Contemporary Socialism

of the people is far from satisfactory and is not free from peril, and that industrial development, on the lines on which it has hitherto been run

qual as is the distribution of wealth already in this country, the tendency of industrial progress-on the supposition that the present separation between industrial classes is maintained-is towards an inequality greater still. The rich will be growing richer; and the poor, at least relatively, poorer. It seems to me, apart altogether from the question of the labourer's interest, that these are not conditions which furnish a solid basis for a progressive social state; but having regard to that interest, I think the considerations adduced show that the first and indispensable step towards any serious amendment of the labourer's lot is that he should be, in one way or other, lifted out of the groove in which he at present works, and placed in a position compatible with his becoming a sharer in equal proportion with others in the general advantages arising from industrial progress." ("Leading Principles," p. 340.) He thinks it beyond question that the condition of the labouring population is not so linked to the progress of industrial improvements that we may count on it rising pari passu with that progress; because, in the first place, the labourer can only benefit from industrial inventions which cheapen commodities that enter into his expenditure, and the bulk of his expenditure is on agricultural products, which are prevented from being cheapened by the increase of population always increasing the demand for them; and, second, the labourer is practically more and more divorced from the control of capital, and reduced to the position of a recipient of wages, and there is no tendency in wages to grow pari passu with the growth of wealth, because the demand for labour, on which, in the last analysis, the rate of wages depends, is always in an increasing degree supplied by inventions which dispense with labour. He is thus debar

ey allege, are consequences of the capitalistic management of industry and unregulated competition:-1st, that it tends to reduce wages to the minimum required to give the labourer his daily bread, and that it tends to prevent them from rising above that minimum; 2nd, that it has subjected the labourer's life to innumerable vicissitudes, made trade insecure, mutable and oscillatory, and created relative over-population; and, 3rd, that it enables

co-operation, which combines some of the advantages of the small capital with some of the advantages of the large, though it lacks one of the chief advantages of both, the energetic, uncontrolled initiative of the individual capitalist. But at present, at any rate, it is premature to expect this, and as things stand, many of the old pathways that linked class with class are now closed without being replaced by modern substitutes, and working men are more purely and permanently wage-labourers than they used to be. But while the wage-labourer has perhaps less chance than before of becoming anything else, it is a mistake to suppose, as is sometimes done, that he is worse off, or even, as is perhaps invariably imagined, that he has a less share in the wealth of the country than he had when the wealth of the country was less. On the contrary, the position of the wage-labourer is really better than it has been for three hundred years. If we turn to the period of the English Revolution, we find that the income which the labourer and his family together were able to earn was habitually insufficient to maintain them in the way they were accustomed to live. Sir M. Hale, in his "Discourse Touching the Poor," published in 1683, says the family of a working man, consisting of husband, wife, and four children, could not be supported in meat, drink, clothing, and house-rent on less than 10s. a week, and that he might possibly be able to make that amount, if he got constant employment, and if two of his children, as well as their mother, could earn something by their labour too. Gregory King classifies the whole labouring population of the country in his time, except a few thousand skilled artisans, among the classes who decrease the wealth of the country, because, not earning enough to keep them, they had to obtain occasional allowances from public funds. We do well to grieve over the pauperism that exists now in England. A few years ago, one person in every twenty received parochial support, and one in thirty does so yet. These figures, of course,

es of society in England in 1688, founded partly on the poll-books, hearth-books, and other official statistical records, and partly on personal observation and inquiry in the several towns and counties of England; and Dr. C. Davenant, who says he had carefully examined King's statistics himself, checking them by calculations of his own and by the schemes of other persons, pronounces them to be "very accurate and more perhaps to be relied on than anything that has been ever done of a like kind." Now, a comparison of King's figures with the estimate of the distribution of the national income made by Mr. Dudley Baxter from the returns of 1867, will afford some sort of idea-though of course only approximately, and perhaps not very closely so-of the changes that have actually occurred. King takes the family income as the unit of his calculations. Baxter, on the other hand, specifies all bread-winners separately-men, women, and children; but to furnish a basis of comparison, let us take the men as representing a family each, and if so, that would give us 4,006,260 working-class families in the country in 1867. This is certainly a high estimate of their number, because in 1871 there were only five million of families in England; and according to the calculations of Professor Leone Levi, the working class comprises no more than two-thirds of the popula

l prosperity, the condition of the poorer classes were growing ever worse and could not possibly, under existing industrial conditions, grow any better; to prevent us from prematurely condemning a system of society, whose possibilities for answering the legitimate aspirations of the working class are so far from being exhausted,

