20 SEPTEMBER 1873, Page 3

One of the most hopeful signs of a cordial understanding

between labour and capital which we have yet seen, is an address by the West-End shoemakers of women's shoes to their employers, now lying before us. In, that address the men acknowledge the ready and graceful manner in which the employers had, at the beginning of the present year, advanced their wages, and provided them with workshops in accordance with their request ; and after explaining why the workshops have not been so useful to them as they had hoped, they proceed to offer to forego 3d. a pair of the advance previously conceded, in order that the 'workshops, the arrangements for which have been evidently hitherto more or less of a failure, may be continued without loss to the employers. This spontaneous disposition on the part of the men to consider the interests of the employers as well as their own, is precisely what is needed to insure a true cu-operation between labour and capital, and precisely what we have hitherto watched for almost in vain. Half the tyranny of the world arises from fear ; and more than half the tyranny of capitalists from fear of the labourers.