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to 18s. is fully enough for that. In short, she lacks incentive, and this is due to the possibility of marriage. It has been curious to note that the "isolated cases" mentioned by employers of women doing excellent work, and earning exceptional wages, have been those of workers who have some one dependent on them, and who, by the pinch of necessity, have been forced to exert their utmost energies.

The investigator who is interested in the position of women in industry, cannot resist an attempt to forecast the future, and to hazard some guess as to the developments awaiting this trade. Here is a trade which in itself appears to be essentially a woman's trade. It is healthy; the work itself is light, there is no heavy work in the way of lifting or moving; there is no machinery, and the rush and whirr and nervous strain that this involves is thereby avoided; the hours are short and there is no overtime. There is no opposition to women on the part of men; the women belong to the same Union, work in the same shops, and have a foothold in factories where the best work is done: they even undersell men; and since each individual in a factory works entirely by himself, there is nothing to prevent a woman who shows herself capable of it from doing the same work as men. Every year there are fewer boys apprenticed to the trade, while more firms employ women, and others express their desire to do so if their premises admitted of it. At the first glance it seems inevitable that the trade should fall entirely into the hands of women mouldwork is rapidly so doing-and in Liverpool, where a great deal of mouldwork and very little handwork is done, the whole of the trade appears to have passed into their hands. But even there, where there are no male cigar-makers whose work can be compared to the women's, the same complaint of unpunctuality and "slackness" is made. Insistence on fixed hours and regularity, as in other trades, would no doubt help to overcome this fault; but until women can surmount the obstacles which are in their character and their lives, and can realise the importance of regarding their industry as a career, and applying the whole of their powers to it, it seems probable that there will always be an aristocracy of male workers at the head.

GRACE OAKESHOTT

THE TRADES UNION CONGRESS.

THE Trades Union Congress, which met at Huddersfield from the 3rd to the 8th September last, would have been featureless had it not been for the constitutional alterations which it accepted on the suggestion of the Parliamentary Committee. It was attended by 386 delegates, representing 184 societies, with an aggregate membership of 1,250,000.

Once again the Congress showed how desirable it is for it to make

up its mind as to its real function.

Is it to be an annual gathering for the purpose of deciding the chief points of some practical programme in legislation, and of supporting with the whole force of its affiliated membership trade union struggles of more than local or sectional importance? Its Parliamentary Committee seems to suggest that this is its chief function, and the report of this Committee, presented at Huddersfield, was mainly taken up with a record of Parliamentary bills, lobbyings and divisions, together with a statement of the intervention in the picketing appeal case of Lyons v. Wilkins; and resolutions in favour of universal old age pensions, the inclusion of all workers under the Workmen's Compensation Act, fair wages contracts for public authorities were passed in accordance with that idea of the function of Congress. But these resolutions tend to become mere annual declarations of opinion, and if it be the business of Congress to form practical programmes, steps should be taken not only to limit the scope of some of the resolutions, but also to devise some machinery by which the will of Congress will be effective.

The other idea which a section of the Congress has of its utility is, that it is to guide and inspire the trade union aim, and that, in consequence, it is its duty to take the widest possible view of what is known as "the working class movement." The somewhat remarkable address of the President, Mr Pickles, in which he put aside the usual trite summaries of programmes and events, and discussed the trade union method and aim from the point of view of natural science and evolution, was the most thorough acceptance of that view of the Congress which a President has ever made. Although there was no collectivist resolution at Huddersfield, the "very large majority" which carried the doubtful economics of the first reason attached to the "universal eight hour" resolution, that it would reduce the unemployed, represented in the main this wider view of Congress, whilst the unexpected success of Mr. Ward's motion condemning the South African war, and the sending of an address of fraternal greetings to France later on, were distinct assertions that Congress is more than a trade union business committee.

It is the existence of those two, often conflicting, ideas, and not merely the overloading of the agenda and the passing of abstract resolutions, which is the cause of the inefficiency of Congress; and the first President who really grasps the opportunities given to him will try and assist the Congress to make up its mind as to the real justification for its existence.

The late Parliamentary Committee's attempt to put the Congress on a business footing was the one important piece of work done at Huddersfield. The first change was in the election of the President. Hitherto the President of the local trades councils has been elected by courtesy to that position; now, the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for the preceding year is to be President of Congress; and, instead of the Standing Orders Committee, in future sectional trade committees are

to meet and report on the several resolutions, according to the trades affected by them. A third constitutional alteration is, that in future the resolutions sent in by societies for the Congress agenda may be edited and even rejected by the Parliamentary Committee. These alterations all make for facilitating business, but at the same time they tend to make Congress rather the appendage of the Parliamentary Committee, and will give the smaller societies more reason than ever for complaining that a few large unions rule Congress.

Little need be said regarding the resolutions passed. The mind of the Congress was bent on law rather than on politics or economics. Owing to some failure, the appeal in the Lyons v. Wilkins picketing case had not been duly presented in the House of Lords; but whilst Congress was sitting, the decision of Mr. Justice Farwell that trade unions could be sued for the damage done by the acts of their agents, was reported, and Congress decided that the matter should be carried to the Lords if necessary. Public authorities received special attention. The Admiralty was asked to pay wages equal to those paid by private contractors, and resolutions dealing with the Post Office grievances were passed. Taxation of ground rents and values, a universal eight hours' day, an active application of Part III. of the Housing Act of 1890, and bills relating to the inspection of mines and compulsory shop half-holidays were approved. The most significant bit of this kind of business was, however, the rejection of the resolution in favour of compulsory arbitration in trade disputes; 246,000 voted for it, and 939,000 against. The vote was owing to the suspicion which trade unionists still have of the "outsider," and it was plain from the debate that if a satisfactory method of choosing the arbitrator could be devised, the unions would accept compulsory arbitration. J. R. MACDONALD

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS.

