The Express.
London, England, 1852-01-10 00:00:00

't

To-DAY—the 10th of
of the Master Enginer4 for clusingtheir
*nieces the leaders of Ai cum Mitad workings ails.
their demands or. the eiliployent; .
Naminant jas,siannta in/urea, is a maxim the truth
of which will be found ineontestahle in other provinces
than those of jurisprudence. Whenever " rights"
are overstrained, the result will be injurious, even to
thsalaimants themselves. From the memorable and
siinirable consequences which an undue prosecution
of the " rights of man" entailed upon the past genera-
tion in a neighbouring country, to the coil of disaster
and contrudiction that is fast entangling the members
of the " Amalgamated Society of Engineers, " the
retributory event is invariably the same. l'unish-
ment never fails, and seldom delays its arrival ; and
comes, too, most frequently in the form moat appro-
priate to the otlilice.
lb sold pania par on its arnient peck'. They who
have interpreted in too monopolising a spirit, or
under a too exclusive sense, the abstract rights with
which their legal or social position endowed them,
have discovered, when it was too late, that the very
privileges they asserted worked their evil in the cud,
and that no worse harm could befal them than to
be taken at their word, and receive in the great
Court of Destiny an award in full of their ill-consi-
dered demands. The farmer, in the old fable,
prayed that sunshine and rain might be apportioned
to his fields at his own discretion. Heaven, in
granting his wish, showed him by woful experience
how unwise was his selfish prayer, and how much
worse the crop he could secure by his own wisdom,
than if he had conseltcs.l to remain a partaker in
the law of universal and indiscriminating benevo-
knee appointed by Providence for the government of
the world.
The operative engineers, whose apparent wish has
been to dissolve the ordinary ties that unite the
employed to the employers in this country, are
bringing down upon their own heads a retributive
justice of the most apposite character. Founding
their quarrel with the master manufacturers chiefly
upon the question of "piecework," they are finding
sinews of war for a prolongation of the contest, by
adopting as a system the very arrangements which
the employers enforced only occasionally as a matter
ateonvenience. In offering. according to the tenor
ler their late advertisements, to perform work " on
die premises of customers," or to " undertake and
accomplish large jobs on their own account," without
the intervention of their present masters, the asso-
ciated workmen have but committed themselves to
the very principle they pretend to condemn. Work
done under the conditions thus set forth, is but piece-
work on the largest scale. And yet this is their sole re-
source against total idleness and destitution,- if they
once throw themselves out of the regular orbit of em-

