354 THE OPERATIVES' PARLIAMENT. 



and ended in a signal failure. The consequence of this strike was 

 the invention of the wool-combing machine, which entirely ruined 

 that class of men, who were the ringleaders of all the disturbances, and 

 the most mischievous class in the trade. Having thus illustrated 

 these redoubtable bodies, the " Trades' Unions," by their conduct 

 and its consequences, a few remarks must close this somewhat ex- 

 tended article. 



In the first place, these Unions are marked by a spirit of wanton- 

 ness, caprice, and ill-feeling. Those who order the strike are inva- 

 riably those that receive the highest wages thus, in 1829, the fine 

 spinners in Manchester were earning 30s. to 35s. per week ; and at 

 Ashton, in 1(330, the coarse spinners were earning from 28s. to 31s. ; 

 while at Liverpool, the strike took place among the builders imme- 

 diately after an advance of 3s. per week, and in the height of work. 

 Nothing, therefore, but a spirit of covetousness can dictate such a 

 resolution ; while caprice is shewn by their absurd orders and coun- 

 ter-orders to their employers ; and ill-feeling by the time chosen 

 for strikes, to the frequent ruin of their employer, bound down as he 

 is, by contracts, to time. 



The continued hostility evinced by Unions to piece-work is a de- 

 cided premium to idleness. " The man who does task-work," says 

 one of their publications, " is guilty of less defensible conduct than 

 a drunkard." It would be curious to know in what scale of moral 

 depravity they place drunkenness ; if they have any fellow r -feeling, it 

 ought not to be judged too harshly operatives are not usually the 

 most distinguished members of the Temperance Societies. " The worst 

 passions of our nature are enlisted in the support of task-work; 

 avarice, meanness, cunning, hypocrisy, all excite and feed upon 

 the miserable victim of task-work, while debility and destitution 

 look out for the last morsel of their prey. A man who earns by task- 

 work 40s. per week, the usual wages by day being 20s., robs his 

 fellow-workman of a week's employment." We do not know by 

 what system of reasoning this conclusion is drawn, but the manifest 

 object of it is to destroy the spirit of emulation, without which man 

 would be a mere machine, and sink into supineness and indolence. 

 According to these philosophers, however, emulation is the cause of 

 all the misery of the world. It is to be regretted that some of the 

 disciples of these benevolent professors scandalize their masters out- 

 r.igeously by their practice, if we may judge from the assassinations 

 avid outrages of all descriptions which have been laid to their charge. 



Another fact has been pretty clearly proved, which is, that the 

 combinations of workmen have not succeeded in raising wages, but 

 in most cases they have been depressed, which, indeed, must be the 

 natural consequence of an influx of strangers, and the invention of 

 new machinery. It is to be hoped that when education becomes 

 more general, that men will begin to reflect upon the true causes of 

 low wages, and they will then learn that not all the combinations 

 in the world can effect a permanent rise of wages beyond what the 

 profits of the trade will allow. 



Another feature in the history of these Unions is, the crimes to 

 which they have given rise ; this alone ought to render them objects 



