CHAPTER VII.

LABOR.

Side by side with the unselfish Protectionism of the diggers there flourishes among the artisans of the Australias a self-interested desire for non-intercourse with the outside world.

In America, the working men, themselves almost without exception immigrants, though powerful in the various States from holding the balance of parties, have never as yet been able to make their voices heard in the Federal Congress. In the chief Australian colonies, on the other hand, the artisans have, more than any other class, the possession of political power. Throughout the world the grievance of the working classes lies in the fact that, while trade and profits have increased enormously within the last few years, true as distinguished from nominal wages have not risen. It is even doubted whether the American or British handicraftsman can now live in such comfort as he could make sure of a few years back: it is certain that agricultural laborers in the south of England are worse off than they were ten years ago, although the depreciation of gold prevents us from accurately gauging their true position. In Victoria and New South Wales, and in the States of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri, where the artisans possess some share of power, they have set about the attempt to remedy by law the grievance under which they suffer. In the American States, where the suppression of immigration seems almost impossible, their interference takes the shape of eight-hour bills, and exclusion of colored laborers. There is no trades union in America which will admit to membership a Chinaman, or even a mulatto. In Victoria and New South Wales, however, it is not difficult quietly to put a check upon the importation of foreign labor. The vast distance from Europe makes the unaided immigration of artisans extremely rare, and since the democrats have been in power the funds for assisted immigration have been withheld, and the Chinese influx all but forbidden, while manifestoes against the ordinary European immigration have repeatedly been published at Sydney by the Council of the Associated Trades.

The Sydney operatives have always taken a leading part in opposition to immigration, from the time when they founded the Anti-Transportation Committee up to the present day. In 1847, a natural and proper wish to prevent the artificial depression of wages was at the bottom of the anti-transportation movement, although the arguments made use of in the petition to the Queen were of the most general character, and Sydney mechanics, many of them free immigrants themselves, say that there is no difference of principle between the introduction of free or assisted immigrants and that of convicts.

If we look merely to the temporary results of the policy of the Australian artisans, we shall find it hard to deny that their acts are calculated momentarily to increase their material prosperity; so far they may be selfish, but they are not blind. Admitting that wages depend on the ratio of capital to population, the Australians assert that, with them, population increases faster than capital, and that hindering immigration will restore the balance. Prudential checks on population are useless, they say, in face of Irish immigration. At the same time, it is clear that, from the discouragement of immigration and limitation to eight hours of the daily toil, there results an exceptional scarcity of labor, which cramps the development of the country, and causes a depression in trade which must soon diminish the wage-fund, and react upon the working men. It is unfortunately the fact, that colonial artisans do not sufficiently bear in mind the distinction between real and nominal wages, but are easily caught by the show of an extra few shillings a week, even though the purchasing power of each shilling be diminished by the change. When looked into, “higher wages” often mean that the laborer, instead of starving upon ten shillings a week, is for the future to starve upon twenty.

As regards the future, contrasted with the temporary condition of the Australian laborer, there is no disguising the fact that mere exclusion of immigration will not in the long run avail him. It might, of course, be urged that immigration is, even in America, a small matter by the side of the natural increase of the people, and that to shut out the immigrant is but one of many checks to population; but in Australia the natural increase is not so great as in a young country might be expected. The men so largely outnumber the women in Australia, that even early marriages and large families cannot make the birth-rate very high, and fertile land being at present still to be obtained at first hand, the new agricultural districts swallow up the natural increase of the population. Still, important as is immigration at this moment, ultimately through the influx of women--to which the democrats are not opposed--or, more slowly, by the effort of nature to restore the balance of the sexes, the rate of natural increase will become far greater in Australia. Ultimately, there can be no doubt, if the Australian laborer continues to retain his present standard of comfort, prudential checks upon the birth of children will be requisite to maintain the present ratio of capital to population.

Owing to the comparatively high prices fixed for agricultural land in the three southeastern colonies of Australia, the abundance of unoccupied tracts has not hitherto had that influence on wages in Australia which it appears to have exercised in America, but under the democratic amendments of the existing free selection system, wages will probably again rise in the colonies, to be once more reduced by immigration, or, if the democracy gains the day, more slowly lowered by the natural increase of the population.

