Charles Godfrey Leland - "The Algonquin Legends of New England"

Elizabeth Gaskell - "The Poor Clare"

Unknown - "The Koran"

Sir Richard Francis Burton - "Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al Madinah and Meccah"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Lectures and Essays

G >> Goldwin Smith >> Lectures and Essays




I speak of the community as the power with which the strikers really
have to deal. The master hires or organizes the workmen, but the
community purchases their work; and though the master when hard pressed
may in his desperation give more for the work than it is worth rather
than at once take his capital out of the trade the community will let
the trade go to ruin without compunction rather than give more for the
article than it can afford. Some of the colliers in England, we are
informed, have called upon the masters to reduce the price of coal,
offering at the same time to consent to a reduction of their own wages.
A great fact has dawned upon their minds. Note too that democratic
communities have more power of resistance to unionist extortion than
others, because they are more united, have a keener sense of mutual
interest, and are free from political fear. The way in which Boston,
some years ago, turned to and beat a printers' strike, was a remarkable
proof of this fact.

Combination may enable, and, as I believe, has enabled the men in
particular cases to make a fairer bargain with the masters, and to get
the full market value of their labour, but neither combination nor any
other mode of negotiating can raise the value of labour or of any other
article to the consumer, and that which cannot raise the value cannot
permanently raise the price.

All now admit that strikes peaceably conducted are lawful. Nevertheless,
they may sometimes be anti-social and immoral. Does any one doubt it?
Suppose by an accident to machinery, or the falling in of a mine, a
number of workmen have their limbs broken. One of their mates runs for
the surgeon, and the surgeon puts his head out of the window and says--
"the surgeons are on strike." Does this case much differ from that of
the man who, in his greed, stops the wheel of industry which he is
turning, thereby paralysing the whole machine, and spreading not only
confusion, but suffering, and perhaps starvation among multitudes of his
fellows? Language was held by some unionist witnesses, before the Trades
Union Commission, about their exclusive regard for their own interests,
and their indifference to the interests of society, which was more frank
than philanthropic, and more gratifying to their enemies than to their
friends. A man who does not care for the interests of society will find,
to his cost, that they are his own, and that he is a member of a body
which cannot be dismembered. I spoke of the industrial objects of the
International as chimerical. They are worse than chimerical. In its
industrial aspect, the International was an attempt to separate the
interests of a particular class of workers throughout the world from
those of their fellow workers, and to divide humanity against itself.
Such attempts can end only in one way.

There are some who say, in connection with this question, that you are
at liberty to extort anything you can from your fellow men, provided you
do not use a pistol; that you are at liberty to fleece the sailor who
implores you to save him from a wreck, or the emigrant who is in danger
of missing his ship. I say that this is a moral robbery, and that the
man would say so himself if the same thing were done to him.

A strike is a war, so is a lock out, which is a strike on the other
side. They are warrantable, like other wars, when justice cannot be
obtained, or injustice prevented by peaceful means, and in such cases
only. Mediation ought always to be tried first and it will often be
effectual, for the wars of carpenters and builders, as well as the wars
of emperors, often arise from passion more than from interest, and
passion may be calmed by mediation. Hence the magnitude of the unions,
formidable as it seems, has really a pacific effect; passion is commonly
personal or local, and does not affect the central government of a union
extending over a whole nation. The governments of great unions have
seldom recommended strikes. A strike or lock-out, I repeat, is an
industrial war, and when the war is over there ought to be peace.
Constant bad relations between the masters and the men, a constant
attitude of mutual hostility and mistrust, constant threats of striking
upon one side, and of locking out upon the other, are ruinous to the
trade, especially if it depends at all upon foreign orders, as well as
destructive of social comfort. If the state of feeling and the bearing
of the men toward the masters, remain what they now are in some English
trades, kind-hearted employers who would do their best to improve the
condition of the workman, and to make him a partaker in their
prosperity, will be driven from the trade, and their places will be
taken by men with hearts of flint who will fight the workman by force
and fraud, and very likely win. We have seen the full power of
associated labour, the full power of associated capital has yet to be
seen. We shall see it when instead of combinations of the employers in a
single trade, which seldom hold together, employers in all trades learn
to combine.

