to prevent such men from earning or saving as much as they otherwise might do in comparison with the less skilled or provident, and, therefore, from rising to that position in the social scale due to their individual energies, were those energies left unshackled.

'It seems inaccurate,' says Sir William Erle, in his 'Memorandum on the Law Relating to Trades' Unions,' to contra-distinguish labourers or working men from capitalists or employers, as if they were separate classes; for both classes labour; and the labour of the brain for the employing class may be immeasurably more severe than the labour of the muscles of motion for the working class. The accumulated stores of the mental labour of past ages exceed in value all money capital, or past labour accumulated. These stores must be used by the employer in the degree required by his business; but muscular action may be supplied with very slight recourse to accumulated knowledge in many departments of labour.'

We are not amongst those who regard Trades' Unionism as a monstrous and portentous birth from its very origin. Nothing can be more natural in its first growth than union in some shape amongst men employed in one common occupation, and sensible of one common interest. And nothing could be more certain, in the modern progress of industry, to give concentrated force to that principle of union amongst the working population than the operative multitudes assembled in vast establishments at our great seats of industry. A mill or foundry, collecting workpeople by the thousand within one enclosure, may be said to constitute a Trades' Union in itself,* and all the artificial extension

*On this point we are able to cite the testimony, unexceptionable to that purpose, of Mr. George Potter, who probably did not perceive the inference which the following words must at once suggest to the reader:

Take the case of one master on one side, and a thousand men on the other: his position as proprietor, capitalist, and employer, gives him a power which, if not quite equal to the united pencer of his thousand men, is immensely too great for any one among the thousand to cope with singlehanded; whereas, let the whole number combine in one demand for what they conceive to be no more than their due, and then the parties would be equally matched- Contemporary Review,' June, 1870, p. 409.

It is not very easy to understand what more can be wanted in the shape of effective representation of the feelings and interests of employed and employers than such an agency as has for some years been supplied by the Boards of Conciliation established in Nottingham, the Staffordshire Potteries and Wolverhampton, of the satisfactory working of which full evidence was given to the Trades' Union Commissioners by Mr. Mundella, M.P., Mr. Hollins, and Mr. Rupert Kettle. These Boards,' say the Commissioners in their Final Report, require no complicated machinery, no novel division of profits, no new mode of conducting business; they need no Act of Parliament, no legal powers or penalties. All that is needed is that certain representative employers and workmen should meet at regular stated times, and amicably discuss around a table the common interests of their common trade or business. There is not a trade or business in the United Kingdom in which this system might not at once be adopted; and we see no reason why, in every case, results should not

follow

extension and elaborate officialism of the later Union organization, seeking to embrace whole trades, nay, to constitute national and even international federations, can add little or nothing to the power possessed already by the operative masses on the spot where employed, by the mere fact of their conscious indispensableness to keep profitably at work the capital engaged in large concerns, and sunk in buildings, machinery, and material. That there will always be union in their common interest amongst masses of workpeople we hold to be as certain as that no ambitiously extended organization of that union can give it a force which does not already belong to it in the nature of things. And it would really seem as if the great body of workpeople were of the same opinion. 'As yet,' says Mr. Thornton, there are very few trades in the United Kingdom in which more than 10 per cent. of the men employed are Unionists; there is but one, that of the plasterers, in which as many as half are. In counting up their future conquests they are decidedly reckoning without their hosts. Their progress hitherto has been due less to their own strength than to their opponents' weakness of purpose.'

6

On Labour,' &c., which dashing style of moral Plea for Peasant Proback, till Mr. Mill en

Mr. Thornton, in his last publication has attracted more attention from its paradox and social prophecy than his prietors' did, some score and odd years dorsed its most hazarded and amazing statements (of which more anon), somewhere likens himself to Saul sitting at the feet of Mill, his Gamaliel. In this last publication the modern Saul requites in a singular manner the flattering acceptance by his Gamaliel of his former agrarian lucubrations, by taking into his hands the task of showing up the baselessness of a theory on which Mr. Mill (with other economists) had founded his doctrine of wages, and his disbelief of the power of Trades' Unions to effect their artificial elevation. Now, Mr. Thornton has taken it into his head to turn champion of Trades' Unionsthough on grounds upon which they certainly would not accept his championship. In assuming it, however, -with ulterior objects which we shall presently see-he had first of all to disarm Mr. Mill of his Wage-fund theory. Very opportunely he found that theory already demolished, and had only to appropriate a demonstration already done to his hand.

