[PEN-L:2732] Duty vs. Bargain

[knowware@xxxxxxxx (Tom Walker)]

Testimony of Mr. Alfred Mault, Secretary of the General Builders
Association, to the Royal Commission on Trades Unions, June 5, 1867

Earl of Lichfield: What is your idea with reference to the amount of work
done now, compared with what it used to be some years ago?

Mr. Mault: I am sure that as much work is not done now as used to be done,
and that is attributable to the feeling generated by the union which I have
just referred to, namely, that a man in his contract with his master must
just make it simply a matter of bargain. But the old feeling of his having a
duty to perform, and his pleasurably doing that duty to his master, is to be
put upon one side, and that he is to think that if he does too much work,
other people will be kept out of employment. It is to the feeling generated
by that idea or principle upon which the union is founded, that I attribute
a great deal more of the difficulties and evils that characterize the
present condition of the intercourse between master and man than to anything
else.


Tom Walker
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/