THE LEVITY OF GR THEESS TRADES-UNION CON.
WE have repeatedly pointed out, as one of the most dangerous symptoms in modern society, the extreme levity exhibited by a section of the cultivated in their thinking. Western Europeans are displaying the im- patient shallowness of the Slays, with whom thought and action lie so close together, that if a man thinks autocracy a bad system, he immediately fires at the Emperor; or if he contracts pity for the poor, he strips himself of his resources and turns labourer, to increase by so much the pressure on the wages-fund. There are hundreds, if not thousands, among us who in religion abandon old creeds at a moment's notice, and adopt new ones without ever con- sidering thoroughly either their sanctions or their results ; who, in politics, are ready to throw ancient States into a crucible, awl accept any new form of Government, say, Federalism, for example, as necessarily good ; and who in social work are ready to try the most bewildering experiments, without the slightest clearness of view as to what their end will be. Such aberrations are perhaps to be expected in a society where men satiated with comfort have, begun to dream, where most dreams are philanthropic, and where intellectual laziness disinclines many to the labour—often, we quite admit, severe—of thinking hard before they admit any momentous proposi- tion. The momentousness of it, in fact, seems to them to prove its reasonableness. We did not expect, however, we confess, to find the same spirit governing working men. They, at least, are experienced within their range; they are in contact with the realities of life ; and they have every reason to fear great changes which, by diminishing the general quantity of work, may bring large sections of them to intolerable misery. Yet we find in the Belfast Trades-Union Congress more than three hundred delegates—representing, they say, more than nine hundred thousand workmen—accepting principles which, if carried out, would at once revolutionise the conditions under which labour is carried on throughout the entire Kingdom. The delegates passed, for instance, on Wednes- day, by 137 votes against 99, a resolution which affirms that all Labour candidates, if assisted by the party, " must pledge themselves to support the principle of collective ownership and control of all the means of production and distribution,"—that is, must support by votes and speeches the most gigantic of all revolutions, the transfer of all land, all mines, all factories, all shops, and all fruit- ful capital to the State, which is to become the sole employer of labour. We wonder how many of the three hundred delegates had ever thought for an hour on what that tremendous proposal meant; had ever considered. by what means it could be carried out ; had ever reflected that, as against each trade, the interest of the consumer —that is, everybody outside the trade—is low wages ; had ever seriously reflected whether he would, or would not, like an employer without a rival, who could make his own laws, who was impersonal and therefore pitiless, who would control all military force, and who would be compelled to put a summary check on idleness by giving the idle the lash We venture to say not 10 per cent. of the delegates had even considered those matters, and Mr. John Burns, who spoke so strongly for the resolution, never alluded to them, but simply pleaded that, if the Trades-Union men and the Socialists pulled together, they would be irre- sistible. Yet the Congress passed the resolution, and everybody was cheerful, except indeed the Belfast work- men outside, who were, from the reports, very much inclined to lynch Mr. John Burns as a Socialist,—one of the oddest commentaries we have yet seen on the reality of the representative character of these gatherings. That, however, is not our point just now ; but to ask whether Lords or Bishops could have displayed more levity, could have passed far-reaching votes after a less exhaustive die. cussion. Be it understood, we are not writing under the influence of any fear of the result of this particular vote. All the votes in the world will not change either the laws of human nature or the national character, and Congresses may "resolute " till the cows come home, without inducing Miners to let sailors legislate for their work, or persuading labourers to accept a system of agriculture from Lancashire weavers ; but we are aghast to see how carelessly even picked men from among the workmen will propound schemes which would overturn the world, without as much hard thinking as they would give to a proposal to reduce their wages by a shilling a week. They are as light as their superiors, as ready to revolutionise all the conditions of labour as the Gladstonians are to revolutionise the Con- stitution of Great Britain. They are really capable, so far as appears, of resolving that a Bill be passed turning all English mould into coal or fire-brick, without ever thinking for one moment of the effect of that change on cultivation.
