WAGE-PAYERS' LEAGUE. [To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR. "] Sra,—Most of
thit ringleaders and inciters of insurgent labour boast loud and openly that thanks to their handiwork the middle class is done. That assumption appears to be founded on the supposed unwillingness or inability of the middle class to combine, and this is being traded on by those people. Therefore the long-suffering wage-payer cannot be blamed for getting roused at last and resolving that he will no more stand by idle and helpless while his whole capital and enterprise and the great commercial fabric he has reared are exploited for unscru- pulous purposes by the demagogue and certain politicians of ill fame.
Things must go from bad to worse unless the wage-payers of the nation do unite for self-preservation. Accordingly it has been proposed to form a national league to be called the Wage-payers' League. Steps are already being taken to establish at Glasgow a centre and committee for Scotland.
The chief objects of the League are in outline—(1) to organize the wage-payers of the United Kingdom into a national league or -union of all kinds and classes of persons and concerns who pay wages; (2) protection of the interests of employers and wage- payers in all things, and particularly against the injustice of vindictive legislation and burdensome taxation, such as is at present masqueraded in the garb and name of so-called " social legislation" ; (3) to resist and to defend wage-payers against the extravagant and growing demands of labour, and to cope with the unrest among, and the blind unreasoning discontent of, work- people ; (4) to fight and counteract or defeat the mischief wrought or attempted by the professional labour agitator; (5) to shield and ensure in the peaceable exercise of employment during labour dis- turbance workpeople loyal to their employers ; and (6) by practical steps, as occasion may from time to time require, to checkmate strikes and render them futile.
The need for immediate action is rendered clamant both by the National Insuranoe Bill and by the news that at the Inde- pendent Labour Party Conference to be held at Birmingham in January a motion will be submitted—and no doubt passed— expressing great gratification at the labour unrest during the past year and insisting on a minimum wage of thirty shillings a week. That is nothing short of cruel and ° criminal incitement of the unintelligent to further folly and excesses. If the wage-payers of the United Kingdom will wake up, and in this matter do their duty by themselves and each other, the result will be an organization so huge and rich and powerful that no confederacy of trade unions dare stand against it. After all, the middle classes have the brains, education, enter- prise, energy, muscle, endurance, and, deservedly, their position and the bulk of the wealth of the country, and it will be indeed a strange thing if they cannot assert themselves and enforce their rights and authority and common law and order. But it must be remembered always that "united ye stand, divided ye fall."—I
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