THE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LABOUR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8300, 5 July 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LABOUR.

[BY Mil. GLADSTONE.]

a kino the history of the world as a whole, the mainspring of a working man's life has been placed, for tho most pirt, as it has with a young child ; as with a slave; at times almost as with a domesticated animal ; that is to say, it has lain outside himself. For very large numbers of working men it has now gradually shifted to a point lying within his base, and is coming nearer and nearer to tho very centre of his own being. Instead of being principally controlled by others, he now principally, and from year to year increasingly, controls himself. Among the causes which have been bringing about this vast and (in principle and in ultimate cfiect) world-wide change are these : tho enlargement of political franchises, and the independence given, through tho secrecy of voting, to their exercise ; tho extension of education ; the cheapened access to knowledge of all kinds ; the progressive remission of his once excessive and brutnlising toil; and the gradually increasing command of the secret how to secure a full remuneration for that one great commodity by the habitual sale of which he lives. Of course I speak of his labour ; and I speak of it in tho sense fixed by common use, without entering upon the quest ion whet her the honours of labour are his exclusively, and whether they may not be shared by a considerable portion of those who belong to what may be generally described as the leisured classes.

For the whole of this enormous advance the basis was laid, once . for all, by the Gospel. This was, in its original form and in its continuing purpose, the charter of human freedom ; and the two modes by which it most conspicuously asserted itself in the arduous process of social regeneration, werefirst, the gradual elevation of woman, and next the mitigation and eventual abolition of slavery. Our own country is our natural centre, and ought to be the first object of our social thoughts. Yet most or much of what touches labour here has a meaning for the world, and this through a double channel : First, through tho vast extension of our race over the globe ; and, secondly, because tho popular energy of our institutions seems to carry with it more or less of a teaching office for the world—and particularly for the old world —at large. Let us look then for a moment at England —at Britain, as it is. It is a country of mixed institutions, which are all sustained by the popular will. Before the great Reform Act, the determining influence of our Government lay with tlie peerage and the possessors of laud. They formed a partnership harmonious enough and strong enough to hold the citadel of the constitution against the people. And the people were governed this way or that way, with their will or without it. Power was then (in !83-') shifted to the middle and commercial class —not that the influences formerly dominant were, or are now, destroyed, but that they retired from the first place into the second, from tho front rank to the rear. Subsequent changes have dislodged the middle class (as the first Reform Act dislodged the landed and hereditary powers) from their shorter-lived monopoly. The Acts of 1867, ISOS, and 18(39 enfranchised the people of the towns, and that pretty fully so far as Great Britain was concerned. Tho Act of ISSt applied the same principle with a freer hand to the counties, adding some provisions which affected tho towns also. Whereas, with some twenty millions of people, we had had, in all, half a million of voters, we have now, with a population of forty millions, about six million voters. The work has yet to be amended and completed by a thoroughgoing reform of registration. 1 shall not hero dwell at largo on tho powerful causes which have brought about a peaceful and happy, if not yet wholly fulfilled', revolution on behalf of the working man. But I make a single exception : I mean his improved means of securing value for the great commodity which it is alike necessary for him to sell, and for the rest of the community to buy. The free sale of his labour, subject to the spontaneous action of supply and demand, has only been attained by him during the present century. Nor did Mr. Hume ever give a better proof of that sagacity which so commonly led him straight to the root of the matter, and which enabled him, not being a man of genius, to see what men of genius often failed to see, than when he struck at the combination laws, which once disgraced the Statute Book of this country. There are cases in which Parliament may be said to have conferred a kind of boon on tho masses. Such are the franchise and the ballot. But in the case of the combination laws it did no more than remove the galling pressure of a gross injustice—an injustice which amounted to absolute robbery in the degree, whatever they may have been, in which it depressed the rate of wages below the level which tho free and open market would have determined for it. A strike is of course an indication that something has gone wrong on one side or on both. The involuntary cessation of labour diminishes at once the wage fund, the produce of capital, and the commodities available for the use of the community. But those inconveniences may be, ami to a vast extent have been, the price paid for the avoidance of a greater evil, such as is depriving the labourer of his just hire. And, if strikes have on the whole done good, it is probable that the possibility, and tho fear, of strikes have done much more good. During the half century, and more, for which strikes have been resorted to, from time to time, without legal restraint, their history has been characterised by many changes, and all of them, so far as i know, in tho right direction. They are more rarely marked by violent attempts of intemperate individuals to coerce the minority who do not join them. They are regarded with more favour by the public outside the area and interests of the dispute ; whose testimony may be considered impartial. Their power has greatly increased, for the working men of different trades and of different countries arc coming into sympathy with each other. While power has thus increased, it is used more mercifully, at least in some noteworthy instances, against members of the working class itself.

That disposition of the general public to look on a strike with presumptive favour, to which I have referred, can hardly have been due to any mere prejudice against employers. It has rather indicated a dim and remote perception that in the continuiil (and not necessarily unfriendly)competition between labour and capital for the division of industrial fruits, capital and not labour Ims hitherto had the upper hand, and that it is time that the balance should bo not reversed, but redressed.

There may come a time when labour shall be too strong for capital, and may be disposed to use its strength unjustly. I conceive that in our recent history the judgment of the masses has upon the whole been more generous and just than the judgment of the leisured classes. Let it not be hastily inferred that, if the fact be so, the meaning of it is that, they have an intrinsic and indefectible moral superiority. It means rather that for them the organisation of life and thought is simpler, and their temptations to pride, greed, and selfishness greatly less. Were the despotic relation in which employers once stood (41 labourers to be inverted, and were labourers once to obtain an uncontrolled command, then indeed, while their material condition might be higher, they would be subject to a strain of moral trial such as they have never yet been called upon to undergo, and such a* only the strong restraints of the Gospel could (in my judgment.) enable them successfully to encounter. But such a contingency, thoutrh it may lie possible, is indefinitely remote. It. is most unlikely to arise ; and the experience of the United States, which has gone nearest to trying the question, witnesses to that unlikelihood ; for there public right has been developed to the uttermost by the action of public law and by the tone of maimers. Yet capital must surely hold its own, since it grows in that country more rapidly than ever. The impartial citizen, t hen, has only to bid the labourer (iod-speed, and heartily to wish that, by their high standard of conduct, their wise choice of calling, and their equal and liberal respect for t he rights of all men, or rather all human beings, they may be enabled progressively to consolidate the position they have gained, and, so far as justice may recommend, to improve it. Of two things especially I make bold to express my hope: One, that they will more and more regard nob the terms of

their contract only, bub also excellence of work considered in itself, and for its own sake, ft a thing greatly to he desired and highly fruitful of future advantage. Apart, from the agreement with the employer, each man should have a contract with himself, always and in all things, to do the very bets he can. And next, and last, that Labour and Art aro nob foes, nor strangers, nor rivals, but allies ; that all labour has a beauty of its own, sometimes a very high beauty ; that the love of beauty is a gift, though not the greatest gift, from God. and both alleviates and adorns the life of man ; that out of labour Fine Art has grown, and ever ought to grow ; and that there is nothing in the composition of our British and Irish race to prevent it from emulating, following, even perhaps overtaking those other races which have been the foromost among men in the work of beautiful production.—Lloyd's Weekly.