skill of the born exploiteur, and hence the smallest community tends to split into two camps, of which the financial interests are not identical. Our first and most zealous co-operator began to think herself indispensable, and to feel that the prices paid for other work than hers should be so adjusted as to leave a margin for special recognition of her own peculiarly valuable services. By working harder she might indeed have increased the divisible profits, but if she was to work harder it occurred to her as more inviting to work on her own hook, so as not to have to share such profits with the rank and file, and having learned in the co-operative shop enough of the art of management to set up as a 'little master,' she left us to do so. This secession, which was not the last of its kind, is typical of the difficulty of a large development of real co-operative production. Those who are born with the knack of driving, or playing 'boss,' of getting the maximum amount of work out of their subordinates, frankly don't care to exercise their special skill pro bono publico; if they are to make themselves disagreeable by keeping all workers constantly up to the mark, they require to be paid as much as they could earn by driving on their own account. On the other hand, the rank and file look dubiously at so-called 'co-operation,' which means that they are to earn profits to be divided amongst the foremen who are good enough to take the trouble to drive them. Theoretically, we know, co-operation is supposed to have a magic virtue which will make driving in every grade unnecessary. But it is better to face our difficulties frankly. If all the workers are to participate in profits, and the smallest share is to be large enough to stimulate the lowest grade of workers to do their best to earn it, it will seldom happen that the proportion available for the higher grades will be as much larger as they will be disposed to claim. Most industrial partnerships make things pleasant in the higher grades, with which alone the employer comes in contact, and one has to mix unofficially with the workers to get at the view of the other side, which is that the operatives have to work rather harder than elsewhere to earn less than the fair value of the increased amount of work they do. And this, say the democrats, is a fraud: even the Maison Leclaire, according to such critics, is only a collection of petits bourgeois, like the joint-stock millowners at Oldham.3 Rightly or wrongly, we identified ourselves with the interests of the rank and file, and let our malcontent managers go. The firm in no case suffered from the secessions, which, it should be added, did not occur till after the partners ceased to be in daily contact with the workrooms. But, in a full and true history of the firm's experience, they must be put on record among other conditions of the problem future co-operators will have to grapple

3 It was to meet this criticism, advanced by a Socialist workman, that Leclaire decided to let all hands without exception share in the division of the bonus to labour; but the advantages in the way of pensions, &c., enjoyed by members of the 'Mutual Aid Society' are still reserved for a select few.

with. The earnings of a firm of average capacity will not suffice to pay at the same time more than average profits, salaries, and wages to capitalists, managers, and labourers respectively; and eight years' experience of the ways of trade has only confirmed the writer's conviction that salaries need raising less than wages, while profits may be very wholesomely reduced.

There was another disputed point of economics upon which we very soon felt able to speak with the authority of personal experience: viz. the question lately reopened by Mr. George, whether wages are paid out of capital or from the fruits of labour. In 1876 our average weekly expenditure on wages was under 20l., so the problem was not of bewildering magnitude; and as the co-operative workshop had been open for several weeks before its earnings reached 20l., it is certain. that at first wages were paid out of capital, as in any case they must have been for the first week of all. But if we pass on for a few months, the working shirtmaker's ability to pay wages on Saturday depends upon his having done, and having been paid for doing, work enough that week or previously to provide the money for wages along with other liabilities. If on any occasion it befell that the bank balance was low, and a despairing partner had to draw a cheque upon a private account to eke out the missing 20l., this would be either because work had been slack and earnings low during preceding weeks, or because the firm's debtors were wanting in punctuality. Practically in every industry, large or small, the payment of wages has to be advanced out of capital for just as long as it takes for the first returns to come in, according to the custom of the trade in question. A working shirtmaker is paid on Saturday for work done that week; a shipbuilder may stand out of his money for years, but if the normal period for building and selling a ship is, say, three years, the advance is not perpetual, but for that period only: the wages to the shipwrights employed on the second generation of ships are paid out of the money received for the sale of the first generation. And from the socialist point of view it may be argued that the real value of the advance is exhausted with the completion of the first sales. The profits earned by the joint efforts of capital and labour do not belong' to the capitalist before they have been earned, and it is a question to be reasoned or wrestled out between masters and men what share each shall take and transform into their own property for private consumption or saving. No economic law would be outraged, and capital would still seek to employ itself productively, even though wages came to swallow up so large a share of the gross profits that the capitalist did not, as at present, receive interest in perpetuity on the amount of the temporary advance made to his first set of labourers.

One word to justify this insistence upon wages and the need of increased expenditure under that head. For the moment the religious and charitable world is interested in the denizens of the slums; but

will that world bear to be told that the slums are peopled by those whom they themselves help to send there? What about the shilling bibles and sixpenny or penny testaments which it is supposed to be a good work to disseminate? The women who fold and sew these books must live in slums, with the rest of the vast army whose life amongst us is a slow death upon starvation wages. Are the Bible societies or they to blame if they take to drinking? Ladies who work among the poor' think it right to save their money for charity, and buy cheap costumes, made far off by the same sisterhood; and who can tell the ladies that their so-called charity is a theft, and they themselves parties to more oppression than the district visiting of a lifetime can atone? Or among the well-to-do who make no pretensions to do more than meet the everyday claims of human honesty and kindness, what lady is there who will renounce a bargain or turn away from the fabulously cheap attractions of the juvenile outfitting warehouse (kept by Israelites not wholly without guile '), because it is physically impossible that the worker's share in the cheap price can represent a maintenance? Even the working classes themselves are not blameless in the matter; they buy slop goods themselves-what but slop goods can slop-workers ever buy with the pence scraped together by going without food and fire? Does not the State itself give the first example-laughable if it were not so tragic in its consequences—of political economy gone mad, and, seeking to buy services in the cheapest markets, have the clothing of its soldiers and police made (partly at least) by women whose earnings must be supplemented either by charity, poor rates, or occasional free quarters in hospital or gaol, because they are insufficient for the decent maintenance of a widow with children--a revival of the worst evils of the old poor-law system of rates in aid of wages?

