turn for the monthly wages he pays with strict regularity-this is well and agreeable, and has the result of causing him to render an amount of willing personal service which he would not consider due to a mere hirer of his skill. But kindly interest is not to be confounded with that pretended liberality which pries into domestic concerns, or that specious benevolence which, by way of enabling a clerk to spend a merry Christmas, or a pleasant summer holiday, slips an extra five-pound note into his pocket a fact which will be taken into account against him the next time that the amount of his salary might fairly be reconsidered.

The various states of relationship which prevail in different establishments are sufficient evidence that the present is a period of transition. We are passing from one condition into another, and the new one is as yet but dimly apprehended. On both sides there is an evident awakening to the facts that, while the interests of master and man are ultimately coincident, they are for the moment antagonistic; for the fundamental idea of the relation is, that "the one has undertaken to perform certain services for the benefit and at the bidding of the other," and the laws which govern the return which this brings to the paid worker, not only

in

wages, but in the price and plenty of commodities, are not always clearly seen. Industrial relationships are to be brought into a certain degree of harmony by the willingness of the master to allow a certain share of profit over and above the fixed scale of pay (complicated, however, by the question as to the course per contra in case of loss instead of profit), and by the determination of the man to merge his desire of personal aggrandisement in an effort for the general welfare and advance

ment of all parties forming the little Industrial State in which he lives. Space forbids an attempt to trace the causes which have led up to and stimulated this gradual awakening, but they may be hurriedly stated in this wise: On the part of employers really anxious for the benefit of their workpeople, a slow recognition of the truth of theories set down as wild and Utopian half a century ago, and a resolve to put them to the test of a trial whether or no they were founded upon a true perception of facts, and would adapt themselves to present wants: and on the part of employers naturally careless of or opposed to the interests of their workers, an unwilling effort at compromise, urged by the pressure of sharp and decided measures on the part of those workers roused to a sense, right or wrong, of the injustice of capital. Employers are asking themselves now, what is to be the relation of the future? How can we raise the condition of these people, how bring them to understand the true position between us, how explain the real nature of their claims, and where their interests begin and end? say the enlightened liberal masters. And how are we longer to assert our authority over men who hold mass meetings, who read Socialist newspapers; how effect a new compromise between capital and labour? cry other unenlightened and illiberal masters. Experiments which have looked very much like muddles, ill-directed efforts resulting in failure and a widening of the breach, new halftheories and undigested schemes for the settlement of things all these which recent times and the present have shown are the unmistakable signs of a transition era, of the chaos resulting from the breaking up of old institutions while the form of the new ones is

as yet undecided. And, as is invariably the case, certain leaders of the new order of things are already putting to the trial the fabrics of philosophy, with results we shall look to presently.

All whose judgment is of any worth are agreed that to try and galvanise the past is as useless as it is absurd. The days of railroads, which carry the discontented labourer and his whole family from one end of the country to the other at the cost of a few shillings; of Hyde-park demonstrations; of the spread of reading, when each. Hodge may learn for himself the opinion of an advanced philosophic section of society upon the great question of his own rights and interests; the days of freedom of tongue and pen, when Atheism, Socialism, and Communism hold their heads high and stalk unmolested these are not the days in which the sermon can still be preached to labour of the duty of absolute submission to capital, or the peasant can be told that the fact of his birth upon the soil of the landowner constitutes him his lawful and natural serf. There are still those who look back with something of regret to these fargone days, who would fain recall the state in which the children of earth knew no other existence than that of blind obedience to the most truculent chief or the nearest landowner; but the truest counsellors of to-day are those who urge a frank acknowledgment from the masters that the old order has passed away, and that the right course is to try to suit themselves to the new order which is already beginning to arise. The question to be answered is, cannot the relationship be modified without the loss of friendliness? Our men want no coddling; but, though there must be no error on the side of a weak and sentimental kindli

