When, adding another to the countless errors which it has taught the people, the Legislature, by passing the Ten-Hours-Bill, asserted that it is the duty of the State to limit the duration of labour, there naturally arose among the working classes the desire for further ameliorations to be secured in the same way. First came the formidable strike of the Amalgamated Engineers. The rules of this body aim to restrict the supply of labour in various ways. No member is allowed to work more than a fixed number of hours per week; nor for less than a fixed rate of wages. {363} No man is admitted into the trade who has not “earned a right by probationary servitude.” There is a strict registration; which is secured by fines on any one who neglects to notify his marriage, removal, or change of service. The council decides, without appeal, on all the affairs, individual and general, of the body. How tyrannical are the regulations may be judged from the fact, that members are punished for divulging anything concerning the society’s business; for censuring one another; for vindicating the conduct of those fined, etc. And their own unity of action having been secured by these coercive measures, the Amalgamated Engineers made a prolonged effort to impose on their employers, sundry restrictions which they supposed would be beneficial to themselves. More recently, we have seen similar objects worked for by similar means during the strike of the Operative Builders. In one of their early manifestoes, this body of men contended that they had “an equal right to share with other workers, that large amount of public sympathy which is now being so widely extended in the direction of shortening the hours of labour:” thus showing at once their delusion and its source. Believing, as they had been taught by an Act of Parliament to believe, that the relation between the quantity of labour given and the wages received, is not a natural but an artificial one; they demanded that while the wages remained the same, the hours should be reduced from ten to nine. They recommended their employers so to make their future contracts, as to allow for this diminished day’s work: saying they were “so sanguine as to consider the consummation of their desire inevitable:” a polite way of hinting that their employers must succumb to the irresistible power of their organization. Referring to the threat of the master-builders to close their works, they warned them against “the responsibility of causing the public disaster” thus indicated. And when the breach finally took place, the {364} Unionists set in action the approved appliances for bringing masters to terms; and would have succeeded had it not been that their antagonists, believing that concessions would be ruinous, made a united resistance. During several previous years, master-builders had been yielding to various extravagant demands, of which those recently made were a further development. Had they assented