them to contract out of its provisions. For | themselves, even those among his own instance, in Lancashire there was a long constituents, were opposed to any change strike on the part of the miners, the in the law; but that was not so. It was chief difficulty in the case arising out of true that at two meetings held at colthe demand of the employers that the lieries in the North a majority of those men should contract themselves out of present voted for the views of the the Act. The National Miners' Union, League; but at one of them there were recognizing the importance of the mat- only 38 votes given, of which 23 supter, sent a deputation to Lancashire to ported and 15 voted against the League; inquire into the causes of the strike, while at several other meetings of the and they found that the most unfair same character the League was outvoted pressure had been employed against the by overwhelming majorities. At a deleminers to compel them to accede to the gate meeting of the Northumberland demand of the employers that they miners, which he attended, an unanimous should contract themselves out of the vote was passed in favour of his Bill. It Act. The main object of this Bill was had been said that the delegates did not to prevent this, or to render illegal the represent the miners. That was not the method by which this was most usually case. They were miners themselves, and done-namely, by requiring the pay- represented the views of the miners much ment of contributions to an accident fund more faithfully than Members of the as a condition of employment. There House did the views of their constituents. were, however, two Provisoes. One He understood that the opposition to was, that the Bill should not have effect this Bill by the hon. Baronet (Sir Joseph on contracts now in existence; and the Pease) was based on a fear lest the other was, that if any employer contri- Miners' Permanent Relief Fund should buted to a common fund, or paid any suffer by the passing of this Bill. A thing in any way to a workman in con- similar fear was expressed when the nection with an accident that might Employers' Liability Act was under disoccur, any such payment should be cussion; but the fact was that these taken into consideration in making any funds were never stronger than at the award. If, however, it was the opinion present time. The Trades' Union Conof the House that they should not ab- gress had unanimously passed a resolusolutely prohibit such agreements, he tion in favour of the Bill. Miners' Assothought they should still have some pro- ciations had petitioned in its favour, and vision, in order that arrangements of there had not been a single Petition the kind might be come to in a formal from an organized body of workmen and specific way, so that workmen against it. He begged to move the might know exactly under what con- second reading of the Bill. ditions they were contracting out of an Act of Parliament passed for their advantage. There were several subordinate provisions, one being to prevent appeals, except by consent, in cases under £100. Another proposed modification of the present Act he desired to call attention to. Sometimes it happened, after a workman had received an injury, that his master continued to pay his wages, thereby admitting that he was in fault, and, after paying them for some weeks, discontinued, and thus the workman, who had not given notice freedom of contract between Employers and "That it is inexpedient to interfere with that of his claim, was precluded from re- Employed which enables them to contract themcovering anything further from his mas-selves out of the Act of 1880, and by mutual ter. Of course, there was opposition to the Bill. Like many other promoters of Bills, he had incurred the displeasure of the Liberty and Property Defence League. That League, in the Annual Report just issued, stated that the miners

MR. BROADHURST rose to second the Motion, and expressed his wish that he could have reserved his remarks for a later stage of the debate.

MR. SPEAKER informed the hon. Member that an Order of the Day did not require a Seconder.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."-(Mr. Burt.)

SIR JOSEPH PEASE, in rising to

move--

arrangement and mutual payment to make provision for every workman who may be injured killed; whether the accident is one coming and the family of every workman who may be under the provisions of the Act of 1880, or is one not so provided for,"

said, it was with regret that he felt him

part of the men, they were much more beneficial to the men than the Act itself would have been. The North-Western Railway, for example, which employed upwards of 50,000 men, had given their men terms, which, he had no hesitation in saying, were five-or even ten-times as good as the original Act, or the Bill of his hon. Friend would give them. With regard to the Petitions that had been presented in favour of this Bill, he confessed that he never saw more unsatisfactory documents of the kind. He had presented many of them himself, and in every case they were signed by one person only in a representative capacity. They were signed by Chairmen; but the Petitions did not say of what Bodies the gentlemen who signed were Chairmen, nor could he find in the local papers accounts of any meet

cative of large support by the working classes; and even from the borough of the hon. Member himself, no less than eight or nine Petitions had been presented to the House against the passing of the Bill. At any rate, there was great divergence of opinion with reference to it.

