TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. SEPTEMBER, 1859. THE BUILDERS STRIK E. AUGUST is a general scholastic vacancy, geography and July wear down pupils and teachers. Academies are closed and colleges are quiet in the last month. The educational mind is at grass when the labourer is at harvest. The two extremes of society get loose together. The houses of learning only precede the houses of legislation by a few days or a couple of weeks. The slaughter of the innocents begins on the 12th, and goes onward to the close of the season. Members of Parliament and schoolboys could not be kept in their places during August, even if the nation in their absence were to be revolutionised. The builders of London have added, between the employed and the employers, largely to the number of idle people in the last month. A dispute had arisen between Messrs. Trollope and Co. and their men, which gradually increased to a general quarrel. The materials of that dispute resolved themselves into a demand by the men of a nine hours day for the old weeks wages, on that of the employers for a promise by their men, that while they continued in their employment they would not belong to any union. These are the two grand points on which the respective parties stand. Upon them they joined issue on the 6th ultimo. On that afternoon the men removed their tools. Work was generally suspended. Large buildings remained as they stood at the close of that week. These carcases in their loneliness looked ghastly, and as if they had become the objects of a chancery suit. The delay even of a few weeks cannot have been profitable to the contractor or to the customer. It must have been ruinous to the tradesmen. For some time past the builders of London have been paid 5s. 6d. daily. They have wrought for ten hours of each day on these wages, but they are liable to deductions for broken days, and short days in winter. In large establishments the men have stopped two hours earlier on Saturday nights. Fifty-eight hours form, therefore, their working time per week. They require a reduction of one hour daily, equivalent to ten per cent. in time, but it does not follow that this change would reach ten per cent. in work. Building operatives do not work by the piece, and there are many persons who believe that they would make equal speed in nine hours as in ten. The nine hours movement is, we believe, confined to the metropolis. There is a reason for its adoption in London not applicable with equal force to smaller towns. Building, unlike nailmaking, spinning, or weaving, is not confined to one locality. The large builders have central establishments for the preparation of parts of their work; but many of the men must be at the actual building, As their engagements are short, and the scene frequently shifts, a man cannot remove his lodgings or his house to the neighbourhood of his work. The changes by that plan would be too expensive, because so frequent. An old Scotch proverb alleges, and experienced persons | behind, and cannot overtake nature. insist, that three flittings are equal to a fire. The families of the building trades might have the loss of two fires annually if they were always to make their homes what the Irish would call "convenient" to their work. This plague of the craft exists in all towns, but its pressure and strength increase with the magnitude of the town. They are more intense in London than in any other place. Three, four, and even six miles, are not unfrequently the distance that a man has to move between rest and labour in the morning, and at night between labour and rest. The gain of one hour daily would bring the metropolitan builders to a level perhaps with those of Perth or similar towns; or even with those of Edinburgh. The demand is not more than reasonable if the trade can afford the reduction. The expense might even be light. Men might work for nine hours with one break in the middle, all that is done with two breaks in ten hours. These nine hours make a long day, with one for walking at each end, and longer when the walker needs, on his journey to labour and to home from work, two hours. It may seem a homely calculation but yet the gist of the matter, that from eight to half-past twelve, and from half-past one to six, make nine hours. Thus the day of eight to six, with one hour in the middle for dinner, makes ten hours; and breakfast could be over by seven a.m., and supper could wait till seven p.m. The ten hours work may involve two breaks, and the operatives time from home be increased, not by one, but by two hours in each day. This increase is neither good for him nor home. It is not good for little children whom he seldom sees, and who scarcely know him. It is not cheap, and good wives wish to be economical. Two meals daily from home run away with money. As for one, that dinner, do the great builders,who at one period of their lives handled hammer or trowel, altogether forget that it is often only a bread and cheese question. This is the case, and they might feel how good it would be for their men to get home at an early hour. Nine hours are decidedly better than ten, and eight hours would be better still. Eight hours in the day, one third of twenty-four hours; one third of life after the commencement of toil is the