THE wide and angry divisions in the camp of French socialism hindered the success of the International Socialist Congress, held in Paris in September. Over 800 representatives from 20 nationalities attended, and, as usual, every speech made had to be twice translated. This of itself limits the usefulness of these Congresses and deprives them of all value as deliberative assemblies. Partly on that account and partly owing to the different method by which such gatherings are conducted on the Continent and in Great Britain, it took the Congress two days to get to real business. The "class conscious" socialists of the Marxian school predominated, but it was a significant mark in the evolution of socialist opinion that, after affirming the class war in economics, the Congress decided, in view of the position of M. Millerand as member of the Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry, that socialists might

serve in middle-class administrations. Another ideal method of international socialism-the general strike-was voted down by 27 nationalities to 7, some nationalities having split their votes; and colonial politics found a place for the first time on the agenda in the shape of a condemnation of Imperialism, which was declared to be the political outcome of capitalist economics. The resolution on municipal socialism was also drafted in a spirit more friendly than dogmatic Marxian socialists have been accustomed to show to this particular application of the collectivist idea, and, believing that municipal experiment was laboratory practice for the larger socialism, the Congress decided in favour of an international conference of municipal representatives. It is interesting to note also, that the legal minimum wage, which a certain section of English socialists has been attempting to propagate, was wisely rejected, mainly at the instigation of the German delegates, some of whom made most conclusive speeches against the proposal. The resolution which passed the Congress declared in favour of a minimum wage obtained by trade union action and by the pressure of labour opinion on the economic policy of public authorities.

The most important result of the Congress was the establishment of an International Committee, with headquarters at Brussels, maintained by contributions from each of the national socialist organisations in the world. The possibilities of the old International Association lie no longer at the command of the Brussels revival, and the new committee will be valuable mainly as a ready means of access to working class leaders of the advanced school all over the world, and as a symbol of the international ideals of the socialist movement. The next Congress is to be held at Amsterdam in 1903. J. R. M.

CHARITY ORGANISATION CONFERENCE.

A NUMBER of papers were read dealing with questions of interest to the social reformer. The perennial subject of State relief for the destitute was dealt with in three papers. Mr. W. Chance described the immense change effected by the reform of the English Poor Law in 1834, showing how the adoption of the workhouse system had been practically successful in ridding the country of the able-bodied male pauper. The statistics with regard to non-able-bodied pauperism were by no means so satisfactory, even when the large increase in the population was allowed for, but there had been a very considerable and cheering reduction in the number of dependent children. On the other hand, the enormous increase in the cost of poor relief was a serious matter, and it was most necessary, in Mr. Chance's opinion, to limit the granting of relief as far as possible and to discourage the idea which was gaining ground, that the payment of rates gave a title to

the receipt of relief. Further, if proper co-operation were established between charity and the poor law, outdoor relief, with all its attendant abuses, could be dispensed with. The system which prevails in Canada for the distribution of poor relief was described by Mr. J. J. Kelso, General Superintendent of Neglected and Dependent Children for the Government of Ontario, and Vice-President of the Canadian Conference of Charities, who pointed out that in many ways it tended to encourage a spirit of thriftlessness and consequent pauperism. Mr. C. S. Loch followed with a paper on some features of public relief in American States, with special reference to New York, in which he described the working of the State Board of Charities and the State Charities' Aid Association. Both of these were typical American institutions. In New York, combined with an abolition of outdoor relief, an endeavour was made to deal with charities in the widest sense as a whole, and the report of the State Board of Charities was a popular and an advisory document. The discussion which followed was principally noteworthy for the speech of the chairman, Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P., who set forth his views on workhouse administration, views which have since been, to some extent, embodied in the recent circular issued by the Local Government Board with regard to the relief of children and of the aged deserving poor.

In the discussion on the housing of the working classes, Mr. Edward Bond, M.P., L.C.C., Chairman of the East End Dwellings Company, pointed out that a number of different causes contributed to the existence of a housing problem. There was the rapid increase of the population, the extraordinary rise in the cost of building, which had nearly doubled in recent years, and the stringency, and in some cases, the mal-administration, of the sanitary regulations. Municipal building was even more expensive than building by private companies, and while a municipality could do little, its competition to a certain extent frightened away the private capitalist from the work. His own view was that the remedy lay, not in transporting the people just outside the London area, but rather in concentrating the population in larger buildings, which at the same time secured them a sufficiency of light and air. We are prevented by lack of space from referring to other interesting topics and speakers. It must suffice, in conclusion, to cite two more opinions commanding attention. Mr. W. M. Acworth, though generally favourable to cheap locomotion, pointed out that the provision of a large supply of workmen's trains led to the increasing development of districts entirely given over to the poor and separate from those occupied by the rich, while Mr. Bosanquet objected to Mr. Bond's proposal to house more people under the same roof, and remarked that the only real remedy was to declare the London area full, and to endeavour to remove some of its industries with their workers elsewhere.

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