company has been recently established, which for a small payment grants compensation to a certain amount in cases of injury resulting from a railway accident. Thus if a working-man had occasion to travel from Edinburgh to Glasgow by a third-class train, instead of paying for 46 miles, the computed distance, at the rate of 1d. per mile, he pays as it were for 47 miles, and receives not only his pass-ticket for the journey, but also another ticket for the additional penny, that entitles his heirs to receive compensation to the extent of £200 in the event of his being accidentally killed during the journey, or to a portion of that sum should he receive injuries that do not prove fatal. The chances against his being injured are pretty fairly indicated in the disproportion between the payment and the promised compensation, but nevertheless the precaution ought not on that account to be neglected. The owners of property pay ungrudgingly for scores of years for the insurance of their property against fire, even though during all the time not a farthing's worth of damage should be done; and workingmen ought to be even more careful of health and life than the richer classes of material wealth. Besides, it is in the third-class carriages that the passengers in case of a railway accident are usually the greatest sufferers -a fact significantly shewn in the scale of the insurance company's premiums, in which one penny insures £200 in a third-class carriage, twopence £500 in a second, and threepence £1000 in a first. Since its establishment about two years ago, this company has issued 500,000 journeytickets, and have had claims made upon them in about sixty-eight cases of accident, of which only two were fatal. The value, however, of this mode of insurance is more clearly seen in its application not to the persons travelling, but to the persons employed on railways. The number of persons so employed was during last year 59,974, of whom 52,239 were essentially working-men. The peculiar risks to which all these men are exposed in the discharge of their duty are too well known to be particularised; and as it would be ridiculous for an engine-driver or a guard to be taking out an insurance-ticket for every journey he has to perform, an arrangement is made by which an insurance can be effected for a year or a shorter period. Thus for 30s. per annum-that is, about 7d. per week -a guard, an engine-driver, or a stoker, may insure his life for £100; and should he during that time meet such an accident as incapacitates him from employment, he is paid at the rate of 30s. per week, for a period not exceeding twenty weeks, until he is able to resume work. For porters, policemen, gatekeepers, &c. as they are exposed to less risk, the charge is only 13s. per annum; the sum insured being the same, but the amount of weekly compensation being only one guinea per week. Several cases have already occurred in which railway servants have been killed, but whose widows and children have been comparatively well provided for through the medium of this insurance company. One or two of the railway companies have expressed their readiness to pay one-half of the premiums in insuring the lives of their servants; and it is much to be hoped that very soon there will not be found one man employed or one person travelling on any railway whose life is not insured.

Another company, still more recently established, provides against accidents of all kinds. This company divides the public, for the purpose of rating, into three great classes:—

1. Ordinary risks-comprising the gentry, professional men, farmers, commercial travellers, clerks, shopkeepers, tradesmen, &c.

2. Hazardous risks-comprising builders, carpenters, sawyers, masons, house-painters, coopers, millers, printers, policemen, labourers; all persons employed about horses, and others engaged in the construction of large engineering works, as docks, tunnels, &c.

3. Extra-hazardous risks-such as boatmen, sailors, persons employed on railways, miners, colliers, &c.

Any person enrolled in the first of these classes may insure himself against accidental death to the extent of £100 by a payment of 2s. 6d. per annum; in the second, by a payment of 5s.; and in the third, by a payment varying from 7s. 6d. to 40s. But this company had not existed long before it was found that its operations must not be restricted to mere cases of fatal accident, but must apply to all; and accordingly a scale of premiums for a weekly allowance in case of non-fatal accidents was adopted. Thus to insure £100 in case of a fatal accident, or a compensation in case of a non-fatal of £1 per week and a weekly allowance not exceeding £2 for medical expenses, the annual payment in class 1 is 12s.; in class 2, 15s.; and in class 3 it ranges from £1 to £2, 10s. This company has been in operation little more than a year, but during that time the annual premiums amounted to £1228.