There were a great many other resolutions on which we should like to say a word,—particularly one which binds all Labour candidates, not only to vote in the interests of labour, but to vote according to any decisions which Trades-Unions may hereafter adopt ; a pledge to accept the infallibility of those bodies which is almost ludicrous in its completeness. The candidate is, in fact, not only to pledge himself to all the Labour ideas he ever heard of, which of course he may do in sincerity, but to all the Labour ideas which shall be hereafter developed, which is simply impossible. He may vote for them, but to promise to believe in them passes the power of man. We might say something, too, of the monstrous resolution, passed unanimously, pledging Trade- Unionists not to work side by side with non-Unionists, that is, to inflict on them, if possible, actual starvation. That is an illustration of the " homogeneity of labour," and of the Gospel of Love by which it is to be governed, which is singularly instructive ; but we have said enough upon that subject elsewhere, and have a good deal of confidence in the pigheadedness of workmen, even when elected Mem- bers of Parliament. They will not be such utter slaves of their constituents as some of the delegates appear to ima- gine ; indeed, they are not, or the resolution would never have been proposed. We want rather to call attention to the smallest and most insignificant resolution passed by the assembly. After resolving to change all the founda- tions of society, and to make speaking dolls of all Labour representatives, the delegates considered a humbler subject. Mr. G. T. Jackson, probably a person of much influence among trade delegates, has seen a man driving a horse and cart with another horse and cart tied to the front one, and following after without separate guidance. The object of the practice is, we believe, firstly cheapness, there being many trades to which the cost of haulage is a crushing obstacle; and secondly, humanity to animals, the load being divided be- tween two carts, because otherwise one horse would have too much to drag. Mr. Jackson, however, moved the following resolution : " That the Parliamentary Committee be in- structed to introduce a Bill to stop one man driving two horses and two carts chained together, a practice which was cruel to horses and dangerous to pedestrians, and which deprived thousands of men of a means of livelihood by allowing one man to do two men's work." And Mr. Jackson's resolution was unanimously accepted ! The delegates probably passed that proposal without a thought, as a mere courtesy to the proposer, never reflecting for a moment that to double the cost of haulage would often be to stop the business altogether, and instead of compelling the employment of two men, to throw the one man who is employed out of work. The true logical deduction from Mr. Jackson's resolution would be that horses should be abolished altogether, and that the carts should be pulled by human labour, thereby affording em- ployment and wages for eight men instead of one. There are many businesses in country districts which can hardly be done at all on this very account, and are done very often only through a cruelty to animals which the very drivers resent and complain of, and which this arrangement of the two carts obviates. Are the delegates really prepared to kill out work when it does not employ enough men, or to allow Parliament—that is, we bog to remind them, the consumer, not the producer—to dictate all the conditions of labour down to details so minute that it is difficult to read them without a sense of ridicule ? They will say they have no desire of the kind ; and we entirely believe them, and no more expect an insurrection to prevent carts being tied together, than an uprising to throw all the means of production into Government hands. But then, in passing such a resolution, the delegates are guilty of the very levity we complain of, display a readiness to over turn a world or to make some petty change, without giving the smallest reflection either to one proposal or the other. We not only have no prejudice against Labour Congresses, but heartily approve them. We want, with all other persons of common-sense, to know what workmen sincerely wish for, and to receive proposals and reasons for them, made and offered when the workmen were not overshadowed and restrained by superiors of any kind, whether em- ployers or politicians. But then we want their genuine wishes, their actual proposals, not vague rubbish like the collectivist resolution for which the Belfast men were ready to stone Mr. John Burns, or resolutions about trumpery matters of detail like that carried by Mr. Jackson. We want the workmen, in fact, like all other men when they meet for business, to be a little serious,— to think, at all events for a few hours or minutes, what it is that they are voting for.
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