ey now have to contend with the radical
Socialists who are seeking to convert England into a republic in which
the government would carry on all industries and would prohibit
private individuals from conducting any business whatever.

[1] One result of the organization of Trades or Labor Unions has been
the shortening of the hours of labor. In 1894 the Government
established an eight-hour day for workingmen in dockyards and in
ordnance factories.
[2] The Trade Disputes Act of 1906. This forbids any suit for tort
against a Trade Union. See A. L. Lowell's "The Government of
England," II, 534; and S. Gompers in _The Outlook_ for February, 1911,
p. 269.

The unions will accomplish more still if they succeed in teaching
their members to study the condition of industry in England, to
respect the action of those workers who do not join associations, and
to see clearly that "if men have a right to combine," they must also
"have an equal right to refuse to combine."

In 1837 the English Corn Laws (S592) virtually shut out the
importation of grain from foreign countries. The population had
outgroiwn its food supply, and bread was so dear that even the
agricultural laborer cried out. "I be protected," said he, "but I be
starving." The long and bitter fight against the Corn Laws resulted
not only in their gradual abolition, 1846, but in the opening of
English ports to the products and manufactures of the world. With the
exception of tobacco, wines, spirits, and a few other articles, all
imports enter the kingdom free.

But though Great Britain carries out the theory that it is better to
make things cheap for the sake of those who buy them, than it is to
make them dear for the sake of those who produce them, yet all of the
great self-governing English colonies impose protective duties[1] even
against British products (S625). One of the interesting questions
suggested by the Queen's "Diamond Jubilee" (1897) (S607) was whether
England's children in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada would take
any steps toward forming a commercial fre-etrade union with the mother
country. More than ten years later that point still remained under
discussion (S625).

[1] Except in certain cases, where the colonies, e.g. Canada, grant
preferential duties, or practical free trade, in certain articles
exported to the British Isles.

617. The Small Agricultural Holdings Act; the Agricultural Outlook.

Through the influence of the greatly