The great dispute in the Building Trade of London is
at an end. The men asked 9d. an hour for 9 hours' work, and to leave work at 12 on Saturdays, thus claiming 36s. 9d. a week and a Saturday half-holiday. The masters, after a lengthy discussion and many threats of a lock-out, at last agreed to accept these terms unconditionally, and the dispute was at an end. We make no complaint of the arrangement—that will come from the work- men's labourers, who are, as a rule, wretchedly underpaid,—but we would point out that wages are rapidly reaching a point at which hand labour is better remunerated than. brain labour. There must be thousands of educated men in London, thoroughly educated too, to whom the builders' wages would seem fortune, who can no more earn 40s. a week than they could pay the National Debt. We are beginning to distribute remuneration, not according to the skill required in work, but according to its clis- agreeableness, and the mason's wages outstrip those of the tutor.
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