Mr. Robert Knight, the secretary of the Boilermakers' and 'Iron
Shipbuilders' Union, and one of the most remarkable and successful of working-class leaders, writes strongly in his monthly report against the unwisdom of the Trade-Union 'Congress in swallowing the Socialist programme. It has ceased, he says, to be a Trade-Union Congress, and become a gathering of advanced Socialists "whose dreamy ideas find vent in strongly worded resolutions." These resolutions, " if they were levelled against the capitalist or denounced some employer of labour, found acceptance with the majority of delegates." They aim at turning the Imperial Parliament into a Trade-Union Congress which is to rule with an iron hand both Capital and Labour. " We differ fundamentally and utterly with all such proposals as these, as they would curse Labour with restricted freedom, with diminished resources, with arrested progress, with abject dependence, and the demoralisation that all these things bring." Col- lectivism, he goes on, can never take the place of in- dividualism. "If our friends who shout so loud at congresses would depend more on individual effort, and work a little more for their societies and less for passing wild resolutions, it would be much better for those they are supposed to represent." Of course Mr. Knight will be called " a fossil ; " but fossils are sometimes made of very hard stone, and hammers have been known to break in the attempt to smash them.
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