Let any working-man, instead of declaiming against capitalists and bad government and bad laws, sit down and seriously consider how much misery could be prevented, and how much true happiness and peace of mind be gained in the class to which he belongs, by the use of those inestimable advantages of life assurance which the capitalists against whom he rails have placed within his reach. These advantages are not visionary or chimerical; the stability of the system under which they are offered has been tested and tried by time, and not found wanting. There are hundreds and thousands of persons in the middle-classes who are now well provided for life, because those on whom they were dependent, but who have now passed away, availed themselves of the same advantages, through acts of self-sacrifice and self-denial of which the world knows nothing. Why should not the working-classes do so likewise? Here are the benefits and there are the men; it is the fault only of the latter if they do not possess themselves of the former.

From this account of the modes in which savings can be invested, it must be apparent to every one that there is no unavoidable contingency against which a working-man may not at a small sacrifice provide. That this provision is not always made is to be attributed in no small degree to the indifference, and, we may say, prejudices of the working-classes themselves. It is difficult to awaken them thoroughly to the necessity of present self-denial to meet future contingencies, and still more difficult to convince many that their condition is to be improved more by savings and judicious investments than by any attempts to alter the relations between labour and capital. The profits of the capitalist are often considered as so much deducted from the wages of the labourer; the interests of masters and men are looked on as directly antagonistic; the prospect of saving sufficient to become an employer seems too remote; and in too many

cases the idea of saving is abandoned, and men look for the improvement of their condition to the adoption of some scheme for re-adjusting the relations of society. The uselessness and expense of all strikes and similar combinations have been proved by the saddest of all experience, and ideas of unions with better and nobler objects are beginning to arise. The first-fruits of these ideas are seen in the various industrial associations that have been formed all over the country. The leading idea of these associations is perhaps best expressed in one of their favourite phrases: 'Not capitalists' labourers, but labouring capitalists;' in other words, associations in which the labour is the director of the capital, and in which all profits, after payment of usual interest, are divided among workmen.

Whatever views may be entertained of the soundness of this idea, all must feel that it is deserving of a fair trial. Everything that would prevent it from being freely and fully tested should be removed, so that its failure or success may be dependent on its weakness or strength. It is clear that a great social problem is involved, and the result of the attempt at its solution will not be received as final unless all parties consider that it receives fair play. In the present state of the law in this country such a trial is hardly possible. Thus if fifty workmen associate together, the law regards them all as partners, and as such each man is liable for all the debts that may be contracted; and, on the other hand, each is at liberty, without committing a legal offence, to seize on the property of the association to any extent. If, therefore, a man were to lend the association a small sum, his interest to be dependent on the success of the undertaking, he would at once become personally liable for all debts, even though he were not a working member, while one bad man in the association could plunder it with impunity. Under such circumstances it is perfectly clear that money will not be lent and that workmen will not associate. But the law further says: these evils may be avoided by procuring an act of parliament or a royal charter. The price of the former varies from £1000 upwards, and the latter can seldom be procured under £800 or £1000.* Combinations of capitalists, such as railway companies, may afford to purchase the limited liability of their shareholders at this high price, but no man in his senses will say that this is practicable for an association of working-men. The law is manifestly unfair: it shelters the rich, but it does not protect the poor. It may be true that if the law were altered so as to recognise limited liability only, the floodgates of speculation would be opened, and the results be ruinous in the extreme; but surely it is as possible as it is just to modify the law so as to meet the requirements of the poor without encountering such a danger. England is perhaps the only country where such a law exists. In France, under the law of commandite, none but the managing partners in an association are liable beyond the amount of their share, and the same law prevails in other European countries and in the United States of America. It is, however, manifest that the existing law on this subject will be changed. The select committee of the House of Commons, appointed in the

* The cost of obtaining a charter for the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes was £1139, 7s. 6d., of which £724, 10s. 8d. consisted of fees paid at the Home Office. See Parliamentary Report, previously quoted, p. 40.

session of 1850 to consider the savings and investments of the middle and working-classes, suggested that charters of incorporation should be granted at a far more reasonable cost, though with the greatest caution, and expressed 'their strong opinion of the pressing necessity of the subject now referred to them being speedily attended to by the legislature;' and another select committee, appointed in 1851 'to consider the law of partnership and the expediency of facilitating the limitation of liability with a view to encourage useful enterprise and the additional employment of labour,' after repeating the recommendation to grant charters at a more reasonable cost, express an opinion, that the law of partnership as at present existing, viewing its importance in reference to the commercial character and rapid increase of the population and property of the country, requires careful and immediate revision;' and the appointment of a commission is suggested to consider and prepare not only a consolidation of the existing laws, but also to suggest such changes in the law as the altered condition of the country may require.'*