6

At the present moment, when even ground landlords are credited with some duties and starving tenants with a few elementary rights, it is surely not too much to ask that wealthy and philanthropic dealers in the labour of the starving shall recognise their responsibility and be required by public opinion to assure themselves that they are not accomplices, willingly ignorant in the sacred name of competition, but none the less accomplices in that underpayment of honest industry which does more than drink, more than vice, more than improvidence to people our slums, and is itself the most fertile mother of all those three. Let the shop-keepers, the manufacturers, and most of all the respectable well-to-do public, which buys from both, look to it, and ascertain, as people would if they learned that there was stolen silver about in the market, that the wares offered to them for purchase have been honestly paid for at each stage in their production, and that the labourers employed, indirectly, in our service are not being starved and brutalised at the bidding of our heedless craving for an illusory cheapness.

EDITH SIMCOX.

FREE TRADE IN THE ARMY.

THE Secretary of State for War, when returning thanks for the army at the dinner given by the Lord Mayor to Her Majesty's Ministers on the 9th of August last, is reported to have said, 'While I do not now deprecate that the attention of army reformers should be turned. to our army system, and that they should suggest all necessary improvements, I do beseech those interested in the army to look at it with an eye to the future, and not with an eye always turned to the past. It is in that way we shall best correct the deficiencies of our army organisation. To look to the past, and to that which is no longer suited to the day in which we live, is not to promote the cause of army reform.'

I have ventured to address the public twice before on the subject of the army, and on both these occasions I appeared in the somewhat unenviable rôle of a critic. Criticism can only do a certain amount of good, and in my opinion, those who have the welfare of our army at heart, ought to be prepared not only to point out defects, but to suggest remedies. Lord Hartington has expressed a hope that all suggestions should be made with an eye to the future,' and that the much debated question as to the merits of long and short service should now be considered as definitely settled. It is no doubt very desirable that the subject of our army's future should be approached without any bias towards one system or the other; but before any satisfactory conclusion can be arrived at, as to the system most likely to produce such an army as England requires, it seems absolutely necessary to inquire into the causes which have prevented all systems hitherto tried from being successful.

While concurring with Lord Hartington that a return to the old long service is impossible, I firmly believe that a continuance of the present short service is equally impossible. If this be the case, it will be readily admitted that the military problem which has to be solved by our War Department is one of no ordinary character.'

Both systems have failed to produce the required number of recruits. Various reasons have been given for this, and various remedies have been suggested; but the true reason has apparently not been discovered, and the proper remedy has certainly not been applied.

When a sufficiency of soldiers was not to be had in 1869-70, it was decided that recruits disliked long engagements, and the short service system was introduced. The number of men who enlisted after the change was made certainly increased considerably; but whether it was because they preferred short to long engagements, or because the standard of height was reduced at the same time, is open to question. With reference to this, it is instructive to turn to the register of fluctuations in the standard for the infantry, which immediately succeeded the introduction of Lord Cardwell's measure, and to note the successive lowering from 5 feet 8 inches, at which the standard stood under the long service system early in 1870, to 5 feet 6 inches in July, and 5 feet 5 inches in September of that year; 5 feet 5 inches in July 1871, and 5 feet 4 inches in 1873. Now if any one will take the trouble to calculate the extent of the recruiting field which lies within the compass of these 3 inches, that is, the number of English lads between 5 feet 4 inches and 5 feet 8 inches in height, he will realise that the increase in the number of recruits was not altogether due to a preference for short service. During the last thirteen years, the standard has only twice been up as high as 5 feet 6 inches, and on each of these occasions for a few months only; and notwithstanding the advantages which the present short service system is supposed to offer, the dearth of recruits and the impossibility of keeping men in the army, necessitated the standard of recruits being reduced, a few months ago, to an almost dwarfish height (5 feet 4 inches), and to a bounty being offered to soldiers unprecedented in its amount.

It would seem, then, that the problem we have to deal with is not likely to be solved by the adoption of a long or a short service, but by an earnest endeavour to discover the causes which have made the army unpopular with the class on which it depends for its very existence as a voluntary force. The voluntary nature of the contract into which the British soldier enters with the State is, indeed, the allimportant factor in our military system. With a compulsory service, the number of men required to fill the ranks are taken, and they have got to adapt themselves to the terms of that service, whether they like them or not. With us, if the terms do not suit the wouldbe recruit, he simply declines to accept them. When, therefore, we find that the army has ceased to be attractive, we may be sure that some grievances exist (imaginary or otherwise), which ought to be inquired into, and removed if possible, or that the wants and wishes of the soldier are not sufficiently understood. If we are to have a voluntary army, we must have a contented one. To get recruits, in the first place, we must make military service popular; and to keep a sufficient number of men in the ranks, we must deal fairly and honestly with our soldiers. Such compensation for service abroad. must be given as will induce men to put up willingly with its draw