moment how many men and women now labour for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, and it will be seen that the enactment of an Eight Hours Labour Day would at once immensely improve the conditions of labour. Obviously such a boon to one class of the community cannot be gained without a corresponding loss to other persons. In the instance of the railways, the increase of their working staff by 50 per cent. at the same rates of wages that now prevail would necessitate a diminution of the dividends paid on their capital. And so in other departments of industry the change proposed would mean that, since the working class obtained a larger share of the results of its industry, the classes which do not work would obtain less. One result of this change in the distribution of wealth would be to divert other labour from the production of luxuries to that of the necessities and commoner comforts of life. From the national point of view, any tendency in this direction is altogether desirable. It must always be remembered that for large numbers of men to be unemployed is an enormous loss to the country. It is not only that they are unproductive and that their skill is evaporating by want of use, but that, though they are not adding to the nation's wealth, they are consuming it. One way or another they must be kept. Their cost falls partly on the poor rates, partly on public and private charity. It appears in the charges for gaols and penitentiaries, for the prevention and detection of crimes, and in public loss by theft. It is impossible to estimate how much under these heads would be gained by the rich as well as by the country at large from any great improvement in the state of the labour market.

In manufacturing industries there is greater difficulty in a reduction of hours. As an employer of labour who pays trades-union rates of wages for a week's work of forty-eight instead of fifty-four hours in a trade in which half the firms pay less than trades-union rates for longer hours, I can state, from my own experience, that men can and will in the shorter day turn out more and better work per hour than in the longer day. But I believe that there are certain trades in which a material reduction of hours might mean a great loss of foreign trade, though in all cases the stimulus given to the home. market by the increased prosperity of our own working classes would largely compensate for this loss. In some trades which even now are said to be threatened with ruin by foreign competition, it is clear that the British workman is in reality unfairly weighted for the race-for instance, in the matters of mining rents and royalties and railway rates. But I do not deny that it may prove to be necessary, failing international agreements as to a general reduction of hours, to contemplate the protection of our own workmen from the competition of countries where a lower standard of comfort prevails. The neces

sity would have to be clearly proved, but if that were done, no one who puts the interests of labour first would object to such a step. It is worthy of note that the International Congress of Workmen which meets in London next autumn is convened for the special purpose of arriving at the best means of procuring a universal reduction of working hours.

One difficulty is often raised by the opponents of State interference between capital and labour, notably by Lord Salisbury. It is contended that the first result of such legislation must necessarily be a tendency for capital to leave the country, in which it is hampered, and to seek investment abroad, where the rate of profit would be higher. There is some force in this contention, but those who make it do not sufficiently take into account the fact that human nature, selfish and grasping though it is, is yet influenced by other motives in addition to that of making money. For instance, money is to be made by taking part in the slave trade, yet British capital does not flow to this highly profitable industry. And why? Because public opinion has been gradually brought round to the belief that chattelslavery is barbarous and wicked, and finally persuaded to regard slaveholding as illegal. Consequently men whose grandfathers thought the opponents of slavery mad or quixotic now regard traffic in flesh and blood with feelings of revulsion. In spite of our worship of wealth, the most money-loving Englishman recoils from the idea of making a fortune out of the horrors of the middle passage. Now what has happened with regard to chattel-slavery is going on before our eyes with regard to the slavery, no less horrible, that exists in the forms of competition which compel men and women to work sixteen hours a day for twopence or threepence an hour. Public opinion is condemning the results. It will, as it gains force, secure by legislation the removal of the causes. And the legislation itself, by rendering that which is wrong also illegal, will tend to make our children look back in wonder at a time when a man, who was known to have become rich by squeezing the life out of the poor, could hold up his head in decent society. So, though it may be possible now for an employer to transfer his capital and machinery from England to a happier clime where no factory legislation or trades-unionism will restrict his perfect freedom to buy labour at the bare cost of subsistence, as it is whispered a certain prominent Radical politician has done, I think that the time is not far distant when men who act in that way will be liable, not only to legal penalties which they might possibly escape, but also to social ostracism which will deprive them of most of the things for the attainment of which they lust for wealth. The power of public opinion in such matters is very great. Witness the fact that the pillorying of a few notoriously harsh employers by the Lords' Committee on Sweating has caused

many who thoroughly deserve a similar fate to try and avert it by better treatment of their employés.

It is obviously possible, without calling in the aid of the legislature, so to organise this public opinion as to give its edicts all the force of unwritten law. But the experience of boycotting in Ireland shows that it is preferable that the written and the unwritten law should correspond, and that conduct which the public conscience declares to be immoral should be punishable by the verdict of open and responsible courts, rather than by the wild justice of a secret and irresponsible tribunal.

It will be seen from the above that the Labour Party sets before itself the task of furthering the interests of the working class by securing the legislative restriction of competition through the compulsory reduction of the hours of labour. The question which will interest the practical politician-who knows the difficulty of rousing the House of Commons to action on such matters, and the immense power of the vested interests in that House-is how the force can be found to bring such matters into the sphere of practical politics. A precedent-a successful precedent-exists. Methods once practised by others with striking results are now being used by the Labour Party, with a success which fully warrants a belief in certain and speedy triumph.

