In our last issue we considered the action of Trades Unions as 
far as they enforce the economical law of wages against 
employers.* We return to this subject, as it is of the highest 
importance that the working classes generally should thoroughly 
understand it. 

We suppose no English working man of the present day needs 
to be taught that it is the interest of the individual capitalist, as 
well as of the capitalist class generally, to reduce wages as much as 
possible. The produce of labour, after deducting all expenses, is 
divided, as David Ricardo has irrefutably proved, into two shares: 
the one forms the labourer’s wages, the other the capitalist’s 
profits.” Now, this net produce of labour being, in every individual 
case, a given quantity, it is clear that the share called profits 
cannot increase without the share called wages decreasing. To 
deny that it is the interest of the capitalist to reduce wages, would 
be tantamount to say that it is not his interest to increase his 
profits. 

We know very well that there are other means of temporarily 
increasing profits, but they do not alter the general law, and 
therefore need not trouble us here. 

Now, how can the capitalists reduce wages when the rate of 
wages is governed by a distinct and well-defined law of social 
economy? The economical law of wages is there, and is irrefutable. 
But, as we have seen, it is elastic, and it is so in two ways. The rate 

of wages can be lowered, in a particular trade, either directly, by 
gradually accustoming the workpeople of that trade to a lower 
standard of life, or, indirectly, by increasing the number of 
working hours per day (or the intensity of work during the same 
working hours) without increasing the pay. 

And the interest of every individual capitalist to increase his 
profits by reducing the wages of his workpeople receives a fresh 
stimulus from the competition of capitalists of the same trade 
amongst each other. Each one of them tries to undersell his 
competitors, and unless he is to sacrifice his profits he must try 
and reduce wages. Thus, the pressure upon the rate of wages 
brought about by the interest of every individual capitalist is 
increased tenfold by the competition amongst them. What was 
before a matter of more or less profit, now becomes a matter of 
necessity. 

Against this constant, unceasing pressure unorganised labour 
has no effective means of resistance. Therefore, in trades without 
organisation of the workpeople, wages tend constantly to fall and 
the working hours tend constantly to increase. Slowly, but surely, 
this process goes on. Times of prosperity may now and then 
interrupt it, but times of bad trade hasten it on all the more 
afterwards. The workpeople gradually get accustomed to a lower 
and lower standard of life. While the length of working day more 
and more approaches the possible maximum, the wages come 
nearer and nearer to their absolute minimum—the sum below 
which it becomes absolutely impossible for the workman to live 
and to reproduce his race. 

There was a temporary exception to this about the beginning of 
this century. The rapid extension of steam and machinery was not 
sufficient for the still faster increasing demand for their produce. 
Wages in these trades, except those of children sold from the 
workhouse ** to the manufacturer, were as a rule high; those of 
such skilled manual labour as could not be done without were very 
high; what a dyer, a mechanic, a velvet-cutter, a hand-mule 
spinner, used to receive now sounds fabulous. At the same time 
the trades superseded by machinery were slowly starved to death. 
But newly-invented machinery by-and-by superseded these well- 
paid workmen; machinery was invented which made machinery, 
and that at such a rate that the supply of machine-made goods not 
only equalled, but exceeded, the demand. When the general 
peace, in 1815,*” re-established regularity of trade, the decennial 
fluctuations between prosperity, over-production, and commercial 
panic began. Whatever advantages the workpeople had preserved 

from old prosperous times, and perhaps even increased during 
the period of frantic over-production, were now taken from them 
during the period of bad trade and panic; and soon the 
manufacturing population of England submitted to the general 
law that the wages of unorganised labour constantly tend towards 
the absolute minimum. 

