Mr Gladstone and the Labour Question,

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4769, 9 October 1893, Page 2

Mr Gladstone and the Labour Question,

Tee hissing oE Mr Gladstone by the representatives of the snobocracy at the Imperial Institute showed, it was asserted by the Tories, how obnoxious the Grand Old Man and his schemes were to the people of England. That statement has einca received emphatic dieproval from those who best could disprove it, the people themselves. On August 5 last Mr Gladstone met a gathering, really representative of the mass of the people, at the Workmen's Exhibition in the Agricultural Hall. That building, the largest in London, was, we are told, crammed to excess, and for ten minutes the vast throng cheered the venerable Premier. There was no hissing from that assemblage, for there the enobocracy had no place; that immense audience represented the workers, and not the drones, of England. But it is not co much of the veteran stateman's reception that we would speak, as of the words which he spoke to that great gathering. One striking sentence revealed what is, probably, the chief reason for the bitter detestation with which he is regaided by certain, we will not say all, of Mb opponents. He said there was no proper place— no definitely ordered place upon this earth of ours for idlers, and every willing hand and every willing heart; could find their work; bat the idle man was wholly out of place, and the more that place was reduced amongst them, the belter. * Verily those who live on the fruits of other men's labour, either royalties, rente, or any forms of gain for which they toil not, have reason to hate the man who holds these views. Mr Gladstone showed a high appreciation of the work of Labour Unions, and a keen perception of their true functions, when he said that their business was not only to organise labour, and to contend gallantly for the interest of labour as a whole, but to promote by every means that could be devited individual excellence' of labour. The latter function, he feared, was apt to to be overlooked through exceesive attention to the former. Whether this fear be well-grouaded or not each Unionist must decide for himself j but the vast importance of securing the individual excellence of the work of the members of a Trades Union must be evident to all. It is as much the duty of the Union to take care that the employer gets the beet possible value for the money he pays to its members as it is to see that the members receive the best possible wages for their work. Membership in a Union should be a certificate of the highest competence as a worker. There are, it is true, difficulties in the way of the realization of this ideal, one of the chief being the quantity of miscalled " free labour," which is, too often, cheap— and nasty, labour; for, while it is to the interest of the Unions to absorb the " free labburers," and thus turn them from foes into friends, there is a danger that their admission may, in some cases, tend to lower the standard of Union workmanship. The difficulty, however, is one which musk be faced, and the members of the Unions have, we hold, a claim on the assistance of the employers in the effort to overcome it.