IMPERFECT BROTHERHOOD. T HE brotherhood of man is making the tour
of the world, and everywhere it displays one permanent characteristic. It grows and flourishes so long as one i brother is not asked to put himself to any inconvenience for the sake of anotha,. We have a standing instance of this limitation among ourselves in the case of the Russian Jews. We read of the sufferings they undergo at the hands of their Government, and our hearts are at once moved to organise societies, call meetings, and address edifying though in- effectual remonstrances to the Czar. Almost at the same moment there comes the news that some of these unhappy people have escaped from their persecutors and have landed in London. It might be thought that we should rejoice at the opportunity thus afforded of proving our sympathy with the sufferers by helping them to make a living over here. Nothing of the kind. The interesting victim of Russian oppression is transformed, the moment he sets foot in London, into the commonplace destitute alien. As such, his case goes into a quite different pigeon-hole and is accorded quite different treatment. Our Russian brother disappears, and in his place we have a cosmopolitan stranger, at whom some of our leading philanthropists are quite ready to heave the traditional half-brick. We are not candid, indeed, as to the reason of our objection. We speak of his poverty, when what we really dislike is his habit of not remaining poor ; of his becoming a burden upon the rates, when the true ground of our objection is his presence as an active and self-supporting rival in the labour-market. But underneath our cunningly devised reasons for keeping him out, the true motive is plainly visible. The brotherhood of man has broken down because one brother has the presumption to ask for bed and board in return for his labour. A more typical example still is to be seen in Iho recent disturbances at Aigues-mortes. At the Peccais Salt-Works a number of Italian workmen have been employed for some time past, and the managers of the works have been so well pleased with them that they determined to employ more. Italy is a poor country, and wages are very low there ; this, therefore, was an excellent occasion for applying the principle of brotherhood. At trade meetings,, we daresay, French workmen have often magnified the ties• which link them with their Italian fellows. They have preached solidarity of humanity, solidarity of interest, soli- darity of prospects, solidarity of hatreds,—solidarity, in short, of everything except wages. But this one exception proves a very fly in the ointment. It corrupts everything that it touches. The brother at once becomes an enemy, an& at Aigues-mortes is at once treated as an enemy. Accounts, differ as to who it was that struck the first blow ; but they agree that this and the shots that followed it did con- siderable execution. For two days there was open warfare between the French and Italian workmen, and peace was not restored until troops had been sent for, and had escorted the Italians to the railway-station, whence they were conveyed' to Marseilles. According to one account, the hospital autho- rities at Marseilles shared the feelings of their countrymen, and refused to give admission to the Italian wounded. This, however, has been contradicted, though not until it had done its work in Italy. Another aggravation on the French i side is the issue of a proclamation by the Mayor of Aigues-- mortes congratulating his countrymen on the prowess they had shown. This, too, has had its influence in Italy ; ands as M. Dupuy has suspended the Mayor from his functions; we must suppose that, in this instance, the statement is well founded. The Italians are not the people to sit down quietly under treatment of this kind ; but their vengeance has taken a national rather than a trade form. It is not French workmen on whom they have retaliated, but the French nation. The latent ill-feeling towards France that exists in the Italian mind has broken out in the large cities, and in Rome an attempt was made to wreck the French Embassy. The Government, however, have acted with promptness and decision; the riots have been suppressed by troops ; the Prefect of Rome and the Chief of the Police have been suspended. In themselves, of course, these occurrences are of no moment. The relations between France and Italy will not be affected by them, and except the workmen of both nations who were killed or wounded at Aigues-mortes, no one is materially the worse for them. But in their bearing upon the doctrine of universal brotherhood they are very significant. Probably, many or most of the French work- men whose dislike of the Italians was the ultimate cause of the disturbance at Aiguesmortes, were professed socialists. In theory, they would repudiate international distinctions as the device of Kings and nobles who had something to gain by the invention ; but in fact, they are as alive to them as their neighbours who have not yet detached themselves from such antiquated notions. Men may argue themselves out of patriotism, but they cannot argue themselves out of national instincts of the baser sort. They may cease to care for their country, or their countrymen, but they will not for that reason cease to hate the foreigner if his interests make by ever so little against their own. In- creased intercourse, personal and commercial, seems to make little or no difference in this respect. Nations no• longer fly at one another's throats at the bidding of a King or an Emperor ; but the example of Aigues- mortes shows that though the orders are no longer given, the temper which readily obeyed them is not extinct.
Nor is it only in the mutual relations of the native workman and the foreigner that we see this same spirit. It is visible beneath all the assurances that we meet with every day of the growing unity of labour. No one, of course, will deny the extraordinary growth of combi- nation of late years. The organisation of trades is very much more perfect than it was a quarter of a century ago. But when we find people alarmed by this change, and looking forward to a time when labour will be com- pletely master, and will be starving for want of the capital it has wantonly destroyed, we cannot but think that their fears are exaggerated. The facts which suggest them really exist, but they exist in conjunction with certain other facts which the alarmists lose sight of. The terror that trade combinations inspire can only e. justified if we assume that they will gradually embrace the working class throughout the country, and in every country. No doubt, if all the labour of England were organised into Unions, if all the Unions were animated by the same spirit and were working for the same end, and if the Unions ef the Continent and the United States were equally strong with those of this country, and were agreed with them as to what they shall demand, there would be the materials of a combination which, unless it were guided by singular wisdom, would be the parent of great disasters. But what evidence is there that any one of these contingencies will happen ? How far England yet is from perfect trade organi- sation is shown by the South Wales strike. How little of a common purpose there may be between the Unions is shown by the divergence of feeling and opinion between the Miners' Federation and the colliers of Northumberland and Durham. And then as to the relations between the British workmen and the workmen of the Continent, we have only to turn to the recent Congress at Zurich. Conflicting interests are not yet on the way to being reconciled. There is enough that is distinctive in nations, in classes, in Unions, in workmen to ensure that there will be no speedy amalgamation between them, and to suggest the hope that the interval that separates us from such an amalgamation may be so utilised as to free it, if it comes, from the evils which now seem to belong to it. So long as genuine brotherhood between nations and classes remains out of reach, we may find consolation in remembering how many obstacles there are in the path of that sham brother- hood which is trying to take its place.
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