natural time for work. As yet we are far Society is in arrears, with its customs, habits, and hours. Society is almost, if not entirely, hypocritical. We should not apply the epithet to any individual, but an action of damages cannot be brought by society. If anything of the kind could be done we should plead a justification and an absence of any malice. The short time movement for shopkeepers stares one out of countenance, who does any shoping after seven o'clock p.m. Now how or when are operatives in their lives to do any shoping if they cannot clear out from their labour an hour before the seventh in the evening? They cannot comply with the request of the placards, which they may read in all parts of London, beseeching them not to buy after seven o'clock. These placards are part of a great conspiracy against the shopkeepers who keep their doors open after the hour named. No measures are proposed against that conspiracy, because it has the patronage of ladies and of peers who may buy what they like just when they please. Why do not the same ladies and peers help the working men to short time? The answer is, because they struck. The greater part of them deny the charge, and say that they were locked out. The shopkeepers were not locked out, and they did not strike. Otherwise, no difference could be found between Mr. Lilwall and Mr. Potter. The first is the secretary of the short time movement in shoping, and the second is the secretary of the short time movement in building. Ordinary minds are baffled to see that a request is treason in building, which is virtue in shoping; especially as without the alleged treason the allowed virtue is absolutely and distinctly impossible. The two movements, and all proceedings of the same nature, hang together; while all that can be said against the builders, if this be true is that they adopted a bad way in their work. The employers demand from the men a promise that they will abandon the Trades Union, as the condition of recommencing work. This request has been explained in several forms, but much explanation is unnecessary. Men need not write long letters when the best reply is "No." The first demand was said to be a written pledge. The second was for a verbal promise. The distinction between the two is nothing. Either the employers Enterprise winds up the quadrant of building powers. It forms one side of the quadrangle. It is not often the best side. Enterprise, in its native and pure state, is commendable, bnt it is a term with many meanings. Enterprise is often rashness. A reckless man decides in his mind to make a spoon or spoil a horn. An equally able man declines the possible gain, trembling for the possible loss. How stands the case between them? When the bold man loses, smashes, and stops, the world may or may not blame him. The issue will depend upon whether he has or has not cleverly and largely cheated the world. If he has done the deed with these qualifications the world and the man live on excellent terms; for the world fancies being cheated, and the man is highly respectable. If he has not accomplished that object, either because he could not, or would not, then he is not an enterprising, but a foolish and speculative person, who falls out of memory and out of sight. union want the employed to abandon their | ital should not pare its payment down to union, or they can say so. The first step the smallest remuneration, for capital to the restoration of peace between the without it is helpless. Both capitalists two classes is a plain declaration of their and labourers should offer inducements objects. The employers union comprises for skill to settle between them, and the more than two hundred firms. Mr. Sidney skilful capitalist, or the skilful labourer, is Smith is said to be the manager of their entitled to a remuneration on two scores. lock out. He is grey in agitations, figuratively, if not literally. He can tell such firms as Messrs. Cubit and Co., or Messrs. Peto, Brassey, and Co., if they do not already know, that an explicit statement of their purpose is requisite. If they will only declare peace in return for a promise in speech or writing that the men will not subscribe to any union while in their employment, nobody can expect an early and willing restoration of work. The condition is legal, but it is also imprudent. The masters are entitled to say that they will not employ unionists. The proprietors of the Times adopt that rule, we believe, in their business, and it has been followed by some other offices in the trade. The builders may expect that they can accomplish the same riddance from the rules of the trade. Many of them are men of large fortunes. Their contracts have been very productive somehow. The differences between the money paid and the money received for labour have bought estates, established plums in the funds, shares in railways, houses and ships, along with many other good things. Capital is entitled to its reward like labour-neither less nor more entitled; but we remember many of these contractors like Lazarus for poverty, who are now like Dives for riches. We refer not to the firms named, for of their history we are ignorant, but to persons who commenced great contracts with little to finish them, and who did finish them endowed richly for