The Bee-Hive. — 1876-03-25 (London, England)

DOWN WITH THE TYRANTS. There IS a long paragraph in Capital and Labour of the lah, •/leaded "Trade Union Tyranny." This morsel consists of a stringing together of a number of charges got at by inference, which display a certain amount of ingenuity on the part of the gentleman who concocted it. The first charge is founded on certain figures said to be taken from the last report of the Amalgamated Engineers, in which a uhttrnber of persons are reported as having been excluded from that society. We Cannot say whether the number given is Correct or not, nor do we pretend to know why, or under what eirctuustances, suoh a step was resorted to; and in the absence of Kull knowledge we think it would be wrong on our part to assume that these parties were driven ;from the Hooiety "for daring to etteit " individuality of judgment." We really do not know what these men did, but we presume in a society numbering nearly nfetubeil3, suCh viviatiQns of -:law as lisiititlo nien .to continued theinbOrship • nyky -tilteltl(l4) ft JR./1y offences Other 'Man  assertions of "individuality of judgment." Capital and. Labour may be right in its assumptions that these exclusions are acts of unmitigated tyranny, but it offers no proof; its business being to assert whatever answers the purpose of its proprietors, and in pursuing this line of policy it, no doubt, satisfies the Employers' Association, whose property it is; at any rate, we have never seen any remonstrance on the part of these gentlemen against such a policy. The wonder is, under the circumstances, that the editor is so modest and moderate, seeing that he might have charged the executive of the Amalgamated Engineers and its agents with murdering these men for the purpose of getting rid of their independent judgments, as well as of any monetary. claims they had against tho society. Another proof of the tyranny of trades unions relates to a member of the Operative Builders' Society who was fined, for daring to criticise the statements in the last annual report, by stating that the worth of the trade and sick fund in cash was £3 3s. per member in 1870, but had fallen to £1 15s. in 1873. He also, it seems, issued a circular, declaring that the society was kept alive solely by the additions; but that when their claims accrued in subsequent years there would be no funds to meet them. For doing this he was fined by the committee, and suspended from benefit to the value of £7O. We are not informed by the writer in Capital and Labour who this persecuted individual is. Clearly be has a suspicion that offending members of trades societies are made away with in some way, for he says, "the name of the sufferer and his place of residence is suppressed for prudential reasons, lest he should be exposed to vengeance." The humane motives of the man who wrote this little story are above all praise; but it is a pity it did not occur to him that the circumstances stated are amply sufficient to point out the wretched offender to those who are likely to make him the victim of their "vengeance." Such criticisms as this unhappy man indulged in, and such a circular us that mentioned, united to the fact of his being already the subject of much wrong, must make him yell known to his fellows. in his society there really can be no mistake as to who he is, and if, through the indiscretion of the editor of Capital and Labour, he has been stewed and served for supper at one of the nocturnal gatherings of the trade union fiends who build our houses, the employers' editor will have much to answer for. There is, however, a cure for these persecutions in the mind of the humane 'editor, and that is to separate the strike funds from the benefit funds, a. very simple process which the employers very much tlestreut eonsequenue of their strong sympathy for trade unionists, and their wish that the business of those unions should be carried on in a satisfactory manner.  Turning, however, from the paragraiih on the "Tyranny of Trade Unions" to a leading article headed " Five Hundred Men," we find an elaborate exposition of the kindly feeling entertained by the combined employers towards the working men in combination. We have said in the