to justify the belief that, in course of time, they will be able to realise at least a part of their programme. It was only in 1876, when the ‘ White Terror ’ was over, that the French working classes began to reorganise themselves. Their hopes and aspirations, temporarily crushed by the san- guinary suppression of the Paris Commune, the death or exile of their best leaders, found voice once more. These were timidly expressed at the first general congress, held in Paris. At any previous date such a gathering would have been ruthlessly dis- solved by the police ; and it was in this instance barely tole- rated. Two years elapsed before the workmen ventured to again assemble the delegates of their trade societies and political clubs. This second congress was also held in Paris. The principal outcome of these two congresses was the recognition of the unavoidable antagonism existing between the interests of the workers and the holders of capital — the consequent neces- sity of establishing a Labour Party with a purely working-class policy. The third congress, held at Marseilles in 1879, went much farther. The principles of scientific Socialism — those same aspi- rations which have so recently rallied more than half-a-million voters in Germany — were then adopted for the first time. It was recognised that the present economic and political situation must tend to the creation of a capitalist feudality, which, by monopolising the means of production, will reduce the workers to the condition of mere serfs. To prevent this consummation, the working classes must descend into the political arena, con- stitute a distinct class and party, and bring about, by all pos- sible means, the ‘ socialisation ’ or nationalisation of the raw material — that is, the land — and of the means of production — 476 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. that is, machinery, &c. But this programme, which expresses what is generally known as Socialism, was strenuously opposed by those who believed in co-operation based on individual and voluntary effort or in mere trades unionism. At the fourth congress, held at Havre in 1880, this moderate section broke away from the general body, and went to form what is now known as V Union des Chamhres Syndicates Ouvrieres, This faction, however, soon fell into general discredit. It was patronised by the Grovernment, some of its promoters were under Government pay, and such a connection was alone quite suffi- cient to destroy what little influence it might otherwise have possessed. Acting upon the decision of the Marseilles Congress, the delegates at Havre prepared for the forthcoming elections, and it is said that in 1881 no less than 96,000 votes were recorded throughout France for the candidates of the new Workman’s Party. In Paris, at the municipal elections, they obtained 11,873 votes. The fifth congress, held during the year of the elections at Eheims, busied itself principally with questions of organisation. France was divided into five regions, and Algeria formed a sixth region. It was decided that each region should have its annual congress, that a national com- mittee, representing all the regions, should be elected, and Paris was chosen as its abode. This central executive committee was further entrusted with the production of a weekly paper, the Proletariat^ as the organ of the party. The congress of 1882 was held at St. Etienne, where another small secession took place. The followers of M. Guesde, for personal and other motives, left the parent organi- sation and formed a little group of their own, known as the Guesdists or Impossibilists. The last two congresses — of Paris in 1883, of Kennes in 1884 — need only be mentioned as having helped to further organise the party. What should be noted with care is the practical result of this organisation. While the Workman’s Party obtained at the Paris municipal elections of 1881 the sum total of 11,873 votes, the following election showed that its voting power had trebled in three short years. Their candidates scored 33,604 in 1884, and there were also FKIDAY AFTEKNOON. 477 3,219 given to the Blanquists, and 867 votes to the Gruesdists. Altogether, for the election of the municipal council in 1884 there were recorded 287,730 votes, of which 37,690 were in favour of the out-and-out Socialists. We are therefore dealing with a genuine political power of growing strength. In the provinces also the increase of voting power was very marked, and many of the municipal councillors elected were representa- tives of the French Workman’s Party. Enough has now been said of the history and strength of this organisation, officially called the Federation des Travail- leurs socialistes de France, to show that, in describing its aims and objects, I am not merely propounding a scheme or a theory but explaining efforts that constitute an important phase of modern and practical politics. I will, however, say less of the ultimate ideal held in view than of those measures that could be at once applied, and which would serve as stepping-stones in the desired direction. My brief allusion to the principles laid down by the Marseilles Congress suffices to show that the French Workman’s Party is thoroughly Socialistic, and its ultimate aim might be briefly defined as the ‘ nationalisation of everything.’ But I can go further than this, and will say that, in the hope of thoroughly eradicating the last vestige of our present competi- tive and individualistic system, the greater part of the work- men are Communists, and believe in an ideal state of society where everyone will work according to his capabilities and receive according to his needs. These are not, however, the points that I now wish to discuss. I mention them simply because efforts have been made to discredit the Pkench Work- man’s Party in the eyes of the French working classes, by representing them as too moderate, as Opportunists, and other terms that tend to destroy their prestige in the eyes of a people who are always anxious to see a complete scheme and not a mere temporary expedient. Also it is well to show that it is possible to hold opinions which many will qualify as mere dreams, or as mischievously subversive of all that is held dear by modern society, and yet be both practical and moderate when dealing with the daily circumstances by which we are sur- rounded. Let me therefore point out, not the ultimate aims, but 478 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. the immediate, the present action of the French Workman’s Party. Three social questions are more particularly before the public at the present moment in Paris, just as well as in London — namely, the depression of trade, the housing of the poor, and the dearness of bread. On all these three points the French Workman’s Party have issued reports and made definite proposals. It was through their action that the Commission of the Forty-Four was appointed by the National Assembly to inquire into the causes of the prevailing commercial depression. But the first of these three problems raises the entire social question, and can only be partially solved by intermediary measures. These latter, therefore, are proposed not as a logical and theoretically perfect solution, but, I repeat, as mere stepping-stones. It is in this light only that the suggestions of the Possibilist Party must be judged. They urged that the prevailing industrial depression would be lightened if all work done for the State was entrusted solely to the workmen’s corporations, and no intermediary contractor or employer allowed to undertake public works. Already the streets of Paris are paved by the Paviors’ Corporation and not by a private firm, while the Official Journal is entirely in the hands of those who compose and print it, the profits being divided among the workmen. Public money spent in public works should go to the benefit of the workers at large and not to individual con- tractors, who often grind down their hands to starvation wages. It is objected, however, that the trade corporations have not the necessary funds to undertake State contracts. To this they reply that, in 1848, the Grovernment gave 2,400,000^. to the Comptoir d’Escompte to be distributed among the middle-class tradesmen who were then suffering from commercial depression. A smaller sum would now enable the trades unions to undertake all government work without any intermediary contractor or employer. What the bourgeois obtained in 1848 the workman may claim in 1885. As over-production, the glut in the labour market, and excessive competition between workmen in search of employ are among the most prominent causes of the present depression, the French Workman’s Party demand that legislation FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 479 shall reduce the legal working day to eight hours, and render it illegal to employ any foreign workmen — notably Giermans, Italians, and Belgians — at lower rates than those generally paid to the native Frenchmen. Such legislation, when possible, should be extended to other countries ; the condition of the most favoured nation being accepted as the basis of an inter- national treaty. The solution of the second question, the housing of the poor, would also greatly contribute to relieve the prevailing distress. M. Jofifrin, when he represented the Workman’s Party on the Paris municipal council, presented a petition signed by forty- seven trades unions, thirty-seven workmen’s clubs, and two co- operative societies, urging the town to build dwellings on the land it possesses, which should be let out in tenements at cost price. Such houses would not only serve as models, but their low rental would compete advantageously with private enter- prise. Then, to prevent attempts to rig the market by keep- ing apartments empty for a long period, a tax, of at least twenty per cent, on the annual value, should be imposed on all unutilised land and houses within the fortifications. Such drastic measures would, it will probably be argued, drive away the capital both of the landowner and the speculative builder. If so, nothing could be more fortunate. As the individual, beaten in the struggle, retreated, the State would step in and nationalise both land and houses, and this without any violent revolution, or the payment of compensation at a rate which otherwise would destroy the advantage of the change. Finally, with regard to the third question, the Workman’s Party maintains that the condition of the bread trade in Paris proves the futility of orthodox political economy. The 1,800 master bakers of Paris have not been led by free competition to adopt improved machinery and to sell their bread at the lowest possible price ; they have simply formed a ring so as to maintain high prices, high profits but low wages, and save themselves the trouble and expense of adopting new methods and improved machinery. Under these circumstances, M. Chabert, the Possi- bilist, and M. Vaillant, the Blanquist, members of the Paris municipal council, proposed that the bread supply of the capital 480 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. should be converted into a public service. The State, by giving* the highest wages, would command the labour market, and by selling at the lowest rate would secure the largest custom. If private enterprise could survive such competition it would only be on the condition of paying high wages, selling very cheap, and contenting itself with slender profits. If, on the contrary, private enterprise was beaten out of the field, then one trade, at least, would have been nationalised. The meat trade would be attacked in the same manner, and one by one all the other trades, commencing always with the necessities of life. Thus pure Socialism would be realised in the course of time, and this without any sudden shock, without inflicting any widespread ruin on those who derived advantage from the present state of affairs ; but rather by the slow, orderly, and almost natural extinction of the present competitive, individualist and anar- chical system. But, in bringing about this State-aided evolution, it is of para- mount importance that the State itself should be in the hands of the producing classes, of the proletariat. State enterprises managed by the bourgeoisie are little better than private enter- prises ; and the workers at the French arsenals or post-office, like their brethren in England, are no better off than those engaged by private firms. These are the considerations that have given so strong an impulse to the political action of the French Workman’s Party, made them eager to contest every election, spread the conviction that the struggle was a struggle of class against class, of producer against non-producer, and that if it be possible to solve the social question pacifically, this can only be done at the ballot-box. Such, in a few words, are the views of the French Workman’s Party; and, when we consider how well it is organised, how powerful it has become in the course of a very few years, the importance of ascertaining what is its aim and policy can scarcely be challenged. This necessity is still further imposed upon us by the fact that the French Federation des Travailleurs socialistes is at one with the American, Belgian, and Spanish Workman’s Party and the Italian Labour Party, represented in the Italian parliament by Signor Costa. Though differing perhaps FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 481 in minor details, the French \Yorkman‘s Party also advocates the same fundamental principles which have united together 600,000 Social Democrat electors of Germany, and the Social Democratic parties of Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, and England. To discuss the question of industrial remuneration without taking into account what these vast and powerful working-class organisations have to say on the matter, would be to leave out of sight the opinions of those who are personally the most concerned in the satisfactory solution of the problem. Discussion. Dr. G. B. Clark (Highland Land Law Eeform Association), before entering into a discussion on the papers read, asked to be heard as representing a society with over 10,000 members in the north of Scotland. Unfortunately, the Highland Land Law Eeform Association had not been able to bring their views before the Conference in the form of a paper because, by a mistake, they were not invited to do so. Lord Bramwell had stated that the present land laws were the result of natural causes. The class of people whom he represented could tell the Conference that the land laws existing in the Highlands at the present day were due, not to natural but to artificial causes. Until rather more than a century ago land was held there not as private property, but under a tribal or patriarchal tenure. In 1846 Hereditary Jurisdiction was abolished ; by the same Act compensation was given, and the rights of the crofter or farmer in the soil were practically confiscated by the State. What was the condition of the gi’eat majority of these men ? They were not asking that one person should have a farm — in nearly the whole of the Highlands until lately there was not an individual property — but common property in land. The individualistic system was not in operation : there was not an individual farm, but there were farming or crofting townships which paid rent. In many places individual farmers in a township did pay a rent, and arable land was held as individual property ; but in the whole of the Highlands grazing land was always held as common property by the township. These men whom he represented did not demand anything for some special individual, but they asked that, as communities of agricultural workers, they should have sufficient land to keep them alive. He wished to state one or two facts which might throw light on the problem under discussion. Why did misery and destitution exist in the Highlands of Scotland % He would tell them why. In the 482 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. beginning of the century the landlords thought that sheep would pay them better than men, and they cleared away the men in order to replace them by sheep. At first sheep did pay better than men, but not now ; and, therefore, if it were simply a question of sheep versus men, the former would go to the wall and the men would come back again, because all the sheep and cattle runs had been made valuable by the labours of the crofters. A farm which used to give enough food for 1,000 sheep could now only afford sufficient pasture for 500, so that the landlords would be glad to get the men back again. It was now found that deer paid better than either sheep or men. The landlords of the Highlands, in virtue of the rights given partly by the Act of 1846, stolen partly with the concurrence and with the aid of the lawyers and others, since they had taken possession of the soil of the country, had driven the people to the hills and the rocks, there to find a living as best they could. No wonder, then, they now lived in misery and destitution, for their township lands were not sufficient for them to live upon. They had been driven away and replaced by sheep. Now they were kept away in order that deer forests might be developed, and that for six weeks or two months in the year a few rich gentlemen — successful merchants, lawyers, and manufacturers — might go down and fill up some of their spare time killing tame animals. In order that one of these gentlemen might have 300 square miles of deer forest for himself, another 150, and so on, the inhabitants were driven away on to land exhausted from over-tillage, where they could not get enough to support them. Professor Nicholson’s paper contained statements which seemed to be the very reverse of the truth, for he had said that where the Highlanders were worse off than other agricultural labourers was because of the subdivision of the holdings on estates where the landlord had been too weak, indulgent, or careless to prevent it. In spite of the facts disclosed to the world by a Royal Commission com- posed almost entirely of landlords — facts showing that hundreds of families had been driven away to places where they could only eke out a miserable existence — here was a professor of political economy coming forward to state that all this was due to the indulgence of landlords. It was clear that Professor Nicholson represented the landlords quite as much as Major Craigie did. Purther than that. Professor Nicholson, as far as security of tenure was concerned, had said in his paper that, as a matter of fact, fixity of tenure was the rule at present in the Highlands. The real state of the case was that 999 out of every 1,000 were tenants- at-will, and they lived in absolute misery. That was the way in which a professor of political economy wrote on this question. The same writer alleged that there FEIDAY AFTEENOON. 48S was no rack-renting. Some had said that 25 per cent, of the crop as rental would be fair ; but not a few of these poor men in the High- lands would be glad to give not 25 nor 50 per cent., but the whole of the crop as rental if the landlords would take it. The latter, however, wanted more than the land could possibly give. They also got what was practically a rent for the sea ; this was not house rent in the ordinary sense of the term, since the tenants built all their own houses, so that they were really paying for the acres of ocean about their holdings. If these men could have for tillage the many square miles of land now used as deer forests, they would be happy and comfortable. Instead of that they were starving and miserable, and some of them were going to prison to-day rather than submit to this condition any longer ; and yet there came to that Conference a teacher of political economy making this miserable apology for things as they are ! With regard to land nationalisation, he had hoped to hear something definite upon that burning question from Mr. JF. Harrison, but he confessed he was going away very much puzzled. Mr. Harrison had said that land did not differ from any other kind of property. Upon what ground did he want to mulct the landlords to the extent of 15,000,000^. a year, and not to the same extent those who held consols, bank stock, ships, and houses, if land did not differ from any other kind of property ^ Mr. Harrison had stated that salt and coal were as valuable a monopoly as land. Of course, when land was spoken of, all the raw material was meant, and that implied salt and coal. Mr. Burns (Social Democratic Federation) said they had heard from the lips of a fellow-countryman of his — Dr. G. B. Clarke — some rather strong observations. As the grandson of an evicted Ayrshire peasant, he would himself make some equally strong remarks, also pertinent to the question, and especially the paper read by Mr. Frederic Harrison on ‘ Remedies for Social Distress.’ He was per- sonally grateful to Mr. Harrison for having narrowed considerably the issues of the question before the Conference. One remarkable feature of the assembly was the undoubted fact that Mr. Harrison had shown the futility of co-operative production. (No, no.) Professor Beesly had shown also the impossibility of profit-sharing as a method of improv- ing the worker’s condition. One word upon profit-sharing. He, as a worker in a factory, regarded profit-sharing as nothing less than a delusive bait on the part of capitalists to goad the workers on to gieater intensity of toil. Mr. Harrison had devoted twenty pages of his paper to a criticism of society as it existed to-day. All well and good. Mr. Harrison had given eight lines on the twenty-first page for the remedy ; and what was the remedy he suggested 'i To a I I 2 484 INDUSTEIAL' REMUNERATION COMFERENCE. socialist it was a peculiar one. Mr. Harrison had suggested the moraiisation of industry and capital. Moralise capital % You might as well try to moralise the lion who was about to devour the lamb ; you might as well attempt to moralise the boa constrictor that had its coils around the body of its victim. Could you moralise the letired capitalist out of his 300 square miles of deer forest, or out of his steam yacht, or out of the guinea orchid he wore in his button-hole ? All such privileged luxuries had been secured by the exploitation of labour, and by the prostitution of genius and ability to the very lowest degree. They had been told by Mr. Harrison that many landlords had done a great deal for their tenants and labourers. Yes, but at whose expense ? From what source ? Had the landlords some hidden source from which they secured this wealth, which it was said, they devoted to the improvement of the condition of their employ h 1 No, they had got it as labour, or as rent, from profit, and had put it into their own pockets. From that platform had been heard repeated statements as to the troubles of the careworn capitalist and the overtaxed landlord. He had in his hand a cutting from the World newspaper, in which it was distinctly stated that three Welsh landlords had given 350,000?. for the improvement of Sandown for racing purposes. If that was so, where was the careworn capitalist or the overtaxed landlord ? It had been said this moraiisation was to be brought about by a system of education. Education had so far enabled the capitalist to import from the realms of science and invention the means by which labour was deprived of its surplus value, this being done in the most subtle forms. The genius and ability of our greatest men had been prostituted by the landlord and capitalist in their service, and against the interest of the proletariat. Mr. Harrison had deemed it expedient to criticise the want of system in the socialistic theories of to-day. It was the absence of theory, as regarded modes of production and distribution, that made that Con- ference necessary. If there had been any such theory or principles for the regulation of society to-day, the Conference would not have been necessary. He contended that the socialists had a definite code of prin- ciples — a set of theories — upon which to work. As an artisan, as a follower of Karl Marxs, and of Lassalle, as a member of a revolutionary body in England, he stated distinctly that the socialists had a definite theory. It was because individualism had no theory that it was bringing its own house about its ears. The question had been asked, how was capital to be worked*? Were there not such things as national banks, and railways owned by the State ? Eailways were but a form of capital. He agreed that the battle of the future lay between individuals on the one hand and socialists on the other. FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 485 Englislimen were unconsciously more socialistic than they thought they were. As to collective ownership, let them look at the town of Birmingham to-day. The corporation there owned the sewage, gas- works, and waterworks ; that was collective ownership. But let them consider the amount of profit realised by the corporation ; it reached no less a sum than 150,000Z. a year. That saving, due to collective owner- ship, went to build houses for the artisans, to improve the homes of the labouring population, to provide open spaces, parks, libraries, baths, and washhouses. To such an extent was this carried out that a member of his own trades union had informed the Social Science Congress that, in Birmingham, there were only twelve cases in which a. family lived in one room, whilst in Glasgow where there was no similar experience, 48 per cent, of the families lived in one room, and 38 in two rooms. These things at Birmingham had been done at the suggestion of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. But the inconsistency . ought to be pointed out of making a landlord a political and social Jonah for the benefit of the capitalist. If it was right for the President of the Board of Trade to suggest that Birmingham should municipalise its gasworks, sewage, and waterworks, and even go so far as to include the public houses, where men spent their earnings, surely it was necessary to nationalise the factory, the source from which those earnings came. If they nationalised in one direction and not in another, such inconsistency would not command any- one’s respect. If it was right in one direction, it was right also in the other. What was sauce for the landlord’s goose was sauce for the capitalist’s gander. (Hear, hear.) He could not, within the short time allotted to him, defend fully the theoretical position of socialism, but he might tell the Conference that bad remuneration was the cause of poverty, and that both bad remuneration and poverty were the result of private ownership in land, capital, and credit. Until governmental co-operation was instituted in Great Britain and in all the countries of the civilised world, they were sure to have the misery, destitution, and anarchy like that of to-day. As a socialist he would impress upon his brother- workers the necessity of studying this question from an economical point of view. As workers they had been told there was freedom to-day. He was sorry to say that the fact of his coming to the Conference as a delegate for the Social Democratic Federation had secured his dismissal from the factory in which he had worked. (Shame.) Where was the freedom in that? Was that not slavery? There was no freedom so long as you had wage-slaves and wage-slave- drivers. The remedy, the socialists contended, was not only the nationalisation of land, capital, and credit, but proper means of pro- duction, distribution, and exchange. They had been told that the 486 INDUSTKIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE, State could not control labour. Why, in Belgium the railways were owned by the State, and with what result '? One could travel there 100 miles, first class, for 45. 6(^., while in England, under the sway of individual ownership, we had to pay 255. Sc?., a difference only of 400 per cent, and yet there was 4 per cent, surplus 1 (Applause.) He could give dozens and dozens of similar illustrations to show that miners and agricultural labourers must be forced into the camp of socialism, and thus stop the robbery which they were subject to. Would they combine with the proletariat of Europe who had embraced socialistic principles, or take the side of might against right ? They would soon have to answer that question. A revolution was germinating in the bowels of society through the inequalities of condition which prevailed. To the middle class he would say : ‘Will you guide this revolution, or be driven by it, or try to suppress it by force ? If you do the latter, upon you rests the responsibility of the strife that is coming — the responsibility of pushing back the hopes and aspirations of the workmen of the world.’ (Applause.) Mr. Shaw Lefevre, M.P., said : The discussion throughout the day has taken a very wide view, embracing the general principles of free- dom of contract, of individualism versus socialism, of nationalisation of land, and other matters. Within the few minutes which can be allowed me, I will deal only with one subject, and that very much more briefly than it deserves. I refer to the land question. I must be permitted to express my entire and absolute dissent from those speakers and writers who have advocated nationalisation of land. Looking at the question from the point of view of an economist who has very little interest in landed property and who is not afraid of change, I can only express my belief that such principles would be disastrous in their effect, that they could not be carried out without an amount of cruel injustice to landowners, and that they would result in a system of State management of land which would develop probably an expansion of State officialism which I should deprecate. In one respect I have been agreeably surprised. I have always understood that Mr. Wallace was one of the prophets of nationalisa- tion, but I gather from his paper that he does not think that land- owners should be deprived of their property without compensation, and his ideas seem to me to result in a widely extended system of peasant proprietary which would import individual property in another shape and would not realise the ideas of nationalisation of land. Other speakers, however, have not limited themselves to this, and have spoken of the principle of individual property in land as unjust and as leading to the depression of the working classes. These ideas have been imported from the United States — (no, no) — through FEIDAY AFTEENOON. 487 the medium of the eloquent and plausible work of Mr. George. I am tempted to ask why it is that these new ideas have not found favour and borne fruit in that country. (Hear, hear.) There are three bundled millions of acres of ground belonging to the different States not yet appropriated as private property, to which the new principle could be applied without injustice to anyone. But not one of the various States has adopted this principle, though they all enjoy universal suffrage. Why is it 1 I do not doubt that it is because they know that if in any State this principle were applied, and it was not permitted to anyone to acquire an individual and personal right and interest in land, the stream of emigrants would go elsewhere, and a great blow would be given to the prosperity of the State. This seems to me to show this — that individual property in land has its origin at the foundation of States in the general consent of the people. If this be the case with new States, what are we to say of the application of the principle to old countries where land has for centuries been private property, and where a large proportion of owners have bought within recent times on the faith of the existing order ? I agree with many speakers that if we are to adopt this principle of nationalisation, we cannot stop there. (Hear, hear.) The same principle would be extended to all other property — (hear, hear) — to houses, to railways, to shares and other property. It is my belief that the principle would not be adopted without the grossest injustice. I am unable to see how it would benefit the labouring people. The landowners employ a large mass of labourers, directly and indirectly, through the improvements they efiect. These men would be thrown out of work — (no, no) — and would compete with others, thus lowering the rate of wages, and they would crowd into the towns in the manner already complained of, and would there also lower the rate of wages. It is my belief also that landowners would make a struggle for their property. Something has been said of the Irish land system and of the application of the principle in that country. I was an ardent supporter of the Irish Land Act as the friend of justice. Looking at the historical and economic position of the small tenants of Ireland, and the fact that they had universally made all the improvements on their holdings under conditions totally different from those of English tenants, I thought that the law was justified in conceding to them fixity of tenure ; but no such claim can be justified on the part of the English tenant farmers. They have no hereditary connexion with the soil. The great bulk of them have come upon the land in recent times. They have not effected any of the permanent improvements, and it would be a monstrous injustice to give them fixity of tenure. For my own part I am firmly per- 488 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. suaded of the value of the principle of individual property in land. I think it one of the highest incentives to civilisation and improvement, and to industry and thrift. My object always has been to bring these influences within the reach of all classes. The defect of our system is that, owing partly to law and partly to custom, to the political, social, and sporting privileges which have been conceded to land, it has come to be the property of very few persons. (Hear, hear.) No one can look at the condition of landownership in this country with- out feeling alarm at the small number of persons who are interested in it — (hear, hear) — without feeling that it does not exert that influence for good which it ought to do and might do. It is my belief that changes of law in the direction of sweeping away the relics of the feudal system and simplifying the transfer of land will do much to make a change and to bring land within the reach of all classes. We have already deprived it of political privileges. We have diminished greatly its sporting privileges. Recent events and the depression of trade have taken off the greater part of the artificial value of land. We cannot, without concern, compare the position of our labouring classes with that of the labouring people of other countries of Europe in which they have a permanent interest in the soil. I believe that with the changed opinions on the subject we shall see, even without any artificial attempts to sub-divide land, a very great change in this respect, and that before long we shall see a dispersion of land which will bring it within the reach of all classes in this country. (Applause.) Mr. Williams (Social Democratic Federation) : As a socialist, I challenge Mr. Shaw Lefevre to meet me on this question upon any platform he may name. Mr. J. Greenwood (Hebden-Bridge Fustian Works), as one practically acquainted with an attempt at co-operative production, remarked that co-operative production had been disparaged to some extent by previous speakers, and rather despondently spoken of by their friend Mr. Frederic Harrison. If they could have co-operative pro- duction and exploit their own labour, they would be doing the right thing. What they wanted was to take hold of the industries of the country and, as working men, get .themselves gradually into the position of capitalists, and control the workshops to their own ad- vantage. This was the very object at which a small company of workers in connexion with the fustian trade at Hebden-Bridge had been aiming — a co-operative society with which he was himself associated. At the commencement of their efibrt fourteen years ago, when they were engaged as fustian workers in the workshops connected with that trade, they were suffering very considerably through the non- FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 489 regularity of employment. Since they began this experiment they had very much improved that state of things. Formerly they had only two or three days’ work in a week on some occasions, and now and then a whole week would pass without their having any employ- ment. That was not the case in connexion with the Hebden-Bridge society. They had regular occupation, and by this means they had raised their wages 20 per cent, higher than they were before they commenced on their own account. The best rates of wages of the district are also paid. There were on the platform gentlemen who could certify to the correctness of the statement. As one who lived in the thrilling times of the Chartists’ movement in 1842, he re- membered very well the systems that were then being advocated and tried by Fergus O’Connor with reference to land. He sat at the feet of his grandfather and listened to the reading of the Northern Star, and to the schemes then propounded for improving the position of workmen in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The workmen combined to- gether to buy land, and allotments were made ; but when they came to farm the land, they severally took their own allotments and culti- vated them. They did not co-operate to produce and buy implements Ac., to farm the land nor to dispose of the product when they got it. Consequently they failed through lack of co-operation. His present belief was that workmen would immensely improve their condition if they were to introduce co-operative production and own the capital themselves. Profit-sharing had been deprecated, but he thought workmen would benefit if profits were capitalised amongst the various workers. Young persons thus could be taught habits of thrift, and all would become thoroughly interested in the welfare of their own workshops. If the capital were allowed to grow gradually, each would realise something which they might fall back upon in time of need. In regard to the concern with which he was connected, although it was feeble and imperfect, still, for all that, there were at least 110 workers who had on an average accumulated 20^. This result might have been considerably greater, if they had had an opportunity of adding ordinary savings to the capital as well as the savings derived from the profit of their labours. Profits on labour have only been permitted, and the rate of interest paid to share capital was made thus too limited in extent. Although Mr. Harri- son had estimated that only 5 or 10 per cent, of the population of England benefited particularly by the co-operative movement, still in the district which he himself represented 40 per cent, of the working population were members of co-operative societies. He referred to Calderdale, which under the new Redistribution Bill would be com- prised in two electoral divisions within the borough of Halifax. Out 490 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNP:KATI0N COEFEEENCE. of the population — 200,000 — 28,000 were co-operators, and they together owned 629, 000?. share capital, and 20,000?. loan capital. The most perfect co-operative productive association of which he knew was at Guise in France. The workers owned all the capital and elected the directors. The largest proportion of the profits was paid to labour. His belief was, with regard to distribution and pro- duction, that co-operation, if fully developed, would be the means of greatly assisting workmen ; and it might stand with socialism in some of its relations to the community and do better than the par- ticular form of socialism which seemed to be so much desired. It would at least have this advantage : — Instead of workers being de- pendent upon the State for help, they could practically work them- selves into the system so as to get the fruits of their own labour and increase their own comforts. He believed in workmen doing some- thing for themselves in that way. If they thus united and acted together they would be simply making use of materials which others with a better education had done for themselves. If workmen could do that, they might ultimately link with the class to whom he had referred, who might throw in their capital ; in that way they might help to benefit one another. With regard to the application of co- operative production to farming, an experiment of the kind was made at Eadbourne, in Warwickshire. The owner of the land had advanced capital to farm labourers, and about four times the number were employed on the land as were occupied on farms in the neigh- bourhood. If there were now two millions of people employed on the land as farm labourers, and four times that number might find occu- pation under the system he had just indicated, a large portion of the surplus labour in the towns and country might be thus utilised. The question of improving their condition was one which working men must take into their own hands ; they should feel an interest in association work, and apply the principles of co-operation for their own advancement. If that course were generally adopted, they would have in their power the redemption of their own position. (Hear, hear.) Mr. J. Toyne (Miners’ National Union) said it might be asked by some people ‘ What do these miners know about the land question 'I ’ Their friend, who had lately spoken on behalf of the Social Democratic Federation, had appealed to them whether they were socialists or believers in individualism. He was himself happy to say, not only on his own behalf, but, he thought, also for the whole of the miners in the north of England at any rate, that they belonged to the party of progress — the party who believed in right against might. He believed in the nationalisation of land. He was very much disappointed with Mr. Harrison’s paper. If he FEIDAY AFTEENOOK 491 had not been present and heard part of it read, he could scarcely have believed, considering the reputation of the writer, that Mr. Harrison would have advocated a system which simply amounted to this — that they were to leave things to go on peaceably as they wei-e at present, whereas what was really wanted was immediate relief. In the north of England there were thousands of men out of employ- ment in the large towns ; they had been kept by charity funds, soup kitchens, and that sort of thing. What working men generally wanted to know was this : what was going to be done with the people! They had been told it was not possible to nationalise the land because the necessary money could not be found. That was an extraordinary statement. When one remembered that money could be found to send troops to Afghanistan, Zululand, and Egypt, and to benefit people that were outside our own boundary, it seemed strange that when they began to talk about what was wanted for home purposes, even for the amelioration of the condition of the people, the money could not be found. He looked upon the land system as a huge monopoly. When a man sank a pit or built a factory, the law of the land compelled him to fence ofif the pit and to fence off the machinery in the workshop in order to protect life and limb ; but the law allowed an individual to monopolise the holding of land and to please himself as to whether it should be cultivated or not, though hundreds and thousands of people were hungering and starving for sheer want of employment. He wished the writers of the papers had said something more about royalty rents. Reference had, how ever, been made by Mr. Wilson to the tremendous amount of such rents in the comparatively small district of Cleveland. As a worker himself in the Cleveland mines for twenty years, he should like to create a stronger feeling against those rents because of their injustice. A mine owner, in order to secure a royalty, had to enter into an agreement to make all good again ; that was to say, if, while working a royalty, he took out the pillars and let in the surface, he had to level it and so make all good again. But, in addition, he had to pay from IcZ. to Sd. for every ton of ironstone delivered to the pit bank. What about it ! The landowner could sit quietly at home without any risk, but the miner’s life and limb were in daily peril. The miner only got something like \0d. a ton for blasting the rock and filling out, while the landowner was getting ^d. or ^d. a ton for doing nothing at all. Looking thus at the matter, miners had much ground for complaint. They had also been trying to find out, if possible, the cause of depression in trade, which had troubled a good many people besides miners. They had come to the conclusion that the cause was the iniquitous land system, and they had proved it to 492 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNEKATION CONFEEENCE. be so. Through the landlords and through the bad system of land laws men had been driven from the country districts into the towns, or, in the words of Mr. Bright, they had been ‘ divorced from the soil.’ They had not only been driven into the towns, but also driven into the mines. In the Cleveland district there were such men employed, and getting sometimes only 10s. a week, for which they risked life and limb ; and even when working full time, they could earn no more than 25s. or 26s. a week. Taking the average of their wages, how were these men to live after paying house-rent? It should also be understood that in the Cleveland district one in every eight of these miners met with an accident of some kind every year while at work. Fully believing that the present sad state of things was due chiefly to bad land laws, he urged that something ought to be done speedily with a view to providing a remedy. If land were more generally cultivated, it would have the effect of improving trade in the several districts and keep machinery going. It was a shame and a crime that men in hundreds and thousands should be allowed to starve in a country where work would be plentiful if only it were properly distributed. The miners of England, in the north at least, believing in right against might, had continued to fight in the cause of progress ; and whether they were socialists or not, one thing was certain — they did not class themselves with individualists. Make them what you liked, they had heard enough of the indi- vidualism doctrine. These individualists had sent men into the mining districts of Northumberland to get signatures to petitions against the Employers’ Liability Amendment Act, but they were no good to the miners, for they belonged to the party who said ‘ Let things remain as they are.’ (No.) Yes, they did ; well, at any rate, that was the doctrine they believed in teaching. The miners would continue in their present course until they saw the wealth better dis- tributed and until every workman had a comfortable home, a good suit of clothes, and enjoyment the same as other people. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Lloyd J ones wished to place himself, and those who thought with him, in a right position in regard to this question. First he desired it to be understood that, rather than bear any longer the present state of things, he was, for his own part, quite prepared to face all the difficulties which Mr. Harrison feared might arise in the future from the adoption of a new system of land-holding. TJnlike Mr. Toyne, he did not feel the least reluctant to say that he belonged to the individualist party ; but he also belonged to the social party. He believed that a man had his individual rights and his individual duties within certain limits, but, for his part, he never FEIPAY AFTEENOON. 493 could consent to give up his right to act with his fellows. They were not monads, but men wdio had to discharge not only their individual duties, but their duties of citizenship. When the complex machine called ‘ society ’ required adjustment, it was for them to watch its progress, at every point, day by day, in order to see that such adjustment took place as would prevent those horrible jars known as revolutions. He went in for all that concerned himself in all his personal acts as an individual, not in connexion with others who might not be affected by his conduct, but for all that was con- nected with his fellows in the government of the country, in the loyal citizenship of the country, and in doing all the public work of the country. He insisted that, whatever Lord Bramwell might say, they were in the double capacity, first as individuals, then as citizens ; and that they could not forego their rights in the one capacity for the purpose of upholding them in the other. He insisted upon that more particularly, seeing that the working men of the country had now, for the first time, got into their hands the power to act as citizens. There had been no objection to legislation when the masses of the people were simply a kind of broken mob to be legis- lated for; but now the legislation must come out of their own thought, he wanted that thought to be the outcome of a strict and intimate association with each other ; so that before it was embodied in law, they should have as the result, that which was best calcu- lated to produce the most good to the largest number. It was true, as stated by Lord Bramwell, that the system as it existed was an artificial one : it was all law. They might say that all law was art. So it was, in a certain sense, but they had a specimen of artificial system as it existed in Ireland. Mr. Harrison had said that if the people got the land to-morrow they must have capital in order to use the land aright. Quite so; but if the landlord could follow with his eye every improvement that the tenant made by his labour, and could take to himself year by year the increase that came out of his labour, how then could the man in occupancy do his duty to the land % They had, therefore, a perfect right to see that the tenant had his just rights, whatever might be the security of the man who worked the land, and whatever might be necessary to make him owmer of what he produced. It was their duty, as citizens, to see that the expression of their opinion had its due effect in the end : it might be a little chaotic at first, a little diverse, or a little anarchic ; but they should see if they could not evolve from this confusion of ideas a certain shape of principles upon which they might do the best for themselves and their fellow-workers. The co-operative body had done this in distribution. They had taken 494 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. into their hands the implement necessary for performing that work ; they claimed and appropriated to themselves the profits belonging to distribution. What they would put on the workers as a duty was not that they should despoil, but that they should create and contri- bute in a higher spirit of equity. As an old radical, as an old socialist, and as an old discarder of all sorts of legitimate and settled evils, though he had heen moving for fifty years among these people, knowing all of them, and even the worst, he had never heard a word said against actual possession of property by anyone living. He had read it in the newspapers, he had heard it, as a misrepresentation, from all kinds of people, but never among the British people, whom he professed to know intimately over many years. Mr. S. Bourne (Member of the Committee), said it was just half a century since it was his lot to change his home from this country to the West Indies, and within four years after the beginning of that period the slave population of those islands became a free community. The question then arose as to what should become of the portions of land which they had been permitted to till as garden ground for their own use, and for raising the vegetables upon which they lived. The proprietors declining to allow the possession of the land, unless it were saddled with the condition of accepting work at the masters’ wages, some philanthropists in England, pitying the state of these poor people when removed from their holdings, purchased land in the interior of the country and converted them into proprietors. What had been the result of that movement in the island of Jamaica ? The staple productions of the country had in great measure ceased to be grown for export. There might be an amount of quiet enjoyment, and peaceful possession on the part of the inhabitants, which was luxury compared with the state of slavery in which they had before existed ; but it was a condition far inferior to that which they would have enjoyed had they remained labourers on the estates. Whether by land nationalisation, by allotment, or any other similar system, if the working community of our own country were converted into small owners possessing from two to five acres each, they would, like the French settlers in Canada, be wanting the necessary means of employment for the earning of wages, vegetating rather than thriving or growing, and enduring hardships, because attached to a small por- tion of soil insuflScient to furnish them with the means of support. Instead of trying to live solely on land portioned out in this way it would pay the owner of from two to five acres to take a voyage to Canada and there get products out of the soil for the season, coming back laden with three times as much as they could possibly produce from such barren land in our own country as was proposed to be FEIDAY AFTEENOON. 495 utilised for purposes of cultivation. Some advocated the levying of protective duties upon manufactures, in order to stimulate the employ- ment of the working population upon the land. What would be the result to the possessor 1 He would have to call his son and daughter away from the town where they were earning good wages, in order that they might help him to cultivate the soil. He would have to exist upon the simplest food ; he would be unable to purchase any luxury ; he would have neither tobacco nor beer, which perhaps he might be better without. This country had grown in wealth by the large amount of manufactured goods it exported, drawing imports in return from other countries; and the moment that interchange of commodities ceased, poverty and destitution would increase to a large extent. He, therefore, advised the pursuit of honest and patient industry in developing the resources we possessed, and em- ploying capital already existent in the manufacture of that which could be exchanged, instead of attempting to bring rocky soil or marshy land into competition with the rich and productive places beyond the seas. Let us send out our surplus population — (Oh, oh !) — to the great and glorious lands where they might enjoy freedom, luxuries, and the purest air, instead of struggling with poverty, misery, and death, on land which would not yield them the neces- saries of life. Here, they might in turn become the purchasers of manufactures which their brothers and sisters would raise at home, while we continued to draw wealth from those distant regions as in the past : thus settling upon a secure foundation the happiness of the community here, and the happiness of the community there. Let us pursue that course and we should prosper. It was not the occupation, whether as owner or tenant, of a good-sized plot to be cultivated in spare moments, both for recreation and as a source of profit, which he deprecated. In localities where this is obtainable within a reasonable distance from the place where other employment — whether in the field or the factory — is to be found, it is in every way desirable. In such cases, even poor land may be usefully brought under culture, and furnish part occupation for the women and children of the family. It is the settling down upon a small plot or farm, and looking upon this as the only means of obtaining support, as in the case of the Jamaica negroes of whom he spoke, which is a retrograde instead of an advancing policy. The Lev. S. Headlam (Guild of S. Matthew) said that permis- sion had been given to two eminent clergymen of the newest religion — Mr. Harrison and Professor Beesly — to speak at some length on these subjects. As a clergyman of the oldest religion of Humanity — at any rate, an older one than they represented— he was glad to be 496 INDUSTEIAL KEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. allowed to speak for five minutes in the name of the religion of Jesus Christ. He was perfectly certain that even after the grand socialistic schemes put forward had been attained all these questions would only be solved by getting the people to be loyal to that religion. It was because he was trying to be loyal to that religion that he felt bound to protest in the name of it against that which had been said by Mr. Harrison in a part of his paper. To him and to the Society which he represented these questions could never be solved until we tried to base them upon simple justice ; and the present land system — the present tenure of land — was based upon absolute injustice. Therefore, it was their duty if possible to make the land- lords recoup what they, without giving services in return for it, had had during the last two hundred and more years. But if they could not do that we must begin at once to put on to the land a tax of 20^. in the pound. He did not know whether Mr. Harrison would be at one with that ; but Mr. Balfour, when he made the astounding state- ment that land was unsaleable, seemed entirely to have forgotten that a very large amount of the value of land was town land, that workers in towns had made the land valuable, and that, as they were being robbed of the value of it, it was their duty and not merely their right to get it back for themselves. If we chose to set about it, this was a matter which might be done by degrees, though he hoped the degrees woMd be pretty quick. A step would be taken in the right direction if all the reformers who had been speaking in the Conference would agitate the new Parliament for putting on a tax of, say, 4s. in the pound upon the present instead of the past value of land. That he submitted as a practical suggestion deserving early consideration. It had been objected that the carrying out of such a proposal would have the effect of reducing people to beggary. If a 20s. tax were imposed even on the real value it would be held by those who lived upon it, or worked upon it ; and the only people who would suffer would be those who speculated in land, or were holding it merely for the sake of political or social influence. From a moral and intel- lectual point of view the best turn would be done to the landowners, if they — or at any rate their sons and daughters — were compelled to work for their living. Therefore, he maintained that instead of injustice being done injustice would be got rid of. There would be no appreciable suffering, because the small owners of land would be much better off, as they would have to pay no other taxation. He, however, agreed with his socialist friends that 20s. in the pound put on the actual value of ground rents would not do everything. [A delegate : What is the good of ground rents for poor people ?] The good would be that the poor people would not have to pay anything FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 497 like the price they did now for their tea, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, beer and spirits. Every time they spent M. on an ounce of tobacco, they were being robbed of by the landlord : that was to say, tax ground rent 20s. in the pound and they would get an ounce of tobacco for a halfpenny. Mr. W. Donisthorpe (Liberty and Property Defence League), replying for Lord Bramwell, suggested that perhaps the best and simplest way of dealing with National isationists would be to lock them all up together in a room, when they would eat one another up like the Kilkenny cats. Just as Fair-traders had several different ways of treating their question — one clamouring for a tax on corn, and another for a tax on manufactured articles — so the Nationalisationists were divided into classes. One class might be said to be fairly repre- sented by Mr. Henry George as advocates of the appropriation of the rental of the land. Mr. George said : ‘ By no means let State administer the land, as that would be ruinous and opposed to all the laws of political economy. I am opposed to all nationalisation of land in this sense ; let us simply confiscate rents.’ Another school of Nation- alisationists said : ‘We mean to make the State the landlord, so that the State shall administer the land, and we shall get rid of the middle- man, the landlord who now absorbs so much which ought to pass into the pockets of others.’ That school might be fairly represented by Mr. Wallace. The third school was represented by Lord Bramwell, and by all who uphold the present system. The present system was one of nationalisation. (Laughter.) Certainly it was; the present system was one according to which, when it could be shown to be ex- pedient, any portion of the land of the country could be taken from the present owner and put to some other use by the State. For ex- ample, if it was expedient that a railway should be run from one part of the country to another, the State thought nothing at all about pro- prietory rights, or rights of absolute ownership ; the land was at once confiscated — well, not confiscated, but bought up at its fair market value. Those who were content with the present state of things were Nationalisationists of the third class ; but those who accepted the second view of nationalisation, viz., that the State should take over and administer the land, should consistently join hands with the socialists. He for one did not believe for a moment that the English people were so cowardly and so dishonest as to throw over, to rob and plunder, one class of capitalists without at the same time plundering other classes of capitalists. If it was right to take over the land and dispossess the landowner, it was even more right to take over the f property and the capital of railway shareholders, mine owners, ship- owners, and factory owners. He said more right, because he thought K K 498 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. it would be admitted by even the most fervent opponents of land- lordism that, of all capitalists, the landlord had actually been the kindest, the most generous, and the most benevolent. (Ob !) He did not want to say too much for the landlord ; he was not one him- self, but this he would say, that the landlord had, at any rate, shown some little feeling. They knew of numerous cases where landlords had returned a certain percentage of rental in hard times ; they knew landlords had sacrificed something ; but he defied anyone to give a single instance where a capitalist — using the term in its narrower sense — had sacrificed anything. The capitalist invariably acted according to the laws of supply and demand ; he extracted the utter- most farthing. The labourers in the factories, mines, and workshops would bear him out when he said that the capitalists of this country had, as a fact, appropriated every single farthing of the profits of labour. People talked about unearned increment in the rent of land ; what was the unearned increment in the profits of capital 1 They had been told that the additional capital in this country due to the invention of machinery alone during the last half century amounted to something equivalent to 100,000,000 of men. How much of that ad- ditional wealth had gone into the pockets of the labourer ? Not a single farthing. Therefore, if they were going to confiscate the property of landlords let them at any rate be consistent and honest, and confiscate also the capital of trade, allowing it all to be held and administered by the State. Mr. Harrison, in deprecating individualism, had said if there was anything whatever to be shown for the socialistic measures passed during the last thirty or forty years, it was all to the credit of socialism. That he admitted, though a great many others had been passed and wrongly put down to the credit of socialism. It was said that the Factory Acts were socialistic, the Irish Land Act was socialistic, the Education Act was socialistic ; so they were, and many more, including those for crushing out the development of the electric light and telephones. To that extent, said Mr. Harrison, socialism was good; but if it was good, let men come forward and proclaim themselves socialists. He called upon the chairman (Sir C. Dilke) to stand forth and proclaim himself a socialist ; he called on Mr. Goschen to proclaim himself an individualist, and likewise upon Mr, Bradlaugh. He was going to call upon Mr. Shaw Lefevre to proclaim himself a socialist because of his very pronounced socialistic address at the Social Science Congress ; but he had that day delivered such a very strong individualistic address, that it was difficult to know what to ask him to do. (A delegate : ‘ He blows hot and cold). They had been told that trades unionism and co-operation were socialistic. No- thing of the kind. Let the working classes rely upon themselves, nad FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 499 upon their unions. Depend upon it, there was no motive power in the State. Whatever had been done by the State had been done through people outside who had put the screw on the State and forced it to do what it had done. The Factory Acts were said to be beneficent measures. All he could say on the point was, if matters had been left more in the hands of trades unions, a larger number of beneficent changes would have been made, though not through the medium of the legislature. But what was the actual case ? As soon as trades unions were beginning to feel their legs, the State stepped in, and said ‘ Don’t trouble, my friends, we will attend to all this.’ And they did, with the result that the hoped-for efiects of individualistic action and organisation were adroitly averted in the supposed interests of employers; and artificial cut-and-dried State restrictions put in their stead, in spite of the warnings of Mr. John Bright and the old school of liberalism and liberty. One word in reply to one of the delegates from the miners of the north. He invited the mine owners to join him in a crusade against mineral royalties. For his own part, as a coal-owner in a humble way, he would rejoice if the landowners would forego these royalties, for, if they did, the royalties would go into the pockets of the coal-owners and not into the pockets of the working classes. But, even if it were otherwise, he would not join in an act of spoliation or robbery, simply because he believed, as they believed, the landowners happened to be in a minority and too weak to resist. Mr. F. Harrison, in reply, said it was scarcely necessary for him to occupy the time of the Conference, because he ventured to think that the criticisms they had listened to were already provided against in his larger paper, only an abstract of which he had read to them. For instance, he had been asked by the last speaker but one if when speaking of taxation of land he was prepared to levy upon it 20s. in the pound. Anybody who read the full text of his paper would see that he meant nothing of the kind. What he did mean was land taxation which would be in fair proportion with the other taxes and also in proportion with the taxes on land in other civilised countries. He was far from saying that the present position of the land tax was in that fair proportion. In his paper it would be seen that when he spoke of a variety of things about which there might be a monopoly, he implied those which were actually raised or parted from the soil — i.e. detached and movable propeHy. He might instance ships — and it was clear that there were a great many articles of commerce — movable things quite as indispensable as land, and which nobody proposed to nationalise simply because they were rare and very useful. One of the speakers seemed to think that, in arguing that 10,000,000Z. was spent by landlords on the land, his K K 2 500 INDUSTEIAL KEMUNEKATION CONFEKENCE. argument was to claim credit for landlords. In giving that figure ^ he was simply stating an economic fact, and he was confining himself to that which was voluntarily spent and not paid out of taxes or rates. Those who had land must, in occupying and tilling it, spend something to keep it going, just as a man had to keep up a ship. That was an economic law. It was hardly necessary for him, before an audience in which many knew him so well, to waste time in showing that he was not opposed to the movements there repre- sented, or in assuring them that he was not a clergyman. The whole force of his paper indicated that there was great value in trades unions, in co-operative societies, and in all the mutual associations and movements of various kinds ; that there was a great deal to be done by land law reform, a great deal to be done towards promoting a system of peasant proprietary, and a great deal to be done towards giving farmers a secure tenure of their land. The whole course and effect of his paper was to show not only that there was a great deal but almost everything to be done. He joined hands most heartily with Mr. Lloyd J ones in demanding a change ; he was not in the least prepared — he should have thought every word in his paper showed it — to acquiesce in the present system. He thought that he had with him the majority of those who represented responsible l3odies in his view, that before accepting any vast social revolution, they must know where it would lead them ; and he for one was not prepared, nor did he think the majority of those present were prepared, to take a blind leap in the dark merely with the hope that something might come of it. The Secretary (Rev. W. Cunningham) on behalf of Professor Nicholson, desired to make a protest against the way in which he had been spoken of in his absence. He had known Professor Nichol- son for years as one who was most careful in the examination of facts, and most scrupulous in his endeavour to present those facts with perfect fairness. Professor Nicholson had published his results again and again, both in the public newspapers and in his book. Those were before the world to be attacked and to be met. It seemed most unfortunate that, when Professor Nicholson was not present to say a word in his own defence, opportunity should have been chosen to speak so very strongly in regard to him, and to raise laughter behind his back. (No, no.) For his own part he had examined the report of the Crofters’ Commission, and according to his judgment, so far as it went, the account of the facts set before the Conference in Professor Nicholson’s paper was far less misleading than that put forward in the speech criticising him.^ * See Appendix, p. 515. FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 501 Sir RawsonW. Eawson, K.C.G.M. (a member of the Committee), having taken the chair, Air. J. Burnett (a member of the Committee) rose to move ‘ That the best thanks of this Conference be accorded to Sir Charles Dilke for the combined ability and tact with which he has presided over its deliberations. ’ (Applause.) As one of the Committee it w’as not his duty to appraise the value of the Conference, but he did venture to think that it had, so far, been successful. He believed that its success would be more strongly marked by the educational agency which it would be in the future, as the published report of the proceedings would afford to men representing all sections of society an idea of the state of feeling which prevailed, not only among working men, but among capitalists, as to' the existing social system. (Hear, hear.) From the platform every variety of view and opinion had been presented. They had had placed before them the some- what dismal optimism of Baron Bramwell, and the most advanced doctrines of the socialist school. Between those two extremes the whole matter rested. It was a question which probably would not be settled by the optimism of Lord Bramwell, nor by the hopes of the socialist party. He believed that the desired progress would not be so rapid as Socialists hoped ; but he did believe the progress would be made, in so far as he disbelieved in the optimism of Lord Bramwell. The success of the Conference was largely due to the manner in which its deliberations had been presided over by Sir Charles Dilke, of whose ability he did not need to say a single word. Neither had he any need to speak of Sir Charles Dilke as a politician, except to remark that he had invariably been on the side of the people. The office of chairman was one requiring considerable tact, especially in an assembly consisting of persons holding so many different views and representing so many conflicting interests; but in discharging this difficult duty Sir Charles Dilke had been eminently successful. Before sitting down, he would like to include in the vote of thanks Air. Shaw Lefevre, who had presided for some hours in the morning owing to the absence of Sir Charles Dilke. (Applause.) Air. Ball (National Agricultural Labourers’ Union), in seconding the motion, said that some credit was also due to the delegates who had attended the Conference. He was glad that the chairman’s ruling had been so acceptable to all, and that they had so generously acquiesced in it. This Conference might perhaps serve as an ex- ample to another company of men who had sometimes the business of the nation under their consideration. (A laugh.) Although they might have no conception as to the ultimate results of the Conference, yet they had no fear but that those results would be good. He for one was not at all sorry that the views of capitalists, landowners. 502 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. and others had been put so strongly before the Conference ; but he did think that, if they would only take the trouble to inquire into the present condition of things, they would, in their calmer moments, modify some of their statements. It was to be desired that everyone, according to his own course of thinking, would try to bring together the various materials they had heard discussed in the hope that out of these might be evolved, if possible, some grand scheme for the amelioration of the suffering population of the country without derogation to the higher interests of other classes. He had no desire to see the social or the political institutions violently interfered with, but he was prepared to do all he could to claim for labour a greater reward than it had ever received. The vote of thanks was then put to the Conference and carried by acclamation and with added cheers. Sir Charles W. Dilke, in responding, said : On behalf of the vice- presidents and myself, I beg to thank you for the vote you have just passed. Mr. Mundella, I am sorry to say, has not been with us, because his health has not yet sufficiently recovered. Mr. Shaw Lefevre has been, as you know, with us to-day, and has occupied the chair during a portion of the proceedings. I ventured at the be- ginning of the Conference to make a few remarks with regard to the spirit in which I hoped that our deliberations would be con- ducted, and • the good effect which I hoped might come of these proceedings. The hope which I expressed at our first meeting, that higher interests and objects would not be forgotten, and that the speeches would not assume a merely selfish and money-grubbing character, has been thoroughly borne out by much we have heard, and no one who listened to the impressive address of Professor Beesly yesterday, or who read with care some of the papers laid before us, can fail to see that that higher point of view has prevailed throughout a considerable part of the Conference. (Applause.) There is another matter which, I think, is worthy of notice. It is that, while all parties and all sections, socially speaking, of the community seem to have been represented ; while both capitalists and workmen have been very largely heard, the difference of opinion has not run upon class lines. There have been a great many more workmen who have addressed us than capitalists ; indeed, the majority of those who have taken part in the proceedings of the three days have been workmen and delegates of workmen’s associations of various kinds. But that has not occurred here which would be likely to occur abroad, and which often does occur in foreign countries, that all the workmen take one side, and all the capitalists and others than work- men take the other. Among the delegates of workmen’s associations FKIDAY AFTERNOON. 503 who have spoken we have seen the widest divergences and great differences of opinion. Although, I suppose, as scientific people, we regret differences of opinion, still we expect them to exist ; but, on the whole, it is gratifying that there should be no class cleavage between the differences of opinion, and that we should find all the opinions held in all classes as we do in this country. I think the publication of our proceedings and the careful reading of them which will take place, I believe, by enormous numbers of the most intelligent among the working men and the capitalists of this country, cannot but have a most excellent effect for good. These proceedings, and especially the papers — prepared with immense care — will throw a great deal of light, perhaps more than ever has been thrown, upon the important problems we met here to consider. With I’egard to my own position as chairman, I can only thank the delegates for having so thoroughly supported me in what have been rather arbitrary proceedings on my part. I thought I should have incurred universal execration rather than have received your thanks ; because when 140 ladies and gentlemen come together from all parts of the country as delegates of various associations, each commissioned by an im- portant body to speak on its behalf, necessarily and naturally they expect to speak and expect to be heard. It is very difficult to combine the reading of long papers with the hearing of 140 ladies and gentlemen in the course of three days ; and if I have been obliged to pass by some altogether by the chances of such a ballot as we have been able to hold, and if 1 have been obliged to cut down many to five minutes, and some even to three or four, I can only ask them to excuse me on the ground of the general interest ; and I can only ask you to believe that I have tried to exercise the office of chairman without favour to anyone. (Applause.) The Chairman (Sir Rawson W. Rawson) : I would ask the favour to be allowed to say a few words on behalf of the Committee which has been formed for the purpose of bringiug you together at this Confer- ence. I intended to have joined myself and the Committee with you in thanking Sir C. W. Dilke. Allow me to do so now. I wish par- ticularly on the part of the Committee to thank those gentlemen who have come here as delegates, many from distant parts of the country, and who have devoted three days to the labours of the Conference, thereby sacrificing their valuable time for the public object designed by the gentleman through whose liberality we have been able to bring you together. (Applause.) I wish also on behalf of the Com- mittee, to thank the several authors of the papers ; I beg to thank those who have taken part in the discussion ; and I wish likewise to express on the part of the Committee, their gratification at finding they have 504 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. been successful in bringing together the representatives of all classes of opinion, which has been their object, with the design of giving each the opportunity, in the face of those who are opposed to them in opinion, of describing their views, and of discussing them one with the other. That has been carried on with an amount of harmony, which the Committee— I for one — scarcely expected ; and with I believe future advantage in the publication of the papers and discussions, which will lead eventually to useful, and to permanent results. One word more I wish to say as President of the Statistical Society. Observations have been made with regard to statistics. I am not going to give a lecture upon what statistics are, but I wish simply to say that they are not figures, but are intended to be facts. If the facts are incom- plete it is no derogation from statistics. The party to blame is the one who brings together imperfect facts, or facts imperfectly represented. Statistics stand upon the same ground as argument. Because an argument is bad, you might as well say that all argument is worthless; and because certain facts imperfectly recorded are brought forward as statistics, all statistics are worthless. An argu- ment founded upon false premisses, an argument carried on with un- sound reasoning and brought to an illogical conclusion, is no argument at all. I hope that one result of this meeting will be that we may be able to represent to Her Majesty’s Government the importance of supplying the public with larger and fuller statistics regarding the social condi- tion of the people of this country, in the same way as the American government, or the government of Massachusetts, provides for the periodical and frequent examination of the condition of the people and giving the results to the public. The Statistical Society will not lose the opportunity of calling attention to this subject, and if no other good than that comes of this meeting, I trust it, at any rate, will come in our time. Sir Charles Hilke : Before we entirely bring these proceedings to a close, I would like to ask your permission to move a vote of thanks to the Committee, and also I may add, to the Statistical Society, for the work they have undertaken. An immense deal of labour in connexion with this Conference has fallen upon individuals, those who form the Committee, and those of the Statistical Society who have joined them. I, therefore, move that we return our thanks to these gentlemen. I would specially mention Sir Kawson W. Bawson, Mr. Frederic Harrison, and the Secretary — w^hose names I would accordingly connect with this vote. (Applause.) Mr. Holyoake, in seconding the motion, said they had seen the patient and assiduous attention rendered to the Conference by the President, but they had no evidence, except in the results, of the un- FEIDAY AFTERNOON. 505 seen labour and pains, foresight, calculation, and continued service of the Committee, by which those results had been brought about. Therefore he joined very heartily in the vote of thanks to these gentlemen. Professor Marshall in supporting the motion, added his tribute to the Secretary, to whose untiring exertions and tact a great deal of the successful working of the Conference was due. Mr. Cunningham’s secretarial duties had prevented the Conference from hearing him speak as a political economist, in which he was quite as proficient as in his other capacities. (Applause.) The vote was passed unanimously. The Conference then broke up. APPENDIX. LEGISLATIVE REGULATION OF SHOP HOURS. By J. F. MILLAK, and Revised by MALCOLM GUTHRIE, J.P., AN Employer. (^Delegates of the Shop Hours League.') No enquiry into the well-being of the working classes can be complete which fails to take into consideration the condition of the large section of the community employed in shops. The great grievance which shopkeepers and their assistants have to complain of is the length of the hours to which their labours are protracted, and their consequent inability to obtain that necessary relaxation of employment which enfeebled mind and body alike require. Amongst the artisans a general consensus of opinion exists that the length of a proper week’s work is fifty-four hours, which gives an average of nine hours per day. Shop-assistants, however, are employed as a rule eighty-three hours per week, or almost fourteen per day, being rather more than one-half in excess of other trades. The evil is an acknowledged one, and its injurious effects upon the physical powers undisputed, the sole question which requires solution being as to the form which the remedy shall take. To artisans who by combination and strikes have secured their emancipation from the slavery of long hours, a similar course of conduct seems the most desirable. But the circumstances of the two classes are totally different. The combination of the artisan and the strength of his organi- sation is favoured by the employment of large numbers of 508 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. men by few firms, and by the fact of his specially-skilled labour. In shops, however, the employment of large numbers by single firms is the exception, and the striking power of the assistants is thus rendered impracticable. The assistants are of all ages and both sexes, and comprise so many dependent and necessitous persons that a trade organisation is impossible. Also the kind of service required — namely, the sale of goods, is more readily supplied from outside sources than is the case in the manufacture of goods for which a long and special training is necessary. Again, the position of the two parties as regards procedure after a disagreement is thoroughly distinct. The artisan carries his recommendation for employment in his manual dexterity. If he is competent he is retained, if in- competent, dismissed ; but he requires no written guarantee of his capacity from his previous employer when he goes to a fresh field of labour. The shop-assistant, however, must give references to his former employer before obtaining a new situa- tion, and this supplies the employer with a powerful weapon to injure, if so disposed, any assistant who may have displeased or thwarted him. For these reasons a combination to procure an amelioration of their condition by means of strikes becomes an impossibility to the shop-assistants. Philanthropists urge that the cure lies with the employers, who have it in their own hands to fix a reasonable hour at which to close their es- tablishments. If all employers were, as the great majority are, anxious to deal justly, then this remedy would be perfect and easy. But the employer who desires to act fairly has two diffi- culties to contend with, viz., the thoughtlessness of the purchas- ing public and the greed of competitors. It is no uncommon thing for a purchaser to put in an appearance after business has ceased to be looked for, and to urge as an excuse : ‘Oh, I thought you would not have closed for another hour, or I would have come earlier.’ And every shopkeeper knows that in the middle and lower class trades there is an invariable rush of customers as the shutters are being put up. The truth is that purchasers suit themselves to the hours of the shop, and make their arrangements accordingly. So long as shops are open APPENDIX. 509 they continue to come, and experience has shown that when the shops close early no diminution of business has been experienced, nor, after the first few days, any complaint of inconvenience made. With a covetous unprincipled employer no voluntary arrangement will ever be productive of good. He will unscru- pulously give his name and support to any movement for the purpose of securing earlier hours of closing, and even give his monetary subscription, but as soon as his neighbours have fairly started the better system he at once resumes his late hours, and thus compels them to also depart from their agreement. In this manner a powerful organisation of employers and employed was rendered ineffectual in the last great movement in Liver- pool in the year 1873. The subject is thus surrounded with great difficulties, and recognising the impossibility of improvement by either of the modes referred to, the society which I have the honour to repre- sent has been forced to accept the conclusion that no cure re- mains for the remedy of the evil save that which can be secured by legislative enactment. Every reformer knows that the last appeal of any body of men in this country is to the law. For fifty years nearly has the voluntary system been tried, and it must be allowed by every impartial observer that it has only partially succeeded, and has long since reached its limits in the early closing of the higher class of shops, leaving the great majority of shop-assistants still suffering from the old evils which social reformers have so heavily denounced. The objec- tions to legislative enactment which have been urged show no variety from those which have at all times been brought forward against any interference of the State in the regulation of labour. It is said that such a proposal is an interference with the liberty of the subject, and a direct hampering of the rights of private contract. But when it is shown that the liberty conceded to one section of the community results in the slavery of a larger section, it is evident that such liberty must be curtailed. The very foundation of good government is the protection of the weak against the strong, and where the liberty party push their privileges beyond reasonable limits to the detriment of others it ceases to be that true liberty which means proper freedom 510 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. for all. The body politic cannot be healthy if one of its mem- bers be diseased, and the State like a wise physician must study the disease and apply the competent remedy. And, indeed, it is not sought to take away or even to touch any right of free contract which exists. The sole aim is to constitute a just basis on which private contract may proceed. The relations which exist between the shopkeeper and his assistants are of a very one-sided character. An assistant may enter an employ- ment where his working hours are supposed to be ten per day, and thus it may be said that the employer and himself enter into a contract for those hours. But it is no uncommon case for an employer to protract those hours, and increase the duties from ten to twelve hours. If the law of contract existed the assistant would be entitled to compensation ; but in reality he has no redress. He must work the additional time for the same salary or leave the employment. The law courts are closed to him. If he resist or complain then dismissal follows, with its adjunct of a dubious reference to any other employer whose service he may seek to enter. I know of cases where assistants have been asked to add Sunday labour to their six days’ work, with no other alternative than that I have mentioned. Where then does the freedom of private contract exist ? Practically all power is upon the side of the employer, and, without the support of a trade organisation (impossible in this case), the only freedom of a necessitous assistant — perhaps a man with a family dependent upon him — is the freedom to submit or to suffer great privations. It has been shown by experience in the operation of the Factory and Workshops Acts that the interference of the Legis- lature has been productive of unmixed good. By preventing overwork and limiting the hours of labour to a reasonable length, it has raised the standard of health and the duration of life amongst the operatives who come under its scope. Whilst the employer acknowledges that the amount of work completed in the restricted hours compares favourably both as to quantity and quality wuth what was previously produced with inordinate hours, so that the gain of the worker has entailed no loss upon the employer. If, therefore, the factory owner can, despite the APPENDIX. 511 heavy capital sunk in machinery, observe the factory laws with- out any loss of gain, surely the shopkeeper can pass through the same experience. If any antagonism to legislative action had been shown by the employers, then the question would have been complicated ; but the vast majority of employers are quite as desirous of a curtailment of their hours as the assistants, and as satisfied that this cannot be obtained without the intervention of the State. In Liverpool, where the present movement had its origin, a test vote of employers was taken with the view of ascertaining definitely their opinions. Six thousand four hundred voting papers were issued, the issue being confined to districts closing after seven in the evening, and spreading over all shopkeeping occupations. The questions to be answered were : 1. Do you desire legislation for shop hours ? 2. What hour do you approve of ? 3. What hour do you approve of on Saturdays ? Two thousand and seventeen replies were received, of which 1,770 were in favour of legislation, 204 against, and 43 neutral. Of those 90 stated no hours, 1,607 were in favour of closing not later than eight on five evenings of the week, and 1,113 not later than ten on Saturdays. Late as these hours are they are such a manifest improvement on the present that the Liverpool Shop Hours League framed a bill in accordance therewith, which was introduced last session by the three members for the city. By an abuse of the privileges of the House of Commons, C. H. Hopwood, Esq., member for Stockport, prevented a dis- cussion upon the question, and thus the matter was shelved. This is to be regretted, as the strong opinion of the employers evidenced in the foregoing returns warranted a special bill, which could have been fairly proceeded with as an experiment in general legislation on the subject. That the question will have to be taken up by the Legislature is clear, and it is to be hoped that speedy action may proceed under the new franchise so as to lessen the grievance and save from disease and death the thousands of shop-assistants whom the present system hurries into an early grave. The bill to which allusion has been made read as follows : — 512 INDUSTKIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. 47 VicT.] • Shop Hours Kegulation (Liverpool). A Bill to regulate the hours of labour in shops and ware- houses in the City of Liverpool and the vicinity thereof. Whereas by reason of the present hours of' labour in shops and warehouses in the City of Liverpool and the vicinity there- of, many of those employed therein are grievously injured in health ; and inasmuch as it is unnecessary for the convenience of the public that the excessive length of such hours should be continued : Be it enacted by the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows : 1. This Act may be cited as the Shop Hours Regulation Act, Liverpool 1884. 2. This Act shall apply to such part or district of the county of Lancaster as is now or may hereafter be supplied with water by the Corporation of Liverpool. 3. The term ^ shop ’ or ‘ warehouse ’ used in this Act shall signify any shop, warehouse, stall, or other premises for the sale of goods or articles of barter other than the establishments mentioned in the schedule to this Act. 4. On and after the first day of October one thousand eight hundred and eighty four, it shall not be lawful for any premises as afore described to be open on Sundays for any period what- ever, nor shall it be lawful for them to be open on any of the next five days of the week beyond the hour of eight o’clock in the evening, or on Saturdays beyond ten o’clock in the evening, the said hours to be reckoned by the clock fixed in the cupola of the Town Hall at Liverpool. 5. Any employer infringing this Act shall be liable to a fine not exceeding ten pounds for each offence ; provided always, that where the employer can show that the offence has been committed by some agent, servant, or other person, contrary to his express injunctions, and without his knowledge, consent, APPENDIX. 513 or connivance, the said agent, servant, or other person shall be summarily convicted of such offence, and the employer shall be exempt from any fine. 6. All offenders under this Act shall be proceeded against under the Summary Jurisdiction Acts. Schedule, Occupations Exempted, Milk Sellers. Tobacconists’ shops where tobacco and smoking utensils alone are sold. Shops licensed for the sale of refreshments to be consumed on or off the premises. Apothecaries, for the sale of drugs only. It might be urged that legislation for one town alone in the matter of shop hours is to be deprecated, and that it were better to wait until a Bill for the whole country could become law. But we would point out that, in the matter of shop hours, partial legislation would in the present stage of the question be prefer- able. All social reforms come about gradually and are expanded as the result of experiment, but how much better and more com- plete could a scheme of reform be made if it were first tested in a special locality and under favouring circumstances. Now in all respects Liverpool offers a fair and available field for such an experiment. The present movement had its inception there. It has been supported as much by employers as by assistants. It has obtained, as we have shown, the written adhesion of great numbers of the shopkeepers of every class, and the verbal approval of many more, while the opposition, so far as can be ascertained, is but small. Any Bill therefore made applicable to Liverpool would have a fair and conscientious trial, upon the results of which would depend the consideration of its applica- bility to the whole country. The tendency of recent opinion is to confer power upon local centres to legislate for their own good, and to abate the tendency ^14 INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE. to imperial centralisation. It is on these lines that we proceed, and whilst asking nothing that is extreme, nothing that will in any way injure one solitary interest, we crave what to thousands of shopkeepers and their assistants will prove an immense boon. Abstract rRoiM Valuation Rolls ou the Burgh or Dundee for the Years 1808-69 and 1884-85, showing the Number and Annual Value of Dwelling Houses, classified according to Rental. (^See page 46.) ] APPENDIX 515 ! 3 7 CO CO 10 00 >Q 7 -H -tH i X 00 10 — 1 00 10 CO rp !M i^-n X-PXCp7COO^C^7CO 7 7 7 7 0 7 ‘b CO CO 0 1 J2'3§ — - 0 p’ —1 10 1-0 0 0 7 -+1 10 X X CO 0 n ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ — 1 r -1 7 -§ -H 00 7 X X 10 JCl 7 — 1 X 0 X -M-rfil— X7l— OOX'NOr-i 1 CO X__ -- 7^ 7^ lO__ 00 HO 01 ^ 00 IP ^ 7 -,r 7 7“ Qo' 7 “ -H 00 rp of CO 0 0 3 of 00 M -H 0^ OJ -P -P ^ IP 7 1 oi 1 0 10 X a. oi oi X X -p i- 1 10 10 10 CO -p X -P 10 -p 10 c t: 01 X t— t— X 1— 7 10 — gc§ 7 7 7 •Cl 7 0^1 rP ■ 1 c2 OJ 10 ! ^ --7 — i0 7iPOIpOOX ^ X X 7 0 -P 7 X 0-1 Ip 7 ;r: rP 0 Ol 1- X 7 10 Ol Ol -H 01 t- of 1- Cl re* r-P CO' lx 5 'PIP-PC17C5XC0 1OXX 7XC5'POX'P001IpO XpIXOIXOIOpH^X-^i 0 ^ 'n tp -p lb bp X i-o lb bp lb bp 4p 7 S 0 0 7 ;h 1 — ( 7 CO -P 01 X 7 -P 7 0 10 0 0 S § ^ TP 7 a — i^0 0101rP7X01X01 7 0 -P-PIOXpHOOItPXO^ CO cc jjX c^cocD-p^i-PX '^00 7 — ^ X — ^ 01 tb" CO -s CO tb 7 " X 0 0 l—J" 1 P 01 7—1 2 1 ii: 0 ^ -A l-t ce X 0 p — —1 -H 7 017 X 7iP-PC57 S 2 X 0 X -pl — X X IP tp CO — ^tbdO'P'PrPrp' 0 01 01 X 7 ' 1 0 r-tpXO— l-Ptp0X70 -p 1 X01XXOX01tp7X-P 01 01_ 0| 7^ Ol^ 0 ^ ■p' X — — 1 10 7 " — crS — crT ! :2; Ol 7 0 0 2 2 0 — OI X -P 7 — 1 ■ ■ ■ ■ CD bo 00 g - 'p .a X . bb *- 0 ' 0 in 0 *j 0 0 0 0 ^g'asp ^ ^ 5 0^ • 1 0 ^ 0 a s ® S " 7 = ■§- 5oT~5o3SS 2 p-p — 01X-P7 — I 1 P .0^0 0 ^ Lt CO 5 »o 5 Pitpai'pi^ *' ' ' ^ ' ■“ 0 0 -cl 0 <

^ § S=! ce q-i 7- 72 S 1 -2 a £ o 7 £ — ' "S o ^0 7 ^ “ S 7 ^ 02 ^ -7 r-i 7 7 .7 7 7 7 ^ c3 2 S c 7 02 7 p 02 o “ _ r— 02 7 ^ 7 t: 13 - 7 o o 73 7 7 £ rH (U Co 02 02 02 0 7m- 0 7 ^ ^ P 7 O c 7 0 ..'r; 7 0 ^7 7 ^ cot: « a 7 h 7 ^ 0^0^70 I 'rH 71 O 7 1 £ 7 ^ ^ 7 ; 7 0 S -s (M 7 7 O o h .. 7 ^ c 0 o o « : 7 ) O 7 7 P 02 7 a 7 7 7 ,7 7 7 P- P -g P r 7 02 - .M i5 7 ^ ;_, 7 ^ o 7 •o r- > ^ g g 7 O Qj 0 O 02 ■P O 7 ^ -7 7 0 ►««...> CZ QJ 2 « - 7 g g'<1 7;^ o a 3; ^ S 7 £Q 72 S'S 7 '“' cn 7rw Ji s is| i “•3 2S.fi L L 2 516 INDUSTEIAL EEMUNERATION CONFERENCE. III. LETTEIi TO THE EDITOR OF THE ^ TIMES: By Professor J. S. Nicholson. (See page 500 above.) {Reprinted from the ‘ Thnes,' Feh. 8, 1885.) Sir, — In the discussion of niy paper on State Management at the Industrial Bemuneration Conference on Friday last, Dr. G. B. Clarke is reported to have said that some of my statements regarding the crofters were the very reverse of truth. As I was unfortunately unable to be present and to answer Dr. Clarke on the spot, will you allow me space to quote three sentences from the report of the Crofters’ Commission, which amply prove my statements — (1) That the crofters are not, with a few exceptions, rack-rented : (2) That they practically enjoy fixity of tenure : (3) That subdivision on some estates has been caused by the weakness or indulgence of the landlord. On page 50 of the Beport I find it stated : ‘ In most cases a considerable degree of indulgence, often amounting to benevolence, may be discovered in the rent of small holdings ; they are rarely disposed of, when vacant, on a purely commercial principle, or by public competition in any form, and are almost invariably held on easier terms than might be obtained in the open market by the inconsiderate rivalry of people aspiring to the occupancy of land.’ On page 51 it is stated: — ‘ On a comprehensive view of the rents paid by the small tenants in the Highlands and Islands we have not found in the conduct of proprietors ground for proposing a general revision by official authority.’ On page 16 : ‘Eviction and repartition have done their lamented work and passed away for ever ; . . . but the dangers of subdivision are perpetuated by the tenacity of the tenant, who often settles his offspring on the impoverished holding in defiance of estate regulations.’ The fact that I advocated the adoption of leases as a remedy for the crofter difficulty is a sufficient proof that my statement regarding fixity of tenure referred to estate rules and not to law. — I am, &c., J. Shield Nicholson. The University, Edinburgh : Jan. 31. INDEX [ r/j/' Xanu s of Mi'inbevs of the Conference and of Societies represented are in small capitals. The nanu’S of authorities quoted are italicised.] ABS A bstinence, 121, 277, 100 Accident, compensation for, 93 Acland, Mr. A. H. Dyke, 2L2, 301 Acts, Adulteration, 398, 402 — A^icultural Holdings, 238, 4G5, 468 / — Combination Laws (Repeal), 27 — Corn Laws (Repeal), 338 — Corporation Laws (Repeal), 75 — Education, 11, 91 n, 278, 401 — Employers’ Liability, 10, 492 — Enclosure, 108 — Industrial and Provident Socie- ties, 213, 407 — Irish Land, 401, 487, 498 — Land Purchase, 320 — Poor Law (New), 28 — Reform (1832), 338 — Regulation of Mines, 398, 403 — Settled Land, 238 — Trades Unions, 10. See also Fac- tory Adulteration, 291, 325, 402 Age, stati.stics of, 205, 207 Agreement, form of, 299 Agriculture, co-operation in, 17, 362, 406, 490 — families engaged in, 97 — hindrances to, 110, 128, 133, 135, 228, 340, 407, 410, 412 — production from, 349, 375, 410 — wage.s, 6, 71, 79, 89, 120, 124, 127,130, 132, 149, 172,383,413, 416. See Land, Farmers, &c. Aikin, Dr., 26, Airedale Worsted Manufacturing Company, 18, 310 Aitkin, Mr. J., 71 Alhusen, Mr., 167 Allotments, 380, 382, 406, 421, 489 Allowances, 224 BAL Allowances to rural labourers, 125, 127, 133, 149 Amalgamated Society of Car- penters AND Joiners, 332 Amalgamated Society of Rail- way Servants, 281 America, 234, 349, 402 — statistics in, 8, 81, 124 — standard of comfort in, 193 — wheat lands, 189, 226, 397. See also United States Anarchists, 474 Angouleme, 260 Apprenticeship, 23, 168, 202, 210, 405 Arbitration, 33, 36, 152, 167, 170, 223, 333 Areli, Joseph, 379 Ardilaun, Lord, 454 Arkwright, 23 Army, 64, 71, 107, 250, 425, 474 Artisans, 507 — interest in trade, 1 53 — standard of comfort, 71, 86, 369, 433 — subdivision among, 168, 208 Artisans’ Technical Associa- tion, 405 Ashworth, Mr. IL, 32 Assington, 406 Assington Agricultural Asso- ciation, 406 Australia, 130, 193, 235, 356 — protection in, 245, 246 Austria, 143 B AGEHOT, Mr., 22, 185 Balfour, Mr. A. J., M.P., 336, 397, 411 Ball, Mr., 126, 411, 501 518 INDEX. BAN Banking, 160, 165, 177, 179, 181 Bankruptcy, 177, 212 Barnett, Eev. S. A., 295 Barstable, Prof., 74 JUu-ter^ Mr. Dudley, 35, 78, 90, 98, 99, 101, 103, 104 Bedford Level, 442 Bedford, Duke of, 453 Bedminster Board of Guar- dians, 127 Beesly, Prof., 215, 323, 334, 483, 495 TJ pi "po cf* Belgiuin’ 44, 143, 144, 145, 226, 246, 288, 355, 394, 410, 449 Bell, Mr. I. Lowthian, 1, 120, 132, 136, 165, 167, 170, 172 JiesselVeere, M., 260 Jh'ean, Mr., 50 Billon, jV., 257, 263 Billon et Isaac, 257, 264 Bimetallism, 186 Birmingham, 485 Bi.smarck, Prince, 2 Blacksmiths, 42, 376 Blane, Mr., 1 6 Boards of Industry, 152 Bookbinders, 106, 200, 207 Boot and Shoe Eiveters’ and Finishers’ Union, Leicester, 208 Bootmaking, 207 Boots, quality of, 70, 78, 243 Bord, M., 18 Bourgeois, 458, 478 Bourne, Mr. Stephen, 494 Bradlaugh, Mr. C., M.P., 170, 498 Bramwell, Lord, 1, 419, 481, 493, 497, 501 Brassey, Mr., 280 Brassey, Sir T., M.P., 4, 68, 70, 80, Bread, price of, 43, 107, 127, 185 Brevity, Mr. J., 62 Bricklayers’ wages, 52, 103 — work of English and foreign, 279 Brickmaking, 299 Bright, Mr. John, 237, 272,287, 376, 397, 499 Brighton, 374 British Iron Trade Association, 5, 136 Broadhurst, Mr. H., 204, 212 Brodricli, Hon. G., 381, 385 JlrnoTte, Rev. Stopford, 378, 408 Buckinghamshire, 125, 382 kludge, Mr. C. 0., 279 Building Societies, 34, 55 CHE Building trades, wages in, 52, 106 bad work in, 326 labour saving in, 73 unionism in, 169 Bulletin de la PaHicipation anx Benefices, 253 Bnlley, Miss A. A., 61 Bunn, Mr. W. G., 168 Burglars, 400 Burnett, Mr. J., 1, 164, 501 Burns, Mr. J., 69, 483 nAB DEIVEES’ SOCIETY, 131,210 \J Cabinet makers, 103, 168 Caird, Sir J., 6, 120 Calderdale, 489 California, 180, 196, 356 Calkers, 21 Canada, 129, 135, 235, 249, 288, 356,, 494 Capital, dispersion of, 434 — in peasant farming, 385, 415, 449 — nationalisation, 477. S^'e also State, Co-operative Societies — need of, on land, 269, 289, 407, 411 — of landlords, 360, 394, 410 — of tenants, 238, 341, 348, 361, 391 — partition of, 77, 122, 250 — returns on, 13, 21, 59, 75, 146, 163, 195, 267, 407 — services of, 82, 190 — taxation of, 95 — waste of, 53 Capitalists, abolition of, 242, 389,, 400. See also Emj)loyers Carlisle, 9 Carlyle, Thomas, 240 Carpenters, 42, 52, 103,. 347, 376 Carpet weaving, 72 Cartwright, 23 Causeway layers, 42, 46 Census returns, 87, 97, 134, 206 Central Co-operative Board,212‘ Chabert, M., 479 Chaix, M., 18, 254 Chamberlain, Et. Hon. J., 165, 222,. 485 Champagne, 36, 211 Channel Islands, 394, 414 Chaplain, Mr. M. P., 245 Charity Organisation Society,. 129 Chartists, 489 Chatelant, d/., 142 Cheapness, 70, 204, 207, 325, 369 Chemical trade, 139, 167 INDEX. 