TBANSACTIOXS OF SECTION F, 853 



tion between piecers and ' learners ' broke down, and the apprenticeship rules could 

 no longer be maintained. Then the spinners adopted a new policy. They merely 

 insisted on their existing large share of the total wage paid on the ' mules,' op- 

 posed all increases in piecers' wages, which they knew would be at their expense, 

 and limited the quantity of machinery to each spinner. The result is that there 

 are to-day from two to three times as many piecers as spinners, and that a 

 great number of the former have been for years as fully qualified as the latter, 

 though they receive at most only about half a spinner's wage. Both masters and 

 piecers have attempted to do away with this arrangement, which is by no means 

 economical, and which benefits only existing spinners at the expense of the piecers 

 and all future workers in the industry. But the opposition of the piecers is weak 

 because they are badly paid, and are ever hoping to become soon highly paid 

 spinners or something else ; and, on the whole, the men have been successful in 

 resisting the masters' attempts to introduce the 'joining,' ' doffing,' and 'appren- 

 ticeship ' systems, and the ' coupling of wheels ' (double- and treble-decking), wliicli 

 were all directed against the existing arrangement of hands on the ' mules.' 



2. Indian Guaranteed Railways ; an Illustration of Laisser Faire Theory 

 and Practice. By Ethel R. Faraday, M.A. 



The dogmatic rigidity of the laisser faire school, and their refusal to recognise 

 the principle of development in economics, have produced the characteristic weak- 

 nesses of their policy, its carelessness of detail, its sacrifice of actual to nominal 

 freedom, its neglect to provide for future possibilities, and its attempt to apply 

 the same reasoning to diflerent circumstances ; all of which are illustrated in the 

 later history of the Indian guaranteed railways. The guarantee system, in origin a 

 purely practical expedient, had outlived its utility before it was revived by the 

 English Government of 1868-74, apparently as being preferable, from the laisser 

 faire point of view, to the direct State ownership which was considered by Lord 

 Lawrence, as by Roscher, advisable in India. In the contracts renewed with three 

 railways—the Great Indian Peninsula, Bombay, Baroda, and Central India, and 

 Madras lines — it was agreed that the companies should receive interest at the 

 guaranteed rate of 5 per cent, and half the surplus profits, no account being taken 

 of deficits ; that remittances to England should be converted at the rate of 1». 10^. 

 the rupee; and that calculations should be made on a half-yearly basis. The 

 result was that the Indian Government bore all the loss of the unprofitable half- 

 years and, after 1875, never received its full share of gain in the profitable ones, 

 since, as the exchange value of the rupee fell below Is. loS., the shareholders received 

 a gradually increasing proportion of the surplus profits, while the contract obligation 

 to pay interest at 5 per cent, deprived the State of advantage from cheaper money 

 and improved credit, which would lately have enabled it to raise money at 2h or 

 3 per cent, to pay off loans advanced at a higher rate of interest. On the three 

 lines in question, taken together, the average proportion of earnings yearly 

 remitted to England, 1892-7, was 99-70 per cent., and the net annual loss to 

 Government amounted to 13,000,0007^^., a tax imposed on the Indian public, for 

 the benefit of the British shareholder, by that laisser faire school which objects to 

 State railways as taxing one part of the community for the benefit of the other. 

 Statistics showing the working expenses of railways formerly guaranteed, beforo 

 and after their acquisition by the State, indicate that the guarantee system was 

 uneconomical ; but the fault is less with the companies than with the laisser faire 

 English Government, which gave them the material advantages of liberty, and 

 freed them from its responsibilities. 



3. Price-changes in the Foreign Trade of France. 

 By Professor A. W. Flux, M.A. 



Some twenty years ago, M. de Foville traced the variations of price-level in 

 French trade by using for the years 1827 and 1847 to 1862 the values of the 



