The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Publishes every Tuesday, Thursday, AND Saturday Morning. Saturday. July 12, 1890. THE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LABOR.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 479, 12 July 1890, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Publishes every Tuesday, Thursday, AND Saturday Morning.

Saturday. July 12, 1890. THE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LABOR.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou e.tm’st at be thy country’s, Thy God’s, and truth's.*

An able paper has recently been written by Mr Gladstone, expressly for the Lloyd’s Newspapet. The article shows great depth ot thought and the comprehensiveness with which the Grand Old Man can grasp a subject. We cannot afford space ror the whole of the article, but the selection of an extended extract will enable our readers to judge as to the current of thought which has been running in Mr Gladstone’s mind. He says:— “ The spectacle presented by this country at the present time is a remarkable one. The ultimate [lower resides in the hands of those who constitute our democracy. And yet our institutions are not democratic. Their basis is popular ; but upon that basis is built a hierarchy of classes and of establishments savouring in parts of feudal times and principals ; and this, not in despite of the democratic majority, but on the whole with their assent. I do not know whether history or whether the present face of the world presents a similar case of the old resting on the new, of non-popular institutions sustained by popular free-will. I shall not here dwell at large on the 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 labor, 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 the 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 absolue robbery in the degree, whatever that may have been, in which it depressed the rate of wages below the level which the free and open market would have determined for it. A strike of course is an indication that something has gone wrong on one side or on .both. .The involuntary cessation of labor, diminishes at once the wage fund, the produce of capital, and the commodities available for the use of the community. But these inconveniences may be, and to a vast extent have been the price paid for .the avoidance of a greater evil, such as is depriving the laborer of his just hire. Ajid, if strikes on th.- whole have done good, it is probable that the possibility, and the 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 the right direction. They are more rarely marked bv violent attempts of intemperate in dividuals to coerce the minority who do not join them. They are regarded with more lavor by the public outside the area and interests of the dispute ; whose testimony may be considered impartial. Their power has greatlv increased, for the working men of different trades and of different countries are coming into sympathy with each ottier. While power has thus increased, it is used more mercifully, at least in some noteworthy instances, against members or the working class itself. The barbarous usage, no less mean than cruel, which once excluded the woman from the higher employments in the art of porcelain—not with the courageous brutality of a prohibition, but by the cowardly method of denying to her the use of a ‘ rest ’ required to relieve the wrist —- has long been failing, and has, I hope and believe, now fallen into disuetude. It is necessary for the permanent elevation of the working man that, as he becomes more free and more strong, he should also become more 'noble. 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 ■continual (and not necessarily unfriendly) competition between labor and capital for the division of industrial fruits, capital and not labor has hitherto had the upper hand, and that it is time that the balance should be, not reversed, but redressed. There may come a time when labor 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 may have an intrinsic and indefectible moral superiority. It means rather that for them the organisation oflife.and thought is simpler, and their temptations to pride, greed, and selfishness greatly less. Were the despotic relation in which employers once stood to laborers to be inverted, and were laborers 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 as only the strong restraints of the gospel could (in my judgment) enable them successfully to encounter. But such a contingency though it may be 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 manners. Yet capital must surely hold its own, since it grows in that country more rapidly than ever. The impartial citizen, then, has only to bid the laborers God speed, and heartily to wish that, by their high standard of conduct, their wise choice of calling, and their equal and liberal respect for the 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, not the terms of their contract only, but also excellence of work considered in itself, and for its own sake, as a thing greatly to be desired and highly fruitful of future advantage. Apart from the agreement with the employer, each man should have a contract with himself, always, in all things, to do the very best he can. And next, and last, that Labor and Art are not foes, nor strangers nor rivals, but allies ; that all labor has a beauty of its own, sometimes a very high beauty j 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 labor 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 foremost among men in the work of beautiful production.”