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It would do far more in improving the wages of the workmen than trades' unions have been able to do; and, in the end, it would promote the interests of the employer.
There is no use in striving against nature; we might as well hope to keep out the tide with a pitchfork, as to expect that men—even trades' union men—will not work under trade prices if their children are starving. The voice of the union may be powerful, and its laws as unchangeable as those of the Medes and Persians, but there is something stronger and more powerful still, and that is, the voice of children calling on a father for bread. The man may wish to be loyal to his union, but he must be true to nature; and the consequence is, when the crisis comes, the union has to go to the wall.
The only rational, true, and fair way of raising wages, is to relieve an over-stocked labor-market by emigration.
Just before the famine commenced in Ireland, for every day's work there was to do in that country, there were three men to do it, which gave to each laborer two days' work, on an average, in the week. This produced such a competition among the laborers to get work, that wages were reduced to a minimum, upon which it was impossible for the laborer to exist.
The labor-master is under the impression that an over-stocked labor market is for his advantage. Here he labors under a mistake. An over-stocked labor market means that the supply is greater than the demand, and that a portion of the workmen are idle; it also means low wages, as the result of competition. Now, a workman who is only employed a portion of his time, gets into irregular and idle habits; and if, along with this, he be indifferently fed, he will not be able to do a fair day's work. There are workmen, at this very time, on the Isle of Dogs, so deteriorated in strength, for want of nutritious food, that they are compelled to decline work, from physical inability to perform it. It must also be borne in mind, that the workman, as a rule, regulates his labor by his wages, and gives no more than a quid pro quo.
The tendency of these observations is to meet the objections of the employers of labor to emigration; but we sometimes meet with objections to this movement in quarters where we least expect them. The Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland set their faces, as one man, against emigration, on account of its apparent tendency to decrease their congregations. Now, I can imagine Protestant ministers to give the subject a cold shoulder for the same reason. But what was the consequence of the rapid emigration from Ireland? That the wages of the people so improved, that they were enabled to buy decent garments in which to appear at chapel or church, which
