7 2 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tions, which the engineers had shrewdly kept in the background, but 

 which were latent in the eight-hour movement, and, from the em- 

 ployers' point of view, inseparable from it questions which have 

 long been irritating, and the conflict over which could not long be 

 postponed. 



In the judgment of the iron masters these questions were lifted 

 far above the range of a mere labor dispute, and involved the broad 

 and national question of the continuance of Great Britain in the race 

 of international competition. We need not enlarge upon the reasons 

 which convince so many Englishmen, and particularly those who 

 are in the thick of the fight, that England's industries and com- 

 merce, not merely foreign but domestic, are seriously threatened 

 by the competition of the continental manufacturers, as well as 

 those of the United States. They cite the longer hours, the lower 

 pay, and the superior technical education of continental workmen 

 as three reasons why the products of the latter are gradually super- 

 seding goods of English origin in the world's neutral markets. 

 They cite the larger product from improved machinery, and the 

 superior application of this machinery, both on the continent and in 

 the United States, as constituting economic advantages against which 

 they are no longer able to successfully contend. They urge that in 

 the long run these superior advantages mean the gradual surrender 

 of Great Britain before a competition ever closer and fiercer, in 

 which a fraction of difference in the cost of production is sufficient to 

 turn the scale. From their point of view the introduction of the 

 eight-hour day, as against ten and even twelve hours on the con- 

 tinent, would mean industrial hari-kari. 



But the complaint reaches further : it insists that English trades- 

 unionism, as developed in the iron trade particularly, is a handicap 

 to industrial progress which is bearing fruit in the continual loss of 

 trade, and the extinction of profits in the conduct of business. 

 Trades-unionism has aimed steadily and successfully at a larger and 

 closer control over the conditions under which work is done in the 

 shops. The masters had lost control over the management of their 

 own business, and, no longer able to adapt themselves to modern 

 methods and economics, they found themselves in a state of dry rot, 

 extrication from which was only possible by heroic measures. 



Doubtless there is a degree of exaggeration in this picture, as 

 drawn by the iron masters. Nevertheless, it is true that English 

 trades-unionism has become so strongly organized and intrenched, 

 and has followed lines of policy so aggressive and so potent, that it has 

 long been an open question in England whether the internal manage- 

 ment of the shop is not more under the domination of the union than 

 of the employers. Until a comparatively recent date the conse- 



