Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE WORKING-MAN. A COMPARISON. Mr. Herbert Spencer has warned us that there is no political alchemy by means of which we can get golden conduct out of leaden instincts. If this be true distributively when applied to the actions of born leaders of men, it is equally true in respect of the collective life and action of the "social organism," the "body politic," and in particular of its labouring members. National energies have been strenuously bent upon self-maintenance and self-protection. Ramparts once set up for peace and stability have been reconstructed to shield the warrior in the world's fight for wealth. And again, national barriers have fallen, like Jericho's wall, at sound of a voice summoning the nations to Pax Laboris; and the world stood ready to listen when, at theBerlin Labour Congress in 1890, Jules Simon called for a toast, "a tons ceux qui souffrent!" Then there were many discussions, and attempts were made—in vain we fear—to lay down broad and comprehensive rules, to shield the worker in need of a rest-day, and to lighten the burden of sex in woman, and help the tender growth of the child. And we took comfort and pride therein at the time, feeling that in our land the bitter cry of the factory slave had long since found audience and redress, heedless that the slave of the shop, the sweating-den, and of public locomotion are still uttering that cry, and that the worker still contrasts the fostering from above of his mental and aesthetic wants with the lack of leisure to live by them. With all that, we are still bent on international investigation. A Royal Commission has been appointed to inquire into the state of labour in England and abroad; and Mr. Geoffrey Drage, its able secretary, has recently published the results of his observations in Germany an...