most elaborate administrative machinery is required to conduct associations of such magnitude as the four selected as examples, with branches not only in most of the larger towns of the United Kingdom, but in our colonies, America, and various other countries. And yet the branches are, to a very great extent, self-governing communities, subject, of course, at all times to the executive council, chosen annually, or half-yearly, by the whole of the members, through the several lodges to which they belong. Each officer is elected by popular suffrage, by ballot or voting papers, and every member is entitled to vote not only on the question of officers, but also on all matters affecting the welfare of the general body, and the progress and well-being of the society. There are, indeed, but few, if any, institutions in this country in which the members have and exercise a larger direct share of control in the management thereof, than in those known as trade-unions. The widespread notion that they are governed by a set of lazy, self-elected

demagogues, is simply a popular delusion; a casual examination of the carefully compiled reports issued monthly and yearly by the managing committees, will show that the officials are, and must be, the very reverse.

The

In proportion as the unions increase in number, and extend the sphere of their operations, so do they gather experience, and effect improvements in their methods of conducting their business. consequence of this is, that the older societies are able to avoid some of the errors into which the newer associations fall. This is strikingly manifest in the matter of trade disputes, which are fewer in the large, long-established, and consolidated unions, than they are in those of more recent growth. That mistakes are often committed, we admit and deplore; no human agency is entirely free from them; if once we acknowledge the good to be found in those organisations under discussion, we shall be all the better qualified to point out their faults, and to suggest the necessary remedies.

VOL. XIX.-NO. CIX. NEW SERIES.

n

WOW concerning these same wages,' says Mr. Boffin the Golden Dustman, in the early days of his avarice, when proposing a certain sum to his secretary, do you think it's enough? I don't say, you know, but what it may be more than enough. And I'll tell you why, Rokesmith. A man of property like me is bound to consider the market price. At first I didn't enter into that as much as I might have done, but I've got acquainted with other men of property since, and I've got acquainted with the duties of property. I mustn't go putting the market price up because money may happen not to be an object with me. A sheep is worth so much in the market, and I ought to give it and no more. secretary is worth so much in the market, and I ought to give it and no more.'

So says Dickens's Golden Dustman when the dark shade of miserliness first begins to creep over his open and generous face. And in expressing such sentiments he is sufficiently typical of a large class of reasoners to set us thinking. He is no imaginary creation-we may meet with him in the public street or the public press any day. At any moment we may be confronted with a glib speaker or writer on wages who will tell us, as a clearly established scientific truth, that it is absurd to expect of an employer any other wages than those which the unalterable laws of supply and demand' compel him to pay-that the market rate of wages, even if it be but starvation wages, is all that it is incumbent on him to give his men, though their labour afford him an income, a mansion, and a table like a prince's; and not only that he is under no obligation to do

more than this, but that he is bound to do no more that the minimum for which he can force his hands to work is also the maximum that he can rightfully payand that to do more is to remove his employé from the free and independent position which any Briton ought to occupy, and to render him a trembling serf living on favours and dependent on the smile of his lord. Such are the doctrines which we may read, and do read, inculcated for the promotion of contentment among the workers, and are we to add ?-of a due sense of responsibility and humanity among the employers.

And these glorifications of selfishness are preached in the name of Political Economy. Too repulsive to venture on presenting themselves in their own nakedness, these doctrines clothe themselves in the garb of science, like the wretched souls in limbo that had huddled on at death the Dominican robes, 'or in Franciscan thought to pass disguised.' The political economist may well ask himself whether these really are the teachings of his science, orany legitimate corollaries from those teachings. He is not indeed to shirk the disclosure of the truth, however seemingly repulsive. But he is justified in examiningnay, bound to examine-most rigor ously whether his science is indeed chargeable with the teaching so frequently laid at its door-whether it does in truth banish humanity and liberality from the employer's dealings with his people, telling him that it is never right to raise wages except when it is impossible to keep them down, and that high wages, like homicide, are only justifiable when they cannot be avoided.

What says Mr. Mill on this point?

Does he countenance such teachings? I fear it must be admitted that he does.

Liberality, generosity, and the credit of the employer (he tells us,' when speaking of the wages of clerks and domestic serrants), are motives which, to whatever extent they operate, preclude taking the utmost advantage of competition; and doubtless such motives might, and even now do, operate on employers of labour in all the great departments of industry; and most desirable is it that they should. But the can never raise they average wages of labour beyond the ratio of population to capital. By giving more to each person concerned, they limit the power of giving employment to numbers; and however excellent their moral effect, they do little good economically, unless the pauperism of those who are shut out leads indirectly to a readjustment by means of an increased restraint on population.

And elsewhere he expresses his opinion of competition to be that

Every restriction of it is an evil, and every extension of it, even if for the time injuriously affecting some class of labourers, is always an ultimate good. To be protected against competition is to be protected in idleness, in mental dullness, to be saved the necessity of being as active and intelligent as other people.

