Would that the same door were open to our poorest workers on this side of the ocean; that the worser paid of English factory workers could, by registering some seven of their number, present their case to a court or, with the support of the court behind them, form such an agreement as was made with their employers by the Wellington match-factory employees in November 1902, and brought into court for registration. The schedule of this agreement contains but five clauses and is a model of brevity and directness. Clause I. settles the working hours, on the basis of a 45 hours week. Clause II. fixes (in 52 words) the piece work rates of pay for five different branches of work. Clause III. deals with the question of union and non-union labour, and requires “the company” (there was but the one employing company, apparently, in the district) “when engaging a worker or workers” to “employ a member or members of the union in preference to non-members, provided there are members of the union equally qualified with non-members to perform the particular work required to be done, and ready and willing to undertake it; provided, further, that any person now employed in this industrial district in this trade, and any other person desirous of entering the trade now residing or who may hereafter reside in this industrial district, may become a member of the union upon payment of an entrance fee not exceeding 5s., and of subsequent contributions, whether payable weekly or not, not exceeding 6d. per week, upon the written application of the persons so desiring to join the union, without ballot or other election.” Clause IV. requires the executive of the union to keep an “employment book” containing the names, addresses and employers during the previous six months of members wanting to be employed; the book to be “open to the company and its servants without fee or charge during all working hours on every working day.” Clause V. runs as follows: “When members of the union and non-members are employed together, there shall be no distinction between members and non-members, and both shall work together in harmony and shall receive equal pay for equal work.”[85] I have thought it worth while to quote these clauses in some detail because they are typical and illustrate the safeguards both to the employer and to the non-union worker by which a preference clause is generally accompanied. The whole schedule occupies only 46 lines of print—exactly one page of the volume in which it appears.