We must not forget that industrial wars, like other wars, however just
and necessary, give birth to men whose trade is war, and who, for the
purpose of their trade are always inflaming the passions which lead to
war. Such men I have seen on both sides of the Atlantic, and most
hateful pests of industry and society they are. Nor must we forget that
Trade Unions, like other communities, whatever their legal constitutions
may be, are apt practically to fall into the hands of a small minority
of active spirits, or even into those of a single astute and ambitious
man.

Murder, maiming and vitriol throwing are offences punishable by law. So
are, or ought to be, rattening and intimidation. But there are ways less
openly criminal of interfering with the liberty of non-union men. The
liberty of non-union men, however, must be protected. Freedom of
contract is the only security which the community has against systematic
extortion; and extortion, practised on the community by a Trade Union,
is just as bad as extortion practised by a feudal baron in his robber
hold. If the unions are not voluntary they are tyrannies, and all
tyrannies in the end will be overthrown.

The same doom awaits all monopolies and attempts to interfere with the
free exercise of any lawful trade or calling, for the advantage of a
ring of any kind, whether it be a great East India Company, shutting the
gates of Eastern commerce on mankind, or a little Bricklayers' Union,
limiting the number of bricks to be carried in a hod. All attempts to
restrain or cripple production in the interest of a privileged set of
producers; all trade rules preventing work from being done in the best,
cheapest and most expeditious way; all interference with a man's free
use of his strength and skill on pretence that he is beating his mates,
or on any other pretence, all exclusions of people from lawful callings
for which they are qualified; all apprenticeships not honestly intended
for the instruction of the apprentice, are unjust and contrary to the
manifest interests of the community, including the misguided monopolists
themselves. All alike will, in the end, be resisted and put down. In
feudal times the lord of the manor used to compel all the people to use
his ferry, sell on his fair ground, and grind their corn at his mill. By
long and costly effort humanity has broken the yoke of old Privilege,
and it is not likely to bow its neck to the yoke of the new.

Those who in England demanded the suffrage for the working man, who
urged, in the name of public safety, as well as in that of justice, that
he should be brought within the pale of the constitution, have no reason
to be ashamed of the result. Instead of voting for anarchy and public
pillage, the working man has voted for economy, administrative reform,
army reform, justice to Ireland, public education. But no body of men
ever found political power in their hands without being tempted to make
a selfish use of it. Feudal legislatures, as we have seen, passed laws
compelling workmen to give more work, or work that was worth more, for
the same wages. Working men's legislatures are now disposed to pass laws
compelling employers, that is, the community, to give the same wages for
less work. Some day, perhaps, the bakers will get power into their hands
and make laws compelling us to give the same price for a smaller loaf.
What would the Rochdale pioneers, or the owners of any other co-
operative store, with a staff of servants say if a law were passed
compelling them to give the same wages for less service? This is not
right, and it cannot stand. Demagogues who want your votes will tell you
that it can stand, but those who are not in that line must pay you the
best homage in their power by speaking the truth. And if I may venture
to offer advice never let the cause of labour be mixed up with the game
of politicians. Before you allow a man to lead you in trade questions be
sure that he has no eye to your votes. We have a pleasing variety of
political rogues but perhaps, there is hardly a greater rogue among them
than the working man's friend.

Perhaps you will say as much or more work is done with the short hours.
There is reason to hope that it in some cases it may be so. But then the
employer will see his own interest, free contract will produce the
desired result, there will be no need of compulsory law.

