The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-11 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, SEPT. 11, 1868.

This season of the year is generally fruitful in
congresses and gatherings of various kinds. Even
if diplomacy is idle, and its votaries too cautious
to meet each other face to face, the sarans and the
social philosophers are usually fully of vigour.
Science takes a survey of her annual progress, and
the quiet folks who like to leave the world as they
found it are startled by bearing that the whole
order of things is to be revolutionised, and that it

is indispensable to the proper development of our
nation that we should each step out of his or her
place and take somebody else's. The International
IVorking Men's Congress is therefore holding its
deliberations at a very suitable time, and the selec-
tion is the more opportune because the leisure of
the autumn months enables theft debates and
cu sions to attract seine attention outside their own
c'rele. The subject of their deliberations on Tuez-
day evening was one which has of late years occa-
sioned a good deal of perphAity, and it is therefore
orth while to see in what light it appeared to the
majority of the social reformers at Brussels.
preceding question which they had been cxamin
ing—that of " War and Standing Armies"—was
one on which we might naturally suppose their
views to be theoretical rather than practical, and as
such more likely to influence the closet of the
scholar than the cabinet of the statesman. " Strikes
and Courts of Arhitrat:iour" howorer, ara.uaatters ou
which it is really of some importance to elicit their

The

opinions, and to ascertain where the chief difficulty,
lies, and accordingly we are able to compare the}
sentiments of delegates from Paris, Geneva, Lon-
don,
and Brussels on these matters. The first
paper read was from Geneva, where the working
men have lately succeeded in establishing an asso-
ciation on a new system. There the different trades
societies belonging to it pay their contributions
into a central fund, which is managed by the dele-
gates of the different trades. " With a weekly con-
tribution of 21d. we have sustained four great
strikes, and in spite of these struggl:s we have re-
mained masters of our situation." Notwithstand-
ing this success, however, the Geneva Association
does not approve of strikes iu the abstract, thoug?a
it holds that they are at present the only weapon
which working men possess to defend themselves.
The great point recommended by the writer of this
paper is a general organisation, and he holds that
every one of the societies connected with the Work-
ing Men's Association ought to create a central de-
fensive fund like the one at Geneva.
From Antwerp we are told that strikes are mis-
chievous in principle and in practice ; they foment
hatred, and tend to produce a state of things in
which every man tries to aggrandise himself at the
expense of others. This writer holds, however,
that " a radical social reform" is necessary, and he
believes the only means of benefiting the labouring
classes is co-operative labour.
In Brussels it is said that there have been num-
bers of strikes in which the employers have gained
the day, but few in which the men have triumphed.
The English workmen explain this by declaring
that when the men win nothing is heArd of the
strike, and it is only the drawn battles that come
under public notice. The Brussels reformers,
however, though they condemn strikes, are strongly
in favour of trades' unions, and they are ready
with suggestions for very sweeping reforms. One
of the principal causes of oppression they declare
to be slack trade, and therefore the trade societies
should provide for men out of employment, to keep
them from working under price. To make this
effective all trades should be " locally, nationally,
and internationally" united, since if the societies
are disconnected, capitalists might take advan-
tage, and fetch workmen who are out of employ
from a distance, and so get their work done cheaper.
The conclusion of all these schemes of reform is not
a little startling. We are marching on onwards,
we are told, to the regeneration of society, but it
is to take a singular form. Strikes, we are told,
but perpetuate wages labour, and the object is to
abolish wages labour. Capital is at present ab-
sorbing -labour, in future labour must absorb
capital. United for the defence of wages in the
first instance, the trades societies will explode the
system of wages labour, and found a new social
order.

It will, therefore, be seen that these reformers
are not satisfied with any ordinary change, bul
intend to turn our social fabric upside down. There
is to come a day when the intrusive capitalist is to
be done away with, when the consumer is to be
supplied direct from the working man without an
intermeddler. The awkward fact of this arrange-
ment is that there will be two or three superfluous
orders of society. The capitalist will be de trop,
the dealer and intermediate agent will be dispensed
with, Statesmen and armies will be quite useless,
since the associations of working men will b 3 the
proper parties to regulate peace and war. All
ranks and classes must fuse into one vast level, in
which wages labour will be no more heard of, and
the dreams of the visionary Republic will be
realised.

As it will be conceded that Europe at least is not
rife for such a change, it is worth while to see what
less sanguine reformers are thinking of. In the
discussion which followed the reading of these
papers a Parisian speaker said that in the first
strike at Paris they had endeavoured to organise
councils of arbitration, but their endeavour had
been frustrated. They could, he said, procure food,
clothing, and shelter with their wages, but they
wanted education as well, and without material
resources they must remain in ignorance. This does
not by any means follow, and too often the addi-
tional wages gained by the workman prove of little
Permanent utility to himself or his family. In
England very certainly the pleasure van and the
public-house absorb enough to afford an excellent
education in the way of libraries and lectures. Our
English delegates are much more inclined to favour
strikes than their continental friends, and two
speakers from London spoke strongly in their
favour. But if any one not connected with associa-
tions had been present at Brussels he might have
brought a few facts to the notice of the meeting. In
the first place, would the manufacturers of the present
day, which in any shape provide the working man
with the means of living, and enrich and benefit
the whole world, ever have reached their present
development if the workmen bad ruled the masters ?
If machinery had been kept from application to the
cotton manufacture, as the throngs who burnt the
first spinning-jennies wished it to be, where would
be the Manchester of 1868 ? HARGREAVES was a
working man, yet HARGREAVES narrowly escaped
from his native place with his life when a rumour
went abroad of his great invention. now many
other trades and manufactures tell the same story,
and how then are we to believe that we may safely
trust the interests of progress in the hands of those
who declare it to be their interest that the laws of
supply and demand should obey a fixed rule ?
other question to be asked by this outsider would
be whether the system of supporting men out of
work to keep am from working under price might
not be pleasanter to the drones than to the bees of
the community ? If a man knows he has only to
throw himself on the resources of the great central
fund when he is idly inclined, we fearithat 21d. a
week will not suffice to replenish the exchequer.
As for the principle that an industrious man's earn-
ings must help to keep a lazy one, we suppose that
is not to be weighed against the advantage of

coercing the masters.
But there is one argument which is conclusive
against the -whole system of these unions, and
would be just as much so if the masters attempted
a similar course. Trade, to flourish, must be free
and unfettered. The more competition the more
success, the more protection the more weakness.
This is the general rule, which all commercial ex-
perience confirms, and yet the very men who are
ready to idolise the name of COBDEN, and are
loudest in denouncing the stupidity and cupidity
of the farmers who wanted to keep up the Corn-
laws, arc eagerly trying how many fetters and
leading-strings they can put on English trade and
manufacture. They do not see that all the argu-
ments which they used to applaud about Free Trade
apply not to cern alone, but to the whole
system of trade and commerce. They would not
expect a man to run on crutches when he had legs
of his o‘%n, but they expect to see the working man
thrive when he may make bricks on one side of the
river but not on the other, when he may not bring
up his son to his own trade, or work with a mama
who dares to think for himself. The Republic
which our theorists are endeavouring to establish
bears iu less murderous times a strong resemblance
to that former Republic which good, and wise, and
patriotic men had Ao long dreamed of, but which