TRADE-UNIONS 55 



think they must fight, and enforce their rules against peccant 

 brethren with justice and without rancour. Of course where 

 there are opposing interests there will be disputes, and where 

 there are disputes there will be some recrimination ; but after 

 reading Mr. Mault's attack and Mr. Applegarth's reply, we con- 

 clude that masters have little cause to blame these unions of 

 superior workmen. The executive council and secretaries are 

 really superior men, and prevent instead of fomenting strikes. 

 The masons do not stand so high ; bricklayers lower still ; with 

 them may be classed plasterers ; and when we reach brick- 

 layers' labourers and brickmakers we reach the realm where 

 violence and outrage are used as the sanction of trade rules. 

 In the better societies, moderate fines or exclusion from the 

 society are ample securities against any infraction of the 

 laws. It is not till we reach Sheffield and the grinding trades 

 that we find the payment of arrears enforced by maiming and 

 murder. The wretches do not see when they whine a com- 

 plaint that they are driven to it ; having no legal redress 

 against defaulters, they pronounce the condemnation of their 

 unions. Exclusion should be and is the bitterest punishment in 

 the better unions, even though exclusion is followed by no neces- 

 sary loss of work. The grinders dare not exclude their members. 

 A club or an insurance office need never sue for arrears. Ex- 

 pulsion is a very simple remedy, entirely in their own hands ; 

 and unless expulsion be felt as a punishment, the club is of 

 no benefit to the member. There is evidence to show that 

 the better class of unions facilitate arbitration upon disputed 

 points, and settle rules with the masters more easily than can 

 be done when the workmen are disorganised. It is natural 

 enough that masters should resent having to settle any rules at 

 all. and having to meet the unions as their equals, with whom 

 they are to bargain, discussing every condition of the contract^ 

 as if with a brother capitalist. They naturally regret the good 

 old times when the workman was a servant, often a trusted and 

 devoted servant, but still a servant who must do as he was told. 

 That is past, and the world will not turn back, so it is useless 

 to discuss whether or not a reverse motion would, on the whole, 

 be profitable. The old form of good feeling as between master 

 and dependent is gone, but it is quite possible that good feeling 



