676 beport — 1878. 



WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 1878. 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. On the Social Aspects of Trades Unionism. By J. H. M. Campbell. 



The Trades Unions are advantageous to the working classes, as benefit and 

 insurance societies, and centres of combined legitimate action. It is, moreover, to 

 the persistent agitation of these unions, aided by the efforts of philanthropists, 

 that are to be ascribed the many legislative enactments of modern times against 

 the employment of women or children in unhealthy or too-protracted labour, 

 against the use of defective and dangerous machinery, and affording facilities for 

 the erection of comfortable and well-aired dwellings. But Trades' Unions assumed 

 a verv different aspect when examined with regard to that which is avowed to be 

 theirprimary object, and to which all others are ancillary and subservient, that of 

 controlling the labour market, and regulating the amount of their wages. The 

 author then reviewed the economic conditions regulating the rise and fall of wages, 

 with which he contended Trades Unions could not attempt to interfere without 

 injury to their members and the country. Respecting strikes, nothing could be 

 more suicidal than the policy sometimes pursued of going out on strike to avoid a 

 reduction of wages in times of depressed trade. The year 1877 affords a striking 

 illustration of the truth of this statement, for, while the country was suffering 

 from acute commercial depression, I find that in that year no less than 191 strikes 

 occurred, the majority of which were intended, not to secure a rise of wages, but 

 to prevent the reduction rendered inevitable by the state of trade, and were conse- 

 quently disastrous failures. Little less injurious was the consequence of a strike, 

 nor the plan at present in favour with the working classes for retrieving their 

 position under the prevalent depression by shortened hours of labour. Every 

 reduction in the hours of labour, unless compensated for by superior efficiency, is 

 equivalent in its effect to a rise of wages, and, consequently must either raise prices 

 or lower profits. The effect of the latter result we have already seen, while 

 increased prices arising from such a cause would drive out the English manufac- 

 turer, and enable foreign competitors to undersell him in all those industries in 

 which the advantage possessed by England is trifling in extent. The most disas- 

 trous and fallacious form which this claim for shortened hours of labour assumes is 

 when it is urged as a means of bringing in unemployed workmen. Why, it is 

 asked, should not the workmen limit the supply of their labour by working less 

 hours, and thereby give others a chance of sharing in the amount of work, and 

 consequently in the wages offered by employers ? To this, as to all those regula- 

 tions of trades unions which, like their restrictions on apprenticeship, are for the 

 avowed object of making work, the simple answer is, that it is never work that is 

 deficient, but capital to give employment, and that the greater the total produce is 

 the greater will be the amount saved and devoted to the subsequent employment of 

 labour ; so that it would seem to be a self-evident proposition that if workmen 

 combine to do only half the amount of work they are capable of performing, there 

 will be only half the amount of wealth in the country that it is possible there 

 should be, and, consequently, only half the amount to devote to the purchase of 

 fresh labour. 