I sympathize heartily with the general object of the nine hours
movement, of the early closing movement, and all movements of that kind.
Leisure well spent is a condition of civilization, and now we want all
to be civilized, not only a few. But I do not believe it possible to
regulate the hours of work by law with any approach to reason or
justice. One kind of work is more exhausting than another, one is
carried on in a hot room, another in a cool room, one amidst noise
wearing to the nerves, another in stillness. Time is not a common
measure of them all. The difficulty is increased if you attempt to make
one rule for all nations disregarding differences of race and climate.
Besides how in the name of justice, can we say that the man with a wife
and children to support, shall not work more if he pleases than the
unmarried man who chooses to be content with less pay and to have more
time for enjoyment? Medical science pronounces, we are told, that it is
not good for a man to work more than eight hours. But supposing this to
be true and true of all kinds of work, this as has been said before is
an imperfect world and it is to be feared that we cannot guarantee any
man against having more to do than his doctor would recommend. The small
tradesman, whose case receives no consideration because he forms no
union, often perhaps generally has more than is good for him of anxiety,
struggling and care as well as longer business hours, than medical
science would prescribe. Pressure on the weary brain is, at least, as
painful as pressure on the weary muscle; many a suicide proves it; yet
brains must be pressed or the wheels of industry and society would stand
still. Let us all, I repeat, get as much leisure as we fairly and
honestly can; but with all due respect for those who hold the opposite
opinion, I believe that the leisure must be obtained by free arrangement
in each ease, as it has already in the case of early closing, not by
general law.

I cannot help regarding industrial war in this new world, rather as an
importation than as a native growth. The spirit of it is brought over by
British workmen, who have been fighting the master class in their former
home. In old England, the land of class distinctions, the masters are a
class, economically as well as socially, and they are closely allied
with a political class, which till lately engrossed power and made laws
in the interest of the employer. Seldom does a man in England rise from
the ranks, and when he does, his position in an aristocratic society is
equivocal, and he never feels perfectly at home. Caste runs from the
peerage all down the social scale. The bulk of the land has been
engrossed by wealthy families, and the comfort and dignity of freehold
proprietorship are rarely attainable by any but the rich. Everything
down to the railway carriages, is regulated by aristocracy; street cars
cannot run because they would interfere with carriages, a city cannot be
drained because a park is in the way. The labourer has to bear a heavy
load of taxation, laid on by the class wars of former days. In this new
world of ours, the heel taps of old-world flunkeyism are sometimes
poured upon us, no doubt; as, on the other hand, we feel the reaction
from the old-world servility in a rudeness of self assertion on the part
of the democracy which is sometimes rather discomposing, and which we
should be glad to see exchanged for the courtesy of settled self-
respect. But on the whole, class distinctions are very faint. Half,
perhaps two-thirds, of the rich men you meet here have risen from the
ranks, and they are socially quite on a level with the rest. Everything
is really open to industry. Every man can at once invest his savings in
a freehold. Everything is arranged for the convenience of the masses.
Political power is completely in the hands of the people. There are no
fiscal legacies of an oligarchic past. If I were one of our emigration
agents, I should not dwell so much on wages, which in fact are being
rapidly equalized, as on what wages will buy in Canada--the general
improvement of condition, the brighter hopes, the better social
position, the enlarged share of all the benefits which the community
affords. I should show that we have made a step here at all events
towards being a community indeed. In such a land I can see that there
may still be need of occasional combinations among the working men to
make better bargains with their employers, but I can see no need for the
perpetual arraying of class against class or for a standing apparatus of
industrial war.

There is one more point which must be touched with tenderness but which
cannot be honestly passed over in silence. It could nowhere be mentioned
less invidiously than under the roof of an institution which is at once
an effort to create high tastes in working men and a proof that such
tastes can be created. The period of transition from high to low wages
and from incessant toil to comparative leisure must be one of peril to
masses whom no Mechanics Institute or Literary Society as yet counts
among its members. It is the more so because there is abroad in all
classes a passion for sensual enjoyment and excitement produced by the
vast development of wealth and at the same time as I suspect by the
temporary failure of those beliefs which combat the sensual appetites
and sustain our spiritual life. Colliers drinking champagne. The world
stands aghast. Well, I see no reason why a collier should not drink
champagne if he can afford it as well as a Duke. The collier wants and
perhaps deserves it more if he has been working all the week underground
and at risk of his life. Hard labour naturally produces a craving for
animal enjoyment and so does the monotony of the factory unrelieved by
interest in the work. But what if the collier cannot afford the
champagne or if the whole of his increase of wages is wasted on it while
his habitation remains a hovel, everything about him is still as filthy,
comfortless and barbarous as ever and (saddest of all) his wife and
children are no better off, perhaps are worse off than before? What if
his powers of work are being impaired by debauchery and he is thus
surely losing the footing which he has won on the higher round of the
industrial ladder and lapsing back into penury and despair? What if
instead of gaining he is really losing in manhood and real independence?
I see nothing shocking in the fact that a mechanic's wages are now equal
to those of a clergyman, or an officer in the army who has spent perhaps
thousands of dollars on his education. Every man has a right to whatever
his labour will fetch. But I do see something shocking in the appearance
of the highly paid mechanic, whenever hard times come, as a mendicant at
the door of a man really poorer than himself. Not only that English
poor-law, of which we spoke, but all poor-laws, formal or informal, must
cease when the labourer has the means, with proper self-control and
prudence, of providing for winter as well as summer, for hard times as
well as good times, for his family as well as for himself. The tradition
of a by-gone state of society must be broken. The nominally rich must no
longer be expected to take care of the nominally poor. The labourer has
ceased to be in any sense a slave. He must learn to be, in every sense,
a man.

