at these diversities? Looked at in the simplest point of view, trade societies are nothing but the effort of the wagesreceiving class to realize, trade by trade, a corporate existence. What wonder that they should be what the wagesreceivers are themselves? that they should vary in character with the working men who compose them?

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To form an opinion, therefore, as to the tendencies of trade societies in general, it is absolutely necessary to discard those accidentals which belong, not to the instrument, but to the material out of which it has to be wrought; just as it is absolutely necessary, judging of the value of any particular trade society, to bear those accidentals in mind. Now the mischief is, that the very reverse process is generally followed. Trade societies in general are condemned, because some Edinburgh Reviewer" has brought together half a dozen raw-headand-bloody-bones stories against a few particular sets of trades-unionists; an unjust and injudicious strike by a trade society is supported by workmen of other trades, because they know their own society to be moderate and beneficial. For myself, I confess, so thick are the clouds of prejudice, arising from their own narrow experience, which I find generally to dim the sight of so-called practical men especially, that I mostly remain quite satisfied when a man comes simply to the negative conclusion, that "there is a great deal to be said on both sides," especially if coupled with a firm determination never again to take on trust any rhetoric of Times' or other "able editors" on the subject of any strike or society, but carefully to examine the facts for himself.

It is not, indeed, for want of inquiry that such ignorance continues to prevail. Parliamentary committees on trade com-, binations have sat and reported in 1824, in 1825, in 1838; not to speak of the evidence bearing on the subject which has incidentally been received by other committees, such as that of last year on Mr. Mackinnon's bill for councils of arbitration. Parliamentary inquiries

one on the part of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, whose council appointed in 1858 a Committee to consider the subject. This Committee, whose report appeared last autumn, and of which I had the honour to be a member, comprised amongst its members Sir James Shuttleworth, Lord Radstock, Lord Robert Montagu and Messrs. Buxton and Freeland, M.P.s, Mr. John Ball, the Rev. F. D. Maurice, Mr. E. Akroyd, Mr. W. E. Forster, Mr. H. Fawcett, Mr. T. Hughes, Dr. Farr, and other well-known names, ranging, it may be said, through all the compass of political and social, and, in great measure, of religious opinion. The papers annexed to the report comprise ten accounts of strikes or lock-outs, two accounts of trade combinations in particular towns, one account of a particular trade society, abstracts of Parliamentary papers relating to trade combinations, and other documents. And, believing as I do that there is some definite conclusion to be come to on the subject of trade societies, I venture to hope that the volume in question may help a few to such a conclusion. Scarcely, however, by the report which heads the volume-never, indeed, in its ultimate shape, even submitted to the Committee, although practically it no doubt expresses "on the whole the views of a majority" of that Committee, but which, like any other report purporting to represent the opinions of a mixed body, can never in fact be much more than a string of successive minimums of disagreement ;-rather by the mass of materials which the Committee has brought together, in somewhat handier shape, and in something more of order, than a Blue-book would probably have afforded. No doubt that mass of materials exhibits all the discordance of which I have spoken,—— proving thereby, indeed, its value as a mirror of the facts;-no doubt prejudice and bad faith will be able to use it as an arsenal for the support of the most opposite views. But, for the thoughtful and candid, the very juxta-position of so many jarring elements will induce the

Babel clangour of strange tongues, suggesting the need of some deeper union than that of words.

