in at last, and now nothing is wanting, it is said, but education. To the obtainment of this there are great legal difficulties; for education in France is not free, but trammelled by formalities and examinations for the most part quite out of the reach of the working man. It is practically in the hands of the "Frères ;" and between "Frères" and working men there is no love lost.

We have before us the two latest deeds of settlement, as we should call them (1852 and 1857), of this association, which has been several times dissolved and reconstituted in form, though always retaining the same place of business, the same firm, and in great measure the same rules. It is legally a society on the commandite principle, in which the managers, varying in number from two to three, are responsible without limit for liabilities, and all the other members only to the extent of their subscriptions. The shares of members are now fixed at 2000f. (80l.) each at least, 10,000f. (4007.) at most (unless by special permission), which are paid up by non-working members in monthly instalments, by working members through a deduction of 10l. per cent on wages and salaries, and in both cases by a total retention of profits till the whole subscription is paid up. Every working associate owes to the association "his labour, his industry, and his abilities;" he must absolutely disclaim entering upon, or taking an interest in, any similar labours to those of the association, without special authority. The managers have the complete financial and commercial control over the business, and are paid by salary, besides living at the place of business. In case of withdrawal, they may not under 50,000f. (20007.) penalty undertake, or become interested in, any building operations for so long as the association chooses; the association, however, paying them an indemnity of 5f. (4s.) a day whilst the prohibition lasts.

Behind the management is the Council of Surveillance, elected in general meeting for nine months, and in which all the members of the association were formerly called successively to take part, though now retiring members are made reëligible. It overlooks the operations of the managers; audits the accounts; proposes dividends, the admission or exclusion of members, the revocation of the managers &c.; supplies temporarily their place in case of death or withdrawal; fixes indemnities for illness and accident. The general meetings alone pronounce definitively on the admission or exclusion of members, and have power to alter the rules. Accounts are balanced yearly; 60%. per cent of the net profits go to labour, in proportion to the number of days' work done for the association; the remaining 40l. per cent to capital. No associate is received except by a majority of two-thirds of those present at a general meeting, and after at

least three months' probation. The association has two years to pay off the shares of associates dying, leaving, or expelled; but there can be no transfer or assignment of rights by an associate without the sanction of a general meeting by a majority of two-thirds; and creditors or representatives of individual associates are excluded in the strictest manner from interfering in any way with the property of the association.

The deed of settlement is followed by the conditions of admission and by the by-laws (règlements d'administration). The work-rules are wisely strict. The fifth by-law, as to the benefit fund (assistance sociale), which is composed of one per cent on wages for both associates and candidates, the amount of fines for disobedience of rules, balances of profit after payment of dividends, gratuities received from landlords, architects, and tradesmen, and voluntary gifts, indicates four purposes to which the fund is to be devoted: 1. Relief of associates when wounded or ill. 2. Relief of non-associates wounded when working on the premises of the association. 3. Contributions for external purposes of benevolence. 4. Burial expenses for associates and candidates. 5. Fees to a medical man to ascertain the facts of

disease and cure. The payment to the sick is fixed at 2f. a day, and can only be varied by a general meeting. One of the associates is specially charged with the duty of looking after the benefit fund.

There remains now to show by figures what this association has done. From Prof. Huber's pamphlet, quoted at the head of this Article, we extract the following summary of its progress in business: 1851-2, 45,330f.,-dividend, only 1000f.; 1852-3, business, 297,208f.; 1853-4, 344,210f.; 1854-5, 614,694f.; 1855-6, 998,240f.; 1856-7, 1,330,000f.; 1857-8, 1,231,461f. We have before us the report of the board of management to the general meeting of the 27th Jan. 1859 (that for 1860 has not reached us). It contains a comparative table between the workings of 1857 and 1858, the detail of which, p. 93 (though not by any means the form), puts a railway balance-sheet to shame. From this it will be seen that the business of the association reached in 1858 the sum of 51,000l. (1,275,997f. 40c.), being nearly 2000l. more than in 1857. The gross profits of the year were more than 10,700. (268,972f. 22c.); the net, nearly 9600l. (239,360f. 30c.); the sum actually divided, 4000l. The net profit was thus nearly nineteen per cent on the business,-a not excessive but perfectly safe ratio. The number of associates was 92, three less than the previous year; the number of demands for admission 17, instead of 31; the subscribed capital on which the 51,000l. of business was transacted, 57,500f., or about 2,300l. (against 77,000f. the previous year); i. e. not much more than half the

amount actually divided in the year, and less than a quarter of the year's net profits.

The result seems prodigious; and yet listen to how it is viewed by the managers:

"You see, no doubt, like ourselves, that this table is far from answering to our hopes of a year ago.

As to business, it is pretty well what we might have hoped for. We have let go nothing in our connection, nor even of what has been offered to us, except what prudence commanded; indeed, the bad debts of the last year were a law to us on this head.

As to results, if wisdom did not make it a duty to us to retain a strong reserve in respect of claims which may have to be litigated, they would be even too satisfactory in reference to the modest hopes which we had entertained on this score.

As to credit, the foremen of yards know it as well as we do, by the offers which are daily made to them; sometimes they go so far as to become obtrusive.

Our relations and our protections extend daily, and amongst a very good connection; we have gained also in reputation, as your council was able to judge by the letters which have been communicated to it.