519 CHE Chereie, Mr. J. M., 311 Cheshire, 6, 120, 381 Children, duties to, 273, 294 — and parents out of work, 102 n — labour of, 11, 103, 124 — orphaned, 100 — wages of, 91 /? China, 81, 135, 278 Chippendale, 328 Church of England, 63, 71, 85, 274, 378 Clarke, Dr. G. B., 481, 483, 500, 516 Class cleavage, 503 Cleveland Blast-furnacembn, 132, 172 Cleveland, 120, 132, 141, 148, 172, 403, 492 Clubs, 170, 401, 402 Clyde, 21 Goal, exhaustion of, 44, 416 — price of, 52 n, 206 — production of, 14, 33. See Royal- ties Cobden, Richard, 228, 245 Cole, Sir H., 106 Coleman, Mr., 120 Collectivists, 425 Collings, Mr. Tesse, M.P., 395 Colonies, 229, 244, 249 — federation, 247, 287 ^ Colonisation, 154 Combination laws, 10, 27 — among shop assistants, 508 — power of, 179, 301 See Trade Unions Commission, executive, 472 Commissions, French, on profit shar- ing, 259 on prevailing depression, 478 — Royal, on Agi’iculture, 120, 124, 125, 377, 469 Crofters, 466, 473, 504, 515 Housing of Working Clas.ses, 269 Women and Children’s Em- ployment, 380 Commodities, primary and secon- dary, 313 Commons, rights on, 80, 378 — enclo.sures, 108 Communism, 420, 425, 438, 451, 456 C!ompagnie d’Assurances generates, 253, 255 Compensation, 93, 107, 387, 462, 468 Competition, foreign, 56, 222, 225 /, 2.34, 235, 24.3, 246 Continuity. See Employment Co-operation, ‘complete,’ 275, .301 DOR Co-operative Printing Co., Man- chester, 19, 310, 334 — production, 17, 19, 40, 58, 152, 159, 204, 284, 304 /, 436, 483 — corn mills, 311 — workshops, 306, 310 — Societies, 40, 55, 123, 177, 181, 199, 267, 269, 433 capital of, 213, 407, 490 members of, 436, 489 statistics of, 19, 290, 310 and trade unions, 285. See Agriculture — Wholesale Society, 66, 121, 182, 186, 265, 296, 301, 303, 311 Cornwall, 18, 352 Cotton trade, 225 wages in, 50, 52, 61, 157/ women in, 206 Coventry Watch Manufacturing Company, 19, 310 Cowell, Mr., 50 Craigie, Major, 124, 132, 133, 409, 416, 483 Credit, 53, 178, 270, 358, 463, 485 Crises, 31, 93, 212 Crofters, 466, 481, 500, 516 Crompton, 23 Cross, Rt. Hon. Sir R. A. 204 Culture, 274, 297 Cunningham, Mr. David, M.Inst. C.E., 41, 69, 70, 71, 83, 119 Cunningham, Rev. W., 500, 504 Cutlery Manufacturing Co., 19 T)AILY NEWS, 373, 378 ^ Dale, Mr. D., 147 Death rate, 88, 100, 128, 1.30, 133, 205 Decorative Co-operators’ Asso- ciation, 324 Democracy, 95, 287, 332, 478 Derby, 211 Devizes, 109 Devonshire, 416 Dewsbury, 206 Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W., 1, 64, 71, 81, 172, 208, 245, 246, 250, 334, 380, 399, 400, 498, 501- 504 Diminishing return, law of, 189 T)ixon, Mr. liailton, 142 Dock labourers, 80, 92, 100, 347, 373 Domestic education, 274. See aim Economy, Servants Donisthorpe, Mr. W., 497 Dorsetshire, 9, 277, 377 520 INDEX. DOY Doyle, Mr., 126 Dressmaker’s, 200, 206 Drink-bill, 155, 270, 293 liriice, Mr., 126 Drysdale, Dr. C. R., 130 Dudley Nail Manufacturing Co., 310 Dukes, 453, 472 Dunfermline Linen Manufacturing Co., 19, 310 Dumfriesshire, 381 Dundee, engineers’ wages in, 69 — Harbour Trust, 41 /, 69, 119 — house rents, 515 — population of, 46 — printers’ wages, 45 — savings in, 46 Durham, 143, 402, 403 — royalties, 353 Durham Miners, 402, 403 Dyke, Mr. E., 131 ~nARLY CLOSING. See Shop jLj Assistants Earnings l Wages, agricultural, 6, 71, 88, 107, 120, 127, 1.32, 135, 14 72, 383,41.3,416, 451 — attack on, .31 - averages of, 5, 77, 91, 103, 119, 133 — Dundee Harbour P>oard, 41, 69, 83 — English and foreign, 142, 196, 223, 247, 371, 416 — four systems of, 157 — fund, 22, 191 WOM Wages, Greenwich Hospital, 50 — and hours of labour, 280 — and prices, 179 — high, 74, .370, 393 — in shipbuilding, 21 — in textile trades, 50, 61, 103, 158 /, 208 — irregularity of, 158, 232 — of seamen, 67, 71, 82 — of women, 52, 61, 62, 85 w, 199 — rates at different periods, 50, 77, 119, 132, 138 — real and nominal, 43, 50, 69, 73, 79, 92, 122, 125, 128, 1.30, 133, 240 — rise of, 5, 119, 132, 138, 168, 208, 355, 383 — sliding scale, 33, 147 — theories of, 157, 187 f, 219, 232, 369, 393, 401 Waldeck-Kousseau, M., 259, 261 Wales, 15, 96, 206, 276, 352, 375, 484 Wallace, Dr. A. K., 57, 368, 397, 399, 408, 414, 421, 472 Wars, American civil, 157 — civil, 94 — Franco-German, 53, 246 — Napoleonic, 28, 7.5, 187 — Kusso-Turkish, 255 Watches, 77, 82, 225, 246 Waterlow Dwellings Company, 293 Watt, 23 Wealth, division of, 77 Weavers (cotton), .52, 61 — (woollen), 52, 208 — in 1785, 26 — hours and work, 68 — silk, 103 Westminster, Duke of, 81, 353, 413, 445 Westphalia, wages in, 14.3, 148, 167 AVheat, 189, 226, 237, 349, 375, .382, 397, 410, 424 Whitechapel, 134, 204, 295 Whiteley, Mr. William, 107 Whitney, 2.3 Williams, Mr. J. E., 79, 397, 401, 408, 413, 414, 488 Williams, Mr. T. Marchant, 105 Wilson, Mr. John, 402, 413, 415, 491 Wiltshire Downs, 441 — landlords, 113, 128, 1.33, .376, 378, 405 — wages in, 107, 135 Wolverhampton, 247 Wolverton, Lord, 452 Women, age of, 205, 207 — division of labour among, 294 528 INDEX. WOM Women, employment in agriculture, 124, 207 — and unions, 162, 206 — married, 99, 207 — numbers of working, 98, 206 — wages of, 52, 61, 62, 85 w, 107, 199, 211 Workhouses, 101, 129, 368, 426 Working Tailors’ Association, 204 — classes, income of, 35, 66, 77, 79, 90, 133, 268, 276 cost of education of, 304 ZUL Workmen’s Association for the Defence of British Industry. 245 Y EOMANKY, 86, 445 Yowu/, Arthur, 25, 377, 382 Young, Edward, 35 ^ULUS, 279, 491 LOSDOX : rJilXTF.D 7iV liPOTTISWOODE AND CO.. NK7V .‘JTUEET SQUARE AND rAltl.rAJIENT S'l'IIKET A SELECTED LIST OF SIMDAliD PUBLICATIONS & REMAINDEBS Offered for Sale at rejna 7 ‘kably low prices by JOHN GRANT, BOOKSELLER, 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, EDINBURGH. Robert Burns’ Poetical Works, edited by W. Scott Douglas, with Explanatory Notes, Various Readings, and Glossary, illustrated with portraits, vignettes, and frontispieces by Sam Bough, R.S.A., and W. E. Lockhart, R.S.A., 3 vols, royal 8vo, cloth extra (pub £2 2s), i6s 6d, W. Paterson, 1880. Dryden’s Dramatic Works, Library Edition, with Notes and Life by Sir Walter Scott, Bart., edited by George Saints-^ bury, portrait and plates, 8 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub £/\ 4s), £i los, Paterson. Large Paper Copy — Best Libra 7 y Edition. Moliere’s Dramatic Works, complete, translated and edited by Henri Van Laun, with Memoir, Introduction, and Appendices, wherein are given the Passages borrowed or adapted from Moliere by English Dramatists, with Explanatory Notes, illustrated with a portrait and 33 etchings, India proofs, by Lalauze, 6 magnificent vols, imperial 8vo, cloth (pub £g gs), £2 1 8s 6d. Wm. Paterson. The same, 6 vols, half choice morocco, gilt top (pub £12 I2s), £/^ i8s 6d. “ Not only the best translation in existence, but the best to be hoped. It is a direct and valuable contribution to European scholarship.” — Athenceuin. Richardsoti’ s (Sattiuel) Works, Library Edition, with Biographical Criticism by Leslie .Stephen, portrait, 12 vols, 8vo, cloth extra, impression strictly limited to 750 copies (pub £(i 6s), £2 5s. London. Sent Carriage Free to a?iy part of the United Kingdom on receipt of Postal Order for the amount. JOM GRANT, 25 & 34 George lY. Bridge, Edinburgh, John Grants Bookselle?^ Choice Illustrated Works Burfiefs Treatise 07 i Paintings illustrated by ijo Etchmgs from celebrated pictures of the Italian, Venetian, Flemish, Dutch, and English Schools, also woodcuts, thick 4to, half morocco, gilt top (pub ^4 los), £2 2s. CanoiaG iVorks in Sculpture and Adodelling^ 142 exqui- site plates, engraved in outline by Henry Moses, with Literary Descriptions by the Countess Albrizzi, and Biographical Memoir by Count Escognara, handsome volume, imperial 8vo, half crimson morocco, gilt top (pub atb^6 12s), reduced to 21s. Cartei''’s Specimens 0/ Az/cient Sculptiu'e and I^aintifig uoiv Re?nai)iiu^ in England^ from the Earliest Period to the Reign of Henry VIIL, edited by Francis Douse, and other eminent anti- quaries, illustrated with 120 large engravings, many of which are beautifully coloured, and several highly illuminated with gold, handsome volume, royal folio, half crimson morocco, top edges gilt (first pub at ;iCj:5 15s), now reduced to £'^ 3s. Also iiniforni in size and binding. Ca7'te7-'s A7icie7it Architecture of E7igland., including the Orders during the British, Roman, Saxon, and Norman Eras, also under the Reigns of Henry HI. and Edward HE, illustratecl by 109 large copperplate engravings, comprising upwards of 2000 Specimens shown in Plan, Execution, Section, and Detail, best edition, illustrated by John Britton (first pub at ^12 12s), now reduced to £2 2s. Castles {The) and Alansions of the Lothians., illustrated in 103 Views, with Historical and Descriptive Accounts, by John Small, LL. D., Librarian, University, Edinburgh, 2 handsome vols, folio, cloth (pub £(i 6s), £2 15s. W. Paterson. Claude Lorrame's Beauties., consisting of Twenty-four of his Choicest Landscapes, selected from the Liber Veritatis, beautifully engraved on steel by Brimley, Lupton, and others, in a folio cloth portfolio (pub £^ 3s), 12s 6d. Cooke. Ma7'lborough Gems — The Collection of Ge7ns fo7'7ned by George Spencer., lliird Duke of JMarlhoroztgli, illustrated by 108 full-page engravings, chiefly by Bartolozzi, with Letterpress Descriptions in French and Latin by Jacob Bryant, Louis Dutens, &c., 2 handsome vols, folio, half crimson morocco, gilt top (selling price ;(dio los), £2 12s 6d. John Murray, 1844. The most beaut ipil Work on the “ Statf'ly Home< of England. Nash’s Matisions of England in the Oldeti Tittie., 104: Lithographic Views faithfully reproduced from the originals, with, new and complete history of each Mansion, by Anderson, 4 vols in 2, imperial 4to, cloth extra, gilt edges (pub £(i 6s), £2 los. Sotheran. Se7ii Carriage Free to atiy part of the Uttited Ki7igdo77i 07 t receipt of Postal Order for the a77iount. JOHN GrRANT, 25 & 34 George lY. Bridge, Edinbiirgh.. 34 George IV Bridge^ Edi?iburgh. 3 Choice Illustrated VI ovk.s— continued Lyndsay {Sir David^ of the Mount) — A Facsimile of the ancient Heraldic Manuscript emblazoned by the celebrated Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, Lyon King at Arms in the reign of James the Fifth, edited by the late David Laing, LL.D., from the Original MS. in the possession of the Faculty of Advocates, folio, cloth, gilt top, uncut edges (pub £\o los), los. Impression limited to 250 copies. Also Uiiifoi‘m. Scottish Arms, being a Collection of Armorial Bearings, A.D. 1370-1678, Reproduced in Facsimile from Contemporary Manuscripts, with Heraldic and Genealogical Notes', by R. R. Stodart, of the Lyon Office, 2 vols, folio, cloth extra, gilt tops (pub ;^I2 I2s), 14 los. Impression limited to 300 copies. Several of the manuscripts from which these Arms are taken have hitherto been unknown to heraldic antiquaries in this country. The Arms of upwards of 600 families are given, all of which are described in upwards of 400 pages of letter- press by Air Stodart. The book Is uniform with Lyndsay’s Heraldic Manuscript, and care was taken not to reproduce any Arms which are in that volume, unless there are variations, or from older manuscripts. Strutfs Sylva Britatmice, et Scotice ; or, Portraits of Forest Trees Distinguished for their Antiquity, Magnitude, or Beauty, drawn from Nature, with 50 highly finished etchings, imp. folio, half morocco extra, gilt top, a handsome volume (pub £9 9 s), £c^ 2S. The Modern Cupid (en Chemin de Fer), by M. Mounet- Sully, of the Comedie Fran9ais, illustrations by Ch. Daux. A Bright, Attractive Series of Verses, illustrative of Love on the Rail, with dainty drawings reproduced in photogravure plates, and printed in tints, folio, edition limited to 350 copies, each copy numbered. Estes & Lauriat. Proofs on Japan paper, in parchment paper portfolio, only 65 copies printed (pub 63s), £i is. Proofs on India paper, in wffiite vellum cloth portfolio, 65 copies printed (pub 50s), i6s. Ordinary copy proofs on vellum paper, in cloth portfolio, 250 copies printed (pub 30s), los 6d. The Costumes of all Nations, Ancient and Modern, exhibiting the Dresses and Habits of all Classes, Male and Female, from the Earliest Historical Records to the Nineteenth Century, by Albert Kretschmer and Dr Rohrbach, 104 coloured plates displaying nearly 2000 full-length figures, complete in one hand- some volume, 4to, half morocco (pub £4 4s), 45s. Sotheran. Walpole’s {Horace) Anecdotes of Painting in England, with some Account of the Principal Artists, enlarged by Rev. James Dallaway ; and Vertue’s Catalogue of Engravers who have been born or resided in England, last and best edition, revised with additional notes by Ralph N. Wornum, illustrated with eighty portraits of the principal artists, and woodcut portraits of the minor artists, 3 handsome vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 27s), 14s fid. Bickers. The same, 3 vols, half morocco, gilt top, by one of the best Edinburgh binders (pub 45s), £\ 8s. 4 John Grants Bookseller^ Works on Edinburgh Edmburgh and its Neighbourhood ht the Days of our Grandfathers^ a Series of Eighty Illustrations of the more remark- able Old and New Buildings and Picturesque Scenery of Edin- burgh, as they appeared about 1830, with Historical Introduction and Descriptive Sketches, by James Gowans, royal 8vo, cloth elegant (pub 12s 6d), 6s. J, C. Nimmo. “ The chapters are brightly and well written, and are all, from first to last, readable and full of information. The volume is in all respects handsome.” — Scotsman. Edinburgh University — Account of the Tercentenary Fes- tival of the University.^ including the Speeches and Addresses on the Occasion, edited by R. Sydney Marsden, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 3s), IS. Blackwood & Sons. Historical Notices of Lady Tester's Church and Parish., by James J. Hunter, revised and corrected by the Rev. Dr Gray, crown 8 VO, cloth (pub 2 s 6d), qd. Of interest to the antiquarian, containing notices of buildings and places now fast disappearing. History of the Queen's Edinbmgh Rifle Vohinteer Bt'igade, with an Account of the City of Edinburgh and Midlothian Rifle Association, the Scottish Twenty Club, &c. , by Wm. Stephen, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 5s), 2s. Blackwood & Sons. “ This opportune volume has far more interest for readers generally than might have been expected, while to members of the Edinburgh Volunteer Brigade it cannot fail to be very interesting indeed .” — St James’s Gazette. Leighton's (Alexander) Mysterious Legends of Edinbutgh., illustrated, crown 8vo, boards, is 6d. Contents : — Lord Karnes’ Puzzle, Mrs Corbet’s Amputated Toe, The Brownie of the West Bow, The Ancient Bureau, A Legend of Halkerstone’s Wynd, Deacon Macgillvray’s Disappearance, Lord Braxfield’s Case of the Red Night-cap, The Strange Story of Sarah Gowanlock, and John Cameron’s Life Policy. Steven's ( Dr William ) History of the High School of Edinburgh, from the beginning of the Sixteenth Century, based upon Researches of the Town Council Records and other Authentic Documents, illustrated with view, also facsimile of a School Exercise by Sir Walter Scott when a pupil in 1783, crown 8vo, cloth, a handsome volume (pub 7s 6d), 2s. Appended is a list of the distinguished pupils who have been educated in this Institution, which has been patronised by Royalty from the days of James VI. The Authorised Library Editio 7 i. Trial of the Directors of the City of Glasgow Bank, before the Petition for Bail, reported by Charles Tennant Couper, Advocate, the Speeches and Opinions, revised by the Council and Judges, and the Charge by the Lord Justice Clerk, illustrated with lithographic facsimiles of the famous false Balance-sheets, one large volume, royal 8vo, cloth (pub 15s), 3s 6d. Edinburgh. Wilson's {Dr Daniel) Memorials of Edinbutgh in the Olden Thne, with numerous fine engravings and woodcuts, 2 vols, 4to, cloth (pub 2s), i6s 6d. Sent Carriage Free to atiy part of the Utiited Kmgdotti on receipt of Postal Order for the amoimt. JOM GrUANT, 25 & 34 Greorge IV. Bridge, Edinburgli. 25 6^ ^4 George IV. Bridge.^ Edmburgh. 5 Works on the Highlands of Scotland Disruption Worthies of the Highlands, a Series of Bio- graphies of Eminent P'ree Church Ministers who Suffered in the North of Scotland in 1843 for the Cause of Religious Liberty, enlarged edition, with additional Biographies, and an Introduc- tion by the Rev. Dr Duff, illustrated with 24 full-page portraits and facsimiles of the autographs of eminent Free Churchmen, 4to, handsomely bound in cloth, gilt (pub is), 8s 6d. Gaelic Names of Plants, Scottish and Hish, Collected and Arranged in Scientific Order, with Notes on the Etymology, their Uses, Plant Superstitions, &c., among the Celts, with Copious Gaelic, English, and Scientific Indices, by John Came- ron, 8vo, cloth (pub 7s 6d), 3s 6d. Blackwood & Sons. “ It is impossible to withhold a tribute of admiration from a work on which the author spent ten years of his life, and which necessitated not only voluminous reading in Gaelic and Irish, but long journeys through the Highlands in search of Gaelic names for plants, or rather, in this case, plants for names already existing. ” — Scotsman. Grant {Mrs, of Laggan) — Letters from the Mountains, edited, with Notes and Additions, by her son, J. P. Grant, best edition, 2 vols, post 8vo, cloth (pub 21s), 4s 6d. London. Lord Jeffrey says: — “Her ‘Letters from the Mountains’ are among the most interesting collections of real letters that have been given to the public : and being indebted for no part of their interest to the celebrity of the names they contain, or the importance of the events they narrate, afford, in their suc- cess, a more honourable testimony of the talents of the author. The great charm of the correspondence indeed is its perfect independence of artificial helps, and the air of fearlessness and originality which it has consequently assumed.” Historical Sketches of the Highland Clans of Scotland, containing a concise account of the origin, &c., of the Scottish Clans, with twenty-two illustrative coloured plates of the Tartan worn by each, post 8vo, cloth, 2s 6d. “The object of this treatise is to give a concise account of the origin, seat, and characteristics of the Scottish Clans, together with a representation of the distinguishing tartan worn by each.” — Preface. Keltic {John S.) — A History of the Scottish Highlands, Highland Clans, and Highland Regiments, with an Account of the Gaelic Literature and Music by Dr M‘Lauchlan, and an Essay on Highland Scenery by Professor Wilson, coloured illus- trations of the Tartans of Scotland, also many steel engravings, 2 vols, imperial 8vo, half morocco, gilt top (pub;iC3 los), £\ 17s 6d Mackenzie (Alexander) — The History of the Highland Clearances, containing a reprint of Donald Macleod’s Gloomy Memories of the Highlands,” “Isle of Skye in 1882,” and a Verbatim Report of the Trial of the Brae Crofters, thick vol, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 7s 6d), 3s 6d. Inverness. “ Some people may ask. Why rake up all this iniquity just now? We answer. That the same laws which permitted the cruelties, the inhuman atrocities, described in this book, are still the laws of the countrj’, and any tyrant who may be indifferent to the healthier public opinion which now prevails, may let^ally repeat the same proceedings whenever he may take it into his head to do so.” Stewards (Getter al David, of G a tilt) Sketches of the Character, histitutions, and Custonis of the Highlanders of Scot- land, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 5s), 2s. Inverness. Stewart’s sketches of the Highlands and Highland regiments are worthy to rank beside the Highland works of Sir Walter Scott, or even more worthy, for facts are stronger than fiction. Every Scottish lad should have the book in his hands as soon as he is able to read. 6 John Grant, Bookseller, Scottish Literature The genial Author of “ Nodes Ambrosiame." CJu'istopher North — A Metnoir of Professor John Wilson, compiled from Family Papers and other sources, by his daughter, Mrs Gordon, new edition, with portrait and illustrations, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 6s), 2s 6d. “ A writer of the most ardent and enthusiastic genius.'’ — Henry Hallam. “ The whole literature of England does not contain a more brilliant series of articles than those with which Wilson has enriched the pages of Blackwood’ s Magazine.” — Sir Archibald Alison. Cockhurn {Henry) — Journals of, being a Continuation of the Memorials of his Time, 1831-1854, 2 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 2is), 8s 6d. Edinburgh. Coclit'an- Patrick (R. W.) — Records of the Coinage of Scotland, from the Earliest Period to the Union, numerous illustrations of coins, 2 vols, 4to, half citron morocco, gilt top, I os. David Douglas. Also uniform. Cocliran-Patrick {R. W.) — The Medals of Scotland, a Descriptive Catalogue of the Royal and other Medals relating to Scotland, 4to, half citron morocco, gilt top, £2 5s. David Douglas. Also u 7 iiform. Cochrati-Patrick {R. W.) — Early Records relating to Mining in Scotland, 4to, half citron morocco, 7s 6d. David Douglas. “The future historians of Scotland will be very fortunate if many parts of their materials are so carefully worked up for them, and set before them in so complete and taking a fonn.” — Athenceum. “ We have in these records of the coinage of Scotland not the production of a dilettante but of a real student, who with rare pains and the most scholarly dili- gence has set to work and collected into two massive volumes a complete history of the coinage of Scotland, so far as it can be gathered from ancient records.” — A cademy. “Such a book" .... revealing as it does the first developments of an industry which has become the mainspring of the national prosperit}% ought to be specially interesting to all patriotic Scotsmen.” — Saturday Review. Crieff : Its Traditions and Characters, with Anecdotes of Strathearn, Reminiscences of Obsolete Customs, Traditions, and Superstitions, Humorous Anecdotes of Schoolmasters, Ministers, and other Public Men, crown 8vo, is. “A book which will have considerable value in the eyes of all collectors of Scottish literature. A gathering up of stories about well-known inhabitants, memorable local occurrences, and descriptions of manners and customs.” — Scotsman Sent Carriage Free to atty part of the United Kmgdoni on receipt of Postal Order for the amoirnt. JOHN OHANT, 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, Edinburgh. ^5 ^ 34 George IV. Bridge^ Edinbmgh. 7 Scottish IjiteYSJtMVQ— continued Douglas’ ( Gainn, Bishop of Dunkeld.