LEGISLATIVE AIDS TO AGRICULTURE. 27 



any association of labor. We do find acts authorizing benevo- 

 lent and charitable associations, religious and educational asso- 

 ciations, temperance associations ; and we have seen every 

 possible form of association of capital, and at last an Act of cor- 

 poration of men to take the moneys paid into the courts in 

 progress of litigation or bequeathed in trust for widows and 

 orphans, for their benefit, and to be held and invested — does 

 any one believe without fee and reward ? Are not the funds, 

 in fact, to be held and invested for the use and benefit of the 

 corporators, who are to make a profit therefrom ? Everywhere, 

 under every conceivable state of facts, legislation has been in- 

 voked to aid men to get a living in some other way than by 

 honest toil. But we look in vain for any Act passed to organize 

 or associate, or give the power or benefit of organization or as- 

 sociation to, any form of labor, whether mechanical, manufac- 

 turing or agricultural. 



We have already seen that agricultural labor may not be ben- 

 efited by association ; but it by no means follows that manufac- 

 turing and mechanical labor might not be so. Remembering 

 current history, we know that a large and numerous body of 

 mechanics thought best to associate themselves together for 

 mutual protection against the demands of capital, and that an 

 Act incorporating that association was refused by the legisla- 

 ture. A half a thousand Acts to protect capital passed ; but 

 one asked for, and that refused, to protect labor ! 



I do not now desire to discuss the question whether the de- 

 tails of the manner and objects of the association of laborers 

 which was asked to be incorporated were correct and just or 

 not. I have heard them severely criticised. It is said that 

 they proposed by their association to prevent the master-work- 

 men in their craft from employing such hands as they wished. 

 That may be very wrong. Its rights or wrongs we will not now 

 consider. But I cannot forget, having lived in a manufacturing 

 city, man and boy, for more than forty years, that the incor- 

 porated manufacturing companies have had in operation a rule 

 there, — and I believe a similar one exists in other parts of the 

 State, — by which no operative leaving employment in one mill, 

 unless he or she received a permit from the overseer under 

 whom their labor had been performed, could be employed in 

 any other mill in the same city. And this, too, with out_ any 