We think we hear the unsophisticated reader exclaim, 'What

follow from the establishment of Boards of Conciliation, as satisfactory as those at Nottingham and in the Potteries to which we have before referred. Under such a system we should look hopefully for a peaceful, prosperous future for the industry of this country.'

on

on earth is a Wage-fund theory?' Let the unsophisticated reader rejoice with us: a Wage-fund theory is a thing-or unthing (to borrow a German idiom)-which is henceforth shunted fairly out of the way of future discussion of all questions affecting labour and labour's wages.

Mr. Longe, the barrister, in a pamphlet published four or five years back, which, at the time of its appearance, received less notice than it deserved-none at all at the hands of the political economists, one of whose fundamental doctrines it refuted-has the merit of having first methodically exposed the so-called Wage-fund theory. Mr. Thornton, in the first edition of his above-cited work On Labour,' adopted without acknowledgment Mr. Longe's previously published refutation of that theory, using that refutation as the basis of his own apology for Trades' Unions. And Mr. Mill, in two review-articles from his pen* on Mr. Thornton's first edition, accepted with a good grace his second-hand refutation of that theory, but equally ignored its source. There seems a sort of Japanese etiquette in the matter. It is only to his own hand, aided by that of a selected and sympathizing friend, the illustrious convict can consent to owe his happy despatch.' †

*Fortnightly Review,' May and June, 1869.

In

† If we decline to stand by simply assisting as spectators of that Japanese etiquette, it is because we consider Mr. Longe's refutation of the Wage-fund theory' as having exploded, together with that theory, much more of the economical doctrines previously inculcated as orthodox than the most authoritative teacher of those doctrines, Mr. Mill, even now has seen fit to acknowledge. But, in mercy to the general reader, we place the following details of that exploded theory at the foot of our pages, instead of inserting them in the text.

The theory, now exploded, once looked fairly in the face, is absurd in a degree to which nothing could have so long blinded its promulgators but the habit of reliance on abstract reasoning unverified by recurrence to facts. We extract, as follows, Mr. Mill's own enunciation of that theory made in the act of renouncing it :

There is supposed to be, at any given instant, a sum of wealth, which is unconditionally devoted to the payment of wages of labour. The sum is not regarded as unalterable, for it is augmented by saving, and increases with the progress of wealth, but it is reasoned upon as at any given moment a predetermined amount. More than that amount it is assumed that the wages-receiving class canuot possibly divide among them; that amount, and no less, they cannot but obtain. So that, the sum to be divided being fixed, the wages of each depend solely on the divisor, the number of participants.' That is-we quote the words of Mr. Longe

we are to regard capital as wealth which has been destined by its owners to the definite object of carrying on production by the employment of labourers in their own country, just as money subscribed to some charity is destined for the objects of such charity. It may have to lle idle for weeks, montus, or years, while mercantile or foreign undertakings offer their 10 per cent. profits for its use. Its owners are never to change their minds. It can never be directed from its original object. It cannot be spent unproductively. It cannot be lost, either to its owner, or to the country, or to the labourers, for the purchase of whose labour it has been destined, while its owners were as yet ignorant in what trade, in what production, it should be actually.employed.'

This aggregate capital,' predestined exclusively and irreversibly to the function of wage-fund, will, it was assumed, with equally predestined certainty, be distributed to the last farthing, by the process of competition, among the different classes of labourers making up the collective entity of the general labourer.'

