THE TRADE DISPUTES BILL.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE 'SPECTATOR."] thanking you warmly for your powerful article on the unfair provisions of the Trade Disputes Bill in last week's Spectator, will you allow me to say that on at least one important point your view is unduly favourable to the Trade- Unions? You assume that the object of the Union leaders is to compel all workers to share the benefits as well as endure the control of the Unions. But in many, if not in moat, cases their object is not to drive men into the Unions so much as to drive them out of the trade. It is a reduced number of com- petitors that they want. In the coal and some other compara- tively unskilled trades entrance to the Union is free, but in most of the more highly skilled trades it is strictly limited. They object to a man working at the trade unless he is a member of the Union ; they will not allow him to join the Union unless he has passed through his apprenticeship, and the number of apprentices is limited to the lowest which they can force the masters to agree to. The Scottish Boiler- makers' Society some years ago issued to its members what the secretary called "a most excellent card," advocating a further restriction in the number of apprentices, who were all to be nominees of the Union Committee. Dr. John Inglis showed clearly by life tables that this "excellent card," if acted upon, would in a very short time altogether extinguish the trade for want of workers. And that is the Policy which all Trade- Unions carry out as far as they can. This fact throws a sinister light on the provisions of the Bill which you object to, and greatly increases the force of your contention. The Bill will largely increase the power of Trade-Unions in restricting the number of workers in each trade, and is therefore a purely and narrowly selfish measure, not only regardless of, but directly opposed to, the interests of the working class as a
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