IX. (1)

And now before concluding let me say in a few words how I think you may most surely advance the condition of your order. It is not by fighting against capital and against machinery, but by having them on your side. Do not lay aside associations, but direct their exertions to the most useful ends. It is not Unions which seem to me and to many others mistaken; it is the object which Unions aim at, and still more the policy they adopt to reach it.

I wish to see workmen becoming by degrees their own capitalists—sharers in all the profits and all the advantages which capital confers. You cannot do without capital. He must be a dreamer who tells you that you can, and he only plays upon words who tells you that labour is capital.

Labour alone will not suffice for raising a factory, or a house, nor even for cultivating an acre of ground. You must have a sum of money to buy the tools and materials, or at all events to maintain yourself whilst you are working. If not, why do you not dispense with employers altogether, and raise your own factories and works?

But when once you determine to have capital on your side I believe you can do it: the Hall in which we meet is evidence that you can do it. Save money, however little, and invest it in a co-operative society, and let it grow, and when you have a little sum, join with others in co-operative works. I believe that there are a multitude of different kinds of business requiring only a moderate amount of capital, which workmen will readily be able to carry on upon their own account when they set themselves seriously to think of it.

There are many branches of trade, however, in which such great capitals are required that you can hardly be able to undertake them safely without the aid of capitalists. In some trades again, especially the iron trade, there are great ups and downs in profits. For several years losses rather than profits may be the result, and then for several years large profits may be reached. As the wages of the operatives have to be raised or lowered accordingly, I see no way of avoiding interminable disputes but by the workmen themselves being admitted to receive a share of the profits under the Industrial Partnerships Act. The Partnerships scheme has been tried with success in Messrs. Briggs' collieries, and Messrs. Fox, Head & Co.'s Newport Iron Mills. I believe that many employers are well inclined to try it, and it only remains for the men to appreciate the advantages of becoming themselves capitalists in a small way.

If other modes of conciliating the claims of labour and capital fail, it is yet open to you to form Boards of Conciliation, as proposed by Mr. Mundella, and successfully carried out at Nottingham. In these Boards representatives of employers and employed may meet and come to a clear understanding of the points of difference. As the rate of wages is always a matter of bargain, and should be freely determined by the course of the market, I do not think that such Boards of Conciliation should have any legislative power; but they may nevertheless be of the greatest utility in bringing the two parties to the bargain nearer together, so that all unnecessary causes of misunderstanding may be removed.