of wages to its old level. And conversely, if the price of labour rose above that limit, the marriage rate among the labouring class would tend to rise and the rate of mortality to fall, till the numbers of the working population increased to such an extent as to bring it down again. But the rate of marriage depended on the will and consent of the labouring class, and their consent was supposed to be given or withheld according as they themselves considered the current wages sufficient or insufficient to support a family upon. The amount of the labourer's "necessary" subsistence was never thought to be a hard and fast limit inflexibly fixed by physical conditions. It was not a bare living; it was the living which had become customary or was considered necessary by the labourer. Its amount might be permanently raised, if in consequence of a durable rise of wages a higher standard of comfort came to be habitual and to be counted essential, and the addition so made to it would then become as real an element of natural or necessary wages in the economic sense as the rest. Its amount might also permanently fall, if the labourers ceased to think it necessary and contentedly accommodated their habits to the reduced standard, and there might thus ensue a permanent degradat

ause capital was capable of increasing much more rapidly than population. The price of labour, he taught, would in that case be always settled by the demand for it which was created by the accumulation of capital, and the sole condition of the accumulation of capital was the productive power of labour. The rate of wages in a

nity, or, in other words, on the average productivity of labour. It is manifest that this would be so in a primitive condition of society in which industry was as yet conducted without the intervention of a special employing class, for then the wages of labour would consist of its product, and be, in fact, as Smith says, only another name for it. It would depend, however, not exclusively on the individual labourer's own efficiency, but also on the fertility of the soil and the general efficiency of the rest of the labouring community. While according to his own efficiency he would poss

nt necessary to support life, and the latter by the amount necessary to secure an adequate profit. Now the space between these two limits will be always great or small in proportion to the general productivity of labour in the community. The general productivity of labour acts upon the rate of wages in two ways, immediately and mediately. Immediately, because, as is manifest, efficient labour is

emselves helped his powers of labour, through affording him a more liberal diet, and in that case the same question is raised, How did he come to get these better wages? It was not on account of an increase in his own production, for that was the effect, not the cause; it was on account of the general increase in the productivity of all labour round about him. The great improvement in industrial proce

ich the community offers at the time. Some part of a nation's savings will always have originated in a desire to provide security for the future, but, as this part is less subject to fluctuation, it exercises less influence in determining the extent of the whole than the more variable part, which is only saved when there is sufficient hope of gain from investing it. There may be said to be a natural amount of capital in a country, in at least as true a sense as there is a natural price of labour, or a natural price of commodities. Capital has its bounds in the general industrial conditions and stature of the community, but it moves and answers these conditions with much more elasticity than the wage-fund theory used to acknowledge. It is, as Hermann said, a mere medium of conveyance between consumer and consumer, and has its size decreed for it by the quantities it has to convey. The general demand for commodities is a demand for capital. It creates the expectation of profit which capital is diverted from expenditure to gratify, and since it is itself in another aspect the general supply of commodities, it furnishes the possibilities for meeting the demand for capital which it cr

hen due regard is had for the influence of special historical circumstances, it will be found that the rate of wages observes very similar proportions in these several countries. In America it is higher than the relative productivity of the country would explain, because a new country with boundless natural resources creates a permanently exceptional demand for labour; because the facilities with which land can be acquired and wrought, even by men without previous agricultural training, affords a ready correction to temporary redundancies of labour; and because the labour itself is more mobile, versatile, and energetic in a nation largely composed of immigrants. Other modifying influences also interfere to preclude the possibility of

, how much the employer can afford to give. They have been able, in trades not subject to foreign competition, to effect a permanent rise in wages at the expense of prices, and they can probably, in all trades, succeed in keeping the rate of wages well up to its superior limit, viz., to the point at which, while the skilful employers might still afford to give more, the unskilful could not do so without ceasing to conduct a profitable business and being driven out of the field altogether. For unskilful management tells as ill on wages as inefficient labour. On the other hand, high wages, like many other difficult conditions, undoubtedly tend to develop skilful management. The employer is put on his mettle, and all his administrative resource is called into action and keen play. They who, like socialists, inveigh against this modern despot, ought to reflect how much less possible it would have be

