Mr. Gladstone presided on Saturday last at a meeting of
the Social Soience Association, called to consider the relations of capital and labour. The meeting was well attended both by members and workmen, and resolved that strikes and lock-outs showed ignorance of the interests master and man have in common ; that good unions were good things, and bad unions bad things ; that the best way of settling disputes was to hold "friendly conferences" between masters and men ; and that the admission of workmen to partnerships would do great good. The general proceedings lasted four hours, but we cannot perceive that they advanced the question at all,—at least if we take the question to be the dis- covery of some mode of inducing masters and men to agree about wages. They will not agree the more because clever persons say they ought to, or because Mr. Ruskin offers a string of questions tending to show that labour can get on without capital, that is, in fact, without its own accumulated result. If such conferences produce kindly feeling they do much, but that is all they do.
Previous page