the next speculation. We knew a man who had not wherewith to buy barrows and spades and pay his labourers their wages for the week, yet he got a contract nevertheless, concluded the same, and bought an estate, and a good one with the proceeds or their profits. Next skill is entitled to payment, certainly skill is worthier than either capital or strength. It is the higher gift in its nature, but it has not the higher reward in the world. Still, a large sum is fairly chargeable and payable for skill. Labour should never grudge good payment of skill, for it clears the way to work. Cap Many little details, in addition to those which we have named, go to the production of these large means engaged in the building as in other trades. Industry and sobriety, of course, and other little items are necessary to the result. They are like salt or sugar in cooking, other ingredients without them have little relish. By the exercise, somehow, of these condiments and solids the great building firms have grown rich, and they naturally ask, why should not we command our men, and why should they disobey us? We will not have treason in the camp and persons in our employment, actually plotting for their own purposes. It is horrible-so they say naturally: that is bad naturedly; but good natured persons among them should take a different view of the business, their duties, if they please their privileges; those privileges that riches have given them. The building capitalist, who is too great and magnificent to reason and speak with his workmen, should abandon the trade. He has grown out of it into maturity for the House of Peers, and there, if he could induce Viscount Pal- | don were considered "idle." The total merston to toss him among his supernumeraries, he would improve his notions on these subjects. number is reckoned at sixty thousand persons, and two thirds are forty thousand, so that the multitude of small employers who would not sign the document had one third of the men in their works. Three weeks afterwards the proportion of men actually idle was assumed to be one third of the whole number, or twenty thousand men; of whom thirteen thousand were supposed to be married men, and their children were estimated at thirty thousand. The estimate seems highly probable, and gives the army of the idle at Workmen ... Wives of Workmen ... ... 20,000 63,000 The employers cannot expect to trample out the idea of union from among their men by insolence, but if it be an evil thing it could be neutralised by kindness. The employed and the employers are mutually dependent. They are useless alone. Their energies are only available in company. A large firm will become soon small enough if it depends entirely upon its own resources. This is a truism, but men sometimes overlook common truths. We have read long addresses issued by one of these combinations at the other conspiracy. They were not very important. One of the masters documents was a dissertation on the creation of wealth and the employment of work, all tinged These forty thousand, or twenty thouwith the mire of a stupid political economy. sand men, walked home on the evening of The writer said that unless work could be the 6th of August, carrying their tools, done more economically in this country laid them down in their little rooms, prothan in other countries, we should be under- duced the wages of their six or eight days sold in neutral markets and all the fabric of toil, for in large establishments the men of our wealth would be found baseless, were kept usually two days in arrears of leaving but the fragment of a dream in the wages, looked at their little ones, and general wreck. Probably he did not ex-looking remembered that they were idle press his meaning in the paraphrase of a notorious and sentimental quotation contained in the closing clauses of the last sentence; but the meaning was indeed precisely as we have given it, and was, on this subject, meaningless. The great majority of the people, according to his doctrine, should be poor, that the country might be rich; or the wealth of a nation depends upon the poverty of three fourths of the whole. In that case India should be very rich, for its population works cheaply, and Ireland should be a greater manufacturing country than either England or Scotland. The assertion is founded upon an aged and exploded error; even in reference to manufactures, and one that obviously never could have had anything to do with building houses; for we can neither export nor import new banks, insurance offices, Parliament houses or palaces. We cannot buy foreign buildings n stone. The two parties form the host who broke into war on Saturday evening, the 6th of August, declaring hostilities by passive resistance. The few would not employ, and the many would not work. Two thirds of the building operatives of Lon men. Great capitalists have no monopoly of hearts, although they may have a monopoly of less costly things. These men of brawny arms and strong thick bones have their hearts also, and all their superiors in money should be thankful for them. They feel deeply when their dwellings are darkened by want. They, too, have their soft places in memory, made there when some light of the dwelling sunk out of sight in this river of death that carries us to