The Trade Unions are new things in industrial history. The guilds of the Middle Ages, with which the unions are often identified, were confederations of all engaged in the trade, masters as well as men, against outsiders. The Unions are confederations of the men against the masters. They are the offspring of an age of great capitalists, employing large bodies of hired workmen. The workmen, needy, and obliged to sell their labour without reserve, that they might eat bread, found themselves, in their isolation, very much at the mercy of their masters, and resorted to union as a source of strength. Capital, by collecting in the centres of manufacture masses of operatives who thus became conscious of their number and their force, gave birth to a power which now countervails its own. To talk of a war of labour against capital generally would, of course, be absurd. Capital is nothing but the means of undertaking any industrial or commercial enterprise, of setting up an Allan line of steamships or setting up a costermonger's cart. We might as well talk of a war of labour against water power. Capital is the fruit of labour past, the condition of labour present, without it no man could do a stroke of work, at least of work requiring tools or food for him who uses them. Let us dismiss from our language and our minds these impersonations, which though mere creatures of fancy playing with abstract nouns end by depraving our sentiments and misdirecting our actions, let us think and speak of capital impersonally and sensibly as an economical force and as we would think and speak of the force of gravitation. Relieve the poor word of the big _c_, which is a greatness thrust upon it, its tyranny, and the burning hatred of its tyranny will at once cease. Nevertheless, the fact remains that a working man standing alone, and without a breakfast for himself or his family, is not in a position to obtain the best terms from a rich employer, who can hold out as long as he likes or hire other labour on the spot. Whether Unionism has had much effect in producing a general rise of wages is very doubtful. Mr. Brassey's book, "Work and Wages," goes far to prove that it has not, and that while, on the one hand, the unionists have been in a fool's paradise, the masters, on the other, have been crying out before they were hurt. No doubt the general rise of wages is mainly and fundamentally due to natural causes: the accumulation of capital, the extension of commercial enterprise, and the opening up of new countries, which have greatly increased the competition for labour, and consequently, raised the price, while the nominal price of labour as well as of all other commodities has been raised by the influx of gold. What Unionism, as I think, has evidently effected, is the economical emancipation of the working man. It has rendered him independent instead of dependent, and, in some cases almost a serf, as he was before. It has placed him on an equal footing with his