Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/44

 24, his men were too divided in opinion to resist, and his example was soon followed by the rest of the trade. The coachbuilders remained a ten hours trade till the general recrudescence of the eight hours movement in 1884. A ten per cent. import duty was imposed on carriages in 1866, and a twenty per cent. duty in 1874; but these availed nothing to restore to the coachbuilders the short day. What, then, happened before 1884 to enable them to recover then what they had lost for a quarter of a century? A new generation had arisen in the interval, which probably set more store by the short hours for their own sake, and which certainly felt stirred by the example they had before them of other trades enjoying the leisure of a short day now for so many years without appearing to suffer anything in consequence. A certain awakening of opinion took place—indeed, in 1884 a curious wave of social awakening passed successively over every country of the world. And—not the least important factor—the federation of the eight hours trades, the Amalgamated Trades Association, which was founded at the origin of the movement in 1856, and to which every trade is admitted as soon as it acquires the eight hours day, had now grown into a very powerful organization, which was able to be of the most effectual assistance to the weaker trades in their efforts for the short day. It helped them to set agitation agoing, to establish unions, and to undertake the risk of strikes. This body is probably as powerful a working-class organization as exists in the world, composed as it is of the unions of more than fifty different trades, all knit compactly together under an executive known at first as the Operatives' Board of Trade, and now as the Trades' Hall Council, and quartered in a spacious mansion-house erected by the trades themselves on a site presented to them by the Government. This federation has made the eight hours day the cornerstone of the whole labour movement of Australia. It has committed mistakes—grievous mistakes, for example, in the recent strike—but when one thinks of the political force it could exert if it chose, one is astonished at its moderation. Lord Hopetoun was right when he told the working men of Melbourne last Demonstration Day that it was their organization that made them so loyal and law-abiding. It has made them independent of the State's offices, good or bad, and when they can do so much for themselves, they have the less reason to ask anything from the State, or resent the State's refusal. Anyhow, in this whole eight hours history they have had little assistance from Government, or from legislation.

The Goverment did give some help to the original movement