But in the meantime the Trades Unions, legalised in 1824,* had 
also stepped in, and high time it was. Capitalists are always 
organised. They need in most cases no formal union, no rules, 
officers, etc. Their small number, as compared with that of the 
workmen, the fact of their forming a separate class, their constant 
social and commercial intercourse stand them in lieu of that; it is 
only later on, when a branch of manufactures has taken possession 
of a district, such as the cotton trade has of Lancashire, that a 
formal capitalists’ Trades Union becomes necessary. On the other 
hand, the workpeople from the very beginning cannot do without 
a strong organisation, well-defined by rules and delegating its 
authority to officers and committees. The Act of 1824 rendered 
these organisations legal. From that day Labour became a power 
in England. The formerly helpless mass, divided against itself, was 
no longer so. To the strength given by union and common action 
soon was added the force of a well-filled exchequer— “resistance 
money”, as our French brethren expressively call it. The entire 
position of things now changed. For the capitalist it became a risky 
thing to indulge in a reduction of wages or an increase of working 
hours. 

Hence the violent outbursts of the capitalist class of those times 
against Trades Unions. That class had always considered its 
long-established practice of grinding down the working class as a 
vested right and lawful privilege. That was now to be put a stop 
to. No wonder they cried out lustily and held themselves at least as 
much injured in their rights and property as Irish landlords do 
nowadays.*”° 

Sixty years’ experience of struggle have brought them round to 
some extent. Trades Unions have now become acknowledged 
institutions, and their action as one of the regulators of wages is 
recognised quite as much as the action of the Factories and 
Workshops Acts as regulators of the hours of work. Nay, the 
cotton masters in Lancashire have lately even taken a leaf out of 
the workpeople’s book, and now know how to organise a strike, 
when it suits them, as well or better than any Trades Union. 

Thus it is through the action of Trades Unions that the law of 
wages is enforced as against the employers, and that the 
workpeople of any well-organised trade are enabled to obtain, at 
least approximately, the full value of the working power which 
they hire to their employer; and that, with the help of State laws, 
the hours of labour are made at least not to exceed too much that 
maximum length beyond which the working power is prematurely 
exhausted. This, however, is the utmost Trades Unions, as at 
present organised, can hope to obtain, and that by constant 
struggle only, by an immense waste of strength and money; and 
then the fluctuations of trade, once every ten years at least, break 
down for the moment what has been conquered, and the fight has 
to be fought over again. It is a vicious circle from which there is 
no issue. The working class remains what it was, and what our 
Chartist forefathers were not afraid to call it, a class of wages 
slaves. Is this to be the final result of all this labour, self-sacrifice, 
and suffering? Is this to remain for ever the highest aim of British 
workmen? Or is the working class of this country at last to attempt 
breaking through this vicious circle, and to find an issue out of it 
in a movement for the ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM 
ALTOGETHER? 

Next week we shall examine the part played by Trades Unions 
as organisers of the working class. 

II 

So far we have considered the functions of Trades Unions as far 
only as they contribute to the regulation of the rate of wages and 
ensure to the labourer, in his struggle against capital, at least some 
means of resistance. But that aspect does not exhaust our subject. 

The struggle of the labourer against capital, we said. That 
struggle does exist, whatever the apologists of capital may say to 
the contrary. It will exist so long as a reduction of wages remains 
the safest and readiest means of raising profits; nay, so long as the 
wages system itself shall exist. The very existence of Trades 
Unions is proof sufficient of the fact; if they are not made to fight 
against the encroachments of capital what are they made for? 
There is no use in mincing matters. No milksop words can hide 
the ugly fact that present society is mainly divided into two great 
antagonistic classes—into capitalists, the owners of all the means 
for the employment of labour, on one side; and working men, the 
owners of nothing but their own working power, on the other. 

The produce of the labour of the latter class has to be divided 
between both classes, and it is this division about which the 
struggle is constantly going on. Each class tries to get as large a 
share as possible; and it is the most curious aspect of this struggle 
that the working class, while fighting to obtain a share only of its 
own produce, is often enough accused of actually robbing the 
capitalist! 

