the formation of a true system of therapeutics.
That which will maintain health is not,
necessarily, that which will restore it. Often it
happens that a blister or a purge, though it
would certainly make sound men sick, will
make the sick man whole. May it not also
be that what is ruinous to all sound trade
shall hereafter come to be known as a social
medicine possessed, in certain cases, of a
healing power, and applicable therefore to
some states of disordered system? We
believe that a great many discrepancies of
opinion may be reconciled by a view like
this. Its justice is hardly to be questioned;
although, as to the particular applications
of it, there is room for any amount of
discussion.

Thus, in the case of the Manchester strike,
the workmen—though not of the unskilled
class—may state that they are unable to
feel the working of the principle of
competition; that if they do not get what pay
they like at one factory, they are not practically
at liberty to get the value of their
labour in another. Even the population of
one mill, thrown out of work, is too large and
too special, as to the nature of the various
kinds of skill possessed among its people, to
be able to find anything like prompt absorption
into other factories; but as masters
almost always act in groups for the determination
of wages, it is the population, not of
one mill, but that of five or six, that becomes
discontented; and the best proof of the fact
that it is practically unable to better itself even
though higher wages may be given elsewhere
is, that it does not better itself. There is a
curious and decided variation in the rates of
wages paid in various factories and manufacturing
towns; variations artificially increased
by strikes, but the existence of which shows,
at any rate, to the satisfaction of the operatives,
that rates may be arbitrary, and that
the natural law does not work easily in their
case which brings the price of any article to
its just, uniform level. The Manchester
masters point out to their men other masters
who pay less than they pay; the operatives
point on the other hand, to masters paying
more. But it is not in their power to carry
their own labour to those masters, as it ought
to be, for a free working of the principle of
competition. Mechanical and accidental
difficulties stand completely in the way, and they
are aggravated on both sides by habits of
imperfect combination. It is just to state these
difficulties, and to show that the instinct of
the operative may not be altogether reprehensible
when it suggests to him that aginst the
worst uneasiness which he feels in the system
to which he belongs, a blister or a
blood-letting, in the shape of a strike, is the best
remedy. He may be very wrong, as a man
is apt to be wrong when doctoring himself.
There is an excuse for his quackery in the
fact that he has, at present, no physician
to call in.

The difficulties of the case, as it is felt by
employers and employed in our manufacturing
districts, is aggravated, as we have said,
by imperfect combinations; for, between the
trades' unions and the masters' associations
there is, in truth, a perfect unity of interest.
They who reduce the master's capital, reduce
his power of employing labour; they who
wrong the labourer by whom they live, reduce
his will and power to do work. At present,
men and masters are in many cases combatants,
because they never have been properly allies;
they have not been content to feel that they
are fellow-workers, that the man at the helm
and the man at the oars are both in the
same boat, and that the better they agree
together, the more likely they will be to
weather out a storm.

In the case of the existing strike at
Manchester, we have read carefully the
manifestoes, replies, and counter-replies that
have been passing between the opposed bodies
for the purpose of being laid before the public;
and the fact made in them of all others
most manifest is—that the points raised in
them are points that ought to have been
raised very many months ago; discussed and
understood between the masters and the men
before the strike, and for the prevention
of the strike.

Upon the precise points in dispute we
cannot undertake to give a definite opinion.
From each party to the quarrel we get half a
case, and the halves are not such as the
public easily will know how to unite into a
distinct whole. Rates of wages, as we have
already said, do not appear to be uniform,
and while the masters in Manchester desire,
as we think, most fairly and properly, to bring
a certain class of wages, raised unduly by
strikes, to its just and natural rate, pointing
to some other place in which the rate is low,
the men point to a place where the rates are
higher than at Manchester, and say, Come let
us strike an average between the two. The
offer is refused. It may be necessarily and
wisely refused. There are evidently many
accessory considerations that affect the nominal
day's wages in this place and that.
To the public out of Lancashire it cannot be
explained fully by manifestoes. Between
masters and men, if they were in any habit
of maintaining a right mutual understanding
it ought not to be possible that any controversy
about them could be pushed to the
extremity of open breach. The spinners on
strike head one of their documents with the
last words of Justice Talfourd: "If I were
asked what is the greatest want in English
society to mingle class with class, I would say
in one word, the want of sympathy." Most
true; but need we say that there is sympathy
due from workmen towards employer, as well
as from employer towards workmen? It is
essential to a correction of the evil thus stated
that the operative should either generously
be the first to give up hostile prejudices, or