Had the money which was wasted in the hapless Preston strike
been wisely spent in relieving the labour market by emigration, or in
making wages more valuable by enabling the workman to buy from co-operative
stores and mills his necessaries at little above cost price, how much
sorrow and heart-burning might have been saved to the iron-trades. Had the
real English endurance and courage which was wasted in that strike been
employed in the cause of association, the men might have been, ere now, far
happier than they are ever likely to be, without the least injury to the
masters. What, again, has been done toward developing the organization
of the Trades' Unions into its true form, Association for distribution,
from its old, useless, and savage form of Association for the purpose of
resistance to masters--a war which is at first sight hopeless, even were it
just, because the opposite party holds in his hand the supplies of his foe
as well as his own, and therefore can starve him out at his leisure? What
has been done, again, toward remedying the evils of the slop system, which
this book especially exposed? The true method for the working men, if they
wished to save their brothers and their brothers' wives and daughters from
degradation, was to withdraw their custom from the slopsellers, and to
deal, even at a temporary increase of price, with associate workmen.
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