^ I4‘g^-ig22) Poetical lVo7-ks, edited, with Memoir, Notes, and full Glossary, by John Small, M.A., F.S.A. Scot., illustrated with specimens of manu- script, title-page, and woodcuts of the early editions in facsimile, 4 vols, beautifully printed on thick paper, post 8 vo, cloth (pub Is 35)5 2S 6 d. W. Paterson. “ The latter part of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, a period almost barren in the annals of English poetry, was marked by a rernark- able series of distinguished poets in Scotland. During this period flourished Dunbar, Henryson, Mercier, Harry the Minstrel, Gavin Douglas, Bellenden, Kennedy, and Lyndesay. Of these, although the palm of excellence must beyond all doubt be awarded to Dunbar, — next to Burns probably the greatest poet of his country, — the voice of contemporaries, as well as of the age that immediately followed, pronounced in favour of him who, ‘ In barbarous age, ^ Gave rude Scotland Virgil’s page,’ — Gavin Douglas. We may confidently predict that this will long remain the standard edition of Gavin Douglas ; and we shall be glad to see the works of other of the old Scottish poets edited with equal sympathy and success.” — Atheiueztm. Lyndsafs (Sir David, of the Mo u fit, i4go-iy68) Poetical tVof'ks, best edition, edited, with Life and Glossary, by David Laing, 3 vols, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 63s), i8s 6d. Another cheaper edition by the same editor, 2 vols, i2mo, cloth (pub 15s), 5s. W. Paterson. “ When it is said that the revision, including Preface, Memoir, and Notes, has been executed by Dr David Laing, it is said that all has been done that is possible by thorough scholarship, good judgment, and conscientiousness.” — Scotsf/ian. Lytteil ( William, M.A.) — Landmarks of Scottish Life and Language, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 7s 6d), 2s. Edinburgh, Introductory Observations ; Cumbrae Studies, or an “ Alphabet ” of Cumbrae Local Names; Arran Studies, or an “Alphabet” of Arran Local Names; Lochranza Places; Sannox Scenes and Sights; Short Sketches of Notable Places ; A Glance Round Bute ; Symbols ; Explanations, &c. &c. M^Kerlie’s (P. H., PS. A. Scot.) History of the Lands and their 0~iune7'S i7i Galloiuay, illustrated by woodcuts of Notable Places and Objects, with a Historical Sketch of the District, 5 handsome vols, crown 8vo, roxburghe style (pub 15s), 26s 6d. W. Paterson. Ramsay (Allan) — The Gentle Shepherd, New Edition, with Memoir and Glossary, and illustrated with the original graphic plates by David Allan ; also, all the Original Airs to the Songs, royal 4to, cloth extra (pub 21s), 5s, W. & A. K. Johnston. The finest edition of the celebrated Pastoral ever produced. The paper has been rnade expressly for the edition, a large clear type has been selected, and the printing in bl.ack and red is of the highest class. 'I'he original plates by David Allan have been restored, and are here printed in tint. The volume con- tains a Prologue, which is published for the first time. Sent Carriage Free to any part of the United Kingdom o)i receipt of Postal Order for the amount. JOM GrEANT, 25 & 34 George lY. Bridge, Edinburgh. 8 John Grants Bookseller^ Scottish Literature— co/7 ^//7wea' 77 / e Earliest known Printed English Ballad. Scotty sche Kynge — A Ballad of written by John Skelton, Poet Laureate to King Henry VIII., reproduced in facsimile, with an Historical and Biographical Introduction, by John Ashton, beautifully printed on thick paper, small 4to, cloth, uncut edges (pub i6s), 3s 6d. Elliot Stock. Southey says of him; — “The power, the strangeness, the volubility of his language, the audacity of his satire, and the perfect originality of his manner, made Skelton one of the most extraordinary writers of any age or country.” This unique ballad was printed by Richard Fawkes, the King’s printer, in 1513, immediately after the battle of Flodden Field, wnich is described in it, and is of great interest. Every justice has been done to the work in this beautiful volume, the paper, printing, and binding of which are all alike excellent. One of the Earliest Presidents of the Court of Session. Seton {Alexander., Earl of Dunfer inline, Chancellor of Scotland, 1555-1622) — Aletnoir of, with an Appendix contain- ing a List of the various Presidents of the Court, and Genealogical Tables of the Legal P'amilies of Erskine, Hope, Dalrymple, and Dundas, by George Seton, Advocate, with exquisitely etched portraits of Chancellor Seton, and George, seventh Lord Seton, and his family ; also the Chancellor’s Signatures, Seals, and Book- Stamp ; with etchings of Old Dalgety Church, Fyvie Castle, and Pinkie House, small qto, cloth (pub 21s) 6s 6d. Blackwood & Sons. “ We have here everything connected with the subject of the book that could interest the historical student, the herald, the genealogist, and the archaeologist. The result is a book worthy of its author’s high reputation.” — Notes and Queries. J Carden’s (Alex. J.) History of Angus or Forfarshire, its Land and People, Descriptive and Historical, illustrated with maps, facsimiles, &c. , 5 vols, qto, cloth (published to subscribers only at £2. 17s 6d), ;i^i 17s 6d. Dundee. Sold separately, vol 2, 3s 6d ; vol 3, 3s 6d ; vols 4 and 5, 7s 6d ; vol 5, 3s 6d. A tnost nseful Work of Reference. Wilson’s Gazetteer of Scotland, demy 8vo (473 pp.), cloth gilt (pub 7s 6d), 3s. \V. & A. K. Johnston. This work embraces every town and village in the country of any importance as existing at the present day, and is portable in form and very moderate in price. In addition to the usual information as to towns and places, the work gives the statistics of real property, notices of public works, public buildings, churches, schools, &c., whilst the natural history and historical incidents con- nected with particular localities have not been omitted. The ^Scotsman says : — “ It entirely provides for a want which has been greatly felt.” Younger (John, shoemaker, St Boswells, Author of “ River Angling for Salmon and Trontf' “ Corn La 7 v Rhymes,’’' Sfc.) — A tit 0 biography, with portrait, crown 8vo (457 pages), cloth (pub 7s 6d), 2s. “ ‘The shoemaker of St Boswells,’ as he was designated in all parts of Scot- land, was an excellent prose writer, a respectable poet, a marvellously gifted man in conversation. His life will be read with great interest ; the simple heart- stirring narrative of the life-struggle of a highly-gifted, humble, and honest mechanic, — a life of care, but also a life of virtue.” — London Review. Sent Carriage Free to any part of the United Kingdom on receipt of Postal Order for the amount. JOHN GRANT, 25 & 34 George IT. Bridge, Edinbargh. 25 6^ 54 George IV. Bridge^ Edinburgh. 9 Grampian Club Publications, of valuable MSS. and Works of Original Research in Scottish History, Privately printed for the Members The Diocesan Registers of Glasgow — Liber Protocollorum M. Ciuhberti Simonis, notarii et scribae capituli Glasguensis, A.d. 1499- 1 5 13 ; also, Rental Book of the Diocese of Glasgow., A.D. 1509-1570, edited by Joseph Bain and the Rev. Dr Charles Rogers, with facsimiles, 2 vols, 8vo, cl, 1875 (pub £,1 2s), 7s 6d. Rental Book of the Cistercian Abbey of Coupar- Angus., with the Breviary of the Register, edited by the Rev. Dr Charles Rogers, with facsimiles of MSS., 2 vols, 8vo, cloth, 1879-80 (pub £2 I2S 6d), los 6d. The same, vol II., comprising the Register of Tacks of the Abbey of Cnpar, Rental of St Marie's Monastery, and Appendix, 8vo, cloth (pub £i is), 3s 6d. Estwiate of the Scottish Nobility during the Minority of fames VI., edited, with an Introduction, from the original MS. in the Public Record Office, by Dr Charles Rogers, 8vo, cloth (pub los 6d), IS. 6d. The reprint of a manuscript discovered in the Public Record Office. The details are extremely curious. Genealogical Memoirs of the Fattiilies of Colt and Coutts, by Dr Charles Rogers, 8vo, cloth (pub los 6d), 2s 6d. An old Scottish family, including the eminent bankers of that name, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, &c. Roger! {Dr Charles) Memorials of the Earl of Stirling and of the House of Alexander, portraits, 2 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub £2, 3s), los 6d. Edinburgh, 1877. This work embraces not only a history of Sir William Alexander, first Earl of Stirling, but also a genealogical account of the family of Alexander in all its branches ; many interesting historical details connected with Scottish State affairs in the seventeenth century ; also with the colonisation of America. Sent Carriage Free to any part of the United Kingdom on receipt of Postal Order for the amount. JOHN GRANT, 25 & 34 George lY. Bridge, Edinburgli. lO Joh7i Grants Bookselle7', Histories of Scotland, complete set in 10 vols for 563 3s. This grand national series of the Early Chronicles of Scotland, edited by the most eminent Scottish antiquarian scholars of the present day, is now completed, and as sets are becoming few in number, early application is necessary in order to secure them at the reduced price. The Series comprises : — Scotic7'07iico7i of JoJm de Fo7'dn7i^ from the Contemporary MS. (if not the author’s autograph) at the end of the Fourteenth Century, preserved in the Library of Wolfenbiittel, in the Duchy of Brunswick, collated with other known MSS. of the original chronicle, edited by W. F. Skene, LL.D., Historiographer-Royal, 2 vols (pub 30s), not sold separately. The Met7dcal CJuvTiicle of Ari drew Wy7itou7i, Prior of St Serfs Inch at Lochleven, who died about 1426, the work now printed entire for the first time, from the Royal MS. in the British Museum, collated with other MSS., edited by the late D. Laing, LL.D., 3 vols (pub 50s), vols i and 2 not sold separately. Vol 3 sold separately (pub 21s), los 6d. Lives of Saint Ni7iia7i and St Ke7itige7-n^ compiled in the 1 2th century, and edited from the best MSS. by the late A. P. Forbes, D.C.L., Bishop of Brechin (pub 15s), not sold separately. Life of Samt Coliwiba, founder of Hy, written by Adamnan, ninth Abbot of that Monastery, edited by Wm. Reeves, D.D., M.R.I.A., translated by the late A. P. Forbes, D.C.L., Bishop of Brechin, with Notes arranged by W. F. Skene, LL.D. (pub 15s), not sold separately. The Book of Pluscarden^ being unpublished Continuation of Fordun’s Chronicle by M. Buchanan, Treasurer to the Dauphi- ness of P'rance, edited and translated by Skene, 2 vols (pub 30s), I2s 6d, sold separately. A Critical Essay on the Ancient hihabitants of Scotland^ by Thomas Innes of the Sorbonne, with Memoir of the Author by George Grubb, LL.D., and Appendix of Original Documents by Wm. F. Skene, LL.D., illustrated with charts (pub 21s), los 6d, sold separately In connection with the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, a uniform series of the Historians of Scotland, accompanied by English translations, and illustrated by notes, critical and explanatory, was commenced some years since and has recently been finished. So much has recently been done for the history of Scotland, that the necessity for a more critical edition of the earlier historians has become very apparent. The history of Scotland, prior to the 15th century, must always be based to a great extent upon the work of Fordun ; but his original text has been made the basis of continuations, and has been largely altered and interpolated by his con- tinuators, whose statements are usually quoted as if they belonged to the original work of Fordun. An edition discriminating between the original text of Fordun and the additions and alterations of his continuators, and at the same time trac- ing out the sources of Fordun’s narrative, would obviously be of great importance to the right understanding of Scottish history. The complete set forms ten handsome volumes, demy 8vo, illustrated with facsimiles. Sent Carriage Free to any part of the U7tited Kingdo77i on receipt of Postal Order for the a7nount. JOHCf GrRANT, 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, Edinburgh, ^5 ^ 34 George IV. Bridge., Edindti?'gh. i r Campbell {Colin., Lord Clyde) — Life of., illustrated by Extracts from his Diary and Correspondence, by Lieut. -Gen. Shadwell, C.B., with portrait, maps, and plans, 2 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 36s), 6s 6d. Blackwood & Sons. “In all the annals of ‘ Self-Help,’ there is not to be found a life more truly worthy of study than that of the gallant old soldier. I’he simple, self-denying, friend-helping, brave, patriotic soldier stands proclaimed in every line of General Shadwell’s admirable memoir.” — Blackwood" s Magazine. Be J Fill’s {John, Grand Pensionary of Holland) Life ; or, Tiventy Yeai's of a Parliamentary Republic, by M. A. Pon- talis, translated by S. E. Stephenson, 2 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 36s), 6s 6d. Longman. Uniform with the favourite editions of Motley’s “ Netherlands” and “John of Barnveld,” &c. Johnson {Doctor) : His Fidends and his Critics, by George Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L., crown 8vo, cloth (pub 8s), 2s. Smith, Elder, & Co. “The public now reaps the advantage of Dr Hill’s researches in a most readable volume. Seldom has a pleasanter commentary been written on a literary masterpiece. . . . Throughout the author of this pleasant volume has spared no pains to enable the present generation to realise more completely the sphere in which Johnson talked and taught.” — Saturday Review. Matheivs {Charles James, the Acto7')—Life of, chiefly Autobiographical, with Selections from his Correspondence and Speeches, edited by Charles Dickens, portraits, 2 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 25s), 5s. Macmillan, 1879. “ The book is a charming one from first to last, and Mr Dickens deserves a full measure of credit for the care and discrimination he has exercised in the business of editing.” — Globe. Brazil and Java — The Coffee Culture in America, Asia, and Africa, by C. F. Van Delden Lavine, illustrated .with numerous plates, maps, and diagrams, thick 8vo, cloth (pub 25s), 3s 6d. Allen. A useful work to those interested in the production of coflfee. The author was charged with a special mission to Brazil on behalf of the coffee culture and coffee commerce in the Dutch possessions in India. Smith {Captain John, 1579-1631 ) — The Adventures and Discoveries of, sometime President of Virginia and Admiral of New England, newdy ordered by John Ashton, with illustrations taken by him from original sources, post 8vo, cloth (pub 5s), 2s. Cassell. “ Full of interesting particulars. Captain John Smith’s life was one peculiarly adventurous, bordering almost on the romantic ; and his adventures are related by himself with a terse and rugged brevity that is very charming.’' — Ed. Philip’s Handy Getieral Atlas of America, comprising a series of 23 beautifully executed coloured maps of the United States, Canada, &c., with Index and Statistical Notes by John Bartholomew, F. R.G..S., crown folio, cloth (pub fi is), 5s. Philip & .Son. Embraces .Alphabetical Indices to the most important towns of Canada and Newfoundland, to the counties of Canada, the principal cities and counties of the United States, and the most important towns in Central America, .Mexico, the West Indies, and South America. Sent Carriage Free to any part of the United Kitigdom on receipt of Postal Order for the amount. JOHN OH ANT, 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, Edinburgh. 12 JoJm Grants Bookseller^ Lillie's {/. Slanley) Soulh Africa^ a Sketch-Book of Men and Manners, 2 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 21s), 3s 6d. Sonnenschein. Oliphanl {^Laurence)— The Land of Gilead^ with Ex- cursions in the Lebanon, illustrations and maps, 8vo, cloth (pub 2 is), 8s 6d. Blackwood & Sons. “ A most fascinating book.” — Observer. “ A singularly agreeable narrative of a journey through regions more replete, perhaps, with varied and striking associations than any other in the world. The writing throughout is highly picturesque and effective.” — Athenceum. “A most fascinating volume of travel. . . . His remarks on manners, customs, and superstitions are singularly interesting.” — St James’s Gazette. “ The reader will find in this book a vast amount of most curious and valuable information on the strange races and religions scattered about the country.” — Saturday Review. “An admirable work, both as a reeord of travel and as a contribution to physical science.” — Vanity Fair. Taller son {R. LL.) — The New Golden Age, and Lnfliience of the Precious Metals upon the War, 2 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 3 IS 6d), 6s. Blackwood & .Sons. Contents. VoL I. — The Period of Discovery and Romance of the New Golden Age, 1848-56. — The First Tidings — Scientific Fears, and General Enthusiasm — The Great Emigration — General Effects of the Gold Discoveries upon Commerce — Position of Great Britain, and First Effects on it of the Gold Discoveries — The Golden Age in California and Australia — Life at the Mines. A Retrospect. — History and Influence of the Precious Metals down to the Birth of Modern Europe — The Silver Age in America — Effects of the Silver Age upon Europe — Production of the Precious Metals during the Silver Age (1492-1810) — Effects of the Silver Age upon the Value of Money (1492-1800). VoC II. — Period of Renewed Scarcity. — Renewed Scarcity of the Precious Metals, A.D. 1800-30 — The Period of Scarcity. Part II. — Effects upon Great Britain— The Scarcity lessens— Beginnings of a New Gold Supply — General Distress before the Gold Discoveries. “Cheap” and “Dear” Money — On the Effects of Changes in the Quantity and Value of Money. The N ew Golden Age. — First Getting of the New Gold — First Diffusion of the New Gold — Indus- trial Enterprise in Europe — Vast Expansion of Trade with the East (a.d. 1855- 75) — Total Amount of the New Gold and Silver— Its Influence upon the World at large — Close of the Golden Age, 1876-80 — Total Production of Gold and Silver. Period 1492-1848. — Production of Gold and Silver subsequent to 1848 — Changes in the Value of Money subsequent to a.d. 1492. Period a.d. 1848 and subsequently. Period a.d. 1782-1865. — Illusive Character of the Board of Trade Returns since 1853 — Growth of our National Wealth. Tunis, Pasl and Presenl, with a Narrative of the French Conquest of the Regency, by A. M. Broadley, Correspondent of the Titties during the War in Tunis, with numerous illustrations and maps, 2 vols, post 8vo, cloth (pub 25s), 6s. Blackwood & sons. “ Mr Broadley has had peculiar facilities in collecting materials for his volumes. Possessing a thorough knowledge of Arabic, he has for years acted as confidential adviser to the Bey. . . . The information which he is able to place before the reader is novel and amusing. ... A standard work on Tunis has. been long required. This deficiency has been admirably supplied by the author.’” — Morning Post. Senl Carriage Free lo any part of the Utiiled Kingdom on receipt of Postal Order for the amount. JOM GRANT, 25 & 34 GeQi:g‘e IV. Bridge, Edinburgh, 34 George IV. Bridge., Edinburgh. 13 Burnet {Bishop) — History of the Reformation of the Church of E?ig/am/, with numerous Illustrative Notes and copious Index, 2 vols, royal 8vo, cloth (pub 20s), los. Reeves & Turner, 1880. “ Burnet, in his immortal History of the Reformation, has fixed the Protestant religion in this country as long as any religion remains among us. Burnet is, without doubt, the English Eusebius.” — Dr Apthokpe. Burnefs History of his Own Time., from the Restoration of Charles II. to the Treaty of the Peace of Utrecht, with Historical and Biographical Notes, and a copious Index, com- plete in I thick volume, imperial 8vo, portrait, cloth (pub £\ 5s), 5s 6d. “ I am reading Burnet’s Own Times. Did you ever read that garrulous pleasant history? full of scandal, which all true history is ; no palliatives, but all the stark wickedness that actually gave the }nomcntiim to national actors ; none of that cursed Humeian indifference, so cold, and unnatural, and inhuman,” &c. — Ch.\rles Lamb. Creasy {Sir Edward S.) — History of England^ from the Earliest Times to the End of the Middle Ages, 2 vols (520 pp each), 8vo, cloth (pub 25s), 6s. wSmith, Elder, & Co. Crime — Pike’s {Luke Oiven) History of Ci'ime in England., illustrating the Changes of the Laws in the Progress of Civilisa- tion from the Roman Invasion to the Present Time, Index, 2 very thick vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 36s) los. .Smith, Elder, & Co. Globe {The) Encyclopcedia of Useful Information., edited by John M. Ross, LL.D., with numerous woodcut illustrations, 6 handsome vols, in half-dark persian leather,' gilt edges, or in half calf extra, red edges (pub ^4 i6s), £2 8s. Edinburgh. “A work of reference well suited for popular use, and may fairly claim to be the best of the cheap encyclopaedias.” — Athenceiim. History of the War of Erederick I. against the Communes of Louibardy., by Giovanni B. Testa, translated from the Italian, and dedicated by the Author to the Right Hon. \V. E. Gladstone, (466 pages), 8vo, cloth (pub 15s) 2s. Smith, Elder, & Co. Ereemasonry — Baton’s {Brother C. J.) Ereemasonry and its furisprudence. according to the Ancient Landmarks and Charges, and the Constitution, Laws, and Practices of Lodges and Grand Lodges, 8vo, cloth (pub los 6d), 3s 6d. Reeves & Turner. Ereemasonry., its Symbolism, Religious Nature, and Laiv of Perfection, 8vo, cloth (pub los 6d), 2s 6d. Reeves & Turner, Freemasonty, its Two Great Doctrines, The Exist- ence of God, and A Future State ; also. Its Three Masonic Graces, Faith, Hope, and Charity — in i vol, 8vo, cloth (pub los), 2s 6d. Reeves & Turner. The fact that no such similar works exist, that there is no standard of autho- rity to which reference can be made, notwithstanding the great and growing number of Freemasons and Lodges at home, and of those in the British Colonies and other countries holding Charters from Scotland, or affiliated with Scottish Lodges, warrants the author to hope that they may prove accept.able to the Order. Ali the oldest and best authorities — the ablest writers, home and foreign — on the history and principles of Freemasonry have been carefully con- sulted. Setii Carriage Free to any part of the United Kmgdotn 07 i receipt of Postal Oi'dcr for the amouttt. JOHN GRANT, 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, Edinburgh. 