Looking, therefore, from a higher point of view, the first question that offers itself is this-Is it requisite, is it advan tageous that the operative classes should thus seek to realize for themselves a distinct corporate or quasi-corporate class existence? From the point of view of the old guild system, the answer must decidedly be a negative one. The principle of that system is, that the distinction between master and journeyman should be simply one of degree. We have so long outgrown that system, that we use the one remnant of it which still lives in our language-the word "masterpiece "--without, for the most part, a thought of its real meaning, and of the vastly different sphere of commercial ideas and practices from those of the present day to which it bears witness; so that, indeed, for most of us, it is only by way of Germany, where that system, though effete, still lingers, that we realize the meaning of the term. But at a time when the difference between master and workman was not that the one had capital and the other only labour, but that the one had a skill and experience which the other had not yet attained to, and of which the last tangible demonstration was required to be some work of peculiar excellence in the common calling, there were properly speaking no classes of masters and workmen; and a society embodying the class interests of either would have been simply out of place. The class was the trade-tailors, coopers, weavers, or the like; in the guild which embodied it, the mastertailors, master coopers, master-weavers, had the natural pre-eminence of skill and seniority; if they were privileged to employ others, it was simply by virtue of that pre-eminence, and of the acknowledged right which it gave them to direct and instruct the less able and less experienced.

But such a state of things can never last long in its efficiency. It has for sure dissolvent the accumulation of

once calls into being and renders necessary, and of which the inevitable result is to change the conditions of mastership, and to transfer the privilege of employing others in a given labour from the skilled man to the moneyed one. From the moment that, to establish a given business, more capital is required than a journeyman can easily accumulate within a few years, guild-mastership-the mastership of the masterpiece-becomes little more than a name. The attempt to keep up the strictness of its conditions becomes only an additional weight on the poorer members of the trade; skill alone is valueless, and is soon compelled to hire itself out to capital. The revolution is now complete; the capitalist is the true master, whether he calls himself such or not; the labourer, skilled or unskilled, be he called master or journey- · man, is but the servant of the former. Now begins the opposition of interest between employers and employed; now the latter begin to group themselves together; now rises the trade society.

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From Mr. F. D. Longe's sketch of the "History of Legislation in England relating to Combinations of Workmen," reprinted in the volume I have referred to, it will be seen that the beginning of this great social revolution may be traced back somewhat over five centuries, and that as early as the reign of Edward III. our building operatives were at work combining to raise wages. Mr. Longe quotes the 34th Edward III. c. 9, to show us the legislature forbidding "all alliances and covines of masons and carpenters, and congregations, chapters, "ordinances, and oaths betwixt them." The statute is remarkable as showing the co-existence of the two masterships, that of skill and of capital; thus, the "chief masters of carpenters and masons are to receive fourpence a day, and the others threepence or twopence according as they be worth; but every mason and carpenter, "of whatever condition he be," is to be compelled by "his master whom he serves" to do every work that pertains to him,-where, as it seems to me, the guild-masters are designated by the

masters by the latter. It may comfort some readers to find that the struggle between capitalist and labourer, which embodies itself in trade societies and employers' associations, and has its battlefields in strikes, has thus lasted in English society without destroying it for half a millennium; it may sadden others to think that half a millennium has been worn away in that struggle, without finding as yet a solution to it.

But there is another important conclusion to be drawn from the statute which I have just referred to, as confirming what reflection would naturally suggest as the historical development of the subject. Evidently, from the moment that the element of capitalistmastership came in, it was one which not only claimed supremacy over that of skill-mastership, but which tended to reduce the whole idea and system of the guild to a lower level, and to confine it to the operative class, so that the guild would necessarily merge in the trade society. And this is precisely what the statute exhibits to us. The statute is directed against the requiring of weekly wages, and of too high an amount; it enacts that they shall be paid by the day, and fixes the rate of them; and for this purpose it endeavours to break up the machinery of the wages-receiving class for insisting on other conditions. Now the attempt, on the part of the wages-receivers, to fix the conditions of labour and the amount of its remuneration, is precisely the work of a modern trade society. But when we notice that the wages of master-masons and carpenters are sought to be fixed,-when we pay attention to the "congregations, chapters, ordinances, and oaths" which are forbidden, it is impossible, I think, to mistake the fact, that we have before us precisely such an instance as I have sketched out, of guilds sinking to a lower level; forced, after embodying the collective interests of the whole trade, to embody henceforth only those of the operative portion of it, yet naturally carrying with them, and seeking to retain and exercise, those habits of regulation and authority which were formerly

