THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 49 



It is thus with the concejjtions the working-classes frame of those 

 by whom they are immediately employed, and of those who fill the 

 higher social positions. Feeling keenly what they have to bear, and 

 tracing sundry real grievances to men who buy their labor, and men 

 who are most influential in making the laws, artisans and rustics con- 

 clude that, considered individually and in combination, those above 

 them are personally bad selfish, or tyrannical, in special degrees. It 

 never occurs to them that the evils they complain of result from the 

 average human nature of our age. And yet, were it not for the class- 

 bias, they would see, in their dealings with one another, plenty of 

 proofs that the injustices they suffer are certainly not greater, and pos- 

 sibly less, than they would be were the higher social functions dis- 

 charged by individuals taken from among themselves. The simple 

 fact, notorious enough, that working-men, who save money and become 

 masters, are not more considerate than usual toward those they em- 

 ploy, but often the contrary, might alone convince them of this. On 

 all sides there is ample evidence having kindred meaning. Let them 

 inquire about the life in every kitchen where there are several servants, 

 and they will find quarrels about supremacy, tyrannies over juniors 

 who are made to do more than their proper work, throwings of blame 

 from one to another, and the many forms of misconduct caused by 

 want of right feeling ; and very often the evils growing up in one of 

 these small groups are greater than the evils pervading society at 

 large. The doings in workshops, too, illustrate in various ways the 

 ill-treatment of artisans by one another. Hiding the tools and spoil- 

 in o- the work of those who do not conform to their unreasonable cus- 

 toms, prove how little individual freedom is respected among them. 

 And still more conspicuously is this proved by the internal govern- 

 ments of their trade-combinations. Not to dwell on the occasional 

 killing of men among them, who assert their rights to sell their labor 

 as they please, or on the frequent acts of violence and intimidation 

 committed by those on strike against those who undertake the work 

 they have refused, it suffices to cite the despotism exercised by trades- 

 union officers. The daily acts of these make it manifest that the ruling 

 organizations formed by working-men inflict on them grievances as 

 great as, if not greater than, those which the organization of society 

 at large inflicts. When the heads of a combination he has joined 

 forbid a collier to work more than three days in a week when he 

 is limited to a certain "get" in that space of time when he dares 

 not accept from his employer an increasing bonus for every extra day 

 he works when, as a reason for declining, he says that he should be 

 made miserable by his comrades, and that even his wife would not be 

 spoken to ; it becomes clear that he and the rest have made for them- 

 selves a tyranny worse than the tyrannies complained of. Did he 

 look at the facts, apart from class-bias, the skilful artisan, who in a 

 given time can do more than his fellows, but who dares not do it be- 



VOL. III. 4 



