The Sun.
London, England, 1833-12-04 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

We have repeatedly warned the workmen
and journeymen who have entered into
Trades' Unions, for the purpose of compel-
ling their employers, under the menace of a
" strike," to raise the rate of their wages when
the market for labour was supposed to be im
proving, or to keep them up when it was declin-
ing, that if their demands were pitched unrea-
sonably high, or if their pretensions involved
propositions inconsistent with the ordinary ex-
istence or reasonable profits of their masters, they
would themselves be the first to suffer from their
conduct. If the manufacturer, acting under such
a threat, engaged to pay more to the workman
than he could obtain from his customers for the
manufactured commodities, after deducting his
own ordinary profits of stock, it is plain that
'his capital would soon be exhausted, and that
along with that exhaustion his means of em-
ploying labour would be destroyed. If, on the
other hand, he attempted to shift the burden
from his own shoulders on to those of his cus-
iorrrers, and charged a higher price for the ma-
nufactured article in order to indemnify himself
for the additional rate of wages to the workmen,
the increase of price would diminish consump-
tion, and leave the manufacturer and his opera-
tives in a worse situation than they were in before.
But the evil generally would not be allowed to
run this experimental career. The employers of
labour would not consent, with their eyes open,
to he the first victims offered on the altar of
combination, and would resist the intended sa-
crifice with all the force and energy of numbers
and concert. This has for some time past been
threatened at Manchester, Leeds, Huddersfield,
Wakefield, and other towns of Yorkshire, where
the despotism of the Trades' Unions has been
lately exercised, and it has actually been accom-
plished in the less extensive manufacturing town
of Derby. We learn this fact from the Derby
Reporter of Thursday last, and from the resolu-
tions adopted on the preceding Monday at a
meeting of the masters and manufacturers of that
borough.
" The number of the members of the Trades' Union,"
says the Reporter, " in this town has increased 200 since
our last publication. There are now upwards of 1,000
of the operatives associated, nearly the whole of whom
have been dismissed, or have left their work, in conse
luence of a tesolution of the masters and manufacturers
not to employ any member of the Union. Notice, we
understand, Ls been given to the remainder to quit their
service at the expiration of their engagements, so that in a
few days there will he 1,000 workmen out of employ, and
in consequence a much forger number of women and chil-
dren. The Mayor and magistrates have taken precautionary
measures to preserve the peace. A number of special con-
stables have been sworn in, and a troop of the 2d Dragoon
Guards, or Queen's Bays, arrived in this town from Not-
tingham on Friday. Several of the manufactories stopped
this morning, and oonsislerable excitation was observable
amongst the assembled workpeople in the neighbourhood
of the mills. Loud complaints were made hy some of the
female bands that they had nothing whatever to do with
the Unions, yet they were deprived of the only means they
possessed of procuring bread for themselves."
The resolutions of the masters are firm, and
decided against the claims of the Unionists,
while they are so reasonable as to allow their
workmen that freedom of combining which they
insist upon exercising themselves. The follow.
ing declaration to that purport, contained in the
first resolution, was never (that we remember)
so unequivocally avowed on any similar occa-
sion:---" This meeting acknowledges the right
of workmen to give or withhold their labour,
and asserts the equal right of masters to give
or withhold employment ; and that when work-
men unite to impose ternts upon their employers,
the latter must either submit to that dictation or
resist it by a similar union." Here, there-
fore, we have camp against camp, union against
union, and a combination of capitalists against
a combination of workmen. The only office
left to the Government in such an emer-
gency is to see that the public peace is not broken,
—that the powers of neither union be exercised
with violence towards its antagonist,—that no
obstruction be offered to those masters who
choose to offer better terms to their workmen, or
to those workmen who choose to continue their
work on the old footing,—in short, that even
where numbers and parties act in concert, con-
tracts may be individually voluntary. No re-
medy could have been found for such a case in
the combination laws, though they had been still
allowed to exist. No man can be compelled to
work for less wages than he thinks himself en-
titled to receive, without being reduced to the
condition of a slave ; and if one mechanic or
artisan can leave his employer unless his situation
is improved, the same right cannot be denied to a
thousand. Combinations, therefore, existed
under the protection of public sympathy, and
sanctioned by a sense of natural right, even
when they were prohibited by statute, and could
not now without positive injustice, or perhaps
sanguinary violence, be extinguished by the re-
enactment of any obsolete law. The masters,
from the smallness of their numbers, and the
facility of their communication, have always
had it in their power to combine ; and it would
have been inconsistent with natural equity to have
denied to the weaker party that which was en

joyed by the sl-onger: lut it is easy to see who
will suffer most by a perseverance in unreason-

able demands, and who must first yield in this
contest of combination. The masters, whose
means of daily subsistence cannot be immediately
affected by the cessation of their works or facto-

ries, may hold out for a considerable time
without personal suffering or inconvenience.
They may live on their capital or on the accumu-
lation of their saving till they try the experiment
of obtaining cheaper labour. If, alter all they fail
in their object, they may, though at a great
loss, but without absolute ruin, remove their
business to some other place, or transfer their
capital to some other employment. We have
had frequent examples of this fact in the mi-
gration of different kinds of manufactures to
new localities (as in the case of the silk trade),
or in the increase of certain branches of business

at the expense of others which have ceased to

be profitable. But the needy workmen who
agree to engage in the Union, and abandon their

employers, have not the same resources. They
generally possess no accumulations on which to
toll hack, and a month's want of employment is
consequently to them a sentence of starvation.
The funds collected from those who have work
are not sufficient to form a military chest to
maintain an army of idlers for fighting the battle
of wages, and those who strike for work must
soon strike their colours from famine. In such
a case the parish poor-rate offers no relief; and
all the contributions of the union club
must soon be exhausted. If it were other-
wise for a time, and if the Trades' Unions
could maintain their members till they wrung
from their employers a compliance with their
unreasonable demands, the evils which would
result from their success would be still more

aggravated, and could not fail ultimately to reach

fiemselves. By suspending our manufacturing
Industry, and interrupting our foreign commerce,
'they would teach our foreign customer to resort