Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/593

 RSVIEWS 571 This second chapter is, like that on state aid, state regulation and state c.ntol, which is contained in a later part of the book, coloured by the individualistic views to which Mr. Howell has elsewhere given expression in his contribution to A Plea for Liberty; but he has little difficulty in showing the vexatious character of the earlier instances of the interference of the State with individual liberty in the matter of restrictions on labour; and his criticisms of the proposals for municipal workshops and for an eight hours day, which have been advanced by some representatives of the New Unionism, are at any rate forcible and suggestive, even if the language in which they are couched is scarcely calculated to convince the advocates of those measures of the error of their ways. He analyses the vote on the Eight Hours Bill, which was given at the last Trades Union Congress, with the result that its importance is seriously discounted as representative of working- class opinion. It is this examination of the principles and modes of action of the New Unionism which forms the most interesting, and in some respects the most important part of Mr. Howell's book, though it is not, we venture to think, that part which will ultimately be found to be of most permanent value. It rather represents wha we may hope is a passing phase of feeling both on the side of the new unionists and of Mr. Howell himself. On the one hand, as it appears to us, he may fairly complain bf the depreciatory language employed on some occasions by some of the representatives of the New Unionism against the veteran leaders of the older unions, who have faced, as he shows, and triumphantly overcome, great difficulties in the past history of the movement, and have to a large extent changed a hostile into a friendly public opinion by the mingled courage and sobriety of their conduct. He may, we think, reasonably condemn some of the proposals of the new unionists as crude and illiberal, and some of their actions as precipitate and unwise. He may point out that the Dockers' Union, one of the most conspicuous examples of the newer associations, was in its inception conceived and established on the traditional lines of the old unions; and that it is even now difficult to distinguish the new from the older unions, unless the distinction be found in a greater violence of language and aggressiveness of action. The New Unionism does, it is true, tend to turn the trade-society side to the front, and to keep the friendly-society benefits in the shade; and Mr. Howell shows that this policy, like that of large schemes of federation, was tried by the older unions in the past, and that they have won their permanent successes by recourse to the broader and more stable basis of mutual providence. But he also shows that the assistance recently given by one trade to another, and even by established organisations of skilled workmen to struggling combinations of the unskilled, has its parallel in the history of the past; and he maintains that in their origin the older trade unions were not, as in their present constitution they are not, exclusively friendly or trade societies.