ncy. At present neither employers nor labourers seem fully alive to the resources which this field is capable of yielding, if it were wisely and fairly cultivated. Both classes are often so bent on immediate advantage that they lose sight of their real and enduring interest. It is doubtful whether employers are more slow to see how much inadequate remuneration and uncomfortable circumstances impair efficiency and retard production, or labourers to perceive how much limiting the general rate of production tends to reduce the general rate of wages. In labour requiring mainly physical strength, contractors sufficiently appreciate the fact that their navvies must be well fed if they are to stand to their work, and that an extra shilling a day makes a material difference in the output. But in all forms of skilled labour, likewise, analogous conditions prevail. Just as slave-labour is inefficie

inst piecework. Their notion of making work is irrational. They think they can make work by simply not doing it, by spinning it out, by going half speed, under the impression that they are in this way leaving the more over to constitute a demand for their labour to-morrow. And so, in the immediate case in hand and for the particular time, it may sometimes be. But if this practice were to be turned into a law universal among working men, if all labourers were to act upon it everywhere, then the general production of the country would be immediately reduced, and the

perience in his own extensive shipbuilding works at Dumbarton, says that "a workman under piecework generally increases his output in the long run-partly by working hard, but principally by exercising more intelligence and arranging his work better-by about 75 per cent., while the total amount of his wages increases by about 50 per cent., making a distinct saving in the wages portion of the cost of a given article of about 14 per cent." ("The Worth of Wages," p. 19.)[5] Similar testimony is given by Goltz, Boehmert, and a writer in Engels' Zeitschrift for 1868, as to the effect of the introduction of piecework into continental industries, and Roscher ascribes much of the industrial superiority of England to the prevalence of piecework here. According to Mr. Howell, more than seventy per cent. of the work of this country is done at present by the piece, and the Trades' Union Commission found it the accepted rule in the majority of the industries that came under their investigation; in fact, in all except engineering, ironfounding, and some of the building trades. The engineers entertain a strong objection to it, and their union has sometimes expelled members who have persisted in taking it. But the system works smoothly enough when an established price-list has become a recog

rease the rate of production to the extent mentioned by Mr. Denny, the day of labour may be shortened with advantage, and it can apparently do so in the very trades that most strongly object to it. A fact mentioned by Mr. Nasmyth, in his remarkable evidence before the Trades Union Commission, opens a striking view of the possibilities of increasing production through developing the personal efficiency of the labouring class, and of doing so without requiring any severe strain. "When I have been watching men in my own work," he says, "I have noticed that at least two-thirds of their time, even in the case of the most careful workmen, is spent, not in work, but in criticising with the square or straight-edge what they have been working, so as to say whether it is right or wrong." And he adds-"I have observed that wherever you meet with a dexterous workman, you will find that he is a man that need not apply in one case in ten to his straight-edge or square." And why are not all dexterous, or, at least, why are they not much more dexterous than they now are? Mr. Nasmyth's answer is, because the faculty of comparison by the eye is undeveloped in them, and he contends that this faculty is capable of being educated in every one to a very much higher degree than exists at present, and that its d

getfulness of their misery at the whisky shop, and the men appeared to be sunk into a state of hopeless degradation. From the moment, however, that work was offered to them which was constant in its nature and certain in its duration, and on which their weekly earnings would be sufficient to provide for their comfortable support, men who had been idle and dissolute were converted into sober, hardworking labourers, and proved themselves kind and careful husbands and fathers; and it is stated as a fact that, notwithstanding the distribution of several hundred pounds weekly in wages, the whole of which, would be considered as so much additional money placed in their hands, the consumption of whisky was absolutely and permanently diminished in the district. During the comparatively short period in which the construction of this canal was in progress, some of the most careful labourers-men who most probably before then never knew what it was to possess five shillings at any one time-saved sufficient money to enable them to emigrate to Canada, where they are now labouring in independence for the improvement of their own land" (p. 451). It may be difficult to extirpate drunkenness in our climate even with good wages, but it is certainly impossible with bad, for bad wages mean insufficient nourishment, comfortless house accommodation, and a want of that elasticity after work which enables men to find pleasure in any other form of enjoyment. As with better wages, so with shorter hours. The leisure gained may be misused, especially at first; but it is nevertheless a necessary lever for the social amelioration of the labouring class, and it will more and more serve this purpose as it becomes one of their permanent acquisitions. There can be no question that long hours and hard work are powerful predisposing causes to drunkenness. Studnitz mentions that several manufacturers in America had informed him that they had invariably remarked, that with solitary exceptions here and there, the men who wrought for the longest number of hours were most prone to d