ness, we need to guard carefully against the hard mercenary state of things which prevailed in that northern foundry where the men stayed the uplifted hammer at the first stroke of the dinner bell. It is to be hoped that the old footing may be changed, and yet that a friendship on a broader and more definite basis may be maintained between masters and men. Strict obedience within certain limits, even to the extent of personal service and loyalty, need not imply cringing or base subserviency. To take a few examples from the mercantile and professional worlds :A young lordling in a business house might address his chief, of whatever social rank, as "Sir," and obey him in every particular. The sub-lieutenant, whose father has acres and a rent-roll of many thousands, subordinates himself on parade to his captain, who has risen from the ranks. The curate, a worthy and intellectual fellow, with grey hairs may be, and a family, acknowledges the authority of his rector, a man in every respect his inferior, who has obtained the living by interest; the rector, in turn, forgets his authority in the august presence of his bishop. Applying the principle which underlies all these relationships-the principle that no loss of dignity or true independence is implied in the obedience of the servant to the master for the time being-to that phase of the subject we are immediately considering, we put the question, Cannot it be made to govern the relations between employers and employed? Can we

not have obedience, and yet respect, loyalty, and even zeal during working hours?

We believe this to be possible; nay, we hope to show that there are instances in which it has even now been proved an actual accomplished fact; but before answering

the question decisively, would point out the difficulties which have had to be encountered, and must still be encountered previous to the general and permanent establishment of such new systems.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the obstacles thrown in the way of those employers who first set themselves to smooth the relations between themselves and their men, to bring about an alliance the terms of which should be honourable to both sides. There was the uncertainty as to the best means of approach, the surest way of reaching the understandings of men who had been bred in the creed that "masters will take all and give nothing," and that every apparent effort at reconciliation is only the eloak of some new plan of extortion. Men could not and would not appreciate motives which they had never been taught to look for. They have been and are blind, and naturally so, to the value of promises made and broken before; they are prone to think that some cunning trap is hidden under the coat-tails of masters who come amongst them with such fair offers of a new and brighter order of things. The fundamental difficulty was and still is one of education. It is not the fact of a man being paid a fixed sum per week or the month to act as secretary, amanuensis, or book-keeper, which constitutes the only barrier between him and the man who pays him, when the hours of work are over and he is free to do with himself what he will. If there were only a difference of pounds, shillings, and pence, they might meet together in the drawing-room or the club as social equals. But if the one is intellectually the superior, if the other cannot rise into his mental atmosphere, if there be no sympathy of tastes, then indeed are they wholly apart, nor-while the one remains

in the chrysalis or mole-like state

can anything on earth unite or bring them one whit closer to each other. If this difficulty exist between principal and clerk, in how much greater a degree must it exist between master and man. It is part of the cant of thoughtless Radicalism that the master should "go among" his men, mix with them "free and easy like," "as one o' theirselves : but have those who advocate such communion ever earnestly considered-they have not of course - what it really means? Have they considered that the present distance between master and man represents a positive difference in taste, education and habit; and how almost impossible intellectually and aesthetically regarded-it is for one of superior mental calibre to descend to a level lower than his own with any beneficial result, either to himself or to those who occupy it? Enter the company of a number of men of the lower orders, possessed of even average intelligence, and how strange and isolated do you feel! Unless you are largely supplied with that natural bonhomie which enables a man carelessly and with a good grace to rub shoulders with even his inferiors in rank, you are completely at a loss what to do or say. Conversation fails you, for you know not what topic to broach, and the sense of being entirely out of place, nay, an enemy or a spy in the camp, sits uncomfortably upon you. There is no doubt that the failure of many a well-meant effort on the part of masters to establish a friendly social intercourse between themselves and their men arises from this natural inability to enter one another's mental spheres; nor until the growth of a more intimate knowledge of the habits and instincts of the employed on the one

hand, and the spread of a more liberal education on the other, can any freedom of the kind be maintained. This is not to be taken as a counsel to masters to cease or avoid any opportunity of personal communication with those they employ. On the contrary, we consider that only by cultivating the means of intercourse, by sedulously seeking to come, at certain seasons and without the appearance of intrusion, into personal contact with their men, can that close and intimate knowledge of them be attained which alone will furnish the introduction to useful and practical intimacy. And the easiest and most direct method of reaching the mass of the men is through the superiors of their own body. A quick, discerning foreman, with sufficient wit to perceive and convey to his fellows the relative interests of themselves and the master, may be made an admirable interpreter of the views of a liberal and en

lightened employer of capital. Surely a medium, able to reason with the men upon the ground of common interest, would be better understood and appreciated than the wisest principal acting as his own spokesman.