But a struggle between two great classes of society necessarily 
becomes a political struggle. So did the long battle between the 
middle or capitalist class and the landed aristocracy; so also does 
the fight between the working class and these same capitalists. In 
every struggle of class against class, the next end fought for is 
political power; the ruling class defends its political supremacy, 
that is to say its safe majority in the Legislature; the inferior class 
fights for, first a share, then the whole of that power, in order to 
become enabled to change existing laws in conformity with their 
own interests and requirements. Thus the working class of Great 
Britain for years fought ardently and even violently for the 
People’s Charter,*”’ which was to give it that political power; it was 
defeated, but the struggle had made such an impression upon the 
victorious middle class that this class, since then, was only too glad 
to buy a prolonged armistice at the price of ever-repeated 
concessions to the working people. 

Now, in a political struggle of class against class, organisation is 
the most important weapon. And in the same measure as the 
merely political or Chartist Organisation fell to pieces, in the same 
measure the Trades Unions Organisation grew stronger and 
stronger, until at present it has reached a degree of strength 
unequalled by any working-class organisation abroad. A few large 
Trades Unions, comprising between one and two millions of 
working men, and backed by the smaller or local Unions, 
represent a power which has to be taken into account by any 
Government of the ruling class, be it Whig or Tory. 

According to the traditions of their origin and development in 
this country, these powerful organisations have hitherto limited 
themselves almost strictly to their function of sharing in the 
regulation of wages and working hours, and of enforcing the 
repeal of laws openly hostile to the workmen. As stated before, 
they have done so with quite as much effect as they had a right to 
expect. But they have attained more than that—the ruling class, 
which knows their strength better than they themselves do, has 
volunteered to them concessions beyond that. Disraeli’s Household 
Suffrage *”* gave the vote to at least the greater portion of the 

organised working class. Would he have proposed it unless he 
supposed that these new voters would show a will of their 
own—would cease to be led by middle-class Liberal politicians? 
Would he have been able to carry it if the working people, in the 
management of their colossal Trade Societies, had not proved 
themselves fit for administrative and political work? 

That very measure opened out a new prospect to the working 
class. It gave them the majority in London and in all manufactur- 
ing towns, and thus enabled them to enter into the struggle 
against capital with new weapons, by sending men of their own 
class to Parliament. And here, we are sorry to say, the Trades 
Unions forgot their duty as the advanced guard of the working 
class. The new weapon has been in their hands for more than ten 
years, but they scarcely ever unsheathed it. They ought not to 
forget that they cannot continue to hold the position they now 
occupy unless they really march in the van of the working class. It 
is not in the nature of things that the working class of England 
should possess the power of sending forty or fifty working men to 
Parliament and yet be satisfied for ever to be represented by 
capitalists or their clerks, such as lawyers, editors, etc. 

More than this, there are plenty of symptoms that the working 
class of this country is awakening to the consciousness that it has 
for some time been moving in the wrong groove*’; that the 
present movements for higher wages and shorter hours exclusive- 
ly, keep it in a vicious circle out of which there is no issue; that it 
is not the lowness of wages which forms the fundamental evil, but 
the wages system itself. This knowledge once generally spread 
amongst the working class, the position of Trades Unions must 
change considerably. They will no longer enjoy the privilege of 
being the only organisations of the working class. At the side of, 
or above, the Unions of special trades there must spring up a 
general Union, a political organisation of the working class as a 
whole. 

Thus there are two points which the organised Trades would do 
well to consider, firstly, that the time is rapidly approaching when 
the working class of this country will claim, with a voice not to be 
mistaken, its full share of representation in Parliament. Secondly, 
that the time also is rapidly approaching when the working class 
will have understood that the struggle for high wages and short 
hours, and the whole action of Trades Unions as now carried on, 
is not an end in itself, but a means, a very necessary and effective 
means, but only one of several means towards a higher end: the 
abolition of the wages system altogether. 

For the full representation of labour in Parliament, as well as 
for the preparation of the abolition of the wages system, 
organisations will become necessary, not of separate Trades, but of 
the working class as a body. And the sooner this is done the 
better. There is no power in the world which could for a day resist 
the British working class organised as a body.