All life not fair-all men not true; some hard, They parted, as the old tales run; and none So many years rolled by; when on a day A priest, unseen, with his long wand outstretched. The outer curtain, and there came the tread Of swift light feet along the marble way. A woman fair, with beauty of full life; On the sweet face from which she cast the veil, Father, canst understand my English tongue? "Father, it was no sin: it seemed not so I loved. Start not. My love was free; no chain Of a new love-God knows how true and pure! Need never shrink from. Such a love as but To taste the blessedness of loving so Were heaven on earth. But then to hear and learn For mortal heart to bear alone, and beat. Father, when just my weaker soul had grown And he passed from me to I know not where. "Father, the years have passed. I thought that I Had learnt so well the lesson-to forget. But Memory listens, as a wakeful child, And all the more the watcher bids him sleep, That wreathe me seem to say, 'You are not true, "Father, he lives-my husband. And his love "Stay! there is one stain more. If I should see There was a long, long silence as she knelt, NEW SERIES.-VOL. XVIII., No. 1 7 "Daughter, be thou still "Daughter, go home. It were not well to stay I will speak with thee again!" She moved, she rose, and passed out from the place. It was the silence only and his God That heard a moan beyond the outstretched wand; And then, in broken whispers, came at length : "Into Thy hands, my God! the gate is past— My God, I thank Thee! Thine the power, the might, If I have suffered my full meed of pain, Let me go hence! And on the other side In looking earthwards-back to earthly things!" That night in Rome a heavy bell tolled slow -St. Paul's. PROBLEMS OF CIVILIZATION. BY THOMAS HUGHES. PART II. In my last address we had already heard the sound of those much-feared and muchabused words, "the organization of labor." Turn them into French, and they become at once terribly suggestive. Vague ghosts of Communism and Socialism rise up before us, till timid folk feel inclined to put their fingers in their ears, and run away shrieking for the police. Unhappily for unhappy France, they are, inseparably I fear, connected there with terrible memories with bitter class hatreds, unclosed social wounds; with blood-stained barricades, and armed men behind them, asserting against society, in blind but deadly earnest, the first "right of labor," as the Paris workman holds it—the right "to live working, or die fighting." I do not care to consider curiously why it is that we have no such memories to brood over, but would for myself earnestly deprecate the tone of complacency in which our press too often takes up this tale; and thanks, not God, but our remarkable national characteristics-our reverence for the constable's staff, our distrust of ideas, and the rest-that our people are not Red Republicans, Socialists, Communists, or even as these Frenchmen. We have a sorrowful enough record in the past, of bitterness and unwisdom-an anxious enough present, with our South Wales strikes, agricultural laborers' unions, and drinking ourselves out of the Alabama indemnity in one year-a future enough overcast, to keep our attention sadly and earnestly fixed at home. We shall want all our breath to cool our own broth. When such" serious changes are going on in the structure" of the society to which he belongs, it is only the eyes of the fool that are in the ends of the earth. The "organization of labor" in this kingdom has gone on in two parallel lines for the last twenty years and more, and at a rate as remarkable as that of the increase of our material riches. If Mr. Gladstone had added to his statement, as to what the last fifty years have done for us in this direction that in the organization of labor, and the consequent change in the condition of the working classes, the same period had done more than the 300 years since the first Statute of Laborers-or indeed than the whole of previous English history he would have been making a statement even more certain, and more easy of proof, than that which he did make. Let me very shortly make good my words. It was not until the year 1825 that the laws prohibiting combinations of workmen were repealed. They had lasted since the early Plantagenet times. Under them no open combination of artisans or laborers, such as the Trades Unions which we know, was possible. There were unions, indeed, but they met as secret societies, and worked by secret penalties and terrorism. After 1825 they came at once into the light, and there was a remarkable decrease, indeed almost a cessation, of those sanguinary crimes connected with trades' disputes which had disgraced the previous quarter of a century. It took another quarter of a century to effect the next great change. From 1825 till 1849-50 may be called the period of local Unionism. In the latter year it entered on a new phase, that of federation. The first sign of the change was the great strike of the engineers at Christmas 1851. Public attention was drawn to this struggle, involving as it did the prosperity of the most skilled, and most thoroughly national, of our great industries, and the country was startled to find that a league of upwards of 100 local unions, all federated in one amalgamated society, were sustaining the local contests in Oldham and London. This federation, although beaten in 1852, has gone on steadily gaining power and numbers ever since. There were then some 11,000 members, belonging to 100 branches in Great Britain and Ireland, and the funds of the society at the end of the great strike went down to zero; in fact, it came out of the contest in debt. There are now upwards of 40,000 members, nearly 300 branches, which are spread over all our colonies, the United States, and several European countries, and the accumulated fund amounts to more than 150,000l. The example of the engineers has been followed, as we all know, by almost every other great industry. The Boilermakers' Union, the Masons' Union, the Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners', and the vast ironworkers and coalworkers' unions, in England, Scotland, and Wales, are the best known. Each of these