seers of factories in that State a return of the different amounts of wages paid and the degree of education of those who received them. Most of the work was done by the piece, and it was found that the wages earned rose in exact ratio with the degree of education, from the foreigners at the bottom who made their mark as the signature of their weekly receipts to the girls at the top who did school in winter and worked in factories in summer. In some branches of industry many new improvements remain unused because the workpeople are too ignorant to work them properly. Moreover, for the supreme quality of resourcefulness, education is like hands and feet, and if we may judge from the number of useful labour-saving inventions which working men give us even now, we cannot set limits to the number they will give when the whole labouring class will have got the use of their mind by an adequate measure of general education, and when, as we may hope, they will have got leisure to use it in throu

the number of apprentices, and prescribe a certain standard of efficiency, loosely ascertained, as a condition of membership. There can be no manner of objection to the latter measure, nor does the former, though it is manifestly liable to abuse and is sometimes vexatious in its operation, seem to be practically worked so as to diminish the labour in any particular industry beneath the due requirements of trade, or to create an unhealthy monopoly. Then, though the trade unionists gather their gains by keeping off the competition of others, it cannot be said that these others are necessarily in any w

unemployed. In regard to technical transformation, the effects of machinery on the working class are now tolerably well understood. Individuals suffer in the first instance, but the class, as a whole, is eventually a great gainer. Machinery has always been the means of employing far more hands than it superseded, when it did supersede any (for it has by no means invariably done so). There is no way of "making work" like producing wealth. The increased production due to machinery cheapens the particular commodities produced by it,

Women. Chil

167,000 10

329,000 109

543,000 201

rial transformation far outweighs the evil, yet evil does accrue from it, and evil of the kind alleged, the tendency to develop local or temporary redundancies of labour. But then that is an evil with which we have never yet tried to cope, and it may probably be dealt with as effectively on the present system as on any other. Socialism would stop it by stopping the progress which it happens to accompany, and would therefore envelop society in much more serious distress than it sought to remove. In Marx's remarkable survey of English industrial history almost every conquest of modern civilization is viewed with regret; but it is manifestly idle to think of forcing society back now to a state in

for this reason, that they are the result, partly of better acquaintance with the principles of sound commercial and financial success, and partly of the equalizing effect of international ramifications of trade, and that these are causes from which even greater things may be expected in the future, because they are themselves progressive. There is no social system that can absolutely abolish vicissitudes, because many of them depend on causes over which man has no possible control, such as the harvests of the world, and others on causes over which no single society of men has any control, such as wars; and, besides, it is possible to do a great deal more under the existing system than is at present do

te which it is almost impossible for them to exaggerate, and that is the mischief accruing to the whole community-and, as is usual with all general evils, to the working class more than any other-from the prevalence of unsound trading and inflated speculation. Confidence is the very quick of modern trade. The least vibration of distrust paralyzes some of its movements and depresses its circulation. Enterprise in opening new investments is indeed more and more indispensable to the vitality of modern industry, but the mischiefs of misdirected enterprise are as great as the benefits of well-directed. Illegitimate speculation is very difficult to deal with. It can never be reached by a public opinion which worships success and bows to wealth with questionless devotion. Nor is it practicable for the State to put it down by direct measures. But the State may perhaps mitigate it somewhat by helping to procure a good system of commercial statistics, for unsound speculation thrives in ignorance, and may be to some extent prevented by better knowledge. The socialist demand for commercial statistics is therefore to be approved. They would benefit everybody but the dishonest dealer. They would not only be a corrective against unsound speculation, but they would tend to smooth the conflicts between capital and labour about the rate of wages, and the working class in America press the demand on the ground of their exp

use the railway chairman may have undergone no special training that thousands of persons with much poorer incomes have not also undergone, and the education of the judge cost no more than the education of other barristers who do not earn a twentieth part of his salary. The explanation of differences of remuneration like these is not to be found in different quantities of labour, but in different qualities of labour. One man's work is higher, rarer, more excellent, possesses, in short, more social utility than another's, and for that reason is more valuable, as value is at present constituted. It is thus manifest that the theory which declares value to be nothing but quantity of labour, nothing but time of labour, is inconsistent with some of the most obvious and important phenomena of the value of different kinds of labour. Many forms of labour are much more remunerative than others, nay, much more remunerative than many applications of capital, and the difference of remuneration is in no way whatever connected with the quantity of labour or the time of labour undergone in earning it. Socialists may perhaps answer that this ought not to be so; that if things were as they should be, the railway chairman, the station-master, the inspector, the guard, and the porter would be paid by the same simple standard of the duration of their labour in the service of the line-a standard which would probably reverse the present gradation of their respective sa