plovment and pay.
Passing the intrinsic absurdity involved in their
position,—when after denouncing piecework in detail
they adopt it as the very basis of their own system,—
we cannot look upon the plan of campaign now out-
lined by the leaders of the Amalgamated Society
of Engineers as deserving approval, either on
account of the abstract justice of their cause, or
the practical prudence of their conduct. Experience,
indeed, shows that all contrivances such as that by
which they now hope to dispense with the interven-
tion of the usual employers invariably result in dis-
astrous failure. Often as the attempt has been made
le de without the customary class of middlemen
ander the name of capitalists and employers—be-
tween the producing ageut and the purchaser of his
productions, the consequences have, without ex-
emption, been injurious to the consumer first, but
afterwards, and in greatest measure, to the producers
themselves. Tried amidst all the ~ehit of an indus-
trial revolution, and with all the support of a govern-
ment which rested solely upon the suffrages of the
operative classes, the great experiment of the
national workshops resulted only in an industrial
chime,, as well as a commercial bankruptcy.
All similar attempts have but led to catastrophes
equally tragical in complexion, if less con-
spicuous in extent. Tempting as the wealth
sometimes acquired by the employment of capital in
industrial enterprises may appear, it is in truth a
}sssssssnn which the workmen snatch at only is find
it la elusive shadow in their grasp. Examined
dusty, we find that the gains of the employer, large
me they seem in the gross, are derived from elaborate
combinations which only a single mind could success-
telly form and conduct; of an accumulation of
minute profits that woold become absolutely evanes-
mot when distributed over the whole mass of work-
men ; or from the fortunate results of speculations
is which an associated company of operatives either
esiald not have embarked at all, or would have had
to undergo the most frightful sufferings had the re-
melt,—after they had committed themselves to the
risk.—turned out uufortunately.
The executive council, at whew control the general
body of members of the Amalgamated Society appear
to have placed themselves are evidently encouraged
in their persistence by the possession of some twenty
or thirty thousand pounds of ready money. This
fund was originally subscribed for very -different
purposes than that of supporting. a "strike" among
the operative engineers. It might even be ques-
tioned how far the council had a legal right to ap-
propriate the fund, or part of it, for any such pur-
pose. This difficulty, 'however, they get over by
covering the transaction under the guise of a loan—
to be appropriated by way of capital for manufactur-
jug purposes, on the " Independent principle," re-
paid out of the profits, and secured meantime by a
mortgage of "all the plant and stock-in-trade " em-
ployed in their business by the workmen who may
be favoured with advances from the fund in question.
Ten thousand pounds of the society's money, with
each other sums as might be attracted from other
quarters by the temptation of five per cent. interest
and the security before mentioned, were, by a resolu-
tion of the council, posited on Tuesday last, devoted
to the formation of a "labour fund, by which the
members of the associated body of workmen should be
enabled to "carry on the business of engineers,
machinists, tee." This capital is to be placed in the
hands of certain trustees, not less than six in
number, "selected by the executive committee;" the
advances of cash out of it are to be made to the
members at the discretion of managers " appointed
by the executive committee;" and the work for
which capital is thus supplied, is to bo performed
under "such conditions as are approved of by tho
executive committee." Considering that if matters
are really pushed to extremity, more than thirty
thousand workmen will be out of employment on
Monday next, tho sum at disposal, with all the
increase that can reasonably be expected, is ridi-
culously small, amounting to perhaps 10s. per head,
by way of capital. But even could the amount be
swollen to a nearer equality with the purpose it is
meant to Nerve, the workmen themselves would be
hardly benefited by its use. After obtaining an ad-
vance through the complicated machinery devised by
the council; after successfully running the gauntlet
of trustees and managers, and triumphing over the
technical difficulties attending the mortgage of hie
tools, by way of security for the loan, the "indepen-
dent" engineer will have further to submit to such
conditions as the executive council may think proper
to enact. lie will, in fact, have accomplished nothing
but a change of masters. Ninety-nine times in the
hundred, we will venture to say, that the change
will not be for the better. When he finds his little
plant" irretrievably " dipped," his precarious re-
ceipts absorbed by the demand for interest acenses-
lating, work or no work, over his heed, and his free
agencies hampered on every side by the conditions
imposed by the council to whom be hes 'Actually
sold himself, the chances are that he will look back
with bitter regret upon the position he hes so wan-
tonly thrown away. The worst terms offered by his
old employers will then appear to him atriotrite In-
dependence contrasted with his present *odd= to
the " executive council."
There is nothing in the cause, and nothing in the
conduct presented by the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers to induce the hope that they will sensed
in claiming exemption from the general rid% ea, that
the attempt to organise a system of labor ell dif-
ferent terms from those of the habitual ma time-
heeensed regulations of employment, &Nil /stet'
OM
datable in their hands than in those et eta
For their own sakes we regret dna
Lira wimperiment should he ever trial. And ifit cheap
semi with a tensporary—it can hope for no perms-
...a—mamma it will but stimulate a conflict, every
barb oradniame of which will be damaging, as its
ISlMlSloornoomi banbren deplorable, to all the parties
mirippily engaged is it.

AME.
that

PROPOSED DOCKS AT MILFORD HAVEN.—The
ostionwl 000 t of exAtructiug sad omaglotiag the laktadid
wog dogs awl floating basin at Mad Sava lo MAN.