เ

In spite, however, of these legal impediments, a large number of such associations of working - men have been formed in this country. The example of their brethren in France, especially in Paris, has had a very marked effect on the working-classes of our island; and to the success of some of the Parisian associations the establishment of several with us has been owing. The oldest of the existing French associations was formed in 1835. It consisted of four working-jewellers, whose united capital amounted only to 200 francs, or about £8. They wrought on with varying success for eight years, when, through some internal quarrel, the association was nearly broken up; but a new code of rules was framed, an addition made to the number of associates, and operations resumed with more success. By the rules then adopted-which represented the hard-bought experience of eight years no associate was allowed to leave for the purpose of establishing himself in business under a penalty of £1000, nor was he allowed to bring anything into the society except his own labour. The capital was indivisible, and to it was added each year one-seventh of the profits of the concern. The associates were paid certain fixed sums according to the work done, and at the end of the year the profits were divided them in proportion to the amounts thus earned. The society is still in existence, and numbers now eleven members. The other Parisian associations are all placed on a somewhat similar basis. The capital of the greater part of them is considered inalienable, indivisible, and hereditary in the association. This is an arrangement which, under proper regulations, is well calculated to insure stability and success, but which, on the other hand, experience has shewn to be more likely to result in the formation of exclusive and wealthy guilds existing only for their own aggrandisement. With such a plan the association may work well during the lives of the present members; but as years roll on, and capital accumulates, when the spirit that animated the founders shall have lost its influence, and the members consider it to be their interest to diminish rather than increase

among

It has been stated on very good authority that the present government has undertaken to bring in a bill legalising industrial associations; that in fact the bill is printed, and would have been introduced last session had there been sufficient time.

their number, the evils of the arrangement will become manifest, and the world will hear these associations denounced as 'close corporations' by men belonging to that class whose interests they were originally intended to promote. The association of working-jewellers already referred to is an illustration of this tendency. It at one time numbered more than seventeen members; but six, or more than one-third of these, have left through various causes, after having laboured to increase a capital in which they had neither share nor claim. This accumulated capital remains with those associates who adhere to the society; and it is perhaps unnecessary to say, that there is more danger in such a case of that capital being used not for but against labour, than if it were in the hands of one man alone.

The experience of these associations has led to the adoption of a rule obvious to all who are not blinded by ideas of equality—namely, the payment both of wages and of shares in profits according to the amount and kind of work done by each man. Thus if a man be lazy or unskilful he is paid little, but if active and skilful he is paid much. Absolute equality in the remuneration of labour has been the leading idea in many Socialist schemes; and it is really painful to find that men will not become convinced of its injustice as well as impracticability except through experience. Thus in an establishment for making bottles in Paris the employer was requested by his workmen to pay them equal wages, and not according to the work done by each man. Each had hitherto been paid so much for every hundred bottles he made, but it was proposed that the day's produce of the labour of all the men should be thrown into one common stock, and the proceeds divided at the end of the week. The result was thus described by Mr Coningham in a lecture lately delivered in London: For the maintenance of emulation, and the satisfaction of the "point of honour," it was agreed that each man's produce should be written up day by day against the workshop wall. For a few days there was great emulation, each workman struggling to establish his superiority. This point once fairly ascertained, the skilful workmen rested from time to time, to let their slower comrades catch them up. When reproached for indolence, they now replied: "Of what do you complain? I make as many bottles as the best man here." The second-best workmen soon took to resting also; the third and fourth hands gradually followed their example; and so on, till the worst workman became the standard. Thus the rate of production and of wages declined, till at the end of eight months there was a falling off of 20 per cent., and next season the employer returned to the old plan of paying piece-work wages, and the earnings of master and men rose at once to their former level.'

The mode in which these associations are managed is somewhat similar to that of joint-stock companies in our own country. A council is elected, usually for one year, by the associates, which has the regulation of all matters except such as require the sanction of a special meeting. Accounts are made up and ordinary meetings held twice every year. Many of the associations have a multiplicity of rules regarding various matters-such as the admission of new associates, the administration of sick funds, &c. &c. to all of which it is unnecessary here to allude further. Several of them have received loans from the government, either to enable them to com