The Sun.
London, England, 1833-09-02 00:00:00

LONDON,
MONDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 2, 1833.

We intended some time back, had not the
pressure of other and more temporary matters
prevented us, to notice an application which
was reported to have been made by some manu-
facturers in the north to the Home Department
for its support in securing them greater control
over their workpeople. We see by a paragraph,
in a morning paper, dated Leeds, that the Secre-
tary of State has sent the memorialists
no answer, and they in consequence begin
to despair of the re-enactment of the Combina-
tion Laws, or of any other step being taken to
put down the Trades' Unions, of which they
complained. It gave us much regret to find
. _

that any set of British capitalists could still
entertain the obsolete notion of fettering or
coercing tlieir labourers. In nothing has Mr.
HUME'S exertions been more usefully employed
than they were when he obtained the repeal of
the Combination Laws. It is an absurdity in
the manufacturers to complain of their men com-
bining or agreeing together not to take less
than a certain amount of wages, for it is
clear that if their labour be not won h what

they ask for it, that is if the demand for it be
not so great as to compel masters to employ them
at the rate fixed, the masters would seek labour
elsewhere. As long as both master and work-
man is protected by the law in the enjoyment
of his personal security and free disposal of his
capital or his labour, neither can complain.
The free competition among the masters will
secure to the workmen the wages their
labour is worth ; and, in like mannner, the
numbers and wants of the workmen will
secure to the capitalist the labour lie may
he desirous of employing at its fair market value.
We have not seen the memorial sent up to Lon-
don by the Leeds master manufacturers, and are
not, therefore, aware on what particular fallacy
they have made shipwreck of their judgment ;
but they must be wrong, be the means they
point out what they may, so long as their object
is to impose restraints on the disposal of
their labour by their workpeople. We are
the more surprised at the ignorance this
conduct would seem to argue, as we had
hoped that the workmen themselves were

beginning to discover the impossibility of arti-
ficially keeping up the price of their labour. It
is either in the report of the poor law com-
missioners, or of the factory commissioners,
that the evidence of several operatives is
adduced to show that they are aware of the
inutility, indeed, injury to them, of strikes,
inasmuch as they always end in bringing a
number of fresh workpeople into a dis-
trict, and reducing wages below what they
were when the dispute began. Cannot the
masters see that any effort of theirs to reduce the
price of labour, or check the rise of the price of
labour, by any other means than bringing fresh
labour into the market, must in the long run be
as injurious to them as strikes are to the work-
peoFle ? Do they not see that the perfection
of the system they wish to establish is
negro slavery ? The slave owners get the
labour of the slave at his own price;
but we all know what the value of it is as
compared with that of a free man. Putting
aside, therefore, the injustice of fettering the
poorer classes in the disposal of the only coma,
nodity they have to sell, it must inevitably
happen that all
-w attempts of the kind must from
their erY nature fail. The Spitalfields weavers
now feel that their disorderly and riotous con-
duct some few years back, their combinations,
their destruction of
wen and all the other
ignorant steps they took to ,to secure what they
fancied they
were
atcot) were the main
causes of the
silk
manur
the country instead of growing into
going
them.
Capitalists would not risk :heir capital
diem. In tne same way master maanuatametongst
would find that coercing workmen would nut
secure labour, and that their remedies against
combinations are the introduction of fresh la-