were most indulgent landlords.” This is as if a writer on the woollen manufacture of the present day should devote a hundred pages to the knitting-needles of the old women in our country towns, and inform his readers in a one-line footnote: “Steam machinery was also used in this age in the manufacture of woollens.” The monastery was as distinctively the economic feature of the civilization of the middle ages as the steam-engine is of our times. Each played the same part in its development. It is just as easy to be blind to one as to the other.
Passing over the period included between Elizabeth and George III., and the early days of what Dr. Young aptly terms the “era of machinery,” we come down to the consideration of the organization and prices of labor, the rates of wages and cost of subsistence, and the habits of the working classes in England at the present day. These are fruitful themes, and are treated of in detail. We will endeavor to present a few items of comparison, from the statistics given in connection with them, with those afforded later in the case of the United States.
What we have said about the change that has taken place in the conditions of labor in the United States is shown by Dr. Young’s account of the trades-unions of the United Kingdom. Instead of, as formerly, maintaining their position on a totally different and higher plane than European workmen, American mechanics now take the law, in many cases, from English organizations. For instance, the “Amalgamated Society of Engineers,” a union including machinists, millwrights, smiths, and pattern-makers, and numbering at the close
of 1874 about 45,000 members, had 30 branches in the United States at the end of 1873, with an aggregate membership of 1,405. These branches were spread over every manufacturing city of the first or second class in the Union. Five branches were established in Canada. Some idea of the power of such a society, apart from its mere roll of membership, may be gathered from its annual statements of the account of its accumulated fund. Its balance on hand at the close of 1873 amounted to £200,923 1s. 6¾d. Its expenditure during the same year amounted to £67,199 17s., 5½d., including such items as telegrams, banking expenses, delegations, grants to other trades, parliamentary committees, gas-stokers defence fund—disclosing, in fact, all the incidents of a powerful and active organization.
The “Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners” has 265 branches, 14 of which are in the United States. The membership, however, appears to be small in this country, numbering only 445 men. The governmental organization of societies of this class is very elaborate and centralizing in character. Monthly reports are received from all the branches, including those in the United States. For instance, the monthly reports of the Amalgamated Carpenters’ Society for January, 1875, from the United States, represent the state of trade as “bad,” “dull,” or “slack,” with the exception of San Francisco, where it is reported “good,” and Newark as “improving.” Although no data are here given, it is not to be doubted that this system of reports will be, or has already been, extended to such organizations as the “Miners’ National Association,” numbering 140,000, and the National
Agricultural Laborers’ Union, numbering 60,000, thus seriously affecting the immigration not only of skilled but of agricultural labor. In fact, we are already aware that personal reports have been made by Joseph Arch and others, some of them not favorable. The formidable character of the trades-unions of Great Britain is seen by the mere statement of their aggregate membership, which Dr. Young estimates, with all deductions, at 800,000 in January, 1875.
The question of strikes in England is too large a one to be entered into here. Dr. Young gives a brief history of the great Preston strike of 1836, of the Nottingham, the Staffordshire Colliery, the Pottery, and the Yorkshire strikes, all of which proved unsuccessful after terrible suffering on the part of the workmen and great loss on both sides had been endured. A short account is also given of the unsuccessful “Amalgamated Engineers’” strike of 1851-52, and the protracted engineers’ strike on the Tyne, 1871-72, for the nine hours’ system, which resulted in a compromise. Experience has demonstrated of strikes, 1st, that they are usually unsuccessful; 2d, that they lessen the employer’s ability to maintain even the wages paid before the strike, by giving an advantage to his competitor in other countries which he cannot always recover; 3d, that where they are fought out to the end they cause suffering and develop disease in the weak, and in women and children, which no wages can pay for or cure; 4th, that they deteriorate the character of the men engaged in them by promoting a feeling of lawlessness and desire for stimulation even among the best disposed; 5th, that, even if successful, there is a greater dead loss in money spent than is
recouped by the advance gained in wages. These conclusions are now beginning to be so well understood in England—where, from more perfect organization, strikes are larger and cost more to both parties than in the United States—that the chairman of the Trades-Union Congress of the United Kingdom, held at Liverpool in January, 1875, in his opening address referred to strikes as a mode of settling differences with employers which ought to be avoided by all practicable means, and resorted to only in the most extreme cases—an opinion afterwards embodied in a resolution which was adopted by the Congress. The principle of arbitration has already been tried successfully in several important instances.
Dr. Young illustrates the rates of wages in the United Kingdom by tables. He accompanies the tables with the explanation that “in a very large number of occupations the hands are paid by the piece or by weight, and the actual rate of wages would not indicate the sum an operative would take home with him at the end of the week as the price of his labor. The sums stated in all these tables are therefore the average sums earned per week, whether the labor be paid by the day or the piece.” The same explanation holds good for the United States. Of these tabular statements our space will only permit us to give two or three, to which we shall subjoin the rates of wages in the United States in the same occupations by way of comparison. The British pound sterling is computed at $4 84, and the shilling at 24 cents.
WAGES IN COTTON-MILLS.