*

In the preceding foot-note the reader will find in brief compass the substantial refutation of the so-called Wage-fund theory, -a theory which formed the foundation, down to the date of Mr. Mill's imperfect palinode, of the orthodox economic creed on the whole subject of wages of labour. Had any rash champion of plain good sense ventured at an earlier period to question the solidity of that foundation, he would doubtless have been consigned to the limbus infantum of immature inquirers, cut off ere they had well crossed the threshold of economic existence, or even perhaps stigmatized by Mr. Fawcett with the epithet of practical man or man of business.' The modern economist has never thought he could get far enough from the old-fashioned practical man. It must be owned the latter personage was too apt to confound inference with fact, and to claim for illegitimately drawn conclusions from observation and experience the credit due to these latter only. One important advantage, however, the despised practical man has always had over the man of closet-science and paper logic.' The former has always had some basis of fact, the latter has often had none. We do not hesitate to say that for every error or fallacy which 'scientific' economists have superciliously laid to the account of practical men,' we should be able to charge to those same economists another error or fallacy, destitute of any even seeming foundation in fact or experience, and which practical knowledge of the subject-matter of their subtle reasonings would have enabled them to avoid. The editor of the new Oxford edition of the 'Wealth of Nations,' Mr. Thorold Rogers, justly observes in his preface that, to be scientific, political economy must be constantly inductive. Half, and more than half, of the fallacies into which persons who have handled the subject have fallen, are the direct outcome of purely abstract speculation.' This is the crowning absurdity of a theory absurd at all points. Mr. Longe asks

'How could the shoemakers compete with the tailors, or the blacksmiths with the glass-blowers? Or how should the capital which a ma-ter shoemaker saved, by reducing the wages of his journeymen, get into the bands of the master-tailor? Or why should the money, which a reduction in the price of clothes enables the private consumer to spend in other things, go to pay or refund the wages of any other class of labourers belonging to his own country? It would clearly be just as likely to be spent in the purchase of foreign wine or in a trip to Switzerland.

The notion of all the labourers of a country constituting a body of general labourers capable of competing with each other, and whose "general" or "average" wage depends upon the ratio between their number and the "aggregate" wage-fund, is just as absurd as the notion of all the different goods existing in a country at any given time, e. g., the ships, and the steam-engines, and the cloth, &c, constituting a stock of general commodities, the "general" or "average" price of which is determined by the ratio between the supposed quantity of the whole aggregate stock and the total purchase-fund of the community.'

*The business man,' says Mr. Fawcett, assuming a confidence which ignorance alone can give, contemptuously sneers at political economy, and assumes that he is in possession of a superior wisdom which enables him to grapple with all the practical affairs of life, unhampered by theories and unfettered by principles.'' The Economic Position of the British Labourer,' p. 1.

In no exercise of human intellect, indeed, is it more indispensable that the athlete, from time to time, Antæus-like, should touch earth.

A logical deduction-a deduction expressly drawn by Mr. Mill, in which also he was implicitly followed by Mr. Fawcett -from this henceforth exploded wage-fund figment of a certain predetermined portion of national wealth--exclusively to be distinguished by the title of capital-and constituting a fund inalienably predestined by capitalists to the employment of labour (apparently for labour's own sake) is that this wage-fund constitutes the sole effective demand for labour, and that-as Mr. Mill has expressly affirmed- demand for commodities is not a demand for labour.'

As Mr. Longe was the first demolisher of the doctrinal foundation for this prodigious paradox, so he was the first to contrast with the real course of facts in this workday world the paradoxical superstructure reared, as we have seen, on that foundation. We extract as follows the main points of his answer to Mr. Mill's proposition that demand for commodities is not demand for labour, referring our readers to his pamphlet for detailed illustrations drawn from the actual system on which the different industrial trades of this country are commonly conducted:

The demand for commodities which could be got without labour would certainly be no demand for labour; but the demand for commodities which can only be got by labour is as much a demand for labour as a demand for beef is a demand for bullocks. Assuming the goods for which there is a demand to have been already produced, the demand for such specific goods would certainly not be a demand for labour; but if such specific goods would not satisfy the demand, the demand for such kind of goods would be a demand for the labour required to increase the supply. It is not "labour" that the employer buys but the labourers' "work" (opus as distinguished from labor); and it is the self-same thing that the consumer wants, and the purchaser of commodities buys, whether it is embodied in the materials which the capitalist supplies or not, and whether he buys it directly of the labourer himself, as in the case of the independent workman or working tradesman, or whether he buys it of a master-manufacturer, merchant, or retail dealer, at a price which includes, together with the labourers' wages, the profits which those intervening dealers require as remunerative for their trouble, and interest on their capital, which has been advanced either in the purchase of materials, or in the payment of wages, or, in the case of the merchant and retail dealer, in the purchase of the finished goods for resale. In the case of the large manufacturing trades, the wages of the workmen employed in producing goods might be, and, probably are, often paid, at least partly, out of the funds supplied by the merchants who purchase the goods which they have made. The funds supplied by the merchant and

the