A

But the education difficulty is being rapidly removed. The spread of books is effecting wonders. man who can read is for certain in a surer way of informing himself as to the doings of masters, and may know all that the heads of his own party have to say in print about the extortions of capital and the wrongs of labour; his reasoning faculties are sharpened, and he begins to use them eagerly. True; but he will reason, without book knowledge or with it, and will make his inferences and deductions whether he have learnt the rule of the syllogism or no ; and this being the case, it is in the interests of both that he should read, and read

much; for the more reading, the greater the chance that in time his arguments will be properly grounded upon principles of logic. He will theorise anyhow; best help him to theorise from facts. The tone of the labourers in many agitations shows them to be under the thumb and speaking the thoughts of a certain number of agitators; but we look forward to the day when at a mass or demonstration meeting, each of the units composing the crowd of labourers shall be able and willing to judge for himself of the value of the utterances from the platform.

But let us see what has actually been done to effect a new relationship between masters and men. The great houses-printing firms, wholesale establishments, and

others of the City and the Westend of London offer a wide and interesting field for inspection. We find here the best examples for our purpose, the vastness of the organisations presenting such a varied view of the subject as could nowhere else be obtained. It would not be difficult to name a dozen houses in which efforts are being made, with more or less satisfactory results, to draw the workers into closer and kindlier relations with their employers; and it is in no spirit of unfairness that we select one or two establishments as affording typical illustrations of the best forms of independent relations between the two classes. We desire to register the subject under three chief aspects-the religious, the social, and the domestic. stances of the first two will be found in connection with the large brother firms of Messrs. Spottiswoode and Co. and Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode. The united staff of both establishments numbers nearly 3000. The very magnitude of such a concern first arrests the attention. Here are men and boys

In

amounting in numbers to almost the population of the chief town of Westmorland, to one-third

the population of the entire country of Greenland. Nearly three thousand persons-the majority of whom have homes and families of their own-dependent upon the skilful enterprise of some half-dozen heads or principals! Looked at in its widest sense, how great the responsibility of these half-dozen! And yet no legal responsibility, for they may take the narrowest view of their position, and, regarding themselves as the mere hirers of these men's labour, consider their bounden duty ended with the payment of each one his wages at the stroke of two o'clock on Saturday. And even did the relation end here, and were no effort made for the moral or educational welfare of the employés, we should still be compelled to acknowledge the benefit done to society by the providing of the means of subsistence for thirty hundred individuals. But the acknowledgment of justice would be followed by the instant reflection, "How much more good might have been done by the exercise of a little thought for the after condition of these men!" What do Messrs. Spottiswoode consider as due from themselves to their men, and to what extent do they endeavour to carry out their duty? Both of these questions will best be answered by setting down as closely as possible a conversation which the writer enjoyed a short time ago with one of the principals* of the firm of Messrs. Spottiswoode and Co., upon the subject of this article.

"I should like," I said, "to hear from you, as a representative em

ployer, what you consider to be fairly due from a master to the men engaged in his service."

"Well, I do not see how I can better answer your question than by stating the principles upon which we, my brother and myself, regulate our own establishments. We have, as I said, towards three thousand men and boys in our employ. We take lads at thirteen years of age, and, as no boy can be expected to have done his schoolmaster credit at thirteen, we put them to school for three years. The school is our own, on our own premises, and taught by our own master, who is assisted by some of the young men from the higher departments, all of whom have themselves benefited by his teachings in earlier years. Our school is divided into two branches-an upper and a lower-the second for the younger lads, and the first for the reading lads' who have reached a more advanced stage. We number about sixty and one hundred respectively in the two divisions."

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ments.