Much light is, I think, thrown upon the subject, when we thus see that the trade society of our days is but the lopsided representative of the old guild, its dwarfed but lawful heir. The historical pertinacity of its struggle against statutory prohibition,-its assumptions of authority,-are thus in great measure explained. It has fought the law on the ground of a prior title; it has dictated to the masters in the name of the shadow of a past corporation. No doubt, when it had once assumed its present character, organizations for the same purpose would spring up, entirely destitute of any historical filiation. But whoever reflects on many common terms of the workman's language, the word "trade," as signifying the collective operative portion of the trade, the word "tradesman," as synonymous with the workman in a trade,will see in them additional evidences of the connexion between the old guild and the modern trade society. In some cases, indeed, there is historical proof of the identity between the two; as will be seen in Mr. F. H. Hill's very valuable "Account of Trade Combinations at Sheffield," in which the filiation of the modern trade societies of that town from the "Fellowship of Cutlers in Hallamshire" in the reign of Queen Elizabeth is clearly shown.

Of course the claim of the wages-receivers, when, through the introduction of capitalist-mastership, they represented only a portion of the trade, to act in the name and with the authority of the old guild, when it embodied the whole, was one perfectly untenable. If workingmen's combinations were to stand, they must stand upon some other ground than that of representing a paramount collective authority. But the scission of interests between the capitalist-employer and his workmen at once afforded such a ground. Putting the subject of wages for the present entirely out of the question, it is evident that the whole burthen of the charitable purposes flowing out of the guild system must henceforth fall mainly, if not exclusively, on the wages-receivers. The capitalist-employer, even if nominally still a member

of the guild or fellowship, owed nothing to it but the strictest legal dues. The higher wages he paid, the less he would deem himself bound to provide for the maintenance of the aged or infirm journeyman, for his decent interment, for his widow and children. Yet workingmen saw every day their fellows helpless with age and infirmities, their families reduced to beggary. All right-feeling men would seek to preserve the guild organization for such purposes; where it had perished, all right-feeling men would seek to form some new one with the like view. And I cannot help thinking that many of the stringent trade-society regulations as to apprenticeship, which are inveighed against as deep-laid plots against economic principles, are originally the simple expression of parental providence on the part of the working-man. At a time when book-education, so to speak, did not exist when facilities of locomotion were small-when every trade, even if not regulated from within, was regulated more or less by Act of Parliament from without, - what education could the father give to the son, except in his own trade? Of what avail would that education be, unless a field were provided for its exercise? This, I think, comes out very clearly in the "Acts and Ordinances" of the Hallamshire cutlers, as quoted by Mr. Hill (see p. 523 of the volume), where it will be seen that every restriction against the exercise of the trade falls before those who have been "taught by their fathers."

Be this as it may, it will easily be seen how, apart from those trade societies which are directly descended from the old guilds or fellowships, another class must have arisen from the need of providing amongst working-men for those purposes which were formerly embraced in those of the guild, which are now mostly reached by the machinery of the Friendly Societies' Acts. Accordingly, the Committee's volume affords several instances of trade societies which began by being benefit societies. In discussing the question of the advan

societies and trade societies, the Committee appear to me to have overlooked this fact, which is nevertheless not without importance. Friendly societies having been only endowed with legal existence in the latter half of the last century, it is obvious that during 400 out of the 500 years during which the trade societies' struggle has lasted, it was only by means of a trade society organization that the workers in a given trade-other than such as might here and there have retained some old legal corporate privileges could compass the purposes of a benefit society. The connexion between the two is, therefore, historically not an external accident; it flows, on the contrary, primarily from the mere effort to band the workers together for purposes of common benefit. The accident, on the contrary, has been the enactment of the Friendly Societies' Acts, which, by affording peculiar facilities for securing certain benefits by combination, has disconnected those purposes from the others, and raised the question of disconnecting also the machineries for attaining them.

