Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-10-15 00:00:00

WORKMEN'S STRIKES.

The following illustration of the means which are
adopted by various classes of work-people to. maintain,
an ascendancy over their masters, has been handed to
us for. publication in our-columns, in order to promote
its general circulation. The particulars it contains refer
more especially, it appears, to the masons ; , but we
understand that similar arbitrary rules and regulations
are in vogue amongst most of the trades. As friends
of the working classes generally, it is impossible to
approve of such proceedings on their part as are here
disclosed. They are certainly not calculated to promote
their own interests, whilst they evince a spirit of
.oppo-
sition to their employers, which can never conduce to
their mutual happiness and prosperity :—A new set of
rules and regulations for the Friendly Society of
Operative Masons was agreed to ea the 28th Octo-
ber, 1858, and came into operation Ist January, 1859.
The attention of the master builders and the public
generally, 13 requested to an extract from the "preface"
by which these rules are introduced, and also to some of
the laws which especially affect their interests.—Preface :
"United we Stand, Divided we Fall." "As no degree of
human happiness can possibly exist without society, it is
the great,principle of the Friendly Society of Operative'
Masons' to bring into -practice among its members the
truly valuable object of a self-protecting power • against
the selfish and unprincipled proceedings of the capitalist ;
and although objections are sometimes raised against
trade societies, and charge,i made that they are monopolies
and unjust restrictions, yet those who experience the
great benefit they confer can fully appreciate their general
usefulness."

The following laws are especially worthy of attention :
—" Members known to disclose lodge business to em-
ployers, foremen, or any one not connected with the
society, to be.fined five shillings for each offence." p; 17.
—" Boys entering the trade on no occasion to exceed
sixteen years of age, and to be legally bound appren-
tices till twenty-one years of age." p. 26.—" Working
overtime tending to our general injury by keeping mem-
bers out of employment, shall, be abolished, excepting in
case of accident or necessity, but no strike to take place
for the abolition thereof without a special grant. When
members persist in working overtime in opposition to
the lodge of which they are members, that they be fined
at the discretion of such lodge. A lessening of the
hours of labour would be a great remedy for the wrongs
we suffer, and may each member speedily perceive how
deeply he is interested in its attainment. It is also
requested that lodges harassed by piece-work or sub-
contracting, do apply at a reasonable time to abolish it.
Where sub-contracting or piece-work is abolished, such
is binding on the society." p. 25.—" If any employer
should attempt to reduce the current rate of wages
at any period of the year, or attempt to .intro-
duce piece-work, when it has been abolished, or
infringe upon the established meal hours, or introducing
individuals not of the trade, or the refusal of paying,
and non-members to contribute to the society, members
may' resist such infringements without a grant, if
acceded to by a majority of the members of the
lodge; but in all cases to wait upon employers
previous to striking." p. 41.—" That an annual
revised
_black list be printed, showing the names of
those who have worked in opposition, on strikes, or
otherwise." p. 18.—From these rules it appears
Ist. That the lodge will dictate to the masters, on the
one hand, and the parents, on the other, when a lad may
be apprenticed, and when he may not.-2nd. That
neither masters nor men may make a contract, or work
on ordinary engagements, except it be on such con-
ditions, and at such times, as the lodge may approve.—
3rd. If the dictation of the lodge be not agreed to, the
master is to be ruined by a strike, and the men put on
"The
of
Revised
a social
cßi
al ale k List"
persecution that t theyh a
that
shallmay
degrade and
be made the
victims
ruin them.-4th. That all this is managed by a secret
committee of a lodge which holds its sittings in an ob-
scure tap-room, and guards its doings from. the public
eye by fines and persecution. Is this to be tolerated in
free and enlightened England ?

