The Sun.
London, England, 1833-11-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TIIE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We insert to-day two very interesting letters
respecting Trades' Unions, or combinations
among manufacturing workmen or artisans,— one
of them, written with great modesty, from a
journeyman hatter, under the signature of " A
Lover of Truth," respecting the late case at the
Mansion-house, and the other, with great know-
ledge and spirit, from a gentleman connected
with Sheffield, who details facts respecting the
Unions of that town, with which we have hitherto
been but partially acquainted. We beg to call
particular attention to the latter instructive com-
munication, and after expressing our hope that
the lesson which it affords will not be thrown
away either on capitalists or workmen, shall take
the liberty of making some further observations
on the late Trades' Unions, both foreign and
domestic. There seems to be a general excite-
ment at present in civilized Europe respecting
the rights of industry, and the proportion in
which its fruits ought to be divided between
the workman and the master,—or, in other
words, between immediate labour and capital,
or accumulated labour. This excitement may
have arisen from political causes, and has in
some instances connected itself with political
principles and associations. It has mani-
fested itself chiefly in those countries
(France, England, and Germany) where poli-
tical knowledge is most advanced—where the
discussion of political institutions is most
generally diffused—where the Governments are
least arbitrary—and where the lenitive political
rights and duties of the different classes of
society are best understood. It has formed
unions, or combination of workmen or journey-
men, who agree to cease from labour till they
obtain better terms from their employers, who
organize themselves into large masses for mu-
tual support during the period of the interrup-
tion of their work, and who sometimes employ
violence to prevent those of their comrades from
continuing their labours, whose refusal to enter
into their combination might defeat its efficiency
or del y its object. These associations have
been formed in some of the staple manufac-
tures of England, and exist in full vigour at
present in the wool trade in Yorkshire. They
have appeared, as described by our correspon-
dent, at Sheffield ; e hear of them among the
hatters in London ; and they are threatened in
some other branches of business. On the Conti-
nent they have appeared in Paris, at Lyons,
at Frankfort, and in several other localities, in a
great variety of trades. In the French capital
they began with the carpenters, for whose ser-
vices the building improvements of the Govern-
ment created a great sudden additional demand.
The potters, or the porcelain workmen, imitated
their example. The journeymen tailors, a more
important body, have latterly alarmed the French
capital by striking for higher wages and dimi-
nished labour. The journeymen bakers are
likewise in the field against their masters, or the
public, threatening to reduce their antagonists
by famine. And the shoemakers and journey-
men jewellers have not been inattentive spectators
of the beneficial arrangements which they expect
from the resistance of their fellow artisans in
other necessary trades and handicrafts. The
journeymen tailors at Lyons have hoisted the
flag of their Parisian brethren, and pitched their
camp in opposition to that of their masters. At
Frankfort the tailors are likewise in motion, as
if, according to the old song, " the devil had
got among the tailors," and they were resolved to
show that they had not only in their hands the
dandy and the exquisite (who are their proper
creation), but that they could deprive the more
respectable part of the human creation of that sign
of civilized humanity with which it is invested by
their useful craft. There are two objects for a
strike in manufactures, and among journeymen
mechanics, which occur in very different or
rather opposite states of the trade—namely, first,
to resist a diminution of wages when the trade
is slack, and when the master manufacturer
cannot continue his former prices ; and, se-
condly, to demand a rise of wages, when busi-
ness is reviving, when it is prosperous, or when
its profits are supposed to be increasing. The
latter seems to be the case at the present mo-
ment over the manufacturing countries of Eu-
rope, and to have occasioned the existing com-
binations. The journeymen tailors at Paris
aye therefore the modesty to propose a minimum

wages, and a maximum of time for labour
G‘er the whole of the shopboard business. The
former is estimated at five or six francs a day,
and the latter is fixed at ten hours. This
regulation they promulgate as the charter of
their profession, supporting and confirming it
with quotations from the writings of the
" Society of the Rights of Man." In this
charter they forget that their employers likewise
have rights, and that the portion of benefit
which they insist upon receiving out of the joint
production of labour and capital may be so great
as to destroy the latter for the temporary advan-
tage of the former, and thus not only to ruin their
masters, hut to destroy the fund of their own
future subsistence. In one of the manifestoes
of the Paris tailors we find the following rich
mixture of political burlesque, with the produce
of the shopboard, where it is quite apparent,
from the cut of the style and the measure of the
arguments, that the pen was not held by the
calumniated ninth fraction of a man ;—" Is the
rate of our wages in proportion to the amount
of our wants ? Is the duration of our labour
in a proper ratio to our physical strength ? Does
it permit our faculties to develop themselves?
Ignorance leads to depravity, arid the rich would
thus wish to see us depraved, that a free course
might be given to their cupidity, under apparent
measures of public order. You thus see with
what facility the wealthy introduce disorder into
our domestic circles, corruption into our families,
while they strip us of the dignity of men, by
degrading charity. Let us, therefore, unite to de-
mand an amount of wages, which will, in the first
place, permit savings for a slack season, and for
accidental expenses ; 2, the time of rest neces-
sary for our health, and for the instruction of our
minds ; and, 3, the relations of independence
and equality with our employers." In the case
of the Paris bakers, and the Lyons tailors, we
find no such extravagance of pretension, though
they both demand a rise of wages, which their
employers most probably will be unable to afford.
In all those trades wages have been gradually
rising, and are now advanced to a rate that affords
a comfortable subsistence. It is stated by the
masters, and not denied by the journeymen, at
Lyons, that a tailor may now earn from 20 to
27 francs a week ; that he can make a coat and
a half during the week in his own house, for
which he is paid between 25 and 27 francs ; or
that if he works in the shop of his master, he
received 31 or 5 francs a day,—no bad wages
for France. At Paris, the making of a coat, as
we are assured by the masters, has gradually
risen from 7 francs in 1803, to 14, to 16, or to
18 francs in 1832. In November last year two