the ocean of life. They also love and are loved, and have affections and hopes bundled tightly up by the little circle gathered round them. That love leads them not to think less of those who are without the inner circle. The inner ring has outer rings, and they keep circling round and round, broader and wider, until they take in a far greater breadth of the earth and those who dwell here than many persons know. These rigns do more for peace, law, and order in society than policemen and statutes. Life is greatly lightened by little kindnesses. Children reared in gentle homes would never guess how happy the boys and girls of the working classes are made by a biscuit, a cheap toy, or some very small matter out of the wages on a Saturday night. The children of the very rich have their nurses to take them out, and drive here and there without any thought of the pleasure that like a life spring wells up from a hundred thousand little hearts and brightens as many little faces, when fathers can take them out after the weeks labour is finished and the weeks money won, and they will be at home to-morrow. That blessed to-morrow that knits so many family groups together, so listless to many great, so grateful and pleasant to many poor. It was of that to-morrow when some sought to save it entirely from business, and care, and labour, in London that others said, if shops were closed in the mornings-the working classes could not have fresh meat for dinner, because it could not keep in their houses. Mark the reproach. The living flesh would take no harm from continuous exposure to an atmosphere so much worse than the average of butchers shops in crowded localities, that dead flesh became under it corrupt utterly in a few hours. Now it seems as if the dinner would not go wrong in twenty thousand of these homes. They are likely to be without dinner of any description. Yet the same class who bewailed the probability of spoiling meat in them, are quite pleasant over the thought that there will be no meat to be spoiled there. One of these journalists asserts complacently that the employers will get builders from German towns. He says that the clothing trade got German tailors, and half the operative seamsters in London are Ger mans. So much the worse for London if that emigration and immigration, which he contemplates, be continued. The colonies and the States pick up the best of English "hands and hearts;" and England will not be stronger by the substitution of German hands and hearts for them. Society has not been improved by continental importations. An English workman quarrelled with some person and knocked him down. The fallen could generally rise again, and little evil feeling remained. Since we had so much cosmopolitanism in business we have also had quarrels going into stabbing, and the fallen never rise. The English workman does not often quarrel. A London mob is, proverbially, the best humoured mass that needs to be met with. These qualities may disappear if we have too great continental infusions. Capitalists should remember that something more is neces sary for their prosperity than cheap labour. They need undoubted security. Two remedies have been suggested for strikes-one by the establishment of councils of reference and another by letting the operatives into a share of the profits, which must be accompanied by a share of the risks from trade. A third is always suggested, "the progress of intelligence and a good understanding between all classes." This improvement in the condition and relations of society makes no progress towards the object sought, for more than the ordinary average of strikes irrespective of the builders-have occurred in the present year, while the condition of society has been improving, and the relations between the employed and the employers have become, as is generally understood, more intimate. Councils of trade have formed a favourite subject of talk in the Legislature and of writing in the press. If they become an established and recognised power in the country the independence of action sought by the great employers will be lost. If they are merely courts of voluntary reference, endowed with the respectability which may be derived from some Parliamentary notice of their birth, all that they could accomplish might be done at once. A bill has been suggested in the Commons to autho rise their establishment. The Legislature, with an appalling confidence in the peaceable character of the people, or an indifference to results, walked to the moors at the commencement of the greatest strike which has occurred for many years, leaving their good wishes for all concerned in the struggle. A Legislature more closely representing all ranks of the people than ours might have deemed necessary the offer of its good offices, if not of its power, to restrict this intestine warfare. After the recess more experience will exist on the subject; but old experiences are apt to be forgotten, and the land was rich in experiences before the present time. Councils of trade are not novelties. They exist in some continental towns, and are said to have many advantages. Their friends in this country propose their formation in equal proportions of employed and employers. The members are to b elected by their respective constituents, |