DEATH OF SIR GEORGE GOODMAN.--Sir George
Goodman, formerly M.P. for the borough of Leeds, who
for some time past had been suffering from a paralytic
affection, brought on by his close and continuous atten-
tion to his parliamentary duties, died at his seat at
Roundhay, near Leeds on Thursday morning.
Sir
George was a magistrate for the West Riding York-
shire, also for the borough of Leeds, and was the first
mayor for that borough under the Municipal Corpora-
tions Act in 1836. To the same office he was also
elected in 1846, 1850, and 1851, in the last of which
years he received the honour of knighthood. While in
office as mayor in July, 1852, he resigned to become a
candidate for the representation of the borough in Par-
liament, and was elected as the colleague of the Right
Hon. M. T. Baines,

ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROMOTION
OF SOCIAL SCIENCE.

MR. MONCTON MILNES ON THE PUNISH-
MENT AND PREVENTION OF CRIME.
BRADFORD, Thursday.
The proceedings commenced at ten o'clock, when Mr.
Moncton Milnes read his paper " On the Punishreent
and Prevention of Crime, and the Reformation of
Ciiininals." He said—The section over which he had
been appointed to preside had been entitled that of
" Punishment and Reformation," two words which ap-
peared to have a natural and necessary connection. It
would, however, be apparent to those who reflected
upon the subject, that this presumed identity of purpose
was but a recent and partial-result of a higher and
purer system of legislation. He proceeded at some length
to examine how it was that a combination which
seemed to, us essential to raise the level of public justice
above the fierce and even malignant dispositions of
huMan nature, should have been so tardy in its origin,
and should be, even now, so 'limited in- its application.
He alluded to the systemof torture practised in the
states of Europe and. in our own country down to the
time of our. immediate ancestors, and said that if men
were to be terrified into law and order, we had never
been scrupulous about the means. Our country had seen
upon the scaffold the man who prevented a horse from
running at Newmarket, the woman who clutched a hand-
kerchief from o-sfside a shop to get breadfor her child, and
the boy who ran off with a pewter pot supended on the
rails of a London area. He heldthat the effect of the dis-
continuance of transportation had been to awaken the legis-
lature and the public to'a due sense-of the worth of the
reformatory
.treatment of prisoners, both youthful and
adult ; to give to the man who had worked out his
penalty the reasonable hope of restoration to honest
life, and in the case of parents of convicted children to
place the responsibility of guilt on the heads on which it
should justly rest. (Applause.) He looked upon refor-
matory treatment as, alone, just and wise, independent
of any results whatever. It was to America that we owed
the first experiments of the separate system, the very
foundation of reformatory discipline. He contended
that the scheme of righteous vindictiveness had had its
fair trial, and held that there was not a step in
our amended discipline which was not the result of
practical observation, and they dreli their reformatory
principles from no puddle of sentimentality, but from
the clear well-spring of common sense. After glancing
at the ticket-of-leave system, and adVerting to the fact
that it was to the governor of a Yorkshire prison
(Mr. Shepherd, of Wakefield) that they owed the
first successful experiment of a refuge for discharged
convicts, lie proceeded to allude to ,the treatment of
criminal children, and said that when the independent
members of parliament in 1849 introduced a bill to alter
the system that then existed, it was received by the
practical men of the day as a presumptuous and specula-
tive piece of amateur legislation:- Out-of-door labour as
remunerative and self-supporting as possible, personal
supervision by one: master over a limited number of
lad., plain and earnest religious teaching, and the
careful development of the natural affections of child-
hood without sentimentality or indulgence—these were
the recognised objects which every reformatory desired
to attain. • He. considered the military and naval
services the best outlet for boys who had been in
reformatories, and regretted that the Akbar, refor-
matory ship at . Liverpool, was not fully supplied
with inmates who would be a most serviceable portion
of that force of sea boys which a late commission
had so strongly recommended, but. not above half of
which had as yet been recruited by the Admiralty.
He did not fear, with many sagacious persons, that
the recent discoveries in science would tend to the
facilities of the commission of crime and the difficulty of
detection. Let us only add to the wonderful advances
of our knowledge, an equal penetration into the occult
recesses of the human heart, and an equally fine mani-
pulation of the discrepancies of human character.; let
us learn to prevent crime by education, and reform it in
punishment; and our age will be no less famous for its
victories over the moral, than over the material world.
(Loud cheers.) The address occupied an hour and a
half in the -delivery.