whole, been diminished rather than increased through the agency of the unions".

The great field of victory of the Unions has been the improvement of the conditions under which the workmen labor; here none can challenge the services they have rendered. The miners' unions obtained the Act of 1850, enforcing inspection in mines, after petitioning as to ventilation, etc., in 1830, '34, '35, '42, and onwards to 1850, and twice obtaining Committees on the question; in 1842they obtained an Act excluding young children from mines, and again for stopping the underground labor of women. Dissatisfied with the Act of 1850, they still petitioned and agitated, and after two more Committees in 1852 and 1853, a better Act was obtained in 1855. Still, owing to the bitter opposition of mine-owners, conditions of safety were not sufficiently stringent, and five more years of struggle won the Act of 1860. Since that date, Act after Act has been passed to ensure safety, to throw responsibility for accidents on employers, and generally to improve the conditions amid which labor is performed.

The miners' unions carried on an equally persistent fight for the extension of education, declaring in 1854 that the men unanimously desired "that a certain sum, say not exceeding 2d. per week, should be stopped out of their wages for school purposes, provided that the men are fairly represented on the committee which manages the particular school to which their contributions are applied". And this, be it remembered, was said sixteen years before the passing of Mr. Foster's Education Act. In 1860, within eight days, 50,000 adult miners signed a petition that this educational tax should be levied on themselves.

With regard to the length of the working day, the Unions have done good work. Before the seventeenth century, an average ten hour day was worked, taking summer and winter together, but this day was lengthened gradually, until the child-labor of our factories became the scandal of our civilisation. The factory legislation which commenced feebly in 1801, but became fairly efficient in 1833, and finally successful in 1847, was throughout

1 See Alexander Macdonald's evidence before the Commission of 1867.

strongly supported by the workmen's organisations, aided well by Robert Owen, the great and noble Socialist, outside Parliament, and by Lord Ashley (Lord Shaftesbury) within it. By limiting the hours of labor for women and children, the Factory Acts indirectly limited the hours of the men whose labor was dependent on theirs. In trades in which men only are employed, the working day has been shortened by the clumsier and more painful process of strikes; thus the builders reduced their day to ten hours, but an attempt in 1859 to reduce it to nine was met with a lock-out. Printers work nine hours ; many of the miners eight hours. But in some trades the reduction is a farce, and means only that hours over the fixed day-limit shall be paid for as overtime at higher rates.

The Unions are much divided on the question of enforcing by law an eight hour day. The figures of the late votings on the subject are challenged, it being believed that the antagonism of the older leaders has led to some misrepresentation of the returns. It has been remarked that a Trade Council voting against Parliamentary action was credited with the whole voting strength of the unions represented on it, while a Trade Council voting for it was only credited with the number of individuals composing the Council. It is probably near the truth to say that the younger members are, as a rule, in favor of using their political power to obtain labor reforms, while the older ones-with all their memories of legal oppressions, and the suspicion of State interference inwrought into their very natures by the bitter experiences of their long struggles to be delivered from it-cling to extra-Parliamentary modes of action.

In this division lies really the essential difference between the old Unionism and the new. The old is still dominated by the anachronistic idea that the State is set over against the People, whereas in the modern Democracy the People are the State. Parliament is no longer a class, making laws for a Nation; but it is the Nation in its legislative activity. The New Unionism will recognise this fact, and when it desires change it will use the ballot-box instead of the strike; it will vote instead of starving women and children.

This New Unionism has doubtless been influenced in

directly, but I think not at all directly, by the theories which have set the Continent throbbing with new life. The old Unionism looks askance at Internationalism, and prides itself on being British to the core. With the brief interlude of the "International", in which men like Lucraft and George Odgers took active part, British Trades Unionism has been hostile to, and suspicious of, "the foreigner". This anti-fraternal spirit is still strong in the Trades Unionism which has Mr. Broadhurst as its type, and which refused this year to even circulate the invitations to an International Labor Congress at Paris. But the new Unionism is being leavened by a strong Socialist party, which, international in its hopes and its ideals, is yet distinctively British enough to influence the younger generation of Unionists. Many of the most active Socialists are prominent members of Trades Unions, and are bringing into them the spirit which seeks to transform society, and not only to increase wage, to shorten the hours of work, and to improve the conditions of labor, while leaving it still in subjection to capital.

This new spirit is seen in the attitude lately assumed by Trades Unions towards women workers and unskilled laborers, the two unorganised mobs which have hung round the disciplined army of unionists, and have lost them many a fight. Comprising but a small minority of the working class, the Unions have ever been hampered by the crowding ranks of cheap, because unskilled, untrained, and unorganised labor, and they have tried to exclude as enemies those whom they should have welcomed as allies. Now Trades Unionism is spreading among women, and large and powerful unions are springing up among unskilled laborers; so that there is hope that at last all workers will be enrolled in disciplined hosts, and there will be no stragglers from the army of labor.

When each Trade Union comprises the majority of the workers in its Trade, and when these unions are united in a National Trade Federation, then will come the time for the International Federation, which will mean the triumph of labor and the freedom of the workers everywhere. But that International Federation can only come when the Socialist leaven, already working in the Trades Unions, shall have leavened the whole lump. And then, when

labor is triumphant, and when its forces are spent for human service and not wasted in the struggle for existence and the struggle against oppression, then the workman, no longer exploited for another's profit, shall once more take joy in the work of his hands and pride in the beauty he creates. Then shall rise from the sepulchre wherein Commercialism has entombed her, the spirit of the old craftsman, to whom work was a pleasure and creation was a delight, to whom craft and art were one and indivisible, and who deemed that a man's true life was to inbreathe the natural and to outbreathe the art. But that resurrection waits for the dawning, and we are yet in the shadows of the night; content if, amid the shadows, we can trace the path towards the sunrising; joyous if, on the far-off horizon, we catch a glimmer that shall brighten into day.