TRADE-UNIONS 43 



it shall not be lawful for you to use your labour as a payment to 

 your employer for injuries which you wish to inflict on Brown, 

 Jones, Eobinson, Green, and the customer who wants 2 inch 

 bricks. You must not spend your money standing outside your 

 grocer's door, and paying all who come there sixpence each, on 

 condition that they shall deal elsewhere. A bargain between 

 two people to injure a third is a conspiracy, and you shall not 

 sell your labour on those most objectionable conditions.' The 

 ground commonly taken against these and similar conditions, 

 that they are contrary to free-trade and injurious to customers, 

 though true as far as it goes, is insufficient. Our dogged brick- 

 layer asks if he and his employer are not to be free to agree on 

 any conditions they please, and calls that free-trade. It is true 

 that we cannot pretend to' prevent everything injurious to 

 customers. High wages and high profits are injurious to cus- 

 tomers ; we do not interfere with these in general ; but from 

 the principle of preventing a contract between two parties, con- 

 taining a condition injurious to a third party, the impropriety 

 of all the above claims follows as a simple consequence. If our 

 bricklayer does not see it, he must be made to see it. 



The case of one trade striking in support of another, as 

 masons in support of bricklayers, offers greater difficulty, 

 supposing the original strike to be for a legitimate object. 

 If the support were bought by one trade from another, the 

 action would be illegal. The masons' union must not contract 

 with the bricklayers' union to injure the master for a considera- 

 tion obtained from the bricklayers ; but if the masons received 

 no consideration, specified or implied, we do not see that they 

 could be prevented from supporting their colleagues. So far as 

 their contract with their employers is concerned, they are at 

 liberty to make an advantage to a third party one of the condi- 

 tions of the contract. They may say to the employers, ' You 

 shall pay me five shillings a day, and that mason one shilling 

 extra, or I will not work for you.' The hours of labour, the 

 conditions on which notice of dismissal shall be given, the regu- 

 lations as to lost time, allowances for walking, for travelling, are 

 all proper subjects for negotiation, and may fitly be included in 

 any contract. 



The rules of a workshop include all these matters, but 



