THE DUKE OF ARGYLL ON CAPITAL AND LABOUR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8631, 29 July 1891, Page 5

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL ON CAPITAL AND LABOUR.

Mr. John Ooilvy, secretary of the Dundee Radical Association, lately wrote to the Duke of Argyll asking his opinion, as a social and economic thinker, regarding the desirability of labour representation _in Parliament, the necessity for the reduction of the hours of labour, and the probable result —baneful or beneficial—from a scientific altitude, of " The New Unionism," alias "The labour Question." His Grace, in replying, says : —Allow me to point out, in the first place, that the phrase "The Labour Question" is one so vague and wide that it may mean anything or everything connected with the constitution of human society. We must define what we mean by " labour" before we can solve any question concerning it. Do we mean "manual" labour alone, or principally? Do we mean to exclude from "labour" all brain work and all "brain workers ?" If we do, we are imposing an artificial meaning on the word "labour." Hence comes the notion commonly impressed upon tho wage-earning classes by the politicians" you refer to that they ate the "creators of all wealth." This is not true of " labour," even in its proper sense—of all "human energies." But still less is it true of labour when-understood to mean muscle power alone. Mind is the prime mover in all work and wealth. This is a fact, not an opinion. Let it be fully understood, and really "taken in," and then much light will come. " Capital "is the "storages of labour," and is purely tho work of mind in the past, and its great weapon in the future. Let this also bo taken in an a fact, not as an opinion. It is so, and no politician ought to be allowed" to obscure these all-important facts. ■ The common antithesis, exhibited in every newspaper every day — "capital and labour " —is a "false antithesis —a fallacy of the worst kind. Every " labourer " is also a " capitalist " when he saves a sixpence, and still more a capitalist, when he uses it as a means of getting another sixpence. Every capitalist is also a labourer when he exercises forethought in storing income, and still more a labourer when he risks his saving, or his storages, in any commercial enterprise. When the muscle labourer is asleep minds around him are constantly saving and planning for the employment of savings upon services useful to the world. When the muscle labourer awakes he may find some "great work" projected or begun on which his special kind of labour can find a very highly paid employment. He has had no share in the saving nor in the plans for the spending of it. He has had no share in the spirit of enterprise nor in tho ingenuity which these plans involve. Ho has no share in the risk. Ho has been passive and inert. Yet the politicians tell him that he "created" all the results, that all wealth comes from his muscles. I have confidence in the ultimate rationality or reasonableness of the human race. But we are all liable to " strong delusions that wo should believe in lies ;" and such delusions have been often lasting, and often disastrous ; hence the immense responsibility of tho " politicians" who do not speak in a spirit of absolute loyalty to facts and to truth. ... It cannot be

right or reasonable that mere muscular labour should seek to take out of the hands of mental labour the whole control of enterprises in which muscle has had only a ver/ subordinate share. Yet this has been, so far as I can understand it, the spirit and the aim ot the "Now Unionism."