14 Johfi Grants Bookselhi', Arnold's {Cecil) Great Sayings of Shakesl)eare, a Com- prehensive Index to Shakespearian Thought, being a Collection of Allusions, Reflections, Images, Familiar and Descriptive Pas- sages, and Sentiments from the Poems and Plays of Shakespeare, Alphabetically Arranged and Classified under Appropriate Head- ings, one handsome volume of 422 pages, thick 8vo, cloth (pub 7s 6d), 3s. Bickers. Arranged in a manner similar to Southgate’s “ Many * Thoughts of Many Minds.” d’his index differs from all other books in being much more com- prehensive, while care has been taken to follow the most accurate text, and to cope, in the best manner possible, with the difficulties of correct classification. The most Beautiful and Cheapest Birthday Book Published. Birthday Book — Friendship' s Diary for Every Day in the Year, with an appropriate Verse or Sentence selected from the great Writers of all Ages and Countries, each page ornamented by a richly engraved border, illustrated throughout, crown 8vo, cloth, bevelled boards, exquisitely gilt and tooled, gold edges, a perfect gem (pub 3s 6d), is gd. Hodder & Stoughton. 't his book practically has never been published It only requires to be seen to be appreciated. Dobson ( IV. T.) — The Classic Poets, their Lives and their Times, with the Epics Epitomised, 452 pages, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 9s), 2s 6d. Smith, Elder, & Co. Contents. — Homer’s Iliad, The Lay of the Nibelungen, Cid Campeador, Dante’s Divina Commedia, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Camoens’ Lusiad, l asso’s Jerusalem Delivered, Spenser’s Fairy Queen, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Milton’s Paradise Regained. Etiglish Literatut'e : A Study of the Prologue and Epilogue in English Literature, from Shakespeare to Uryden, by G. S. B., crown 8vo, cloth (pub 5s), is 6d. Kegan Paul, 1884. Will no doubt prove useful to writers undertaking more ambitious researches into the wider domains of dramatic or social history. Bibliographer {The), a Magazine of Old-Time Literature, contains Articles on Subjects interesting to all Lovers of Ancient and Modern Literature, complete in 6 vols, 4to, antique boards (pub ;!{i'2 5s), 15s. Elliot Stock. “ It is impossible to open these volumes anywhere without alighting on some amusing anecdote, or some valuable literary or historical note .” — Saturday R eview. Book-Lore, a Magazine devoted to the Study of Biblio- graphy, complete in 6 vols, 4to, antique boards (pub £2 5s), 15s. Elliot Stock. A vast store of interesting and out-of-the-way information, acceptable to the lover of books. Antiquary {The), a Magazine devoted to the Study of the Past, complete set in 15 vols, 410, antique boards (pub I2S 6d), £i 15s. Elliot Stock. A perfect mine of interesting matter, for the use of the student, of the times of our forefathers, and their customs and habits. Se?it Carriage Free to any part of the United Ki7tgdo7n 07i receipt of Postal Order for the a77tou7it. JOHN {}HANT, 25 & 34 (}eorge lY. Bridge, Edinhurgh. ^5 ^ 34 George / V. Bf'idge, Edinburgh. 15 Chaffers’ Marks and Monograms on Europeafi and Oriental Pottery and Porcelain., with Historical Notices of each Manufactory, preceded by an Introductory Essay on the Vasa Fictilia of the Greek, Romano- British, and Mediceval Eras, 7th edition, revised and considerably augmented, with upwards of 3000 potters’ marks and illustratious, royal 8vo, cloth extra, gilt top, £\ 15s. London. Civil Costume of England, from the Cotiquest to the Present Time, drawn from Tapestries, Monumental Effigies, Illuminated MSS., by Charles Martin, Portraits, &c., 61 full-page plates, royal 8vo, cloth (pub los 6d), 3s 6d. Bohn. In addition there are inserted at the end of the volume 25 plates illustrating Greek costume by T. Hope. Dyer {Thomas H., LL.D.) — hnitative Art, its Prhiciples and Progress, with Preliminary Remarks on Beauty, Sublimity, and Taste, 8vo, cloth (pub 14s), 2s. Bell & Sons, 1882. Great Diamonds of the World, their History and Romance, Collected from Official, Private, and other Sources, by Etlwin W. .Streeter, edited and annotated by Joseph Hatton and A. H. Keane, 8vo, cloth (pub los 6d), 2s 6d. Bell & Sons. Hamilton’s ( Lady, the Mistress of Lord Nelson ) Attitudes, illustrating in 25 full-page plates the great Heroes and Heroines of Antiquity in their proper Costume, forming a useful study for drawing from correct and chaste models of Grecian and Roman Sculpture, 4to, cloth (pub fi is), 3s 6d, Jeivitt iyLleivellyn, F.S.A.) — Half-Hours atnong so?ne English Antiquities, illustrated with 320 wood engravings, crown 8vo, cloth gilt (pub (5s), 2s. Allen & Co, Contents : — Cromlechs. Implements of Flint and Stone, Bronze Implements among the Celts, Roman Roads, Temples Altars, .Sepulchral Inscriptions, An- cient Pottery, .A-rms and Armour, Silabs and Brasses, Coins, Church Bells, Glass, Encaustic Tiles, Tapestry, Personal Ornaments, &c. &c. King {Rev. C. W.) — Aatural History of Gems atid Decorative Stones, fine paper edition, post 8vo, cloth (pub los 6d), 4s. Bell & Sons. ‘‘ Contains so much information and of so varied a nature, as to make the work ... by far the best treatise on this branch of mineralogj' we possess in this or any other language.” — Atheiieeum. Leech’s ifohn) Children of the ALobility, Drawn from Nature, a Series of Humorous Sketches of our Young Plebeians, including portrait of Leech, with Letter on the Author’s Genius by John Ruskin, 4to. cloth, 1841 (pub 7s 6d), 3s 6d. Repro- duced 1875, Lentley & .Son. Mo rein (G.) — Ltaliati Masters in German Galleries, translated from the German by L. M. Richter, post 8vo, cloth (pub 8s 6d), 2s. Bell & Sons. “ .Signor .\Iorelli has created nothing less than a revolution in art-.scholarship, and both by precept and e.vample has given a remarkable impulse to s ^und knowledge and independent opinion.’ — Academy. Sent Carriage Free to a7iy part of the U7iited Ki7igdo77i 07 i receipt of Postal Order for the a77iou7it. JOO (jRA^^T, 25 & 34 G-eorge IV. Bridge, Edinburgh. i6 Joh7i Grants Bookselle7\ Exquisitely beautiful Works by Sir J. Noel Pato 7 i at a remarkably lotv price. PatoTi^s {Noel) Co 77 ipositio 7 is fro 77 i Shakespeare^ s Te 77 ipesty a Scries of Fifteen Large Outline Engravings illustrating the Great Drama of our National Poet, with descriptive letterpress, oblong folio, cloth (pub 2is), 3s. Chapman & Hall. Uniform zvitJi the above. PatoTi’s {Noel) Co 7 fipositions ft'otji Shellefs Pro 77 ietheus Unbotiml a Series of Twelve Large Outline Engravings, oblong folio, cloth (pub 2is), 3s. Chapman & Hall. S 77 iith {J. Moyr) — Aticietit Gtxek Fettiale Costu 77 ie, illus- trated by 1 12 fine outline engravings and numerous smaller illustrations, with Explanatory Letterpress, and Descriptive Passages from the Works of Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Hischy- lus, Euripides, and other Greek Authors, printed in brown, crown 8vo, cloth elegant, red edges (pub 7s 6d), 3s. Sampson Low. Bacoti {Ft'ancis, Lord ) — IVorks, both English and Latin, with an Introductory Essay, Biographical and Critical, and copious Indices, steel portrait, 2 vols, royal 8vo, cloth (originally pub 2S,) I2S. 1879. “ All his works are, for expression as well as thought, the glory of our nation, and of all later ages.” — Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire. “Lord Bacon was more and more known, and his books more and more delighted in ; so that those men who had more than ordinary knowledge in human affairs, esteemed him one of the most capable spirits of that age.” BurTi {R. Scott) — -The Practical Directory for the I771- provement of Lauded Property^ Rural and Suburban, and the Economic Cultivation of its Farms (the most valuable work on the subject), plates and woodcuts, 2 vols, 4to, cloth (pub 3s), 15s. Paterson. Martitieau {Hat’riet) — The History of British Rule iti India, foolscap 8vo (356 pages), cloth (pub 2s 6d), pd. Smith, Elder, & Co. A concise sketch, which will give the ordinary reader a general notion of what our Indian empire is, how we came by it, and what has gone forward in it since it first became connected with England. The book will be found to state the broad facts of Anglo-Indian history in a clear and enlightening manner; and it cannot fail to give valuable information to those readers who have neither time nor inclination to study the larger works on the subject. Selkirk {J. Browti) — Ethics and ^Esthetics of Moderti Poetry, crown 8vo, cloth gilt (pub 7s), 2s. Smith, Elder, & Co. Sketches frotn Shady Places., being Sketches from the Criminal and Lower Classes, by Thor Fredur, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 6s), IS. Smith, Elder, & Co. “ Descriptions of the criminal and semi-criminal (if such a word may be coined) classes, which are full of power, sometimes of a disagreeable kind.” — Athcnai7C)n. Southeys {Robert) Co7)uno7iplace Book., the Four Series complete, edited by his .Son-in-Law, I. W. Warter, 4 thick vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 42s), 14s. Longmans. Warretfs {Sattiuel) Teti Thousand a Year., early edition, with Notes, 3 vols, i2mo, cloth (pub i8s), 4s 6d. Blackwood, 1853. Se7it Carriage Free to a7iy part of the U7iited Ki7igdo77t 07i receipt of Postal Order for the a7nou7it. JOHN OHANT, 25 & 34 Oeorge lY. Bridg'e, Edinburgh. 25 6^ George IV. Bridge., Edinburgh. 17 Jo7ies' {Pi'ofessor T. Ryvier) General Outline of the Or- ganization of the Ajiimal Kingdom, and Manual of Comparative Anatomy, illustrated with 571 engravings, thick 8vo, half roan, gilt top (pub £\ IIS 6d), 6s. Van Voorst. Jotted {Professor T. Rynier) Natural History of Animals, Lectures delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 209 illustrations, 2 vols, post 8vo, cloth (pub 24s), 3s 6d. Van Voorst. Hunters {Dr John) Essays on Natural History, Ana- tomy, Physiology, Psychology , and Geology, to which are added Lectures on the Hunterian Collection of Fossil Remains, edited by Professor Owen, portrait, 2 vols, 8vo, cloth (pub 32s), 5s. Van Voorst. Forestry and Forest Products — Prize Essays of the Edinburgh International Forestry Exhibition, 1884, edited by John Rattray, M.A. , and Hugh Robert Mill, illustrated with 10 plates and 21 woodcuts, 8vo, cloth (pub i6s), 5s. David Douglas. Comprises : — Brace’s Formation and Management of Forest Tree Nurseries. The same, by Thomas Berwick. Stalker’s Formation and Management of Plantations on different Sites, Altitudes, and Exposures. The same, by R. E. Hodson. Milne’s Afforesting of Waste Land in Aberdeenshire by Means of the Planting Iron. Mac Lean’s Culture of Trees on the Margin of Streams and Lochs in Scotland, with a View to the Preservation of the Banks and the Conservation of Fish. Cannon’s Economical Pine Planting, with Remarks on Pine Nurseries and on Insects and Fungi destructive to Pines. Alexander on the Various Methods of Producing and Harvesting Cinchona Bark. Robertson on the Vegetation of Western Australia. Brace’s Formation and iManagement of Eucalypus Plantations. Carrick’s Present and Prospective Sources of the Timber Supplies of Great Britain. Oldrieve on the best Method of Maintaining the Supply of Teak, with Remarks on its Price, Size, and Quality ; and on the Best Substitutes for Building Purposes. On the same, by J. C. Kemp. .Alexander’s Notes on the Ravages of Tree and Timber Destroying Insects. Webster’s Manufacture and Uses of Charcoal. Boulger’s Bye-Products, Utilisation of Coppice and of Branches and other Fragments of Forest Produce, with the View of Diminishing Waste. Stonhill’s Paper Pulp from Wood, Straw, and other Fibres in the Past and Present. Green’s Production of Wood Pulp. T. Anderson Reid’s Preparation of Wood Pulp by the Soda Process. Cross and Bevan’s Report on Wood Pulp Processes. Yoshida’s Lacquer {Urushi), Description, Cultivation, and Treatment of the Tree, the Chemistry- of its Juice, and its Industrial Applications. Sent Carriage Free to any part of the United Kingdom on receipt of Postal Order for the amount. JOHN (jHANT, 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, Edinburgh. John G7'ant, Bookseller^ i8 Johnston’s (W. & A. K.) Instructive Series Scientific Indiist7'ies Explamed, showing how some of the important Articles of Commerce are made, by A.lexander Watt, F. R. S.S.A. , First Series, containing Articles on Aniline Colours, Pigments, Soap- making. Candle-making, Paper-making, Gun- powder, Glass, Alcohol, Beer, Acids, Alkalies, Phosphorus, Bleaching Powder, Inks, Vinegar-making, Acetic Acid, Fireworks, Coloured P'ires, Gun-cotton, Distillation, &c. &c., crown 8vo, cloth (pub 2s 6d), IS. “ Mr Watt discourses of aniline pigments and dyes ; of candles and paper ; of gunpowder and glass ; of inks and vinegar ; of fireworks and gun-cotton ; . . . excursions over the whole field of applied science ; . . one of the best is that on ‘ gilding watch-movements. A systematic arrangement of the subjects has been purposely avoided, in order that the work may be regarded as a means of intellectual recreation.” — Acader/iy. Scientific Industries Explai7ied, Second Series, containing Articles on Electric Light, Gases, Cheese, Preservation of Food, Borax, Scientific Agriculture, Oils, Isinglass, Tanning, Nickel- plating, Cements and Glues, Tartaric Acid, Stained Glass, Arti- ficial Manures, Vulcanised India-rubber, Ozone, Galvanic Batteries, Magnesia, The Telephone, Electrotyping, &c. &c., with illustra- tions, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 2s 6d), is. Meclia7iical I7idust7'ies Explained^ showing how many useful Arts are practised, with illustrations, by Alexander Watt, containing articles on Carving Irish Bog-oak, Etching, Galvanised Iron, Cutlery, Goldbeating, Bookbinding, Lithography, Jewellery, Crayons, Balloons, Needles, Lapidary, Ironfounding, Pottery and Porcelain, Typefounding, Bread-making, Bronze-casting, Tile- making, Ormolu, Papier-mache, &c. &c., crown 8vo, cloth (pub 2s 6d), IS. “It would form a useful present for any boy with mechanical tastes.” — Engineer. Scie7ice in a Nut-Shell., in which rational Amusement is blended with Instruction, with numerous illustrations, by Alex- ander Watt, crown 8vo, illustrated boards (pub is), 6d. Contents Absorption of Carbonic Acid by Plants. — The Air-Pump. — Amalgams. — To Produce Artificial Ices. — Attraction : Capillary Attraction. — Carbon. — Carmine.— How to Make Charcoal. — To Prepare Chlorine. — Contrac- tion of Water — Crystallisation. — Distillation. — Effect of Carbonic Acid on Animal Life. — Electricity. — Evaporation, — Expansion by Heat, &c.— Heat. — Hydrogen Gas. — Light. — To Prepare Oxygen. — Photographic Printing. — How to Make a Fountain. — Refractive Power of Liquids. — Refrigeration. — Repulsion. — Solar Spectrum. — Specific Gravity Explained. — Structure of Crystals — Sympathetic Ink, &c. &c. Se7it Carriage Free to a7iy part of the U7iited Kmgdoni on receipt of Postal Order for the a77iou7tt. JOM GrRANT, 25 & 34 George IV. Bridge, Edinhurgli. ^5 ^ 34 George IV. Bridge., Edinburgh. 19 Ste2L>a?Is (.Di(gald) Collected Works., best edition, edited by Sir William Hamilton, with numerous Notes and Emendations, II handsome vols, Svo, cloth (pub 12s), the few remaining sets for £2. los. T. & T. Clark. Ele limits of the Philosophy of the Huiiian Mind., 3 vols, Svo, cloth (pub £1 i6s), 8s 6d. Philosophy of the Active Poicers, 2 vols, Svo, cloth (pub £i 4s), 6s 6d. Principles of Political Economy, 2 vols, Svo, cloth (pub 4S), 5s. “ As the names of Thomas Reid, of Dugald Stewart, and of Sir William Hamil- ton will be associated hereafter in the history of Philosophy in Scotland, as closely as those of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno in the School of Elea, it is a singular fortune that Sir William Hamilton should be the collector and editor of the works of his predecessors. . . . The chair which he filled for many years, not otherwise undistinguished, he rendered illustrious.” — A tlienceiini. Dante — The Divina Coniinedia, translated into English Verse by James Ford, A.M., medallion frontispiece, 430 pages, crown Svo, cloth, bevelled boards (pub 12s), 2s 6d. Smith, Elder, & Co. “ Mr Ford has succeeded better than might have been expected ; his rhymes are good, and his translation deserves praise for its accuracy and fidelity. We cannot refrain from acknowledging the many good qualities of Mr Ford’s trans- lation, and his labour of love will not have been in vain, if he is able to induce those who enjoy true poetry to study once more the masterpiece of that literature from whence the great founders of English poetrj'^ drew so much of their sweet- ness and power.” — Athenceuin. Pollok’s {Robert) The Course of Time, a Poem, beauti- fully printed edition, with portrait and numerous illustrations, i2mo, 6d. Blackwood & Sons. “ ‘The Course of Time’ is a very extraordinary poem, vast in its conception, vast in its plan, vast in its materials, and vast, if very far from perfect, in its achievement.” — D. M. Moir. Monthly Interpreter, a New Expository Magazine, edited by the Rev. Joseph S. Exell, M.A., joint-editor of the “Pulpit Commentary,” &c., complete from the commencement to its close, 4 vols, Svo, cloth (pub £\ los), los 6d. T. & T. Clark. Vols. I, 3, 4, separately, 2s each. The aim of The Monthly Interpreter is to meet in some adequate way the wants of the present-day student of the Bible, by furnishing him in a convenient and accessible form with what is being said and done by the ablest British, Ameri- can, and foreign theologians, thinkers, and Biblical critics, in matters Biblical, theological, scientific, philosophical, and social. Parked s {Dr Joseph, of the City Temple) Weaver Stephen ; or. The Odds and Evens of English Religion, Svo, cloth (pub 7s 6d), 3s 6d. Sonnenschein. “ Dr Parker is no repeater of old remarks, nor is he a superfluous commentator His track is his own, and the jew'els which he lets fall in his progress are from his own casks ; this will give a permanent value to his works, when the produc- tions of copyists will be forgotten.” — C. H. Spurgeon. , Skene {William E, LL.D., Historiographer- Royal for Scotland) — The Gospel History for the Young, being Lessons on the Life of Christ, adapted for use in Families and in Sunday Schools, 3 maps, 3 vols, crown Svo, cloth (pub 15s), 6s. Douglas. “ In a spirit altogether unsectarian provides for the young a simple, interest- ing, and thoroughly charming history of our Ford.” — Literary World. “ The ‘ Gospel History for the Young ’ is one of the most valuable books o the kind.”- The Churchtnan. 20 John Gratify Bookseller^ Edinburgh. By the Atithoress of “ The Land o' the Leal." ' £, S. Nairne’s (Baroness) Life and Songs, with a Memoir, and Poems of Caroline Oliphant the Younger, edited by Dr Charles Rogers, portrait and other illustrations, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 5s) Grithn 0 2 “ This publication is a good service to the memory of an excellent and gifted lady, and to all lovers of Scottish —Scotsman. Ossian’s Poems, translated by Macpherson, 241110, best red cloth, gilt (pub 2 s 6d) O I A dainty pocket edition. Perthshire— Woods, Forests, and Estates of Perthshire, with Sketches of the Principal Families of the County, by Thomas Hunter, Editor of the Perthshire Consti- tutional and Journal, illustrated with go wood engravings, crown 8vo (564 pp), cloth (pub 12s 6d) Perth 0 4 “Altogether a choice and most valuable addition to the County Histories of Scotland .” — Glatgow Daily Mail. Duncan’ (John, Scotch Weayer and Botanist) — Life of, with Sketches of his Friends and Notices of the Times, by Wni, Jolly, F.R.S.E., H.M. Inspectpr of Schools, etched portrait, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 9s) Kegan Paul 0 3 “We must refer the reader to the book itself for the many quaint traits of character, and the minute personal descriptions, which, taken together, seem to give a life-like presentation of this humble philosopher. . . The many inci- dental notices which the work contains of the weaver caste, the workman’s esprit lie corps, and his wanderings about the country, either in the performance of his work or, when that was slack, taking a hand at the harvest, form an interest- ing chapter of social history. The completeness of the work is considerably enhanced by detailed descriptions of the district he lived in, and of his numerous friends and acquaintance.” — Athenceum. Scots (Ancient)— An Examination of the An- cient History of Ireland and Iceland, in so far as it concerns the Origin of the Scots ; Ireland not the Hibernia of the Ancients ; Interpolations in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and other Ancient Annals affecting the Early History of Scotland and Ireland — the three Essays in one volume, crown 8vo, cloth (pub 4s) Edinburgh, 1883 o I The first oDhe above treatises is mainly taken up with an investigation of the early History* of Ireland and Iceland, in order to ascertain which has the better claim to be considered the original country of the ^Scots. In the second and third an attempt is made to show that Iceland was the ancient Hibernia, and the country from which the Scots came to Scotland ; and further, contain a review of the evidence furnished by the more genuine of the early British Annals against the idea that Ireland was the ancient Scotia. Traditional Ballad Airs, chiefly of the North- Eastern Districts of Scotland, from Copies gathered in the Counties of Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray, by Dean Christie, and William Christie, Monquhitter, with the Words for Singing and the Music arranged for the Pianoforte and Harmonium, illustrated with Notes, giving an Account of both Words and Music, their Origin, &c., 2 handsome vols, 4to, half citron morocco, gilt top, originally published at ;^4 4s by Edmonston & Douglas, reduced to I lO D. 6 6 6 6 o o Sent Carriage Free to any part of the United Kingdom on receipt of Postal Order for the amount. jora (IRANT, 25 & 34 (Jeorge IV. Bridge, Edinburgh.