cient portion to constitute the raw materials and instruments of future production; but, as a matter of fact, the State does not do so. It leaves the service to be rendered spontaneously by private persons out of their private means. The service rendered by these persons to production is as indispensable as the service rendered by the labourers, and the justice of interest stands on exactly the same ground as the justice of wages. The labourer cannot produce by labour alone, without materials and implements, any more than the capitalist can produce by materials

the capitalist there are, we may feel sure, no useless clerks or overseers, for he has the strongest personal interest in working his business as economically as possible. But with the socialist mandarinate, the interest lies the other way, and the tendency of the head officials would be to multiply their subordinates and assistants, so that by abolishing the capitalist, society would not by any means have got rid of middlemen and parasites. There would be as much waste of labour as before. Lord Brassey is certainly right in attributing the industrial superiority of Great Britain as much to the administrative skill and economy of her employers as to the efficiency of her labourers. Individual capitalists are more enterprising, as well as more economical managers, than boards. Their keenly interested eyes and ears are ever on the watch for opportunities, for improvements, for new openings; and having to consult nothing but their own judgment, they are much quicker in adapting themselves to situations and taking advantage of turns of trade. They will undertake risks that a board would not agree to, and they will have entered the field and established a footing long before a manager can get his directors to sti

as distinguished from interest, are the earnings of management, and the minimum which employers will be content to take is at present largely determined by the entirely wrong principle that their amount ought to bear a direct proportion to the amount of capital invested in the business. In spite of competition, customary standards of this kind are very influential in the adjustment of such matters; they are the usual criteria of what are called fair profits and fair wages; they always carry with them strong persuasives to acquiescence; and then,

unfair in amount, just as rent may be, or wages, or judicial penalties, neither of them is unjust in essence, because they are merely particular forms of remunerating particular services, which are now act

e springs of the first. Some of its adherents do assert that production would be increased and progress accelerated under a socialistic economy, but they offer nothing in support of the assertion, and certainly our past experience of human nature would lead us to expect precisely the opposite result. The incentives and energy of production would be relaxed. I have already spoken of the loss that would probably be sustained in exchanging the interested zeal and keen eye of the responsible capitalist employer for the perfunctory administration of a State officer. A like loss would be suffered from lightening the responsibility of the labourers and lessening their power of acquisition. Under a socialist régime they cannot by any merit acquire more property than they enjoy in daily use, and they cannot by any fault fail to possess that. Now socialist labourers are not supposed, any

uld be common property, and neither be owned nor inherited by individuals. If this theory were to be enforced, it would be fatal to progress. Private property has all along been a great factor in civilization, but the private property that has been so has been much more producers' than consumers'. Consumers' wealth is a limited instrument of enjoyment; producers' is a power of immense capability

necessarily determined by the demands of consumers for the particular commodity the occupation in question sets itself to supply. Freedom of choice is, therefore, limited at present by natural conditions, which cause no murmuring; but these natural conditions would still exist under the socialist régime, and yet they would perforce appear in the guise of legal and artificial restrictions. It would be the choice of the State that would determine who should enter the more desirable occupations, and not the choice of the individuals themselves. The accepted would seem favourites; the rejected would complain of tyranny and wrong. Selection could not be made by competitive examination without treason against the principles of a socialist state, nor by lot without a sacrifice of efficiency. The same difficulties would attend the distribution of the fertile and the poor soils. Even consumption would not escape State inquisition and guidance, for an economy that pretended to do away with commercial vicissitudes must take care that a change of fashion does not extin

rofoundly impressed as they are with the vital need for a better distribution of wealth, they hesitate to sacrifice for it an increasing production. On the contrary, they claim for their system that it would stimulate progress, as well as spread its blessings, better than the system that exists, and Lassalle at all events frankly declared that unless socialism increased production, it would not be economically justifiable. But tried by this test, we h

ce of the distribution effected by free competition to depend on the false assumption of the natural equality of the competitors, and therefore as manifestly implies that unless men are equal in talents and opportunities, the system of unlimited freedom may produce a distribution that is seriously unjust. Laissez-faire thus had a germ of socialism in its being, and even when its ascendancy seemed to be highest, it was already being practically replaced by a larger and more energetic theory of social politics which imposed on the State the duty of correcting many of the evils of the present distribution of wealth, and promoting, if not equality of all conditions, yet certainly amelioration of the inferior conditions. Instead of maintaining equal freedom for weak and strong, the State was to take the part of the weak against the strong, in order to secure to all citizens a real participation in progressive civilization. It is said truly enough that the effect of such interferences is not to destroy liberty, but to fulfil it, because, apart from them, the labour contract

