[5] In 1851-2 a large and well-known engineering firm in Leeds had a serious struggle with their workmen on account of the masters having determined to pay the men according to their merit and the character of the work turned out. A determined strike was the result, which, though the original difference was only with eight men, threw eventually more than 600 out of employment. Fresh hands were obtained with the usual difficulty, and these were subjected to great annoyance and even danger; in eighteen months, however, the works were again all going and were efficiently manned. The masters henceforth made it a condition of employment under them that no member of a trades' union should be engaged, and the sequel was a better behaved and superior class of men. Not only so, but the masters are now enabled to make their own regulations for the benefit of those employed under them, which before, owing to the interference of the trades society, they could not make. They have instituted a sick and funeral fund to which the men contribute by working _ten minutes additional time when necessary_, an arrangement which we recommend to other large employers of labour and large bodies of workmen. That the masters should be acquitted of any selfish motive, they allow the funds to be managed and applied by a committee of workmen appointed by themselves from their own number. [6] "No labourer," says Mr. Smiles in his _Workman's Earnings, &c._, "is better worthy of his hire than the English one. It is not merely that he works harder than the labourer of any other country, but he generally produces a better quality of workmanship. He possesses a power of throwing himself bodily into his occupation, which has always been a marvel to foreigners;" and he then recurs to the well-known example of the surprise created among the French peasantry when gangs of English navvies proceeded with the works of the Rouen railway, and worked amidst constant exclamations, of "Voilà! voilà ces Anglais! somme ils travaillent!"