§ 10. THE POWER OF LABOUR. TRADE UNIONS AND CO-OPERATION--But the labourers of to-day are a very different class from their ancestors of fifty or seventy years ago. They have learnt, at least the most advanced among them, the power of combination, a remedy which at one time was forbidden them, but which is now fortunately once more theirs. The steady growth of Trade Unions and of Co-operative Societies has taught them habits of self-reliance and of thrift, and has made them {222} look more closely into the economic conditions of industry. These unions and societies do not yet embrace all the workmen of England, but they contain the best and worthiest of them, and their members are able to preserve a certain independence in treating with their employers. The power of capital is now opposed by the strength of united labour, and some of the great strikes of recent years have shown how great this united strength may be. But the power of labour may often in such cases degenerate into what readily becomes its weakness; and in any event, the attitude of mutual distrust and hostility between employer and employed is one which those who have the best interests of labour at heart cannot fail to deplore. It is true that the labourer can look back in his history to times when the power of his employer was used too selfishly and he himself was miserably oppressed. The miseries of the early days of the Industrial Revolution, the pauperism of agricultural labour in the early days of the nineteenth century, the sad conditions of children’s employment at the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign--all these show how the greed of gain has rendered masters callous to their workpeople’s welfare. But it must be remembered also that in many cases the workpeople themselves were by no means always anxious for the improvement of these conditions; and both masters and men have been slow to recognize the essential identity of interest, and the equal rights, of Capital and Labour. If the great principle of mutual interest and co-operation between employer and employed were more fully acted upon, then the industrial history of our country would enter upon a new era of well-founded prosperity. {223} CHAPTER VIII THE NEW AGE, 1897–1911