service, the limitation of the normal labor day, the recognition of such rights as are incident to collective bargaining-all these are matters which concern the laboring classes in a special and direct way in which they concern no others. There is, therefore, in Parliament a legitimate locus standi for a party which distinguishes itself from all other parties by representing, as distinguished from the interests of all other classes, the peculiar interests of the classes who live by manual labor.

But the

Such being the case, then, the presence in Parliament of a party which differed from other parties only in this one particular, that it concerned itself more specially than they with matters of the kind just indicated, would not be in itself a feature in our political life to which, on general grounds, it would be possible to take exception. claims of the Labor party, and the ideas of its members and their supporters, are far from being limited by this sober view of the situation. Mixed with claims and ideas which will generally be admitted as reasonable are others of a more ambitious and also of a more disputable character. Thus, with the idea that the special interests of labor require to be represented by members who make them their main concern is associated the idea that the members who represent these can only do so adequately if they are themselves manual laborers. Again, with the idea that the special interests of labor require more consideration than they have generally received hitherto is associated the idea that these interests are entitled to some privileged position -as though because such and such men belong to the laboring classes acts should be legal on their part which are not legal for others. The vitality of this idea has been illustrated in an interesting way by the demands of the Labor party with regard to the right of

picketing.

They and their friends in the Government disguise the nature of these demands under the plausible doctrine that it ought not to be illegal for men to perform any act collectively which is legal for each singly; and one of the spokesmen of the Government elicited uproarious applause by what was supposed to be an absolutely convincing illustration. No one, he said, would maintain that an upper housemaid was committing an illegal act if she left her situation on the ground that she did not like the butler. Would any one, the speaker continued, be foolish enough to maintain that what was legal for one housemaid, so long as she acted for herself, ought to be made illegal if the other housemaids were to join with her? A far closer parallel to the practice of picketing would have been the following. It is legal for any one member of Parliament to walk by himself down Parliament Street; it is also legal for any two to walk down it arm-in-arm; but if ten members were to walk down it linked together, sweeping the pavement, and thrusting every one else into the roadway, such a corporate act, were it not illegal already, would certainly be made so with very little delay. The hollowness of the arguments put forward in this connection by the Labor party and their friends would have been plain to everybody—indeed, the arguments could hardly have been used-if it had not been for the underlying idea that any claim advanced in the special interest of Labor is prima facie a just claim, and that any arguments supporting it must for that reason be sound.

But the disputable ideas of the Labor party do not end here with the idea that the interests of manual labor as such have a right to preferential treatment. They are reinforced by one of very much wider scope. This is that the classes whose one class distinction

to industry, whilst half the members of a neighboring tribe devoted themselves to the art of fighting, the former would in theory have twice as much wealth as the latter; but in practice the latter would undoubtedly have seized on the wealth of the former. Labor, therefore, in relation to actual social life, has, even in cases where theoretically its importance is greatest, not possessed the exclusive importance which certain thinkers assign to it. But waiving such considerations with regard to military efficiency, which I have used only as a passing illustration, let me go on to observe that, in exact proportion as labor is, in an economic sense, the main factor in production, it is inefficient, and the product is small; whilst in proportion as it becomes a subordinate factor, though it can never cease to be a necessary one, the productive power of the community, as a whole, increases. Manual labor, in short, as related to the facts of progress, is simply the productive unit, which is multiplied by other forces; and these other forces consist of the various faculties and activities by which manual labor is directed and co-ordinated. In other words, labor, as such, is essentially non-progressive. The extremes of manual skill, as devoted to individual tasks, were reached very early in the history of civilization. They are to be found in savage tribes to-day. The relation of labor to the causes of industrial progress may be illustrated by a comparison between a geographical treatise written and printed to-day, and one written and printed, let us say, in the time of Aldus. The former would, of course, as compared with the latter, represent an immense advance in geographical knowledge, and this enlarged knowledge would be conveyed to us by means of the printed characters. But so far as these characters themselves were concerned, the compositors of

