The great employers in Lancashire and Yorkshire have founded a
"national federation of associated employers of labour," ap- pointed a council, the names on which are given elsewhere, and published an official account of their designs. These are briefly to fight the Trades' Unions, and especially the federation of Trades' Unions, to influence Parliament in favour of capital, to direct the public mind through a special Press, and "an efficient and ever watchful literary staff," and to promote the "freedom of labour,"—that is, to discourage combination, which can alone enable the artisan to deal on equal terms with the capitalist. All these objects, except the last, are fair and just, if only they can be carried ; but we think, and have endeavoured elsewhere to show, that they cannot. Legislation, at all events, must depend on Parliament, and in elections to Parliament the millionaire has only one vote, while his " hands " may have ten thousand. There is the ultimate power which will always beat combinations of this kind. If, indeed, " intelligence " were always associated with capital, the capitalists might win, but it has a trick, unfor- tunately, of belonging to the other side. Our readers will not fail to perceive, on reading the names, that the leading members of the federation are among the richest men in England, have, in fact, earned, under the system they now want to check, "fortunes beyond the dream of avarice." If men can, under all checks from strikes, grow as rich as the Fieldens, is it truly conser- vative in the Fieldens to object ,to strikes ? We thought Con- servatism meant, among other things, letting well alone.
