The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-02-23 00:00:00

THE LABOUR QUESTION.

In London, on Monday night, the usual meeting of
the Royal Institute of British Architects was held,
when a discussion ensued upon the paper read by Mr.
Thowas Brassey, M.P., at the last meeting, on the
subject of the " rise of wages in the building trades of
London." In the course of this paper Mr. Brassey
stated that he had been informed that work had
deteriorated, while its cost had increased. On the
other hand he showed that provisions and rent had
increased in cost at the same time. The paper dealt
with all the questi,ms at issue between employers and
workmen in the building trades.

Mr. George Howell, as to the asserted benefits
arlding from piece-work, declared that in general work
this was next to impossible in the bricklaying trade,
but that it could be applied in stone work and in
joining. The only work in which it could be done
was when individual men carried out parts of the
work themselves. As to the charge that there was
want of heart in work on the part of working men, or in
other words that there was a disposition to "skulk," and
while acknowledging hat people generally were disposed
in these days to get as much for as little as possible,
he denied that the working men of to-day were dis-
posed to give less work, and less skilled work. In
general cases he said that the work of to-day would
bear comparison with the work of 20 years ago, the
only exceptions being in the cases of what was called
"slogging work," and " jerry builders," in the out-
lying districts.

Mr. Hill read extracts from a paper which he had
written and published some time since on the labour
question, and attacked the trades' unions, declaring,
besides other wr.mgs, that they attempted to level the
working men and to preach down the capitalists as
the enemies of those who laboured. Speaking as one
who had taken an interest for a long time in the
welfare of the working classes, Mr. Hill expressed
the sentiment that friendship was the cement of
society, and further that education, if judiciously
encouraged, would eventually furnish one of the
strongest bonds of union.
Mr. Horace Jones pointed out that between 1865
and 1875 there was an accumulation of bullion to be-
tween the amounts of £40,000,000 and £50,000,000,
and there could not be this increase of value in the
country without all classes increasing the prices for
products, and it was only natural that the working
men should have their wages raised. He also thought
that Unionism would never have occurred if some-
thing like the old principle of work had been carried
out, such as existed forty or fifty years ago, when a
tradesman had his apprentices and his skilled work-
men working all the year round.
Mr. G. Potter mentioned that no strike of any
magnitude could occur without the sanction of the
trade in which it took place. They must remember
that there were two stand-points in this question—that
of the capitalist and that of the labourer. It was
necessary that capital should exist and that labour
should be supported, and each should share in the
reward of the united result. The question was what
part of the reward should go to capital, and what to
labour. It was better to have a good workmilla at 9d.
an hour than a bad workman at 7d. He aged that
piecework in many branches of the building trade was
impracticable. It was not always the men who were
in the wrong. The old relations between the masters
and the men were dying out. Formerly one master
might only do one branch of the building trade, but
now the small builders might be overridden. The
honest English artisans did not wish unnecessarily to
appose their masters. They were willing to work,
but they desired a fair portion of the retura.

Mr. Lucas maintained that it was a matter of proof
that the working men in the building trade did not
now do a fair day's work. They talked about "work-
ing men," but he was a working man himself, and
had worked up from a boy to his present position, and
he declared that it would be impossible for a man,
whatever might be his qualities and energies, to rise as
he had himself risen by his freedom of labour un-
trammelled by trades' union rules. He declared
broadly, without hesitation, that there was half the
work now given for 9d. the hour to what was given
formerly for 6d. the hour. The action of the masons
had resulted in work now being done in concrete
instead of in stone as formerly ; in fact, a
dock, in which there were millions of rods, was now
being laid with concrete, and so the labour in stone
was lost. It was quite impossible, he said, speaking
as an employer, to treat with the working men in the
building trade now, for the trades' union was always
interfering. The union insisted upon giving a high
rate of wages, and then insisted that the idlest or
most inferior workman should have this pay; so that
a man worth only 6d. an hour, and who might get
work at that, was raised on a level with the best,
and was out of work half his time. It would be wiser
for the men, instead of striking, to put Itheir money
into co-operative trade associations, and their energies,
instead of being wasted in idleness, employed in work.
He would help them to do this; for he was sure that
they would not work in co-operation a month before
they would knock over their tra ies' union rules. He
declared that it was now impossible for an employer
to estimate the labour of a work, or to justify its cost
when the work was done, and he urged that piece
work, on fair wage, could only solve the difficulties
which had now arisen.

Lord Houghton said that the results of investiga-
tions proved that no strike "paid," but, in addition,
by a strike there were the lost habits of industry.

Mr. Trollope, of the well-known buildin firm,
declared that the action of trades' union had been such
that they had fixed the amount which a job should
come to, and it had come to such a pitch that the em-
ployers could not go on without some radical change.
Thanks were voted to Mr. Brassey and to the chair-
man, who said that if skilled labour was to be pressed
out of the field there would be an end to all archi-
tecture.

PARODY FOR THE PRUDENT.
We don't want to go to war; for, by jingo, if we do,
We may lose our ships, and lose our men, and, what's worse,
our money too.—Pu9zeh.

The Norfolk Chamber of Agriculture discussed on
Saturday the County Government Bill, and unanimously re-
solved that while approving generally of its scope, much
better machinery for comtituting the board might be created.

In the German Parliament on Saturday a debate
took place on the 13,4clget. The President of the Imperial
Chancellory stated that the close of the financial year was
less favourable than that of the preceding year, and pro-
posed, instead of increasing the contribution of the several
States, to raise the revenue receipts of the empire itself,

Visrellaneans itticltigenct.