20 DECEMBER 1873, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE "NATIONAL FEDERATION OF EMPLOYERS." THERE are only two objections that we know of to the Association of capitalists in Lancashire and Yorkshire of which we have heard so much this week. They cannot carry out their design, and if they could, their success woold injure their own cause. There is not the elightest legal objection of any sort to the employers forming a Trades' Union, if they please, except so far as they may by possibility some day render themselves liable to the Conspiracy Law which the workmen are now endeavouring to repeal ; and they cer- tainly will have the strength, pecuniary and otherwise, to form a League, as strong as a League can be, to carry their principles into action. If it be true, as asserted in the Manchester Guar- dian, that the Association includes the following firms and associations—and from the official report it would seem to be true—then it certainly has capital at its back equal to that of many States, and can, as far as resources go, certainly "con- trol "the trade of two great manufacturing counties :-- " The President of the Association is Mr. J. Robinson, of the firm of Messrs. Sharp, Stewart, and Co., Manchester. The other members of the Council are :—Sir James Ramsden, Barrow ; Mr. B. Hannen, of the firm of Holland and Hannan, London ; Mr. J. Crossley, of Halifax ; Mr. Richard Haworth of Manchester ; Mr. J. Brinton, of Kidderminster; Mr. J. Laird, of Birkenhead ; Mr. S. A. Marshall, of Leeds ; Mr. W Malcolmson, of Portland, Ireland ; Mr. W. B. Briggs, of Birmingham ; Sir John Savage, of Belfast; Mr. Edmund Ashworth, of Bolton; Mr. James Wilson, of Leeds • Mr. E. Gilkes, of Middlesborough; Mr. Titus Salt, of Bellaire; Mr. Robert Neil, of Manchester ; Mr. T. R. Bridson, of Bolton; Mr. W. Morris, of Halifax; • Mr. R. Raynsford Jackson, of Blackburn ; Mr. Anthony Bower, of Liverpool ; Mr. J. Menelaus, of Dowlais ; Mr. E. Akroyd, M.P. ; Mr. F. McCance, of Belfast; Mr. Field (firm Mandalay, Son, and Field), London; Mr. Vickers, of Sheffield ; Mr. Joseph Simpson of Manchester ; Mr. Robert Tennant, of Leeds ; Mr. Trollop°, Westminster; Mr. E. J. Harland, Belfast ; Mr. W. J. Ridout, of London • Mr, W. Knowles, of Bolton; Mr. Stanley G. Bird, of London ; Mr. 0. London; of Belfast ; Mr. Bennett, of the London Tailors' Association ; Mr. C. N. Peel, of the West EndShoomakers' Association ; Mr. J. Oldroyd, of Dewsbury ; Mr. E. Johnson, of Manchester Mr. E. F. Smith, the Earl of Dudley's agent in North Worcestershire ; Mr. Peacock, of the firm of Messrs. Bever and Peacock, of Manchester; Mr. R. Thompson, of Ps.diham; Mr. James Coombe, of Belfast ; and Mr. Davies, of the firm of Davies and Eckersley, Manchester. Among the associations which have become affiliated to the federation are the Master Cotton Spinners' and Manufacturers' Associations of Preston' of Blackburn, and of Burnley ; the United Bleachers' Association‘of Lan- cashire and Cheshire ; the Engineers' Association of Belfast ; the West- End Master Bootmakers' Association ; the Master Worsted Spinners' Association of Halifax ; the Master Cotton Spinners' Associations of Manchester, and Salford, and of Bolton ; the Master Builders' Associa- tions of London, of Birmingham, of Manchester, and of West Yorkshire ; the Iron Trades Employers' Associations of Barrow-in-Furness, Barns- ley, Bradford, Bristol, Halifax, Huddersfield, Keighley, Leeds, Leicester, Lincoln, Liverpool and Birkenhead, London, Manchester, Nottingham, and Wakefield.'

