The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1878.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5245, 15 January 1878, Page 2

The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1878.

Colonists are not much troubled with the vexed question of the relationship of labor and capital, but it is instructive to watch how the great question of the future is being solved in England. As the \vorking classes of the mother country became imbued with the spirit vf trade unionism we were told on all sides that it was the beginning of the great battle which would one day have to be fought out between labor and capital. It is pleasant to see that these anticipations are not likely to be fulfilled, and that the whole question has at the present day resolved itself into one of argument as to what is best for both master and workman. If political economy teaches that the employer has a right to buy his labor in the cheapest market, it should also inculcate that the workman has an equal right to obtain the highest price for his labor. In several branches of industry in England the workman has demanded too large a share of the profits, and the consequence has been that particular industries have suffered in consequence. It naturally followed that the employed themselves were the greatest sufferers. From our English exchanges we notice that in many directions it is fast dawning upon the working classes that by studying the interest of the employer they are studying their own interest. That this has not been recognised years ago is owing to the wide gulf which separated the two classes. As long ns the working men of England were led by such men as Bradlauch there was no hope of an amicable understanding between them and their employers. But matters have wonderfully changed within the past few years, and some of the wealthiest men and the ablest pens in England have taken up the subject in all its aspects, and have temperately put the whole question of labor and capital before the public. As we have stated, the question has now entered the legion of argument, and is being argued on different lines to what it was twenty years ago. We hear very little about political economy and buying in the cheapest market, and selling in the dearest. The question has now resolved itself into, can England with high-price labor compete with the comparatively cheap labor of the Continent ? Both masters and men are now studying that problem. That the working classes should got a fair share of the profits of trade has been fully recognised; the only difficulty is fixing that share. The employer is apt to look at it from a different standpoint to the men. Still that the subject should be seriously discussed in this way is a wonderful advance on half-a-century back. Some correspondence recently appeared in the London Times upon the changes, for good or evil, trade unions and high wages have wrought in the manufacturing industries of England. The present is a time of depression, and this depression Sir Edmund Beckett, in a letter to The Times , attributes to the fault of the working classes, who, ho says, have become less skilful, less diligent, less thoughtful than they used to be, and who have, moreover, of malice prepense, set themselves to do all they can to make their labor inefficient, and therefore unprofitable to their employers. This is certainly a strong indictment against the industrial classes; but it is completely answered by several writers on the other side, who maintain that the men not only do their work

well, but that they take a pride and pleasure in so doing it, “ that a really good specimen of work is to them a sort of artistic production, which they admire, and which they are eager to emulate, and that lirst-class intelligent workmen could be found and produced, by the thousand to set against the few specimens Sir Edmund Beckett could bring forward of another kind.” An idle nation would not increase in wealth, and this view of the question is prominently put forward. We extract the following as bearing most particularly on the oftrepeated assertion that a high rate of wages was fast paralysing industry and preventing the accumulation of wealth in England “ Mr. Lloyd Jokes appeals to figures to prove that our trade for a good many years past has been enormously on the increase, and that the accumulated wealth of the country has been steadily growing with it. The millions of money we have been investing in railways, in building, in shipping, in home and foreign securities of every kind, can scarcely have been the fruits of general idleness and improvidence. We have made money, and we have saved money; and, on the admitted principle that labor is wealth, we muse have been working very hard indeed to have done so.” On the whole, we think that those who advocated the aide of the industrial classes have had the best of the argument. The Times very fairly sums up the case thus as between capital and labor:—“ When our working classes are weighed in the balance they cannot wonder that they are found wanting. They are poor human beings like the rest of ns, more fond of wages than of work, and very often more fond of play than of either’. They are open to delusions, too, as to their own interests, and they bring suffering and annoyance on other people as often as they are thus .misled. If they are to be used after their deserts, how can they escape whipping ? But it would, perhaps, be more fair to them if, before sentence, we were to hear what they have to. say for themselves. Under kind pressure they would probably admit that they were not perfect, and that very faulty specimens indeed were to be found among them. But such as England is, the richest country in the world, with the most widely extended commerce, and with her manufactures in demand everywhere, they have been very largely concerned in making her. It is laborers and capitalists, workmen and employers, who have, neither class alone, but between them, constructed her thousands of miles of railways, who have reared her mansions, and palaces, and public buildings, who have produced the hardware and the textile fabrics which she possesses for exportation and for use. Look where we will, in England and out of England, we find the monuments of this joint performance. In the face of such stupendous results, it is not easy to believe that one of the two bodies of partners can have been a lazy, incompetent set of fellows who have done as little as they could and have scamped their work all through.” People are beginning to see the wide difference between trade unionism and communism. The latter would destroy nearly everything that is valuable in our present state of society by sinking all to a dead level, while any evils arising from trade unions will be righted by the natural law that the workman must necessarily suffer if he injures the interest of his employers. As we have previously said, both workman and master in the old country are daily taking a clearer view of their obligations. The equalising influences of civilisation in enlightenment and material comfort are at work in England, and the result will be to render the nation richer and stronger, and more fitted to compete with other countries in all branches of industry. We will conclude with the following opinion of The Times on the industrial classes of the mother country;—“But, good or bad, industrious or idle, provident or thriftless, do they compare badly, as working men, with the working men of any other country in the world ? Whom can we find to set ’against them 1 Spoilt as British industry has been by prosperity and unionism, and by all the other bad influences which Sir Edmond Beckett dilates upon, we must admit that—taken in its only true sense as a combination of masters and men—it remains for the production of solid, hard, sound work, what Mr. Thomas Buassey’s father pronounced it to be, 1 unsurpassable.’ ”