Of the extent to which trade societies, so called, which are also benefit societies, dispense relief for what are strictly benefit society purposes, few who have not examined into the fact can have any idea. I take up the volume of the yearly reports of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and I find that it spent in 1853 for sick, superannuation, funeral, and accident benefit, 6,054., making 11s. 3d. per member; in 1854, 6,1457., making 10s. 7d. per member; in 1855, 7,230l., making 11s. 6d.; in 1856, 8,017., making 11s. 11d.; in 1857, 9,8217., making 138. 5d.; in all, for the five years, upwards of 37,000l., which one must hold to have been directly saved to the public in the shape of poor-law relief or charity, by the providence of these much-abused agitators.

But there is one mischance to which the worker is subject, more dreaded, more frequent, more constantly recurrent than sickness, disabling accident, or any

want of work. Continuous employment is the lot but of a very small minority in any trade. There is scarcely any but has its slacks or dead seasons, amounting generally to at least a month, sometimes extending to three or four in the year. How is the worker to provide against this? By individual saving? The requirement implies at least, be it observed, that the wages of eleven months' work, of ten, of nine, of eight, shall be sufficient for the year's maintenance; but, without following out this remark into its ultimate consequences, let it be noticed at once how hardly such a requirement bears upon the young man, before he has begun to save, and with all the impulses of youth upon him, all its temptations about him. Evidently, the mere need of providing for the event of want of work, for the labour of proceeding in search of it, begets the idea of forming a common purse, of securing against individual imprudence by collective organization. Hence another ground for the trade society, which indeed was insisted on by the minority of the SubCommittee by which the conclusions of the Report were drawn up. I am myself unable to see why the chances of want of work (for any cause exclusive of strikes) should not be quite as capable of being reduced to an average, and should not supply a purpose quite as worthy to be included amongst those of legalized Friendly Societies, as those of sickness, old age &c.; and I consider it a serious blot in our Friendly Societies' Acts, that they do not so include it. At any rate the is one which must be propurpose vided for by every working man, and, by all but the most exemplary, cannot be sufficiently compassed except by means of a collective organization. To require them therefore to separate the relief of the unemployed from the relief of other social needs in the trade is really to call upon them to maintain two separate organizations, where one would otherwise suffice.

Now this function of trade societies, in maintaining the unemployed, and equalizing the pressure on the labour

means of travel, is one of enormous importance to themselves, and it is only by dwelling upon it that we can understand the totally opposite points of view from which trade societies are looked at by the working classes, and by the general public. The general public practically never sees them but through the heated and distorting medium of a strike atmosphere; or, to use a different image, the strike is the sole point of contact between the one sphere and the other. For the working man on the contrary, it can never be too often repeated that the strike is but an accident in the history of his trade society. He looks to it above all as a hand stretched out to him in all his needs. In such a year the firm that employed him failed, and he received donation during so many weeks. In such another year trade was very slack in the neighbourhood where he was employed, and he received tramp allowance to go to a distant county. In such another he fell sick; in such another he was temporarily disabled by accident, and still from the same source flowed the aid which he received. He knows that, if he reaches a certain age, he will receive his superannuation allowance; he knows that, if he be called away by death, his widow will not have to ruin herself in giving him decent burial, and will herself receive something towards her support. True, there was that disastrous strike in the year 18when the society's full purse got drained, and none but the most urgent cases of sickness were helped, and sore were his own privations. But what of that once in a life-time? Contributions flowed in

all the more abundantly the very next year after the strike. His society does not exist for that; it exists to enable working men to make the best of their earnings, and live and die comfortable. What do you mean by talking about trade societies as mere hotbeds of agitation? He only knows that he would have had to

1 I cannot help regretting the multiplication in the Committee's volume of accounts of strikes, as compared with those of trade combinations in themselves, as being likely to