AND ON THE CONTINENT.

1.5)7

the beard do mostly as they like with the shareholders who areinexperienced in business. Thus, it is said, the members of thehoard exercise, in fact, the power of employers, without bearingthe personal responsibility of the employer. This disadvantageis, however, not unavoidable. It is impossible, where the share-holders, living on the spot, have the working of the business beforetheir eyes, and are even at home in the trade of the limited under-taking, yea, even have people under them who, within the in-dustry, are generally reckoned amongst the cleverest, as, forinstance, those veterans of cotton spinning who have earned theirspurs in India, Japan, Russia , etc. In such a case the generalmeeting is a monarch jealous of his rights, who keeps his servantsunder strict control.

It is specially deserving of mention that those so-called co-opera-tive limited concerns of Oldham, of which there are about 70, areby no means producing societies. They grant even in no wise aprofit bonus to the operatives, wherein certainly lies one of tlioreasons of success. Participation in profits does not pay in cottonspinning, because the system of piece-wages gives to every onesufficient incentive for labour, which would not be increased bvsharing in the profits. Besides, the wages are so high that theycannot be increased without reducing the managing salaries andrisk premiums of the shareholders in an uneconomical manner.The only wav to improve wages is by economy in labour through-technical progress. Those limited companies have indeed, on theone hand by extraordinary cutting of production costs and press-ing down of yarn prices, brought down the profits to the lowestpossible degree; on the other hand they have been typical ex-amples of technical progress.

But in order to judge the condition of the working class, asimple description is not enough—one must seek a glance intotheir feelings and thoughts. I therefore ask the reader to spenda day with me in Lancashire , which for me will for all time belongto the most interesting reminiscences (8).

S. How strange this appears to many Germans is shown by the followingextract from a paper given by me and printed in the “ Manchester Chamber ofCommerce Monthly Record ” (March 28th, 1891):—“ Here in England , as allreaders know, the workers, or at least the majority of them. I am glad to say,get to Blackpool, Southport, the Isle of Man , or some other watering place, onceor twice a year. The German workman knows nothing like this. I remembera manufacturer asking me to send him some small articles in a couple of days.

It was a holiday time, and I told him it was impossible, because our works