728 REPORT— 1897. 



the balance of trade and commercial relations with foreign countries, and at 

 another currency schemes and currency iniquities, pervaded the atmosphere, so now 

 Labour and the Labour Question, and writer after writer struggles beneath its 

 fascination, helpless in his efforts to avoid its introduction in every part of his 

 work, suitable or unsuitable. Like the reference to the head of a departed 

 Enghsh monarch, it forces an entrance page by page and chapter by chapter. 

 What a revenge time has brought with it for former neglect ! How great the 

 present prominence is and how recent is shown by a comparison between the sub- 

 jects discussed to-day and those discussed at the beginning of the present or 

 during the past century, between the general trend of an economic treatise now 

 and that of those of the past. Then Labour itself was the subject of bare refer- 

 ence as an agent of production, and as one, but by no means the chief, factor 

 requiring payment, and in only a few cases were there traces that its condition 

 and its environment were even regarded as matters for economists to discuss, while 

 now there is the risk of other elements escaping attention. It is not the way in 

 which the subject is dealt with that is insisted on here, but the bare prominence of 

 the subject, though the former in its turn has changed greatly, the somewhat rigid 

 impassiveness of the earlier date yielding to expressions of a vivid and personal 

 sympathy. 



On turning to what is the Jirst portion of our taslv — the consideration of 

 the causes which have made thus conspicuous one agent in production and one 

 economic element — the identification or rather the confusion of labour with labour 

 of one grade calls for remark. Labour is the term used to denote either the work 

 of one class, the class, that is, which monopolises the title of the working-class, 

 or all human work necessary to production. In some instances the term is 

 stretched so far as to include all eifort, direct or indirect, involved in production. 

 But though instances of these different meanings are found in abundance, and 

 though the second of them is the most strictly consistent, as it expresses the dis- 

 tinction between personal effort and that which is not personal, Labour when 

 used emphatically and spelt with a capital initial is almost invariably, so far as 

 popular usage is concerned, taken as implying some particular reference to the 

 grade of manual labour. Other labour, skilled labour or labour of management, 

 if included at all, is treated as comparatively insignificant. To all intents and 

 purposes by labour, especially when conditions and remuneration are referred to, 

 is meant manual labour. This restriction in definition is significant and unfortu- 

 nate. Associations centring round labour in the wider sense come almost imper- 

 ceptibly to be conceived of as relating to labour in the more narrow meaning of 

 the word. Coincident with its growth in popular favour, the tendency to restrict the 

 term has increased. It is true, of course, that in economic writings labour, 

 when defined, is applied to personal action of all grades and of all degrees of skill, 

 but even there laxity finds entrance in the frequent unguarded use of slipshod 

 popular expressions, as the difficulties of labour, the labouring classes, conflicts 

 of labour and capital, and the like, when by these are meant the difficulties and 

 interests of one class of labour only. Such, then, is the aspect which confronts 

 the student of social phenomena in the present day. Considerations respecting 

 Labour have acquired, and that comparatively recently, an unusually large share 

 of attention at the very time when the term, in popular usage at any rate, has 

 been shorn of some part of its meaning and severely restricted in definition. 



The causes of the new prominence of this class of labour form a subject of 

 much importance, for on our knowledge of them largely rest the conclusions as 

 to the true significance of the problem and the meaning of such results as we 

 discern. Such knowledge also provides the means of discriminating between 

 changes due to direct economic movements and those arising out of nothing more 

 than an altered attitude on the part of society brought about by general causes. 



To some, no doubt, the explanation of this particular change, and of the pro- 

 minence of this question, lies in the greater humanity which characterises the 

 economic thought of the present as contrasted with the past ; to others, in the wide 

 extension of the franchise, and the admission to political power of the classes 

 whose interests lie in the above direction ; while others again believe that they 



