A letter printed in our correspondence columns from one of
the leading members of the Working-Men's International Society, Mr. Maltman Barry, will be read with interest by most of our readers. In it he criticises severely the Report of the Com- mittee of the British Association on "Combinations of Capital and Labour," read by Professor Leone Levi at the recent meet- ing of the British Association at Bristol. After carefully study- ing Mr. Barry's criticism, however, we are forced to say that we do not think he really meets the argument which he attacks. The gist of his criticism is this,—that if the Labourers can ever become capitalists as well as labourers, a very large proportion of the remuneration which now falls to the share of the distinct class of capitalists, will then fall to the class including capitalists and labourers at once. Of course it wilL We do not doubt it for a moment, nor, we suspect, would Mr. Leone Levi himself. But how are the labourers to cease making capital for the capital- ists, and to begin making it "for themselves," as Mr. Widlake and Mr. Barry propose, without first accumulating out of their savings a capital on which to start? Till the labourers have got a great stock of capital, and so organised themselves as to use it with all the unity of purpose and keen sagacity, displayed by coherent firms or shrewd individuals, the arguments of Pro- fessor Leone Levi and his colleagues will certainly not lose their significance. Mr. Barry's javelin flies over the heads of his antagonists, and so wastes its force.
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