150 REPORT — 1875. 



known to their own workmen the groiinds of the action they propose taking 

 before the resolve is carried into execution, your Committee are convinced 

 that many disputes would be avoided, and much of the jealousy which now 

 exists between the parties would he removed. The recent lock-out in Soiath 

 Wales illustrated the need of such a course. Had the facts which Lord 

 Aberdare elicited from the principal colliery firms in Glamorganshire been 

 made known previous to or simultaneously with the notice of a fall, it is a 

 question whether such a widespread calamity would have occurred. It is, 

 perhaps, a natural but unfortunate circumstance that employers are seldom 

 found to take the initiative in allowing a rise in wages when the state of the 

 market permits it as they are in the case of a fall, and spontaneously to offer 

 what they must sooner or later be compelled to grant. A more prompt and 

 politic course on their part in this matter would go far to neutralize the 

 hostile action of trade-unions. 



Your Committee were anxious to ascertain how far is it in the mind of 

 the employed that the employers obtain for themselves too large a share 

 of profits at their expense. Your Committee Avcro assured that no such 

 . doubts are entertained, though cases were produced supporting such sus- 

 picions by reference to the time of the great rise in the price of coals in 1873, 

 when workmen's wages did not, in the opinion of the representatives of 

 labour, rise to any thing like the proportion of the masters' profits *. Your 

 Committee admit that in cases of great oscillations in prices, the share par- 

 ticipated either by the employers in the shape of profits, or by the employed 

 in the shape of wages, may be for a time greater or less than their normal 

 distribution would justify. And it is possible that some portions of these 

 extra profits may be unproductively spent or so employed as not to benefit 

 the parties more immediately concerned, and even used in totally alien 

 speculations. Yet, in the main, the working classes must receive, in one 

 way or another, a considerable advantage from them, there being no doubt 

 that the largest portion of such extra profits will bo reinvested in the 

 ordinary industries of the country. In the end, however, wages and profits 

 will be divided among the producers in proper proportions ; and if at any 

 time profits or wages should be larger than they ought to be, we may be 

 quite sure that ere long the competition of capitalists will tend either to the 

 lowering of prices or the raising of wages, so as to make profits and wages 

 gravitate towards each other. 



Immediately allied to the question of the determination of a minimum of 

 wages is that of their uniformity. In the opinion of many trade-unions, all 

 workmen of average ability in any trade should earn the same wages, the 

 average ability of each man being understood to have been determined in 

 advance by the fact of his being admitted as a member of the union. But a 

 man is subject to no examination, and is generally admitted upon the tes- 

 timony of those who have worked with him, whose evidence must fre- 

 quently be fallacious and insufficient. Nor does it appear that the rejection 

 is absolutely certain even if the applicant should not be deemed a man of 

 average ability, the acceptance or rejection of the party being always 

 optional with the lodge to which he is introduced. Your Committee are 

 therefore not satisfied that any guarantees exist that every member of a 



* Mr. Halliday's evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons on coals was 

 that, though the custom was to give to workmen a portion of any rise of prices in the 

 shaje of increasing wages, the proportion being an additional 2d. a day for every lOd. a 

 ton, the rise in wages was often Id. per ton only, and sometimes nothing, whilst when thr 

 price rose 2s. Qd. to 5s. a ton, the wages were only increased dd. a day. 



