MR. GLADSTONE IN THE COIL CRISIS.
MR. GLADSTONE has taken our advice, unconsciously of course, and has intervened in the coal strike. He ought to have done it before. It has been clear for weeks past that this is the most formidable strike which has of late years threatened the industry of the country, that its effects, as the stocks and surpluses of the dependent trades were used up, must grow more and more extensive, and that, whatever the cause, all ordinary means of pacification had grievously failed. Negotiations between masters and men had produced nothing but a deadlock ; arbitration had been finally rejected, by one side at least ; and even the dire argument of starvation seemed to have no effect. The men, it seemed certain, would accept parish relief before they would yield ; while the masters declared that to go back to work without a reduction in wages, yet burdened with heavy, profitless contracts, would be directly • ruinous. There seemed no visible way out of the dilemma. Capital and Labour had, in fact, struck together, while the misery was deepening and spreading wider. The men's savings are gone, The little shopkeepers who live by their custom have got into debt to the large houses as deep as they can, and are now sitting without cus- tom, crushed with bills from those who supply them, and with no aid from any Union of their own to supply them even with food. Hundreds of them are suffering like the men's wives. Factory after factory is closing or working half-time, railway after railway is discharging hands, and all over England poor women are lamenting that food and fuel together are now above their means. It is enough in London to break one's heart to hear the stories that they tell, and see the fear with which they await the arrival of bread-winners for whom they can no longer cook. The evil, too, is progressive, for with every increase in price for a necessary, the number of purchasers for everything else is lessened, and the amount of credit which can be allowed to the poor dimin- ishes by leaps and bounds. In the Midlands an invasion could hardly create more suffering, and meanwhile the winter is rapidly advancing upon us, with its increased need of comfort and decreased chance of work for any one outside the regular grooves. If the strike were to last into the spring, it would produce consequences as evil as those of a civil war, and a separation between classes such as would for years be fatal to any hearty co-opera- tion even in gathering profit. Mr. Gladstone, who has known all these things, or ought to have known them, should, therefore, have acted earlier ; but we are bound to add that, now be has acted, it has been with a directness and a judgment sometimes of late wanting in his inter- ventions.
The great difficulty was to allow Government to intervene without making of its intervention an authoritative act. Neither party would have borne that in peace, and it would, moreover, have produced consequences as bad as those of the great strike itself. The State cannot " regulate " or " pacify " strikes by authoritative action without settling both prices and wages, which, as matters stand, it is hopelessly incompetent to do. It has not, and cannot obtain, the power to make capitalists work at a loss, or workmen accept less than what they consider a living wage. It must, therefore, if it intervenes in this way, take over the mines at a price, and thus become, in one trade at least, the sole employer of labour, a social revolution of which the consequences are incal- culable. Nevertheless, to intervene without being authori- tative is for a Government a most difficult task, if only because the ignorant always attribute to the Govern- ment once in motion such irresistible powers. Under these circumstances, Mr. Gladstone has steered his boat with admirable skill. In a letter addressed to both the hostile federations, he asked them, in view of the great dangers impending, to meet once more and endeavour to agree in a Conference, over which one of Her Majesty's Ministers would preside. That pledges the Government to nothing, least of all to any grand scheme, yet it reveals to both parties that their action affects the State, and compels the State to move, if it be only as supreme but pacific mediator between warring factions. Then Mr. Gladstone added that the Minister employed would be the Earl of Rosebery, a stroke of policy amounting almost to genii's. Lord Rosebery is precisely the Minister who suits both parties, as a man who has no official relation to the struggle, whois not an embittered politician, and. who, besides being credited with unusual general capacity, knows how to manage men when assembled for discussion, so that his opinion seems to be theirs. He is not an expert, but he is a man of the world, and it is the man of the world rather than the expert who usually hits the point. There is nobody to whom both sides will more gladly listen, and nobody whose opinion will give them a readier excuse for abandoning any position which they may be defending chiefly out; of pride. The selection is excellent, and we do not wonder that both parties at once accepted. Mr. Glad- stone's offer, and agreed to meet in conference at the Foreign Office—an odd locality to choose, and all the better because of its oddity. All its associations are remote from labour wars, and all its people are, by the necessity of the case, uncommitted to any side.
We shall not hear the result of the Conference before we go to press, but even if it should fail, which we deem improbable, both parties being fairly sick of the situa- tion, and both aware that Lord Rosebery's opinion will incline the formidable weight of public sentiment to one or the other side, we shall still hold the Government to have acted rightly. Its position has been to the last degree delicate and embarrassing. Its members probably dread acutely any interference of the State in labour disputes, as leading to discussions and even proposals for which opinion is not ripe, and which cleave parties by cross-lines that may render Parliamentary government for a time almost or quite im- possible. They see the drift of opinion throughout Europe, and. they know that even here a large party defend ideas which would lead ultimately to collectivism—the control, that is, of all labour and all capital by the State. They are most unwilling to give such ideas any sanction, such as would be given by authoritative arbitration ; and yet they feel that when a great section of the people is acutely distressed, a capable Ministry cannot continue to look on silent and apparently detached. They must at least form and express opinions, or be accused of callous- ness; and how are they to form them unless the parties to the struggle will acknowledge in conference that there are data upon which they are agreed ? To obtain such acknowledgments is fit work for a Government, if only that it may be itself informed ; and nobody hassuggested a better way than a conference of conciliation under a Minister known from his defects as well as his great qualities to be serenely impartial. Nobody believes that Lord Rosebery is a philanthropist, and everybody knows that if he could give the working class a good heave upwards towards content he would do it, even in his own interest, with delight. This first step, therefore, is wisely taken, and. though, if it fails, the second step will be increasingly difficult, that is a risk which every Government, and indeed every nation, must endure. The truth is, the Labour question—that is, substantially, the claim of handicraftsmen to a larger share of the profits they help to produce—is on the nations for settlement before they are quite ready. Thought is in the anarchic stage. No one entitled to be heard will say boldly that he fully believes in the first datum of all—that Capital can give a larger wage—or will affirm that he knows what is meant by "a living wage," or will say, straight out, that wealth must be more generally distributed by charging a heavier price to the consumer for the benefit of the handicraftsmen alone. Those are three of the very first questions at issue, and until they are approximately settled, it is impossible to act except blindly ; yet the multitude at the gates may force on action. Take cost merely as one example. Coal is nearly as necessary in our civilisation as water. Well, shall its distribution be managed like that of water—supply, price, and payment of price being alike secured by the State under laws which, but that they are never resisted, would be seen to be severe? There is plenty to be said on both sides of that matter if it comes up seriously in Parliament ; but if it comes up now, there will be no settlement on account of the unripeness of opinion. The people have never even heard what their own picked rulers have to say about it, and are dependent upon half-informed and interested "leaders," who are nearly irresponsible, and a Press which is quite irresponsible, and on such a matter wholly unprepared with an enlightening utterance. "Agree, agree, and don't let anybody suffer," is all they have to say, though the point at issue is not the end which nobody disputes, but the method of securing it. It is time for the statesmen to begin to form opinion without yet committing the State, and we rejoice that Mr. Gladstone's Government has seen that, and is helping on sound argument without any authoritative or " experi- mental " action. Let us know clearly what we want our explosives to do before laying them about.
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