LABOUR MEMBERS. T HE result of the General Election in Victoria
upon the state of Labour representation in the Colony should not pass without notice. Three years ago, as the result of the strikes and labour troubles existing in the Colony, a considerable body of Labour representatives were returned to the Lower House. By Labour repre- sentatives, we do not merely mean Members who happened to be engaged in mechanical employment before their election. The Labour representatives we are speaking of were men who differed from ordinary Members by pro- fessing to represent one class, and one class only. They were working men first and last, and their object was to represent the interests and press the claims of Labour with a big "L,"—that is, of those who earned their livings at particular trades, and did not make enough by their labour to be regarded as professional men. The tem- porary success of this Labour Party was at one time regarded throughout the Australian Colonies as but the thin end of the wedge. In their most enthu- siastic moments, the spokesmen of Labour counted upon sweeping the board, and of having a whole House of Labour representatives ; while even in their cooler moods, they looked forward with confidence to the pos- session of a compact body of Members capable of holding the balance between parties, and of securing their ends by indirect if not by direct means. The prospect of these hopes being fulfilled seemed to the public in general likely enough. The labourers are a majority of the population. A majority of the population can elect a majority of the House. Therefore, if they choose, the labourers can elect a majority of the House. From a simple syllogism of this kind there seemed no escape. Especially was this the case in the Colony of Victoria. There, if anywhere, the Labour Party ought to have been triumphant. Nowhere in the world does there exist a more complete example of pure democracy. The suffrage is universal, the electoral districts are equal, and the newness of the settlement has prevented the growth of any aristocratic or plutocratic body. Though there are millionaires in Victoria, the rich form a far smaller portion of the community than in long-settled countries like England. Again, there is no Established Church, no House of Lords, and no Monarchy—for the Governor has no more influence on the political tendencies of the Colony than a statue of the Queen—institutions which, it is said, though with very little truth we suspect, tend to keep down and hold in check the power of Labour. Yet, in spite of these advantages, the Labour Party have had a trial of strength in Victoria, and have been utterly put to rout. The bladder has been pricked, and has collapsed with a completeness which must be not a little bewildering to those imaginative persons who believed that a Trade-Union Committee was going to rule in Melbourne. The Labour Party only tried to get thirty-six Members into the new House, and yet even this modest attempt proved an utter failure. Of the thirty-six Labour candidates, twenty- four appear to have been rejected, and the twelve actually chosen are said to have come in "more in the guise of supporters of the Ministry than as independent Labour advocates." "In any case," says the Times' correspondent in Melbourne, "the Labour Members will be unable to form a separate party with even the modified success which has attended the attempt to do so in New South Wales."
We trust that the collapse of the Labour Party in Vic- toria the moment they attempted to set up the labourers as a caste, will be taken to heart by those foolish and timid persons in England who imagine that we are ever likely in England to see political power solely in the hands of the labourers, and all other classes excluded from any partici- pation in the work of government. In a country where the conditions which prevailed in France before the Revolution are in existence, such a thing might have occurred. There the lat ouring population was in truth a caste subject to and depressed by special legislation, and a caste from out of which it was practically impossible for a man to rise. In England no such conditions obtain. There is no distinct Labour class, and the ranks of the workers are insensibly shaded off into those of the richer portion of the population. There are richer and poorer, but no hard- and-fast line of status, political or economic, exists between the labourer and the rest of the country. This is the fact which forbids the creation of a distinct and all-powerful Labour Party pledged to take care of Labour to the exclu- sion of other interests. Besides, there is not, in reality, that solidarity of interests among labourers in general which would be the only sure foundation of a Labour Party. One trade's meat, is another trade's poison. What is most ardently desired. by one set of work- men is very coolly received by the next. Again, it must be remembered that the sort of freemasonry which is supposed to exist among people who toil with their hands is a fiction. It no more prevails than does a freemasonry between those who are engaged in sedentary pursuits. There is no special community of feeling between stockbrokers, journalists, solicitors, and wholesale tradesmen. People suppose that when a handi- craftsman puts up for election, the hearts of all other handi- craftsmen warm to him. They do no such thing. We have no desire to assert that workmen are specially jealous of workmen. They may be so sometimes, just as stockbrokers are sometimes jealous of other stockbrokers, bankers of other bankers ; but this explanation is not needed. In truth, men are inclined towards or against a candidate in accordance with their opinion of the views he advocates. If they like his views, they vote for him whether he is a Lord or a cobbler. For example, in a Welsh colliery district where the men were strong for an Eight. Hours Bill, Mr. Burt, once a miner, would not receive half the support extended to a capitalist advocate of Parliamentary restriction on the hours of labour. Again, even if workmen are not jealous of other workmen simply because they are in the same class, there can be no doubt that there is a great deal of antagonism between the different categories of labour. The superior person who looks from the top at the whole body of labourers, imagines that they are all cut out on one pattern. Instead, each trade has its special idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, and within the trades themselves there are special and marked gradations hardly visible to the ordinary eye, but none the less real and effective. The stonemason, the brick- layer, the carpenter, the plumber, the glazier, the wheel- wright, the cabinetmaker, feel each and all the sort of antagonisms that exist in the professional classes. Stock- brokers, solicitors, doctors, journalists, auctioneers, are all classes against which strong prejudices exist among their fellow men of means. A member of one of them might support a member of the other because he advocated his opinions ; but no stockbroker, journalist, doctor, or solicitor would support an auctioneer out of an abstract love of auctioneers. So with the working men. The fact that a man is a working carpenter does not at once endear him to all stonemasons and wheelwrights and bricklayers. Rather it is likely to awaken some ancient grudge and prejudice existing in those trades against carpenters in the abstract,—a prejudice carefully treasured in the workshops, and passed down from generation to generation. No Chancery barrister in his heart of hearts believes that a Common Law counsel can be anything but a coarse-minded, ignorant, bullying windbag. The same sort of feeling is alive throughout the various grades of working men. There is not, and there cannot be, in fact, any solidarity of interests between all labourers. Society is not a series of regular steps, but a gradual incline. You can say which is the top and which is the bottom, but you cannot tell where one part of the slope stops and another begins. There is no break of continuity, and no particular piece of the incline belongs more to the piece next above it than to the piece next below. Hence it follows that, do what they will, the so-called leaders of " Labour " will never get purely Labour representatives. They may get men of advanced opinions, but a Parlia- ment entirely composed of working-men representatives is a bogey which the General Election in Victoria has, we trust, dispelled for good and all.
We cannot leave the subject of the General Election in Victoria without noting that the cry for "One man, one vote," met with very much less favour than might have been supposed. The fact is another proof of how absurd it is to judge of what a democracy will do on abstract principles. Experience is constantly showing that, in the English-speaking world at any rate, it is quite unsafe to suppose that democracies are ruled by logic alone, and are outside the ordinary influences of human nature.
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