Aldus would have done their work as well as the compositors of to-day. The modern treatise would be superior to the old one, because the movements of the compositors' hands had been made in accordance with a new set of instructions given, through his manuscript, by a man in possession of new knowledge. The work of the compositors may stand for the non-progressive efficiency of labor. The superiority of the new treatise to the old one may stand for the progressive forces by which manual labor is directed. The same thing holds good of all the advances that have been made in manufacturing machinery, in applied chemistry, in locomotion, the transmission of news, and so forth. Progress in all these cases has resulted not from any new dexterity on the part of manual laborers, but from new directions being imposed on the movements of innumerable hands, whose strength and precision to-day are no more than they were yesterday. And to this progressive work of directing each pair of hands singly must be added the work of co-ordinating the operations of innumerable pairs, so that they may eventuate in some one result.

Now, such being the case, as all industrial history shows us, whilst the faculties involved in labor are, to speak broadly, common to the human race, the faculties involved in the progressive direction of labor develop themselves in a minority only, and the highest of these, the most important and the most far-reaching in their effects, develop themselves only in a minority that is very small. The progress of industry, for example, as Herbert Spencer has pointed out, is largely based on mathematics of an abstruse kind, which, as our university examinations show, only a few of those most favorably circumstanced can master. No doubt to an eye that does not pierce below the surface of things, the build

ing of an Atlantic liner and the navigating of it between England and America seem to be entirely the work of manual labor-of such labor as the Labor members claim to represent in their own persons; but it requires the exertion of very little intelligence to see that such labor is merely the tool of other faculties that lie behind itthe faculties of the mathematician, the astronomer, the chemist, the master of applied science, of the great industrial organizer, which are in their highest and most efficient developments not found in one man out of a thousand.

It is needless and impossible here to elaborate this fact farther. It is enough to say briefly that the faculties which make labor progressively efficient, which maintain its increased efficiencies and alone prevent them from disappearing, are not only incomparably rarer than manual labor itself, but differ from it essentially in this fundamental particular-that whereas manual labor, as such, is the work of the single laborer engaged on a single task, the directing faculties operate simultaneously on an indefinite number of laborers, making to each a loan of the same kind of added efficiency.

The result is that those classes or persons, in whom the directing and organizing faculties are most successfully embodied, contribute an element to the productive power of a country out of all proportion to their number, which, compared with that of the laborers, is, as I have said, small. How, then, as social forces, do these two classes stand related? If we suppose them, in preparation for some act of formal antagonism, to be estimating the strength of their respective positions, the following assertions on either side will express the true nature of the situation. Labor will be able to say for itself: "I am the prime essential. I can exist in the absence of directing talent. I did so for thousands of years

before directing talent arose. But directing talent is powerless without me." On the other hand, the directing classes will be able to say to the laboring: "You may paralyze us, but you will not be emancipating yourselves. We do not make you toil. What makes you toil is Nature. We find the majority of mankind laboring with its hands and muscles owing to the same compulsion that makes the earth rotate and rivers flow downwards to the sea. You will have to labor, whether we direct you or no; but if we do not direct you, you will only have to work the harder. In some countries, no doubt, you could continue, on these terms, to exist; but in thickly peopled countries such as England even existence would be impossible for something like two-thirds of you. If, when you talk about the interests of labor, what you have in view is a gradual amelioration of the general conditions of toil, and an increase in your own share of those material goods which constitute the results of the general industrial process, you can hope for this only through co-operation of the directing classes, on whose activity the progressive efficiency of the industrial process depends."

In so far, then, as the Labor party of to-day really does what it purports to do in so far as it represents the interests of labor as distinct from other interests, and opposed to them, it represents only a very small fraction of those interests and activities which are essential to its own welfare.

To this it is possible that the apologists of labor may answer, "We do not ignore or underrate the importance of the directing and organizing talents; but we claim that, amongst our ranks, we possess these talents ourselves." Now, such an argument, if seriously put forward, is, as we shall see presently, a complete abandonment of the labor position, as at present popularly