MR. GREG AND "'THE MASSES."
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
cannot quite gather from the letters of your correspond- ent, the Rev. G. D. Snow, wherein I have "made unfair attacks upon the ' masses,' " or deviated from the doctrines of sound political economy, nor do I care much to defend myself against such charges. 1 only feel clear that he has misunderstood, and therefore misrepresented me, and I am pretty sure that he cannot have read me with much care. But as his chief aim appears to be to advocate "strikes," which I have deprecated as a deplorable blunder and a grievous mischief, I take the opportunity afforded me by his attack to say just two or three words upon that very grave matter.
The year 1874 has been a year (as, in one of the papers he criticises, 1 prophesied it would be) of numerous, extensive, and calamitous strikes—all, I believe, unwarranted, and all therefore futile and disastrous—to resist reductions of wages just as righteous and just as inevitable as were the several advances of wages which had been obtained during the two preceding years. In those strikes the working-classes wasted a vast proportion of the earnings they had gained, and the storing of which might have gone far to make them capitalists. For those futile and abortive efforts to avert the inevitable, the advocates of "strikes," whether unthinking writers or unwise agitators and leaders, must be held responsible, and the responsibility is grave.
We are now, to all appearance, on the verge of another gigantic struggle between masters and men on a larger scale, involving greater multitudes, promising far wider and more appalling suffer- ing than any yet recorded, and I may add without fear of contra- diction, by general admission more utterly irrational and un- warranted by the circumstances of the case. And your corre- spondent, apparently without a thought for the folly which he is thus doing what he can to encourage, or the misery which he is thus helping to bring about, chooses this precise moment for singing the praises of " strikes " in general! And he chooses for his theme an epoch when the experience of the last three years has more than ever proved the truth of my position that strikes are not needed to secure whatever rise of wages is just and fair, and are powerless to prevent whatever fall in wages may be warranted. Three several advances were secured with scarcely an effort or a demur in 1872-3. Two several reductions had to be submitted to, in spite of every effort and struggle to resist them in 1874, and another must follow now.
I believe it maybe stated as a rule, almost if not quite without ex- ception, especially in the great industries, such as coal, iron, cotton, &c., that whenever disputes between masters and men culminate in a "strike," the workmen must be in the wrong for the simple reason, that the inevitable loss to the masters consequent upon astoppage of their works is so grievous, and in the case of coal mines and blast- furnaces, so enormous, that no man will face it if he can afford to' give way to the demands of his workpeople. The statement is a. broad one, and the language in which I state it is somewhat un- measured, but I believe it to be strictly true, and I think few per- sons really conversant with the history and details of the subject will be inclined to controvert it.
The sufferings which are at this moment hanging over the mis- led and perverse Miners of South Wales bid fair to be of such severity and extent as will lay a heavy weight upon the conscience- of all who may have in any way, by bad advice or unsound. doctrine, contributed to cause them.—I am, Sir, &c.,
W. R. GREG.
[Our two correspondents are rather at cross-purposes, Mr. Snow thinking only of agricultural and Mr. Greg chiefly of mining and manufacturing labour. It is impossible to say that the rise of wages in agricultural districts which has taken place in recent years would have taken place without a strike.— ED. Spectator.]
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