It is much easier to recommend our neighbours to change their habits
than to change our own, yet we must never forget, in discussing the
question between the working man and his employer, or the community,
that a slight change in the habits of the working men, in England at
least, would add more to their wealth, their happiness and their hopes,
than has been added by all the strikes, or by conflicts of any kind. In
the life of Mr. Brassey, we are told that the British workman in
Australia has great advantages, but wastes them all in drink. He does
this not in Australia alone. I hate legislative interference with
private habits, and I have no fancies about diet. A citizen of Maine,
who has eaten too much pork, is just as great a transgressor against
medical rules, and probably just as unamiable, as if he had drunk too
much whisky. But when I have seen the havoc--the ever increasing havoc--
which drink makes with the industry, the vigour, the character of the
British workman, I have sometimes asked myself whether in that case
extraordinary measures might not be justified by the extremity of its
dangers.

The subject is boundless. I might touch upon perils distinct from
Unionism, which threaten industry, especially that growing dislike of
manual labour which prevails to an alarming extent in the United States,
and which some eminent economists are inclined to attribute to errors in
the system of education in the common schools. I might speak of the
duties of government in relation to these disturbances, and of the
necessity, for this as well as other purposes, of giving ourselves a
government of all and for all, capable of arbitrating impartially
between conflicting interests as the recognised organ of the common
good. I might speak, too, of the expediency of introducing into popular
education a more social element, of teaching less rivalry and
discontent, more knowledge of the mutual duties of different members of
the community and of the connection of those duties with our happiness.
But I must conclude. If I have thrown no new light upon the subject, I
trust that I have at least tried to speak the truth impartially, and
that I have said nothing which can add to the bitterness of the
industrial conflict, or lead any of my hearers to forget that above all
Trade Unions, and above all combinations of every kind, there is the
great union of Humanity.




"WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXURY?"


A phrase in a lecture on "The Labour Movement," published in the
_Canadian Monthly_, has been the inconsiderable cause of a
considerable controversy in the English press and notably of a paper by
the eminent economist and moralist Mr. W.R. Greg, entitled "What is
Culpable Luxury?" in the _Contemporary Review_.

The passage of the lecture in which the phrase occurred was: "Wealth,
real wealth, has hardly as yet much reason to complain of any
encroachment of the Labour Movement on its rights. When did it command
such means and appliances of pleasure, such satisfaction for every
appetite and every fancy, as it commands now? When did it rear such
enchanted palaces of luxury as it is rearing in England at the present
day? Well do I remember one of those palaces, the most conspicuous
object for miles round. _Its lord was I dare say consuming the income
of some six hundred of the poor labouring families round him_. The
thought that you are spending on yourself annually the income of six
hundred labouring families seems to me about as much as a man with a
heart and a brain can bear. Whatever the rich man desires, the finest
house, the biggest diamond, the reigning beauty for his wife, social
homage, public honour, political power, is ready at his command" &c, &c.

