第21章 PART II(12)

Some of the Unionist regulations go even further than to prohibit improvements; they are contrived for the express purpose of making work inefficient; they positively prohibit the workman from working hard and well, in order that it may be necessary to employ a greater number. Regulations that no one shall move bricks in a wheelbarrow, but only carry them in a hod, and then no more than eight at a time; that stones shall not be worked at the quarry while they are soft, but must be worked by the masons of the place where they are to be used; that plasterers shall not do the work of plasterers' labourers, nor labourers that of plasterers, but a plasterer and a labourer must both be employed when one would suffice; that bricks made on one side of a particular canal must lie there unused, while fresh bricks are made for work going on upon the other; that men shall not do so good a day's work as to "best their mates;" that they shall not walk at more than a given pace to their work when the walk is counted "in the master's time"--these and scores of similar examples which will be found in Mr. Thornton's book, equally vexatious, and some of them more ridiculous, are all grave violations of the moral rule, that disputes between classes should not be so conducted as to make the world a worse place for both together, and ultimately for the whole of the community. I do not say that there are never cases which justify a resort to measures even thus bad in principle. A portion of society which cannot otherwise obtain just consideration from the rest, may be warranted in doing a mischief to society in order to extort what it considers its dues. But when thus acting, that portion of society is in a state of war with the rest; and such means are never justifiable but as weapons of war, like the devastation of a country and the slaughter of its innocent inhabitants--things abominable in themselves, but which may unhappily be the only means of forcing a powerful adversary to consent to just terms of accommodation. It is palpably for the good of society that its means of production, that the efficacy of its industry, should be as great as possible, and it cannot be necessary to an equitable division of the produce to make that efficacy less. The true morality of the workmen would be to second zealously all means by which labour can be economised or made more efficient, but to demand their share of the benefit. In what shape they shall obtain it, is a matter of negociation between the parties, the difficulties of which may be greatly lightened by an impartial arbitration; and it is in such cases, above all others, that advantage might be expected from the Councils of Conciliation, which Mr. Mundella and Mr. Rupert Kettle have so forcibly advocated, and have carried so successfully into practice in their respective localities. The identification of the interest of the workmen with the efficiency, instead of the inefficiency of the work, is a happy result as yet only attained by co-operative industry in some d of its forms. And if it should prove, in the end, not to be attainable otherwise; if the claims of the workmen to share the benefit of whatever was beneficial to the general interest of the business, became an embarrassment to the masters from which no system of arbitration could sufficiently relieve them, and growing inconvenience to them from the opposition of interest between themselves and the workmen should stimulate the conversion of existing businesses into Industrial Partnerships, in which the whole body of workpeople have a direct interest in the profits of the enterprise; such a transformation would be the true euthanasia of Trades' Unionism, while it would train and prepare at least the superior portion of the working classes for a form of co-operation still more equal and complete.