One of the deepest, though least noticed divisions among work-
ing-men, the chasm between the skilled and the unskilled labourers, came out oddly at an open-air meeting of the brick- layers and others held on Saturday in Hyde Park. Mr. Philips, a painter, had declared that the men must have the 91. an hour, because whatever political economy might say, leas than that "did not suffice for their natural wants." Whereupon, Mr. Halloran, hodman, presumably an Irishman, certainly a humourist, wanted to know what the labourers were to do with their 51. an hour. They had the same stomachs as the mechanics, the same wives, the same necessity for clothes, the only difference between them being the cost of tools. Clearly, if a man is to be paid according to his wants instead of according to his work, Halloran is entitled to as much as Philips. Indeed, he is entitled to more, for if any socialist idea is just, it is that work should be paid for in propor- tion to its disagreeableness. If a curate is entitled to £100 a year a night-soil man ought on the socialist basis to have at least £300.