self compelled to act in opposition to his hon. Friend the Member for Morpeth (Mr. Burt), whose life-long devotion to the interests and welfare of the class which he represented he highly appreciated. The Employers' Liability Act was to be in force for only seven years, of which only two had elapsed-a period obviously insufficient to enable a sound judgment of its effects to be formed. At present, workmen had the choice of remaining under the Act, with all the advantages it conferred, or the choice of contracting out of it with often still greater advantages. But the question broadly put before the House was, whether or not the working classes of this country were able to take care of themselves? Were the employed too prejudiced, or too ignorant, or too foolish to make their own contracts with their employers? He did not take that view of the work-ings. They were certainly not indiing classes of this country. Was the House of Commons to say to them "You shall be tied down to the four corners of this Bill, even though your employers offer you much more liberal terms than you would obtain under the Bill." There could only be two reasons for this Bill. One was, that the men were subject to undue pressure from their employers were, in fact, slaves to their masters; and the other was, that they were so unwise and so imprudent that they contracted themselves out of the Act without receiving any equivalent. No such case had been or could be made out. He maintained that employers had endeavoured to work the Liability Act loyally and well, and their voluntary efforts were equally commendable. He could not find that a single meeting had been held on the subject of the present Bill; but he knew that from the borough of Morpeth, 1,219 persons from among the constituents of the hon. Member in charge of the measure had petitioned against it. A mere reference to the voluntary efforts among the coal miners and iron miners in the North, the subscriptions from whom last year amounted to £46,144, would show that these were not the men to be treated as children. Some trades-for instance, the building trade and the mechanical engineers-had by a system of mutual assurance made provision for all cases of accident. As to the generality of contracts between employers and employed, he believed that, so far from there being improvident contracts on the

Sir Joseph Pease

The hon. Member had said that a great cry was raised that the provident societies of the working men had been placed in danger by the Employers' Act. That was quite true, and the figures showed a steady falling off in the subscriptions by the employers; but they would be placed in very much more danger and be much more damaged if the Bill now proposed was carried into law. He contended that the employers of England had acted most loyally by their workmen under the existing Act. With regard to the statement that the masters had been able to extort from the men the advantages of the Act, the hon. Member for Morpeth had only mentioned one case, and that was the case of 27,000 miners in Lancashire. The fact was, however, that they had a strike, and all, he believed, went to work again after having extracted some terms from the masters which enabled them to contract themselves out of the Act with advantage to themselves. He had never yet heard exactly the terms upon which these Lancashire miners contracted themselves out of the Act; but he perceived from a speech that was made by Mr. Bryson, a Northumberland miner, on this very question, that he said the miners of

Lancashire were improvident, and had made no provision against an evil day. Further, Mr. Bryson said the idea of 27,000 men being forced into a disadvantageous agreement was ridiculous, and ought never to have been brought forward, for they entered into the arrangement that was made well knowing what they were doing. That was the language of Mr. Bryson at a meeting held only the other day; and when these men actually got 20 per cent for their provident fund from their employers, it could not well be said that it was a case where they got nothing. But if this proposal was adopted, it would deprive working men of great advantages they now enjoyed, and place them in a much less independent and favourable position. He took a very different view of the requirements of the working classes of this country to that of the hon. Member for Morpeth. He did not think they would have to legislate for the working classes very much longer in this style. If they were once in leading-strings, they were well out of them now, and were perfectly Iwell able to run alone and to take care of themselves. He spoke on this matter with some right, for he had been among the working classes all his life, and it was only within the last few months that he had been twice elected by a large body of them to be sole arbiter in an important dispute between them and their employers. He had no hesitation in saying that on those occasions the working men placed their case before him more clearly, logically, and more true to principle than the employers did theirs; and such facts as those and others went to prove that what Parliament had done for the working classes was very little compared to what they had done in recent years for themselves. The statement of the hon. Member that the working men required to be taken care of, and to be protected from their employers, was, therefore, one which he thought the House would hardly be prepared to endorse. As he had said, the working men of the country were able to take care of themselves, and did not need or ask for this protection. Therefore, he moved the Amendment he had read to the

House.

Amendment proposed,

To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "it is inexpedient to interfere with that free

dom of contract between Employers and Employed which enables them to contract themselves out of the Act of 1880, and by mutual arrangement and mutual payment to make provision for every workman who may be injured and the family of every workman who may be killed; whether the accident is one coming under the provisions of the Act of 1880, or is one not so provided for,"-(Sir Joseph Pease,) -instead thereof.

Question proposed, "That the words. proposed to be left out stand part of the Question.”

