ess, and prepared to rejoice, though secretly mayhap, in
their defeats and reverses. And further, their discomfiture will be
always quite certain enough when seasons of depression come, from the
circumstance that, fixing their terms in prosperous times, they will fix
them with reference rather to their present power of enforcing them,
than to that medium line of fair and equal adjustment on which a
conscientious man could plant his foot and make a firm stand. Men such
as you, able and ready to work in behalf of these combinations, will of
course get the work to do, but you will have little or no power given
you in their direction: the direction will be apparently in the hands of
a few fluent _gabbers_; and yet even they will not be the actual
directors--they will be but the exponents and voices of the general
mediocre sentiment and inferior sense of the mass as a whole, and
acceptable only so long as they give utterance to that; and so,
ultimately, exceedingly little will be won in this way for working men.
It is well that they should be allowed to combine, seeing that
combination is permitted to those who employ them; but until the
majority of our working men of the south become very different from what
they now are--greatly wiser and greatly better--there will be more lost
than gained by their combinations. According to the circumstances of the
time and season, the current will be at one period running in their
favour against the masters, and at another in favour of the masters
against them: there will be a continual ebb and flow, like that of the
sea, but no general advance; and the sooner that the like of you and I
get out of the rough conflict and jostle of the tideway, and set
ourselves to labour apart on our own internal resources, it will be all
the better for us." William, however, did not give up his clerkship; and
I daresay the sort of treatment which I had received at the hands of my
fellow-workmen made me express myself rather strongly on the subject;
but the actual history of the numerous strikes and combinations which
have taken place during the quarter of a century and more which has
since intervened, is of a kind not in the least suited to modify my
views. There _is_ a want of judicious leadership among our working men;
and such of the autobiographies of the class as are able and interesting
enough to obtain a hearing of their authors show, I am inclined to
think, how this takes place. Combination is firs