Reputation, you know, depends upon good work. If good work costs more pains to do, it costs no more to supply; quick execution has also much to say to it, as well as the right interpretation of architects' orders. All this depends on your intelligence and your good-will. We do not doubt that you will persevere, and that all your efforts will tend to perfect yourselves; for with such a reputation well deserved, one has the pick of orders, and one obtains the price of well-executed work. . . .

But the progress of association is far from being satisfactory. . . This decrease [in numbers]! more withdrawals! fewer associates! fewer demands of admission! scarcely any admissions! more than one-third less subscribed to capital !—notwithstanding the efforts of some of us, this grieves us most sincerely.

We seriously call your attention to this point. If this is all which the principle can do, notwithstanding the advantages of plenty of work, success in our undertakings, the encouragements of our good repute, we very humbly declare that we have been mistaken.

And yet we dare not, we cannot believe it, since with seventeen men alone, and debts to boot, without reputation and scarcely any credit, and small experience of business, we did in four years that which now exists..

We declare with all the might of our souls that the pleasure of dividing a hundred thousand francs is far from compensating for us the pain of such a diminution.

If we do not doubt the goodness of the principle, we fear that indolence and selfishness may replace self-devotion in some, and carry discouragement to others.

Let us take care, let us examine, and carefully pursue improvement. Let us show ourselves the men whom we ought to be, that is to say,

Z

more bent on the common interest than on our private one.

We hope, gentlemen, that if you do not follow our advice, you will examine it with attention, if ten years of our administration inspire you with sufficient confidence.

O renowned financiers, skilful in the art of grasping figures, O prosperous and much-testimonialised railway directors, who know so well how to make things pleasant to the shareholders, what a foreign language must be to you that of these Parisian builders, who in their often ungrammatical and ill-spelt French actually declare that to divide 4000l. amongst ninety-two men does not make up to them for the pain of not dividing it among ninety-five! And these not enthusiasts of yesterday, but men who for ten years have had in hand the management of a business! Surely there rings out from the report of the Paris builders a tone which has not been heard before in such things-a tone of workmen masters of their labour and no longer slaves to it; and masters of it, not because they have so much capital, materials, credit, but because they have learned to place themselves, their labour, and their resources at the service of a principle.

To look back from these ninety-two Paris builders, doing their 50,000l. a year business and making their nearly 10,000l. a year profits, to our six-months building strike, spending 20,000l. to keep men out of work, seems in one point of view a grievous fall. Yet let us not be unjust to the idea of the trade society. That idea will never be looked upon with much favour by the bulk of the community. Inasmuch as the trade society is based on the class-interest of the worker, and seeks continually to obtain for him more pay and less work; inasmuch as every gain to the producer is prima facie a loss to the consumer, and we are all consumers; inasmuch as the equivalent of every sixpence extra wages, every quarter-hour less work, is sure to be taken, whenever the wages-payer can do so, out of the pockets of his customers, it is perfectly natural that the consuming public should be ready to frown down such an organisation; and it is all the more necessary, to judge it fairly, that we should look upon it from the worker's point of view. And, seen in this light, we may perceive reasons why even the idea of cooperation in production, in itself so favourable to the working man, should meet with a less willing and general assent amongst his class than the trade society. The coöperative association benefits immediately only the few; the trade society seeks to benefit the many. We deal with a few picked men among the associated builders of Paris; we deal with the bulk of a whole class among the society men of the London building

trades. So far there is no doubt a democratic breadth about the trade society which no coöperative aristocracy (using that word in its best sense), even the most devoted, can attain to. The question of an hour's labour is one of immense value to the thousands; the coöperative association can only approach it within the limited sphere of its own operations, checked even there by competition; whilst, however generous may be its provisions for relief amongst its own associates or those employed by it, it never can reach the scale on which most of our trade societies dispense their benefit funds in cases of accident, distress, death, old age, relief to men on tramp or casually thrown out of work, among the thousands of their members, nor yet those opportunities which they afford for the distribution of labour throughout the country. It is this daily working of the trade society, together with the field which it affords for mutual communication, self-government, and a really political education, which has rooted it hitherto in the hearts and habits of our working men;-not those strikes, which are in fact only an interruption to its daily working, and which are not unfrequently in great measure occasioned by law-made impediments to the profitable investment of its funds.

But having said thus much from the working man's point of view, something must also be said from the point of view of third parties. The repeal of the combination laws has been, in fact, but a licensing of private war in the sphere of trade. With our English taste for a good "mill," when masters and men fall out in a given trade, and one or the other stops work, Government and public have hitherto mainly confined themselves to making a ring round the combatants and seeing fair play whilst the match is fought out. But the more frequent these contests become, the more we are reminded that nostra res agitur. The combatants are not prize fighters pummelling each other for a hat or a purse full of gold, but hundreds of capitalists and thousands of skilled artisans debating the point of an hour's work, more or less, at the price of our shelter, our comfort, as well as their own. "It is nothing but the haggling of the market on a large scale," say the plutonomists. But when that haggling takes the shape of half-built walls and roofless houses, and a stoppage of works of public utility, what does society profit by it?

To go back to the old system of forbidding combination is impossible. The mere power exhibited on either side in this battle of the building trades forbids us to entertain the thought of doing so. To allow these contests to go on is to deliver over the whole trade of the country to anarchy. Is there no other course? Will the debate on trade societies at the Social Science Association's meeting at Glasgow have shadowed any forth to us?