It will be remembered that, just before the General Election of 1885, Mr. Gladstone, then at the head of a united party which had incurred the detestation of the Irish Nationalists, appealed to the country to place him in power with a majority large enough to enable him to deal with Irish questions without being dependent upon the Parnellite vote. The Irish National League of Great Britain retorted with a manifesto couched in terms of unmeasured ferocity, in which they directed the Irish voters in British constituencies to vote against Mr. Gladstone, and against his servile, cowardly, and unprincipled herd' of followers. The result of the election was to render the Liberal party dependent on Mr. Parnell, and the wishes of the Irish Leader became the chief factor in the programme and policy of the Liberals. So the politicians who four or five years ago were unsparing in their denunciations of all who ventured to question Liberal treatment of Ireland can now find no language strong enough to express their admiration for their Irish conquerors. In the process of educating the constituencies on the enormities of landlord rule and Castle government, the coercionists of 1882 vie with the apostles of public plunder' of the same date. And the result must inevitably be, that even if the Parnellites do not succeed in establishing on College Green a Parliament which will altogether suit their more enthusiastic supporters, they will shortly obtain from one or other of the two great political parties a

redress of the most striking grievances which are now being vigorously expounded on every Liberal platform and in every Liberal paper throughout the country.

This edifying spectacle is perhaps not calculated to raise politicians in the eyes of men who have any regard for self-respect, consistency, and principle. But it demonstrates the fact that any political project can be speedily brought to the front if its adherents are possessed of sufficient electoral power to hold the balance between parties and enough resolution and independence to use that power with a ruthless determination to make their particular question the keystone of the political situation.' Whether these qualities are possessed by the Labour Party may be surmised from what they have already done, but can be proved only by time. They have on their side the great advantage that the Liberal party has accepted, and the Conservatives acquiesced in, the principle that State interference with freedom of contract is permissible. No politician who approves the substitution of a 'fair rent' for a rack rent in Ireland can argue for ten minutes before an audience of working-class voters that it is impossible for the State to substitute 'a fair day's work' for the twelve, fourteen, or sixteen hours now resulting from free competition.

As an instance of the success with which the policy of the Labour Party is being attended, I may take the Mid-Lanark election. The views of their candidate, Mr. J. Keir Hardie, Secretary of the National Federation of Scottish Miners, met with much approval from the miners, who form a considerable proportion of the constituency. Proof of the spread of democratic principles was soon afforded by the incorporation in the speeches and addresses of the other candidates of much of the Labour legislation which, when advocated by Mr. Keir Hardie, had found so much favour among the electorate. But, unfortunately for the Labour Party, and, as I believe, unfortunately also for the Irish Nationalist cause, instructions were sent from London for the Irish to vote for the Gladstonian, and not for the Labour candidate. There being, as it was said, 1,500 Irish voters in MidLanark, this rendered it certain that Mr. Keir Hardie could not possibly be elected, and so no one would vote for him who did not regard the Labour Question as the paramount political topic. Yet Mr. Hardie polled 617 votes, a result which can appear small only to those who do not realise the circumstances and who fail to compare it with the result of similar action in previous instances. Few, for example, remember that Mr. J. G. Biggar's first attempt to drive Liberalism out of Ireland resulted in his polling 89 votes only; that in 1874 when Mr. Parnell stood in co. Wicklow, with another Home Ruler as well as a Liberal and a Conservative, in the field, he only got 553 votes; or that in the same year Mr. Henry Broadhurst's essay at 'splitting the Liberal party'

ended in his getting 415 votes. But to judge of the real success of the tactics in Mid-Lanark one has to examine the effect upon the other candidates. Mr. J. W. Phillips was defeated in an English county constituency in 1886, and at that time his published utterances show only an orthodox Liberalism. Mr. W. R. Bousfield, the Conservative, was defeated in 1885 in Mid-Lanark, and, so far as I am able to learn, was not at that time very different to other candidates of his party. But an interview' with Mr. Phillips which appeared in an evening paper after his election shows that he fought and won on points far in advance, from the Labour point of view, of anything in the authorised programme of his party; in advance, indeed, of the promises of Mr. Chamberlain in the brave days when the doctrine of 'ransom' played so prominent a part in his unauthorised programme.' In fact, in order to appear a greater friend of the working man than his Tory opponent, Mr. Phillips was compelled to go very far. For Mr. Bousfield's election address was divided between Irish and Labour questions in the proportion of one to three, and committed him to the following points: the personal liability of the employer to compensation for all classes of accidents if he failed to make 'proper arrangements with an insurance society;' preventing any contracting out of the Act, and raising the scale of compensation; a compulsory eight hours' day for the miners; more extended powers of interference on behalf of miners in regard to further precautions, better inspection, oppressive deductions from wages, and other similar matters; a searching parliamentary investigation to ascertain the actual relation of mineral royalties to wages and prices; taxation of royalties to form an insurance fund for miners; Home Rule for the mines in the shape of a board on which masters and men should be equally represented, with compulsory powers to make and enforce rules with respect to hours of working, settlement of trade disputes,' &c.; an earnest and resolute attack on the problem of housing the poor; permanent machinery to be provided by the State for giving employment to the unemployed in times of distress; a thorough revision of the Poor Law, which is utterly inadequate to cope with even the ordinary distress;' compelling publicans to provide good non-intoxicants; raising taxation from surplus income only for instance, wages are at such a point' now that 'working men should practically escape taxation' which should be shifted on to the shoulders of the fortunate possessors of surplus incomes.' Clearly the Liberal whose promises exceeded these had to go a long way from the doctrinaire Radicalism of the Manchester school.

It will not be supposed that the Labour Party are so simple as to expect, in the light of past experience, that these promises will be fulfilled. They know that no individual member can fulfil them.