The words in italics have been separated from the context and taken as
an attack on wealth. But the whole passage is a defence of labour
against the charge of encroachment brought against it by wealth. I argue
that, if the labouring man gets rather more than he did, the
inequalities of fortune and the privileges of the rich are still great
enough. In the next paragraph I say that "wealth well made and well
spent is as pure as the rill that runs from the mountain side." An
invidious turn has also been given to the expression "the income of six
hundred labouring families," as though it meant that the wealthy idler
is robbing six hundred labouring families of their income. It means no
more than that the income which he is spending on himself is as large as
six hundred of their incomes put together.

Mr. Greg begins with what he calls a retort courteous. He says that if
the man with L30 000 is doing this sad thing so is the man with L3000 or
L300 and everyone who allows himself anything beyond the necessaries of
life; nay, that the labouring man when he lights his pipe or drinks his
dram is as well as the rest consuming the substance of one poorer than
himself. This argument appears to its framer irrefutable and a retort to
which there can be no rejoinder. I confess my difficulty is not so much
in refuting it as in seeing any point in it at all. What parallel can
there be between an enormous and a very moderate expenditure or between
prodigious luxury and ordinary comfort? If a man taxes me with having
squandered fifty dollars on a repast is it an irrefutable retort to tell
him that he has spent fifty cents? The limited and rational expenditure
of an industrious man produces no evils economical, social or moral. I
contend in the lecture that the unlimited and irrational expenditure of
idle millionaires does; that it wastes labour, breeds luxury, creates
unhappiness by propagating factitious wants, too often engenders vice
and is injurious for the most part to real civilization. I have
observed and I think with truth that the most malignant feelings which
enter into the present struggle between classes have been generated by
the ostentation of idle wealth in contrast with surrounding poverty. It
would of course be absurd to say this of a man living on a small income
in a modest house and in a plain way.

If I had said that property or all property beyond a mere sustenance is
theft there would be force in Mr. Greg's retort, but as I have said or
implied nothing more than that extravagant luxury is waste and
contrasted with surrounding poverty grates on the feelings, especially
when those who waste are idle and those who want are the hardest working
labourers in the world, I repeat that I can see no force in the retort
at all.

Mr. Greg proceeds to analyse the expenditure of the millionaire and to
maintain that its several items are laudable.

First he defends pleasure grounds, gardens, shrubberies and deer parks.
But he defends them on the ground that they are good things for the
community and thereby admits my principle. It is only against wasteful
self indulgence that I have anything to say. No doubt, says Mr. Greg,
if the land of a country is all occupied and cultivated, and if no more
land is easily accessible, and if the produce of other lands is not
procurable in return for manufactured articles of exchange, then a
proprietor who shall employ a hundred acres in growing wine for his own
drinking, which might or would otherwise be employed in growing wheat or
other food for twenty poor families who can find no other field for
their labour, may fairly be said to be consuming, spending on himself,
the sustenance of those families. If, again, he, in the midst of a
swarming population unable to find productive or remunerative
occupation, insists upon keeping a considerable extent of ground in
merely ornamental walks and gardens, and, therefore, useless as far as
the support of human life is concerned, he may be held liable to the
same imputation--even though the wages he pays to the gardeners in the
one case, and the vine-dressers in the other, be pleaded in mitigation
of the charge. Let the writer of this only allow, as he must, that the
moral, social and political consequences of expenditure are to be taken
into account as well as the economical consequences, and he will be
entirely at one with the writer whom he supposes himself to be
confuting. I have never said, or imagined, that "all land ought to be
producing food." I hold that no land in England is better employed than
that of the London parks and the gardens of the Crystal Palace, though I
could not speak so confidently with regard to a vast park from which all
are excluded but its owner. Mr. Greg here again takes up what seems to
me the strange position that to condemn excess is to condemn moderation.
He says that whatever is said against the great parks and gardens of the
most luxurious millionaire may equally be said against a tradesman's
little flower-garden, or the plot of ornamental ground before the
cottage windows of a peasant. I must again say that, so far from
regarding this argument as irrefutable, I altogether fail to discover
its cogency. The tradesman's little bit of green, the peasant's flower-
bed, are real necessities of a human soul. Can the same thing be said of
a pleasure-ground which consumes the labour of twenty men, and of which
the object is not to refresh the weariness of labour but to distract the
vacancy of idleness?