If the

slopsellers and others of their class have

lowered the wages of tailors and some other artisans by making them an affair of competition instead of custom, so much the better in the end.

'Liberality and generosity, however excellent their moral effect, do little good economically.' The employers who trouble themselves to pay higher wages than they need mean well. But even if all were like them, the average of wages, it seems, would not be raised. They are withheld by their kindness of heart from taking the utmost advantage of competition'little recking that every restriction of competition is an evil and every extension an ultimate good.' As a moralist, Mr. Mill may deem it 'most desirable' that sentiments of liberality should operate on the minds of the employers. The

results, however, to which such liberality would lead are results which he deplores. It cannot be very reasonable to ask us to rejoice that clerks and domestic servants are paid, through the influence of a humane custom, higher wages than they could secure under the régime of competition, and also ask us to rejoice that tailors, being placed under the régime of competition, have lost the superior position they are supposed to have enjoyed by reason of custom. To congratulate us alternately on the prevalence of each of two contending influences is indeed to find good in everything,' but we must be permitted to doubt its philo sophical consistency.

Notwithstanding any inconsistencies, however, Mr. Mill's teach

ing, in the passages which I have cited, seems on the whole to countenance that popular conception of economic doctrine to which I have alluded. The rate of wages is represented in those passages as so fixed as to be incapable of general elevation, even by any degree of liberality on the part of employers. And the influence of competition is represented as not merely beneficial in the main, but so beneficial that the more unbridled its operation. the better for society. If competition drives poor needlewomen to make shirts at twopence-halfpenny each, it is better, it seems, that they should receive such a wretched pittance than that they should owe a better scale of payment to any 'custom' of generosity or of justice. To reign is worth ambition, though in hell; and to enjoy the glorious consciousness that you are receiving no favours, in other words, not a farthing which your employer can avoid paying, is a benefit worth purchasing, even though the price be starvation. One can scarcely be surprised if the poor, lighting on

2 Ibid. Book IV. vii. § 7.

such teaching or on the speeches and articles which echo and disseminate it, should conclude that to the wealthy capitalist Mammon is the one god and the political economist is his prophet.

For the sake alike of political economy and of humanity, I much regret that such conceptions of economic teaching should prevail. I regret that so useful a science should be discredited by association with such selfish doctrines, and that such selfish doctrines should find protection under its shield. And I am the more emboldened to dispute the legitimacy of this association by reason of the inconsistency and vacillation in Mr. Mill's own language on this point, and by the discrepancy of much of it with the writings of one who, whenever he dissents from Mr. Mill, is almost invariably the safer guide. I allude to that very clear-headed economist the late Professor Cairnes, who, though not perhaps essentially abler than Mr. Mill, yet, coming after him, has in many cases carried out Mr. Mill's principles where sound to further conclusions, and replaced them where unsound by principles of a more reliable cha

racter.

To understand the true value of these popular expositions of political economy, it is necessary to apprehend aright—what few economists have grasped and expressed so forcibly as Mr. Cairnes-the true function which political economy has to discharge in these questions of morality. The economist, as such, cannot be the judge of right and wrong. What political economy does is to contribute a certain portion of the data requisite for forming a judgment. It examines what effect on the production, distribution, or exchange of wealth certain causes can produce; or, given the effects, it inquires to what causes they are due. Taking man as he is, taking physical nature as it is,

the economist traces the operation of the forces of nature and the desires and capacities of man, and shows what their issue will be in wages, rent, profits, or the like. Its propositions, therefore, are statements of fact (or of tendency, which is included in the wider sense of the word fact) and not rules of conduct. It supposes not a feat to be accomplished nor a duty to be performed, but a truth to be ascertained or explained. That an overstocked market will result in low prices, an overcrowded labour market in low wages, are laws' of political economy, not in the sense that political economy teaches that such results ought to be brought about, but merely states as a fact that they will. It recognises the self-interest of human nature, the desire to get wealth with the minimum of labour, but only with that recognition which is always due to every important fact, whether a cause for pleasure or regret or neither. It recog nises it, not as the State recognises religion by an Established Church, but as a traveller in London will, if he is not a fool, recognise the existence of cabs and of rogues.

But for the decision of a practical question more is needed than to know that certain causes tend to produce certain effects as regards wealth. We must also know whether those effects are desirable or the contrary, and whether the means of bringing them about will entail other good or evil such as to reverse or to confirm or to weaken, though not upset, the conclusions at which we should arrive from considering the influence on wealth alone. And as these questions lie outside of political economy, its conclusions are not precepts but merely truths. They supply us with information which may be highly useful in enabling us to judge how we ought to act-as does the sign-post which tells us