TRADE-UNIONS 





ild. night after night and year after year. Lave all of them 

 ro work till 10 o'clock, in order that 1 per cent, of their 

 number should rise to be a master, or that even 5 per cent., 

 with extra large families, should be more at their ease. In 

 truth, the middle-class mind is so imbued with the one longing 

 to yet on, that they cannot conceive a healthy state of societv in 

 which the members are actually contented with their position. 

 Your middle-class man must make his way and end his days with 

 greater means, and in a higher rank of society, than his father, 

 or he has failed. Nay, such is the struggle, that unless he 

 str'arlily strives to advance he will recede, and. falling back, 

 will come to real ruin and privation. Failing to perceive the 

 happier condition of skilled workmen, who need not struggle at 

 all. and who scoff at the idea that to become a draughtsman or 

 a clerk is an advance, the middle class think, as Mr. Glad- 



ic said at Oldham, that the best condition of things for the 

 labouring classes is that in which it shall be easiest for the able 

 or the diligent man to rise out of it. What a blunder is this ! 

 On the contrary, the best state for the working man is that in 

 which he can be good, happy, and well off, remaining in that 

 \ or one in a thousand can ever hope to rise, and we must 

 not legislate for this unit, but for the 999 who desire no better 

 than to do their duty in the condition of life in which thev 

 were born, not out of it which last is the whole aim of the 

 educated Englishman. 



We have spoken of habitual over-time ; as to occasional over- 

 time in the face of a real emergency, no union ought to object to 

 it. and we think few do, unless there be some standing quarrel. 

 W- have known a gang of a dozen shipwrights work thirty-six 

 hours on a stretch, ay, and work hard too, and be back at their 

 work after one night's rest. Xo indolence this, nor any un- 

 common case ; but then the men must feel that there is a real 

 occasion calling for extra exertion. 



Piece-work is no better understood than over-time. In some 

 places, and in many trades, as at Birmingham in the hardware 

 trades, the men will have piece-work, and decline to be paid bv 

 the day. There some masters deprecate piece-work. In other 

 trades and other places, the men set their face against piece- 

 work, and there the masters uphold it. This is no accusation 



VOL. II. E 



