CHAPTER III

EMPLOYER AND WORKMAN

THE Parliamentary and indeed the whole public life of these countries was marked during the later years of Queen Victoria's reign by continuous efforts towards the improvement of the conditions under which the workingclasses had to make their struggle for existence. Much of this quickened interest in their condition was due, it must be owned, to the working-classes themselves. There never had been wanting the generous and persevering efforts of individual philanthropists belonging to the upper classes to make the life of the working-man as smooth and prosperous as sympathy, brotherly love, and the spirit of reform could make it. Some of the greatest statesmen of our days voluntarily and patiently gave up a large part of their time and their work to an effort after improvements in our legislation which would lead towards. the desired result. Such efforts had for a long time been made merely in the spirit of charity and sympathy, efforts for which those who made them could expect no immediate return but that given by their own consciences and by the approval of the enlightened among their own contemporaries. But the working-men of these countries were now making their influence tell with systematic effect on Parliament and on the public at large. Organizations of working-men began to be established all over these Islands, as they were beginning to be established in many countries abroad, for the purpose of

creating such thorough union of the operative classes as must make it necessary for political leaders and political parties to take account of their claims and their movements.

Union among the working orders had been long regarded with dread and dislike by many among the classes who control the business of Parliamentary legislation. The reign of Queen Victoria was far advanced before the working-man became recognized as a personage whose influence would have to be taken into account in the movements of political parties. We can most of us remember the time when a working-class member in the House of Commons was regarded as a sort of interesting curiosity, and there was a time not very long before when the conditions of our laws denied to an ordinary working-man the needful qualification for a seat in the Imperial Parliament. That property qualification had been abolished before there existed any practical likelihood that a workingman could obtain a seat in the House of Commons. Such a man might no longer be disqualified by law from taking a seat in the House if he could obtain a number of votes at an election large enough to put him at the head of the poll. Political reform soon and almost suddenly came about in that direction also. The political franchise was extended at length to something approaching nearly to manhood suffrage, or at least to the principle of household suffrage, however poor the house might be, and to such an extension of the lodger franchise as did not preclude any grown man, not otherwise disqualified, from giving his vote at an election even if he did not occupy a house of his own.

The result of these reforms was that the votes of working-men began to be regarded as an element of the gravest importance in the election for a Parliamentary constituency. If a great struggle were coming on between

the representatives of the two Parliamentary parties it was soon made apparent that the result must in many places depend absolutely on the votes of the workingmen. It might happen at the time that some measure was under public discussion which directly involved the interests of the working-classes and had nothing necessarily to do with the proclaimed principles of existing Liberalism or existing Toryism. The candidates at an election knew beforehand that if the constituency were one in which the votes of the two political parties were about equally divided the victory would probably lie with the candidate who could pledge his support to some measure directly concerning the interests of the operative classes. It therefore became inevitable that the support of the working-men voters must be counted as one of the elements to be taken into serious consideration by the political parties. The next step in this movement of progress was the resolve of working-men to bring forward members of their own fraternity as candidates for seats in the House of Commons. A distinct impression was made on the public mind when in February, 1874, two workingmen, Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt, were elected to represent two English constituencies in the House of Commons. That event proved to be the opening of a new era. The number of working-men elected to the House of Commons grew steadily at the General Elections.

We have seen that the presence and action of even a very small number of men who have one great object in view and can give to it their united and constant support must have an important effect on the business of Parliament. We have seen how the famous Fourth Party, a party of only four members, one of whom was the late Lord Randolph Churchill, was able for years to make itself formidable to each of the two great parties as occasion required. But that vigorous little party, how

ever active and however well suited for effective Parliamentary debate, had not one common principle of action to which its main efforts were to be devoted. The party led at one time by the late Charles Stewart Parnell numbered in its early days only some eight or nine members, and yet with their principle of united action they were able to make themselves an important element in the working, or, at all events, in the obstruction of Parliamentary business. It may be taken for granted that a party determined on systematic obstruction and having also a common cause, which is recognized as legitimate and fair even if remote, must become an object of consideration to all who are concerned in supporting the existing Administration and to all who are ambitious of forming an Administration of their own. The party led by Mr. Parnell grew in numbers until at last it could bring some ninety votes into either division lobby, and it soon became an important element in the Parliamentary life of these countries.

The working-men representatives in the House of Commons had no such severe struggles to go through, and were never regarded with the dislike and dread which the majority of the House felt for the Irish Nationalists. But as they grew in numbers, and as their action was always united on questions concerning the welfare of their fraternity, they began to be recognized as men whose movements would have to be taken into account by the leaders and managers of the Liberals and the Tories alike. The working-men in the House of Commons knew well that they had behind them the support of their whole order outside the walls of Parliament. Frequent congresses of working-men were held in England, and international congresses of the same order in many Continental and American cities. Resolutions concerning the policy to be pursued for the interests of the laboring classes were care

fully discussed at these meetings, and resolutions were adopted determining the course to be taken in Parliament. Therefore the working-men who sat in the House of Commons were always authoritatively informed as to the action which their brotherhood believed to be necessary for the promotion of their common welfare. There might be only a dozen men in the House of Commons who actually belonged to the operative order, but every member of the House knew that behind and supporting that small force there stood the whole working population of Great Britain and Ireland. The candidate for a constituency at an occasional election, and the candidates for all the constituencies at the General Election, soon understood that a man's chance of success might very often depend on the manner in which his political career had recommended or was likely to recommend him to the support of the working-men who had votes.

Gradually it came to be that the House of Commons contained at least four distinct parties. There were the Liberals, there were the Conservatives, there were the Irish Nationalists, and there were the representatives of Labor. It must be remembered, too, that while many Conservatives, and not a few even among the Liberals, were so distinctly and definitely opposed on principle to the concession of Home Rule for Ireland that they could not give it their support, there were, on the other hand, hardly any questions brought up in the interests of the working-classes against which it was possible for any sincere Liberal or Tory to maintain an opinion so definite and distinct. The interests of capital and labor are no doubt always in a certain sense antagonistic, but at the same time no one will get up in the House of Commons and boldly declare that he is opposed to some measure merely because he is a capitalist and objects to anything which claims to promote the rival interests of Labor. The men