In places where competition has reduced the reward of labor to the lowest amount consistent with the efficiency of the work, compulsory restriction of the hours of toil must evidently be an unmixed benefit to the laborer, until carried to the point at which it destroys the trade in which he is engaged. In America and Australia, however, where the laborer has a margin of luxuries which can be cut down, and where the manufacturers are still to some extent competing with European rivals, restriction of hours puts them at a disadvantage with the capitalists of the old world, and, reducing their profits, tend also to diminish the wage-fund, and ultimately to decrease the wages of their men. The colonial action in this matter may, nevertheless, like all infringements of general economic laws, be justified by proof of the existence of a higher necessity for breaking than for adhering to the rule of freedom. Our own Factory Acts, we should remember, were undoubtedly calculated to diminish the production of the country.

Were the American and Australian handicraftsmen to become sufficiently powerful to combine strict Protection, or prohibition of foreign intercourse, with reduction of hours of toil, they would ultimately drive capital out of their countries, and either lower wages, or else diminish the population by checking both immigration and natural increase. Here, as in the consideration of Protection, we come to that bar to all discussion, the question, “What is a nation‘s good?” It is at least doubtful whether in England we do not attach too great importance to the continuance of nations in “the progressive state.” Unrestricted immigration may destroy the literature, the traditions, the nationality itself of the invaded country, and it is a question whether these ideas are not worth preserving even at a cost of a few figures in the returns of imports, exports, and population. A country in which Free Trade principles have been carried to their utmost logical development must be cosmopolitan and nationless, and for such a state of things to exist universally without danger to civilization the world is not yet prepared.

“Know-nothingism” in America, as what is now styled “native Americanism” was once called--a form of the protest against the exaggeration of Free Trade--was founded by handicraftsmen, and will in all probability find its main support within their ranks whenever the time for its inevitable resuscitation shall arrive. That there is honest pride of race at the bottom of the agitation no one can doubt who knows the history of the earlier Know-nothing movement; but class interest happens to point the same way as does the instinct of the race. The refusal of political privileges to immigrants will undoubtedly have some tendency to check the flow of immigration; at all events, it will check the self-assertion of the immigrants. That which does this leaves, too, the control of wages more within the hands of actual laborers, and prevents the European laborers of the eleventh hour coming in to share the heightened wages for which the American hands have struck, and suffered misery and want. No consistent republican can object to the making ten or twenty years’ residence in the United States the condition for citizenship of the land.

In the particular case of the Australian colonies, they are happily separated from Ireland by seas so wide as to have a chance of preserving a distinct nationality, such as America can scarcely hope for: only 1500 persons have come to New South Wales, unassisted, in the last five years. The burden of proof lies upon those who propose to destroy the rising nationality by assisting the importation of a mixed multitude of negroes, Chinamen, Hill-coolies, Irish, and Germans, in order that the imports and exports of Victoria and New South Wales may be increased, and that there may be a larger number of so-called Victorians and New South Welsh to live in misery.

Owing to the fostering of immigration by the aristocratic government, the population of Queensland had, in 1866, quadrupled itself since 1860; but, even were the other colonies inclined to follow the example of their northern sister, they could not do so with success. New South Wales and Tasmania might import colonists by the thousand, but they would be no sooner landed than they would run to Queensland, or sail to the New Zealand diggings, just as the “Canadian immigrants” flock into the United States.

That phase of the labor question to which I have last alluded seems to shape itself into the question, “Shall the laborer always and everywhere be encouraged or permitted to carry his labor to the best market?” The Australians answer that they are willing to admit that additional hands in a new country mean additional wealth, but that there is but little good in our preaching moral restraint to them if European immigration is to be encouraged, Chinese allowed. The only effect, they say, that self-control can have is that of giving such children as they do rear Chinamen or Irishmen to struggle against instead of brothers. It is hopeless to expect that the Australian workmen will retain their present high standard of comfort if an influx of dark-skinned handicraftsmen is permitted.