is growing steadily, and aims at absorbing the whole trade. And not only are the unions of the separate trades federated in great amalgamated societies, but these societies are again in federation. They hold a Congress at the opening of each new year. It sat at Leeds at the beginning of this year, when another step in advance was proposed, being nothing less than the incorporation of all the unionists in the kingdom into one vast society. This proposal was indeed rejected; but even as it is, for all practical purposes the unions throughout the country are allied in a federation, which promises to be drawn closer and closer every year, and to become more and more powerful. Such have been, shortly speaking, the results of the twenty-five years of federated unionism, And now let us look, as fairly as we can, at this "problem of civilization," and ask what it means and where it tends. That unionism is a great power, and likely to become a greater one still, no one will deny. That it is an army, by which I mean an organization for fighting purposes, goes without talk. That nearly all unions have their sick and provident funds, and their benefits of one kind and another, is perfectly true; but these are not their vital function. They are organized and supported "to speak with their enemies. in the gate," and to fight whenever it may be thought advisable. And when it comes to fighting, they may use every penny of the funds (as the Amalgamated Engineers did in 1852) without a thought of the provident purposes contemplated by their rules. You can't have armies and battles without training professional soldiers. They must come to the front as naturally as cream rises if you let milk stand; and the Trades Unions train leaders who are essentially fighting men. I do not use the word as implying any censure. Many cruel and unfair attacks have been made on these men as a class with which I do not in the least sympathise. Many accusations have been brought against them which I know to be untrue. There are good and bad amongst them, as in all other classes; but, on the whole, they have done their work faithfully, and without giving needless offence. Indeed, I have often found them far more ready to listen to reason, to negotiate rather than fight, than their rank and file. They have supported the attempts to establish Courts of Arbitration and Conciliation, and are, as a rule, honest representatives, and in advance of their constituents. But the fact remains they are fighting men, at the head of armies; and their business is constant watchfulness, and prompt action whenever a fair opportunity occurs. They accept and act on the principles of trade which they have learnt from their employers and see proclaimed in all the leading journals. Their business is to enable their members to sell their labor in the dearest market, and to limit and control the supply. "Morality," they maintain with their betters, "has nothing to do with buying and selling." They have nothing to do with the question whether their action is fair or just to employers, or whether it will bring trouble and misfortune on workmen outside the union. Employers and outsiders must look to themselves; what they have to see to is, that every unionist gets as much and gives as little as possible. No one can doubt that this is a most serious business, and that organizations such as these do threaten the prosperity of our industry. Nevertheless, for my own part I accept unionism as on the whole a benefit to this nation. Without it our working classes would be far less powerful than they are at present, and I desire that they should have their fair share of power and of all national prosperity. The free and full right of association for all lawful purposes is guaranteed to all our people. They had better use it now and then, unwisely and tyrannically, than be unable to use it at all. I shall be glad to see the day, and I fully believe it will come, when Trades Unions will have played their part, and become things of the past. But they have still a part to play, and until they are superseded by other associations, founded on higher principles and aiming at nobler ends, their failure and disappearance would be a distinct step backwards—an injury, not an advantage, to the nation and to civilization. What hope, then, is there of the rise of other associations amongst our people of nobler aim than their Trades Unions? I said just now that the "organization of labor" had been going on amongst us by means of two parallel movements. Of one of these the Trades Union, or fighting movement-I have already spoken; and we now come to the Co-operative movement, to which I have looked for five-and-twenty years, and still look with increasing hope, for the solution of the labor question, and a building up of a juster, and nobler, and gentier life throughout this nation. The present Co-operative movement is not thirty years old. The store of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers, which has become world-famous now, was established in the year 1844 by a few laboring folk, of very small means and very high aspirations. Their first venture in goods, not amounting to more than some 20l. worth, but all that they could command, was trundled in a wheelbarrow to the little room in Toad Lane, where they started on the trifling work of making trade honest, and delivering their brethren of the working class with themselves from the bondage in which they were held by the credit system, by thriftlessness, by intemperance. On the 28th of September, 1867, I had the pleasure of attending a great gathering of Co-operators at Rochdale to celebrate the opening of their new central store. This new central store is only their chief place of business. It is a fine building four stories high, and surmounted by a clock with a bee-hive on the top of it. The building cost 10,000l., and-besides giving ample room and convenience for their great trade in the shape of shops, offices, store-rooms, workshops, committeerooms-on the third story there is a library with an area of 150 square yards, and a news-room containing an area of 170 square yards; and on the fourth floor, one large room for lectures and meetings, |