Some ten or even fewer years ago, we Free Traders of the Western world, first then coming to know some little about the kingdoms of the further East, paused a moment in our daily toil to lift to the skies our hands in lamentation at the blind exclusiveness which we were told had for ages past held sway within the council chambers of Pekin. No words were too strong for our new-found laughing-stock; China became for us what we are to Parisian journalists—a Bœotia redeemed only by a certain eccentricity of folly. This vast hive swarming with two hundred million working bees was said to find its interest in shutting out the world, punishing alike with death the outgoing and incoming of the people. “China for the Chinese” was the common war-cry of the rulers and the ruled; “Self-contained has China been, and prospered; self-contained she shall continue,” the favorite maxim of their teachers. Nothing could be conceived nobler than the scorn which mingled with half-doubting incredulity and with Pharisaic thanking of heaven that we were not as they, when the blindness of these outer barbarians of “Gog and Magog land” was drawn for us by skillful pens, and served out to us with all the comments that self-complacency could suggest. A conversion in the future was foretold, however; this Chinese infirmity of vision should not last forever; the day, we were told, must come when Studentships in Political Economy should be founded in Pekin, and Ricardo take the place of Cou-fou-chow in Thibetian schools. A conversion has taken place of late, but not that hoped for; or, if it be a conversion consistent with the truths of Economic Science, it has taken a strange shape. The wise men of Canton may be tempted, perhaps, to think that it is we who have learnt the wisdom of the sages, and been brought back into the fold of the great master. Chinese immigration is heavily taxed in California; taxed to the point of prohibition in Victoria; and absolutely forbidden under heavy penalties in Louisiana and the other ex-rebel States.
The Chinaman is pushing himself to the fore wherever his presence is not prohibited. We find Chinese helmsmen and quartermasters in the service of the Messageries and Oriental companies receiving twice the wages paid to Indian Lascars. We hear of the importation of Chinese laborers into India for railway and for drainage works. The Chinaman has great vitality. Of the cheap races the Mongol seems the most pushing, the likeliest to conquer in the fight. It would almost seem as though we were wrong in our common scales of preference, far from right in our use of the terms “superior” and “inferior” races.
A well-taught white man can outreason or can overreach a well-taught Chinaman or negro. But under some climatic conditions, the negro can outwork the white man; under almost all conditions, the Chinaman can outwork him. Where this is the case, is it not the Chinaman or the negro that should be called the better man? Call him what we may, will he not prove his superiority by working the Englishman off the soil? In Florida and Mississippi the black is certainly the better man.
Many Victorians, even those who respect and admire the Chinese, are in favor of the imposition of a tax upon the yellow immigrants, in order to prevent the destruction of the rising Australian nationality. They fear that otherwise they will live to see the English element swamped in the Asiatic throughout Australia. It is not certain that we may not some day have to encounter a similar danger in Old England.
It will be seen from the account thus given of the state of the labor question in Australia, that the colonial handicraftsmen stand toward those of the world in much the same relative position as that held by the members of a trade union toward the other workmen of the same trade. The limitation of immigration there has much the same effects as the limitation of apprentices in a single trade in England. It is easy to say that the difference between fellow-countryman and foreigner is important; that while it is an unfairness to all English workmen that English hatters should limit apprentices, it is not unfair to English hatters that Australian hatters should limit their apprentices. For my own part, I am inclined to think that, fair or unfair—and we have no international moral rule generally acknowledged to decide the question—we might at least say to Australia that, while she throws upon us the chief expenses of her defense, she is hardly in a position to refuse to aid our emigrants.
Day by day the labor question in its older aspects becomes of less and less importance. The relationship of master and servant is rapidly dying the death; co-operative farming and industrial partnerships must supersede it everywhere at no distant date. In these systems we shall find the remedy against the decline of trade with which the English-speaking countries of the earth are threatened.
The existing system of labor is anti-democratic; it is at once productive of and founded on the existence of an aristocracy of capital and a servitude of workmen; and our English democracies cannot afford that half their citizens should be dependent laborers. If manufactures are to be consistent with democracy, they must be carried on in shops in which each man shall be at once capitalist and handicraftsman. Such institutions are already in existence in Massachusetts, in Illinois, in Pennsylvania, and in Sydney; while at Troy, in New York State, there is a great iron foundery, owned from roof to floor by the men who work in it. It is not enough that the workman should share in the profits. The change which, continuing through the middle ages into the present century, has at last everywhere converted the relation of lord and slave into that of master and hireling, is already giving place to the silent revolution which is steadily substituting for this relationship of capital and labor that of a perfect marriage, in which the laborer and the capitalist shall be one.
Under this system there can be no strikes, no petty trickery, no jealousy, no waste of time. Each man‘s individual interest is coincident with that of all. Where the labor is that of a brotherhood, the toil becomes ennobled. Were industrial partnerships a new device, their inventor would need no monument; his would be found in the future history of the race. As it is, this latest advance of Western civilization is but a return to the earliest and noblest form of labor; the Arabs, the Don Cossacks, the Maori tribes are all co-operative farmers; it is the mission of the English race to apply the ancient principle to manufactures.
CHAPTER VIII.
WOMAN.
IN one respect, Victoria stands at once sadly behind and strangely in advance of other democratic countries. Women, or at least some women, vote at the Lower House elections; but, on the other hand, the legal position of the sex is almost as inferior to that of man as it is in England or the East.