THE MASONS' STRIKE.
1 HE Masons' Strike in London shows no sign of ending. The conference of two sub-committees has done no good ; the representatives of the masters and men have been corre- sponding with each other, but the snappish letters of Mr. Goolden and Mr, Nisbet, full as they are of recriminations, have done nothing to diminish the differences between the two classes. The majority of the masters will come to no terms with their men. They think it absurd and presumptuous for workmen to ask at once for an increase in wages and a re- duction of hours. The men, on the other hand, are hopeful. Not a few of the employers have accepted the men's terms ; many of those who went out on the first of the month have procured work elsewhere ; and as the strain on the funds of the Society—never more than £1,200 a week, and now only about £600 to £700, it is said—is moderate, the struggle may last long. What the men want is a penny an hour more than they have been earning. They wish, also, to be allowed to begin working half an hour later than heretofore—that is at 6.30, instead of 6—on the ground that the workmen's trains do not take them to town in time for any earlier hour. It is estimated that about 2,500 masons are employed in London ; and'it is pretty clear that the employers of a clear majority
have refused these terms. They will not grant any increase in wages, and they will not consent to the proposed alteration in the hours, unless—which is tantamount to a direct refusal-- the men agree to work until half-past five instead of five in the afternoon and manage to persuade other artisans connected with the building trade to agree to the revision of the hours.
We must do the men the justice of saying that they have kept clear of one groat mistake which, whenever it is com- mitted by workmen, deprives them and ought to deprive them of the good-will of the community. They have not sprung suddenly upon the masters their notice of a strike. Fair warning has been given ' • the terms demanded by the men were made known as far back as November of 1875 ; they were renewed in January of this year ; they did not come into opera- tion until July 80. We are sorry to observe that Mr. Goolden, the spokesman of the Central Association of Master Builders, rather scornfully refers to this piece of forethought as if it were of no value. This semblance of indifference, which will deceive no one, is not politic. Of course, it is an im- mense advantage to the masters in industrial warfare that pro- ceedings shall not be taken suddenly, and that masters shall not be all at once deserted by their men ; and it would have been only seemly on the part of the employers had they recognised the fair, manly way in which the Masons began the fight. Mr. Goolden does his principals no good by disseminating the notion that it is all the same whether a strike takes place with or without notice. The Statute Book visits with fine or impri- sonment the person who wilfully and maliciously breaks a contract of service or hiring, if he have reasonable cause to believe that valuable property will be exposed to serious injury ; and why so ? Because employers have always contended, to the satisfaction of the Legislature, that the sudden, unforeseen withdrawal of their men might be ruinous to them ; and if it be the case that masters can guard, by special clauses in their contracts, against all inconvenience caused by the withdrawal of their workmen, the justification of this exceptional legisla- tion ceases. Why, too, we should like to know, has Mr. Goolden mixed up the true issue with loose, irritating charges against the men of circulating "fraudulent lists" of builders who have agreed to the men's terms ? Not a particle of evi- dence of fraud has been produced by him ; Mr. Nisbet owns that the lists may contain five or six names too many ; but his statement that some ninety London firms have accepted the men's conditions remains unchallenged. This is not the first instance, and will not be the last, that the chance of a settle- ment of a dispute has been visibly diminished by warlike Secretaries publishing acrimonious letters.
In most quarters it is agrbed that the Building Trade in London has been active for months back, and that the demand for labour has been in excess of the supply. The vast stores of unemployed capital seeking profitable employment have flowed towards building as a supposed safe investment, and in the midst of a general depression of trade this industry has flourished. Mr. Goolden, we observe, speaks about the large quantity of property unlet in the City of London and the suburbs. This, though quite true, is hardly to the point ; there may be an excess in building, and yet the trade may still be brisk, the real question being not the wisdom, but the reality of the demand for masons. At the same time, we do not say that the men's advocates have always kept to the true issue, which some of them naively suppose is whether a man and his wife can live on ninepence an hour, and not whether their masters can afford to give more than that sum. Of course, that is a question on which outsiders cannot dogmatise. They can no more pretend to decide for a man at what price he ought to buy labour than fix the rent which ho ought to pay for his house. But we may surely express a wish as to the way in which it would be desirable the strike should terminate. Up to a certain point, not yet reached in most trades, anything which will diminish the hours of work of our artisans is valuable ; it makes' the manual toiler more of a true man, and in most cases it enables him to execute at the end of a week more and better work. If, therefore, it should be found possible to diminish the work- ing day of the mason by half an hour, the result of the strike would be valuable in the extreme. If the employers persist in their refusal, Parliament might reasonably be asked to con- sider whether Railway Companies, which have pulled down the houses of working-men and driven them out of London, should be permitted to refuse them fair travelling facilities to and from work.
We fully appreciate the responsibility of letting fall one word which might encourage the men to persevere in a strike the result of which must be very doubtful. The air is too full of in- dustrial disputes to desire to add to their number. We hear of a probable strike of some 40,000 men in the Black Country, and some half-dozen strikes of carpenters and joiners are now in progress in the provinces. Turning to America, once an outlet of our surplus labour, but now sealed to it, we find the pros- pects worse than here. A competent judge, Mr. Thomas Con- nolly, writing from St. Louis, says that he finds 2s. 6d. in England will go as far as a dollar in America ; that he fears the troubles will be much greater next winter ; and that " it would be madness for mechanics or labour of any kind to come out here at present. The best man in England could with difficulty find employment, even if he preferred to work for his board." We admit that, more than ever, a strike ought to be entered upon with caution, and as a last resort in these days. Still the condition of America must not be used, as it often is just now, as a moans of scaring English workmen to accept what wages, and especially what terms as to hours, are offered them. The depressed state of wages there is due to special causes not far to seek. Ricardo long ago showed, in words curiously applicable to the United States for years back, that " the commencement of war after a long peace, or of peace after a long war, generally produces considerable distress in trade." " It changes in a groat degree the nature of the employments to which the re- spective capitals of countries were before devoted, and during the interval while they are settling in the situations which new circumstances have made the most beneficial, much fixed capital is unemployed, perhaps wholly lost, and labourers are without full employment." He points out, too, that the liability is peculiarly great in rich countries, such as the United States, with abundance of fixed capital. If we add to those causes the existence of a depreciated currency, which is being con- tracted, and a protective tariff which has helped to create vast factories, the distress will be sufficiently explained. None of these causes are in operation here, and the Masons have some right to assume that there is genuine activity in the building trade, in the benefits of which they may fairly hope to share.
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