francs more were added to the 18, and the jour-
neymen demand two more at present, saying that
they may not stop short of 30 francs, which
would give them weekly wages at the amount of
45 francs, or about 365. When the English Par-
liament regulated by statute the pay of the jour-
neymen tailors of London within the bills of mor-
tality, they were not so liberal to the artisans as
these artisans have been to themselves in Paris. By
the Act passed at the beginning of George lll.'s
reign, and unrepealed till within the last few
years, though not rigidly enforced, a journeyman
tailor was only to receive 2s. 7-id. a day, except
on the announcement of a general mourning,
when his wages were to be raised to ss. and a
fraction. The charter of the Parisian tailors
would exalt them far above their brethren of the
scissors in this country. The Paris bakers
snake their bread more easily and more abun-
dantly, sometimes earning six or seven francs
a day, and having generally four. When the
price of living at Paris is taken into account,
these wages would appear higher a great deal
than in England. The legal principles of deal-
ing with these associations of workmen seem to
be precisely the same in England and in France.
Indeed they must be the same in every country
where there is the least pretension to individual
freedom, or the least regard to equal justice,
combined with a due sense of the necessity of
preserving the order of society, and guaranteeing
the acknowledged rights of all its members.
Every man in a free state must be at liberty
when he chooses to withhold his labour (which
is his capital) and to remain without work,
or to sell that labour on any conditions
or terms that he thinks best for his own in-
terest, and what an individual may legally do
cannot become illegal when done by a number
or by an association. This great principle has
been universally acknowledged and acted upon
in England since the repeal of the combination
laws in 1825, which, without being able to re-
sist its operation, had no other effect than to in-
troduce illegal violence into transactions which
can only be wisely decided by peaceful discus-
sion and negotiation between the contending
parties. The combination laws absurdly made it
penal, and punishable on the evidence of one
witness, and at the discretion of two magistrates,
for three or four persons to quit in concert their
common employment, or to demand in concert
conditions of remuneration which they might all
legally do in their individual capacity. They
thus converted every quiet attempt of workmen

to better their condition by union into a secret
conspiracy against the order of society,—they
armed the master with the authority of the ma-
gistrate and the power of imprisonment,—to
adjudicate questions the settlement of which
ought to be a mere matter of arrangement be-
tween two parties to a voluntary contract,—
and they necessarily extended the circle of
disorder by destroying all distinction between
what everyman's good sense must admit to be
right, and what the terms of the statute de-
clared to be criminal,—between, in short, a
concerted voluntary cessation from work, and
a forcible interruption of the labour of those
who chose to continue at their employment.
The law, while it now permits every man to
leave his work, or to join in bodies to cease
from working, has acquired a new right to pu-
nish violations of order, or attempts at intimi-
dation, either exhibited towards the masters who
resist the claims of their workmen, or towards
the peaceable operatives who refuse to join the
Unions, and continue satisfied with the terms
of their existing contracts. Let, then, the law
be strictly and universally enforced in this latter
respect,—let a broad separation be made between
the peaceable and the turbulent,—and let the
most secure and prompt protection be extended
to the latter against the machinations and ex-
cesses of the former. Let the ruffian tyranny
of the leaders, who deny that freedom to others
which they so broadly claim for themselves, be
met with the strong arm of the law, and the
vigilant interference of the police and the ma-
gistrate ; and then the Unions may be allowed,
to act upon the interests of their voluntary
members, and to incur all the hardships and
privations of their abstinence from their toil,
and the sacrifice of their means of subsistence,
as long and as severely as they please. It
ought likewise to be understood, that while in
the Unions, and refusing to accept of the work
tendered by their masters, they must be entitled
to no parochial relief. We shall again return
to this subject.