Some ten or even fewer years ago, we Free Traders of the Western world, first then coming to know some little about the kingdoms of the further East, paused a moment in our daily toil to lift to the skies our hands in lamentation at the blind exclusiveness which we were told had for ages past held sway within the council chambers of Pekin. No words were too strong for our new-found laughing-stock; China became for us what we are to Parisian journalists--a Bœotia redeemed only by a certain eccentricity of folly. This vast hive swarming with two hundred million working bees was said to find its interest in shutting out the world, punishing alike with death the outgoing and incoming of the people. “China for the Chinese” was the common war-cry of the rulers and the ruled; “Self-contained has China been, and prospered; self-contained she shall continue,” the favorite maxim of their teachers. Nothing could be conceived nobler than the scorn which mingled with half-doubting incredulity and with Pharisaic thanking of heaven that we were not as they, when the blindness of these outer barbarians of “Gog and Magog land” was drawn for us by skillful pens, and served out to us with all the comments that self-complacency could suggest. A conversion in the future was foretold, however; this Chinese infirmity of vision should not last forever; the day, we were told, must come when Studentships in Political Economy should be founded in Pekin, and Ricardo take the place of Cou-fou-chow in Thibetian schools. A conversion has taken place of late, but not that hoped for; or, if it be a conversion consistent with the truths of Economic Science, it has taken a strange shape. The wise men of Canton may be tempted, perhaps, to think that it is we who have learnt the wisdom of the sages, and been brought back into the fold of the great master. Chinese immigration is heavily taxed in California; taxed to the point of prohibition in Victoria; and absolutely forbidden under heavy penalties in Louisiana and the other ex-rebel States.

The Chinaman is pushing himself to the fore wherever his presence is not prohibited. We find Chinese helmsmen and quartermasters in the service of the Messageries and Oriental companies receiving twice the wages paid to Indian Lascars. We hear of the importation of Chinese laborers into India for railway and for drainage works. The Chinaman has great vitality. Of the cheap races the Mongol seems the most pushing, the likeliest to conquer in the fight. It would almost seem as though we were wrong in our common scales of preference, far from right in our use of the terms “superior” and “inferior” races.

A well-taught white man can outreason or can overreach a well-taught Chinaman or negro. But under some climatic conditions, the negro can outwork the white man; under almost all conditions, the Chinaman can outwork him. Where this is the case, is it not the Chinaman or the negro that should be called the better man? Call him what we may, will he not prove his superiority by working the Englishman off the soil? In Florida and Mississippi the black is certainly the better man.

Many Victorians, even those who respect and admire the Chinese, are in favor of the imposition of a tax upon the yellow immigrants, in order to prevent the destruction of the rising Australian nationality. They fear that otherwise they will live to see the English element swamped in the Asiatic throughout Australia. It is not certain that we may not some day have to encounter a similar danger in Old England.

It will be seen from the account thus given of the state of the labor question in Australia, that the colonial handicraftsmen stand toward those of the world in much the same relative position as that held by the members of a trade union toward the other workmen of the same trade. The limitation of immigration there has much the same effects as the limitation of apprentices in a single trade in England. It is easy to say that the difference between fellow-countryman and foreigner is important; that while it is an unfairness to all English workmen that English hatters should limit apprentices, it is not unfair to English hatters that Australian hatters should limit their apprentices. For my own part, I am inclined to think that, fair or unfair--and we have no international moral rule generally acknowledged to decide the question--we might at least say to Australia that, while she throws upon us the chief expenses of her defense, she is hardly in a position to refuse to aid our emigrants.

Day by day the labor question in its older aspects becomes of less and less importance. The relationship of master and servant is rapidly dying the death; co-operative farming and industrial partnerships must supersede it everywhere at no distant date. In these systems we shall find the remedy against the decline of trade with which the English-speaking countries of the earth are threatened.

The existing system of labor is anti-democratic; it is at once productive of and founded on the existence of an aristocracy of capital and a servitude of workmen; and our English democracies cannot afford that half their citizens should be dependent laborers. If manufactures are to be consistent with democracy, they must be carried on in shops in which each man shall be at once capitalist and handicraftsman. Such institutions are already in existence in Massachusetts, in Illinois, in Pennsylvania, and in Sydney; while at Troy, in New York State, there is a great iron foundery, owned from roof to floor by the men who work in it. It is not enough that the workman should share in the profits. The change which, continuing through the middle ages into the present century, has at last everywhere converted the relation of lord and slave into that of master and hireling, is already giving place to the silent revolution which is steadily substituting for this relationship of capital and labor that of a perfect marriage, in which the laborer and the capitalist shall be one.

Under this system there can be no strikes, no petty trickery, no jealousy, no waste of time. Each man‘s individual interest is coincident with that of all. Where the labor is that of a brotherhood, the toil becomes ennobled. Were industrial partnerships a new device, their inventor would need no monument; his would be found in the future history of the race. As it is, this latest advance of Western civilization is but a return to the earliest and noblest form of labor; the Arabs, the Don Cossacks, the Maori tribes are all co-operative farmers; it is the mission of the English race to apply the ancient principle to manufactures.