would perhaps have been further advanced to-day, if co-operators had not been so faithful in their idolatry of their original ideal, and had fostered instead of discouraging variations of type, which may yet justify their superiority by persisting and multiplying. As it is, co-operative production has not been such a complete failure as it is sometimes represented; it can show at least a few very signal tokens of success and great promise. It is often declared to be inapplicable to the great industries, because they require more capital and better management than co-operative working men are usually able to furnish. But in the town and neighbourhood of Oldham there are 100 co-operative spinning mills, with a capital of close on ￡8,000,000. They are managed entirely by working men, their capital is contributed in ￡5 shares by working men, and they have during the last ten years paid dividends varying from 10 to 45 per cent. These are joint-stock companies rather than co-operative societies in the stricter sense; but they are joint-stock companies of working men, and they furnish to working men in an effective and successful way that participation in the industrial capital of the country which is really what is wanted. The Oldham workman prefers to hold shares in a different mill from that he works in, because he feels himself more free to exercise his voice as a shareholder there, and he prefers to carry his labour to the mill where he gets the best wages and the best treatment, without being obliged to change his investment when he changes his workshop. The advantage of the Oldham system over the stricter co-operative type is therefore the old advantage of freedom. It suits the English character better, and the only wonder is why it is still, after more than sixteen years' successful experience, c

, but there is one singular exception-it is Sheffield. Porter drew attention to the fact many years ago. "The town itself," he says, "is ill built and dirty beyond the usual condition of English towns, but it is the custom for each family among the labouring population to occupy a separate dwelling, the rooms of which are furnished in a very comfortable manner. The floors are carpeted, and the tables are usually of mahogany. Chests of drawers of the same material are commonly seen, and so in many cases is a clock also, the possession of which article of furniture has often been pointed out as the certain indication of prosperity and of personal responsibility on the part of the working man." ("Progress of the Nation," p. 523.) The same condition of things still prevails, for at the meeting of the British Association in Sheffield in 1879 Dr. Hime read a paper on the vital statistics of the town, in which he says:-"Although handsome public buildings are not a prominent feature in the town, still there are few towns in England where the great bulk of the population is so well provided for in the way of domestic architecture. Overcrowding is very rare; cellar dwellings are unknown; and almost every family has an entire house, a most important agent in securing physical as well as moral health." (Transactions of British Association, 1879.) Now this is a fact of the highest interest, and we naturally ask what peculiarity there is in the trade or circumstances of Sheffield, in the first place, to create such an exceptional excellence in the standard of working class house accommodation, and, in the next place, to maintain it. One thing is certain: it is not due to better wages. There are trades in Sheffield very highly paid, but the labourers belonging to them are described by the anonymous author of "An Inquiry into the Moral, Social, and Intellectual Condition of the Industrious Classes of Sheffield" (London, 1839), as being much less comfortable in their circumstances than the others. This writer speaks of some trades in which "the workmen are steady, intelligent, and orderly, seldom the recipients of charity or parochial relief. They depend on their own exertions for the respectable maintenance of their families, and when trade is depressed they strive to live on diminished wages, or fall back on resources secured by industry and economy. This healthy and vigorous condition is not attributable to high wages. The workmen in the edge-tool trade are extravagantly remunerated, and yet, as a body, they are perhaps as irregular and dissipated in their habits as any in the town. Their families, in time of good trade, feel few of the advantages of prosperity, and when labour is little in demand, they

or to despair of their introduction into the hitherto unorganized trades. It was only lately common to deny the possibility of combination among agricultural labourers, and yet, scattered as they are, they have shown themselves not only able to combine, but to raise wages effectively by means of their combinations. We have now very powerful unions of unskilled day labourers, and a beginning has been made of an efficient organization even among needlewomen. It is true that, even when organization has spoken its last word, much of the distressing poverty that now exists would probably s

TNO

l figures, was 3? times the number for one day, but whether

between the whole body of the men in any works and their employers, piecework prices have not a self-regulating power, and are liable, under the pressure of competition, to be depressed below what he would consider a proper level. And this was chiefly, if not, indeed, exclusively, the case with those lump jobs which were undertaken by little copartneries of workmen, and afforded the occasions for practising co-operation from which he had drawn the hopes I have mentioned above. He came to see that in all kinds of work for which it

chapter on "State Socialism," under the sub-