MR. BROADHURST said, he thought the speech of the hon. Baronet the Member for Durham (Sir Joseph Pease) had in no way dealt damagingly with the Bill of his hon. Friend the Member for Morpeth. He (Mr. Broadhurst) was fully aware of the importance of the coal and iron trades of the North; but he wanted the hon. Baronet to remember that there were in Great Britain a few other industries besides those he had mentioned. It was the fact that soon after the Employers' Liability Act, 1880, was passed, a placard was posted up at one of the large building firms in the Metropolis, informing the men that they must consider themselves in the same position as if they had signed an express agreement contracting with their employers that the latter should incur no responsibility under the Act, otherwise the men must leave the works forthwith. That document was, he believed, merely a copy of what was posted by other firms, not only in London, but all over the country, which seemed to indicate concentrated action on the part of the employers. It was all very well to say that the men were capable of taking care of themselves. They, no doubt, were in many instances; but it must be remembered that when the Act came into force there was a great lack of employment in many industries, and the employers of labour swooped down like vultures and engaged men who, from their sheer necessity of providing themselves and their families with bread, were only too ready to accept work on any terms imposed by the employers. Moreover, there were a large number of men in the service of the Railway Companies who were not in permanent employment, but who were, nevertheless, compelled to work under the same conditions, so far as contracting themselves out of the Act was concerned, as the men who were in the permanent employ

the House would be flooded with Petitions in its favour. Reference had been made to Mr. Bryson, a working miner, who addressed a meeting in London, a few days ago, against this Bill; but Mr. Bryson had no authority to speak for the miners of Northumberland, and his appearance in London could only be described as a huge hoax. In conclusion, he begged to thank the House for the patience with which it had listened to him, and expressed the hope that the House would assent to the second reading of the Bill.

ment of the Companies. He did not | until another Session, he believed that think the hon. Baronet could have been aware of the course taken by the general trades of the country with regard to the Act. Then insurance companies had been called into existence under the Act in the interests of the employers, to indemnify them against all liability under it; and these companies, in many instances, worked great hardship by resisting the just claims of the widow and children of some poor workman who had lost his life in the service of his employer. Such a state of things was a disgrace to the country. The hon. Baronet had stated that the existing law had already done some damage to the provident associations by lessening the contributions of the employers to those associations; but he was informed by his hon. Friend the Member for Morpeth, that the contributions of the employers last year amounted to a larger sum than they had ever amounted to before. With regard to the Petition to which reference had been made, 1,200 or 1,300 men and boys out of a large colliery district was not a great number of signatures to have been obtained, especially when they were aware of the wonderful power which had been brought to bear in obtaining these signatures. His marvel was that the signatures of everybody in the district had not been obtained. The Liberty and Property Defence Association, which had used its influence in promoting the Petition, was generally known as the Association of the "three P.'s"-peers, pawnbrokers, and publicans. When they had an Association of that description, with agents scattered all over the country, and without stint of money, was it not surprising that with all their mighty efforts they had only produced 1,200 signatures ofmen and children to a Petition against the Bill of his hon. Friend? He said that the Petition, and the Association which promoted it, were wholly unworthy of the confidence of the workmen, and had never had their confidence. He asked the House to take the assurance of his hon. Friend that the Bill was absolutely necessary for the protection of the workmen, and that there was a widespread desire on their part that this Bill should be passed. If the question of Petitions were to be introduced, and the Bill were to go over

Mr. Broadhurst

MR. WARTON said, he thought the speech of the hon. Baronet the Member for South Durham (Sir Joseph Pease) was perfectly convincing, the hon. Baronet being well qualified to speak with authority on the question. The existing law had, so far as he was able to judge, though he was not himself an employer of labour, worked well. The whole question was fully considered by Parliament at the time the Act of 1880 was passed, and he protested against its being now re-opened. In this Bill there was a provision that an action might be brought without any claim having been sent in at all. Now, was that fair to the employer? The one great question really was that they ought to set their faces against the idea that the working man might not contract himself out of the Act. Believing, as he did, that it was for the interests of all classes, masters and servants alike, he certainly did hope that the House would not for a moment entertain the crude crotchet of the hon. Member for Morpeth (Mr. Burt). And, before he sat down, he would recommend the hon. Gentleman in future to conduct his own case himself, and not to filter it through the mouth of the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Broadhurst).

SIR R. ASSHETON CROSS said, he thought that before the hour at which, according to the Standing Orders of the House, the debate would be adjourned, they ought to have some expression of the opinion of the Government on this question. They had all looked to the Bill of 1880 as a settlement of the question; and they wished to know whether or not the Government were satisfied with that Bill, and whether they meant to maintain it or not? If there was