The only difficulties in the way of such a League are its purposes, which, as we understand them, they cannot attain without excessive, perhaps unendurable, injury to themselves. Those purposes clearly are to fight Strikes by an organisation more powerful than that of the ordinary Trades' Unions, and to influence legislation in Parliament in favour of the capitalist and against the workmen. Of course prettier names are given to these objects, but very few of the bolder capitalists would deny that these are the ends they seek, although they would also affirm that they are legitimate ends. We do not question the latter assertion at all, and only ask deferentially how these ends are to be attained. The capitalists who, without the Ballot, carried all Lancashire, can hardly, under secret voting, carry more than all seats, nor can they secure more thorough representatives of their own views. Nor if they step out of their own counties, do we believe they can make a Parliament much more completely governed by capitalist feeling than the present one, in which it is difficult for a Member to reach his seat without treading on a millionaire's toes, and in which the average income of the Commons—we do not say the average property—is believed to be greater than the average income of the Lords. It would be most difficult to find capitalists more devoted to the cause, and as to numbers, the Associates forget where ultimate power in the North now lies. The moment the Association is in action—and it is already completely formed —the workmen will become alive to their danger, and will resolutely support any candidate, Tory or Liberal, opposed to their employers' designs. We should say, judging from what we see of the success of the Railway Kings, that great employers of labour are not popular in boroughs, and certainly great employers of labour associated to influence Parliament will not be much morapSpuliii than the old Boroughmongers though the latter - had= a -long tradition of empire at their back. We,Ishould.i. aorry•to see any com- bined effort made to exclude an' °lase; bat:Most certainly if suf- ficient provocation is given p exclusion will be attempted, and must, in the present state of parties, beznore or less successful. We doubt, for example, if any one of the gentlemen drawn into this ill-advised Union will ever sit, or sit again, for a borough, and the result of the effort will in that ease be.not to increase, but to decrease the number of capitalists in the House. Even if this result does not appear in the next Parliament, that will be the inevitable final result ; Ifor no association, however powerful, or wealthy, or determined, can outlive, or overpower, or outargue a whole people, without the military force which the Associated Masters would repudiate, even if they had got it to use. As to the employers' power of influencing votes outside the workmen, which, do they think, has most, an Association like this, with all its list of potentates, or any widely circulated journal of Liverpool, Manchester, or Birmingham ? In such a cause their whole power (and we fully acknowledge its mightiness) would be less than that wielded by a single local Cobbett. They are going, they say, also to establish journals, and to sow broad-sheets broadcast. But capital, though it can ,do much for journals, cannot find them readers ; and broad-sheets, to be of any use at all, must attract the very multitude who arele be attacked. We should have thought the experiment of a subsidised Press had been tried too long, and in to many countries, to seem feasible to long-headed men of lousiness like most of those who make up the Masters' Council. - But Strikes can be put down ? Let us see how. The Asso- ciated Masters must meet a strike, either by a lock-out, or by the importation of new labour, or by letting the trade affected stop for a while. As strikes usually occur when a trade is most prosperous, the look-out plan would result either in a secession of the masters connected with that parti- cular trade from theLeagae, or a demand for compensation, —that is, praoticallyc for a tax upon- each =prosperous or moderately prosperous trade, in order to stop a most prosperous one, a kind of socialism reversed-which. the Association would speedily find it inipoaaible to bear. It w*4,Tin. its pecuniary effect be exactly equi+elent to a strike in .11'trades, the very thing they are so desitoue to prevent ; while; moreover, it would encourage competitilui;fend especially co-operative competitionr to an enormous extent, investors having found out already that of all investments, a suoceesful co-operative business pays the largest interest. Of course, there exist one or two exceptions to our principle. The coal-owners, for example, having the monopoly of their article, and that article being of prime necettity, could manage a complete look-oat) bnti then they would tome across the maxim, Salus reipublicar ttuprem,a lex, and under the pressure of insurrection in London, would ran the most imminent danger of sudden and drastic legislation against their action. Precisely the same argument may be applied to the third course ; while the second, though apparently feasible, has never succeeded upon• any great scale. The importation of a hundred thousand or so of labourers is as difficult a matter as the organisation of an army, and usually less successful. It has been accomplished once or twice on a small scale, no doubt, but it would not work if applied on the scale which alone would justify the exertions of so very great an Association. Emigration within the country is of course possible, but foreign immigration is too much impeded by differences of language, manners, and civilisation. '

Again, suppose for a moment the Association succeeds, and is able to repress strikes and prevent all legislation "unjust to capital ;" what would be the result ? Just the one we see upon the Continent,—a horizontal cleavage of society so sharp and decisive that England would be as insecure politically as, say, France or Denmark at this very moment are believed to be ; that there would be an open and avowed struggle between rich and poor for the government of the country, which would fluctuate between men determined on repression and men exasperated into tolerance of the pro- ceedings of the Commune. No Englishman wants that, but of all Englishmen who least want that, surely the capitalist must be first. Is it he who wants social disorder, the horizontal cleav- age of society, and the state of things which existed when Sir James Graham declared he would never be Home Secretary again with the corn laws unrepealed Anarchy would surely hurt capitalists more than the state of society they deprecate, and under which they have made the fortunes that render them so powerful. We should have thought that the men whose names are given in the Council's programme had a specie right to be contented with our institutions, but if they are not, and seek to alter them in the Continental direction, they must run a great political risk, a risk absolutely equalled in no other country, for in no other are the people with pro- perty in so grave a minority by the side of the wage-re- ceivers, while in no other have the wage-receivers, if they choose to exercise it, so complete a control over the Govern- ment. Why is it that the great distraction of the Continent —the struggle between the proletariat and property—is so little felt here ? Partly, no doubt, because the people still believe in a man's right to his own, but mainly because the laws leave master and man to arrive at some modus vivendi by the haggling of the market, celled on the small scale a "resignation," and on the large scale a "strike." We quite admit that the Association is not talking of force, and would not use it if it could, but it is talking of legislation, and that in Great Britain is ultimately controlled not by money, or by energy, or—if the Masters are fond of that proposition—by intelligence, but by numbers. The numbers may be conciliated by capital only too readily, else why so rich a Parliament ? But defeated in an open struggle they cannot be, except through a revolution every member of the Association would resist.

The Masters, though clearly within their legal right, have as clearly gone too far in so using it, but they can still make their organisation extremely useful. They are strong enough, we should imagine, almost to insist on adherence to an arbi- tration agreed to by the men, and it is to that their efforts should be directed. They could deal with the Trade Unions on equal term, being a Trade Union themselves, and insist that on any Treaty being arranged the Unions should induce their men to keep it in its integrity. Their Council would then become that Council of Arbitration with power behind it for which we have all been searching so long, and they would exchange a position which we believe to be quite untenable for one of the most solid advantage to themselves and to their countrymen.