he first offer to
discharge their cargoes. It in no way interfered with or attempted to
fix the price of the labour. This was left as a matter of contract
between employers and employed. As there were conflicting interests to
be consulted, the bill provided that the proposed office should be placed
under the management of nine commissioners, four of whom should be
appointed by the Board of Trade, and four by the Corporation of the City
of London, the chairman to be the chairman for the time being of the
Shipowners' Society of London. To show how the Act has worked, we make
the following extract from an appeal to the House of Commons by the
Committee of the Registered Coal-whippers in the Port of London,
published in May of the present year, and which bears the names of John
Farrow, John Doyle, William Brown, Michael Barry, John Cronin. They
say:--"The object contemplated by the Legislature in the establishment of
the office was to secure to the men the full amount of their earnings
_immediately_ after their labour was completed, with the exception of one
farthing in the shilling, which is required to be left in the office to
defray necessary expenses. At first the office was fiercely opposed by
interested parties, because it broke up a system of vile, degrading, and
unjust extortion, by which these men derived their profits; but this
opposition soon subsided, the price of labour became equalised by an
understanding between the employers and the employed, the former being at
liberty to offer any price they were willing to give, and the latter to
accept or refuse as they thought proper; and the only compulsory clause
in the Act, in favour of the coal-whippers, is that, an office being
established at which they assemble for the purpose of being hired, the
shipowners _shall first make an offer to the coal-whippers_ registered at
the office, and if refused by them at the price offered, a discharge is
given, empowering the captains to obtain any other labourers elsewhere,
at not a greater price than that offered to the registered men. The good
effects resulting from the establishment of the office are--relief to the
men from extortion and a demoralising system, ruinous alike to both body
and soul--a fair turn of work in rotation--immediate payment of their
wages in money--and an opportunity of disposing of their labour (if any
is to be had elsewhere) in the interim of their clearing one ship and
obtaining another. The a