And it makes all the difference to the worker whe.. ther he is out of work ten weeks or twenty; it may be a matter of life and death, of pauperization, humiliation, and loss of self-respect; to the employer it is a matter of making a certain range of profits supposed to be necessary. Why should he not keep them on until the line of interest is touched? Those most prosperous and firmest on their feet could afford to do so, and no doubt some of them do act on considerations other than economical without suffering much economical loss. It is even said that companies have been known to carry on work without dismissing their hands while dividends were at zero, the manager and the workers sharing the whole proceeds, and the shareholders receiving no interest. This, no doubt, is a degree of self-sacrifice that could not be expected to last long with the average shareholder; nevertheless the fact suggests an interesting question for the workers' meditation, namely, whether they might not after all get better terms from a company than from the private capitalist, who is more intolerant of reduced profits, and less able to bear them than a company where the loss is spread over a number, while the manager's salary is assured. The company is indeed popularly supposed to be deaf to all considerations other than dividends. This is doubtful in the case of some producing companies, but as between them and the individual capitalist it is not doubtful that the egoistic and strictly economical motives are stronger and more concentrated in one than in many. It is indeed, according to orthodox economics, because his egoism is so alive and his eye

so keen in all directions, that the profits of the private capitalist are so large as they are.

"But you ask something too much of us," may urge the capitalist, "first to share our profits with our employés, then to incur losses or considerably lowered profits for their sake. The latter up to a certain point we can do, provided we are allowed to reap all the profits when better times come. But we cannot do both, divide our profits and suffer the losses; and we cannot keep permanently employing people in producing goods which don't sell, when perhaps the additional produce is worth nothing, perhaps less than nothing, because it helps to lower the price of the stock already produced. Our production depends on orders from without; if we keep on producing in slack times irrespective of the demand, we should have our capital invested in the risky form of unsaleable goods, and we could not then go on producing more till our stock was taken off. We would not have the means. We should thus have finally to pull up, and dismiss them, and we ourselves might be ruined by having our capital in a form that might have become enormously depreciated in value. So you see there is a limit to our power of keeping our hands at work, if we are to make ordinary profits and keep out of the Bankruptcy Court. We should prefer to employ them always, and to be always working full time, if we were not to lose by it. When our machinery is not fully employed, we lose interest on our capital, and we have certain constant expenses; during this bad time, if we kept on our hands, we should lose their wages likewise. Their work-the produce of it-during that time.

would not be worth their wages; it might be worth nothing at all. We only dismiss them when we should be considerable losers by keeping them, but we shall be glad to have them back when our accumulated goods move off, and the good times come round again."

Now there is truth in this, so far at least that even the best-disposed employers must dismiss in stagnant times a portion of their hands, from which it results that there will always, under the present system, be unemployed more or less numerous from this cause as well as from some of the others before enumerated.

Such being the state of the case, the question what is to be done with the unemployed becomes a question as difficult as pressing. The workhouse is open to them, as the police magistrate tells them; but the genuine unemployed operative or mechanic rightly feels the strongest repugnance to the workhouse, with its degrading associations. What the temporary unemployed want is either employment by others, or the means of working at some kind of work on their own account,—some second resource for their slack time or a reserve fund to fall back on.3

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If the average time out of work in a trade could be foreseen or gathered from statistics of past years, this reserve fund should come from wages which should rise in the same proportion as the time of employment was reduced. Thus, if the unemployed time averaged ten weeks, the wages for forty-two weeks must serve for fifty-two, and should rise accordingly, though some small deduction might be made to be set against the fact of leisure and the individual chances of casual work.

They cannot work at their own calling or craft, for one reason, because they have no capital; they must, then, either be set to work by the Government or by local authorities. But neither of these can employ them at their own craft, because, amongst other reasons, they would then be in competition with other labourers in their own industry and would. injure them (a point to be more fully considered presently). They can only be set to some kind of useful public work requiring only rude labour of a general kind; with of course economic loss, and waste of skilled labour.

In parts of France the artisan has often a plot of land, perhaps an acre or two, and that solves the problem ; the like is true in parts of Switzerland. They work on the land when not otherwise employed. Perhaps something in the same direction might be done for our artisans to the benefit of their health, as well as the increase of their resources. It would also somewhat ease the public conscience, as well as be a guarantee of public tranquillity, and most certainly something of this kind should be tried. It will, however require the landlord and the municipality to address themselves to the problem in the right frame of mind. Perhaps it will require the reformed local government so long promised before anything considerable can be done."

• Written before the Local Government of 1888 was passed, which does give certain powers of the kind required to the County Councils.

VII.

BUT can society not assure to the labourer work; recognize the right to labour as an inherent right of the working man? It seems at first sight a reasonable demand that the worker should be assured of work, especially as the State has already guaranteed to him the necessaries of life if he is out of work and in want.

It seems at first sight a small thing; but in reality the right to labour recognized would be a very great thing, involving wide-reaching and momentous consequences. The following is the first, according to most economists, including J. S. Mill:-If work, with wages, were assured to all who asked for them, not merely to-day but in future, there would be such a premium put on population, there would come such an ever-increasing throng of claimants, that profitable work could not after a time be found for all: the results of their work would not be worth their wages in the case of an increasing number of labourers, and as the right to work would involve the right to at least necessaries so long as society possessed reserved means, the increasing deficiency in the results of inferior labour would have to be made up by increasing taxation of the wealthier members, until at last the whole annual income of the country would barely afford subsistence to the population. The tax for the support of the poor would engross the whole net produce of the country, the payers and receivers having at last reached equality in a universal poverty. At that point, according to Mill, the check on popu

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