persons to subscribe sums of money to men well qualified to trade, on the condition that the subscribers were not to be deemed traders on that account, or subject to any further demands.1 Had such a law existed for a hundred years in England, it would have allowed of the growth of industrial partnership, and would in all probability have profoundly ameliorated the relations of labour and capital.

I entered into careful consideration of this subject in a lecture prepared for the Social Science Association in 1870, and published by the Society,2 and I see no reason to alter the opinions in favour of the plan then expressed. It is true that the experimental trials of the system which were then being made by Messrs. Henry Briggs and Co. in coal mining, Messrs Fox, Head, and Co. in iron manufacture, Mr. E. O. Greening, and others, in several branches of trade, have proved more or less unsuccessful. The industry has continued, but the partnership with the men has been given up. On the principles enunciated at the outset, to the effect that we must reason from the most direct and proximate experience available, it might seem that these failures negative the whole thing. But then, as before explained, experience requires careful interpretation; when we remember that these few experimental partnerships were started in single-handed opposition to powerful trades unions, we can see that there may have been interfering causes sufficient to ensure failure. A system like that of trades

1 Holyoake, History of Co-operation, vol. ii. p. 227.

2 On Industrial Partnerships-A Lecture delivered under the auspices of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. April 5, 1870. London, 1 Adam Street, Adelphi.

unionism, with all its associated ideas, has vast latent influence. When we remember that the men employed in the works in question were brought up and imbued with these ideas, we see that it must take a long time to introduce a very different system.

The present doctrine is that the workman's interests are linked to those of other workmen, and the employer's interests to those of other employers. Eventually it will be seen that industrial divisions should be perpendicular, not horizontal. The workman's interests should be bound up with those of his employer, and should be pitted in fair competition against those of other workmen and employers. There would then be no arbitrary rates of wages, no organised strikes, no long disputes rendering business uncertain and hazardous. The best workman would seek out the best master, and the best master the best workmen. Zeal to produce the best and the cheapest and most abundant goods would take the place of zeal in obstructive organisation. The faithful workman would not only receive a share of any additional profits which such zeal creates, but he would become a shareholder on a small scale in the firm, and a participator in the insurance and superannuation benefits which the firm could hold out to him with approximate certainty of solvency.

I should hesitate thus to enlarge upon the advantages of industrial partnership were they at present purely imaginary and in opposition to experience. The fact, however, is, that in France, where trades unions have never acquired much influence, the system of industrial partnership has advanced surely, and of late rapidly. Under the name of Participation aux Bénéfices, or participation in

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profit, it has been adopted by at least forty firms, many of them, such as the well-known "Bon Marché," being establishments of great extent and importance. A society, now in the third year of its existence, has been formed to study the different schemes of participation adopted, and to make them known in the Bulletin of the Society. This publication is issued by Messrs. A. Chaix et Cie., Rue Bergère, 20, Près du Boulevard Montmartre, 5 francs per volume. Payments can be made to a collector in London, who will be named on application to the secretary of the society at the address just given. Full membership of the society is obtained by payment of an annual subscription of 20 francs. The fullest details of the constitution, general management, and results of the French industrial partnerships are given in this periodical. One of the latest numbers of the Bulletin contains a complete history of the partnership accorded to its employees by the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer d'Orléans, since amalgamated with other lines. In the last year or two Mr. Sedley Taylor has drawn attention to the remarkable progress of "participation in profits" in France, and has wisely and ably advocated similar progress in this country. So great is the practical importance of the subject that I subjoin a list of the papers or books in which the reader can obtain full information:

Charles Babbage, Economy of Manufactures, chap. xxvi.

H. C. Briggs, Social Science Association, 1869.

H. C. and A. Briggs, Evidence before the Trades - Union Commission, 4th March 1868. Questions 12,485 to 12,753.

The Industrial Partnerships Record.

Pare, Co-operative Agriculture (Longmans), 1870.

Jean Billon, Participation des Ouvriers aux Bénéfices des Patrons, Genève, 1877.

Fougerousse, Patrons et Ouvriers de Paris (Chaix), 1880.

Sedley Taylor, Society of Arts Journal, 18th February 1881, vol. xxix. pp. 260-70. Also in Nineteenth Century, May 1881, pp. 802-11, "On Profit Sharing."

To see what is being done abroad, the reader should consult La Question Ouvrière: Essai de Solution Pratique. Par J. C. Van Marken Paris (Chaix), 1881.

CHAPTER VII.

ARBITRATION AND CONCILIATION.

HAVING regard to the failure of working-men in most cases to become their own employers by co-operation, and the apparent remoteness of the time when the system of industrial partnership is likely to be adopted in this country, we must turn with increased interest to the measures which have been taken with respect to conciliation and arbitration. A conciliator is one who intervenes between disputants in order to promote calm discussion, to draw forth frank explanations, or to suggest possible terms of compromise. The mere fact that the conciliator is, as he always ought to be, unimpassioned and disinterested, the impartial spectator of Adam Smith's theory of morals, is often sufficient to enable him to allay the irritation and to prove that the disputants are more nearly of a mind than they imagined themselves to be. An arbitrator, on the other hand, is one appointed either by the consent of the parties, or by superior authority, to inquire into the facts, to receive explanations from both sides, and then, with or without the concurrence of the disputants, to assign the terms of arrangement. The logical difference between conciliation