Note S — Chapter VIII

In the English report of the discussion Professor Hins's remarks are summarized as follows: "Hins said he could not agree with those who looked upon trade societies as mere strike and wages' societies, nor was he in favor of having central committees made up of all trades. The present trades unions would some day overthrow the present state of political organization altogether; they represented the social and political organization of the future. The whole laboring population would range itself, according to occupation, into different groups, and this would lead to a new political organization of society. He wanted no intermeddling of the State; they had enough of that in Belgium already. As to the central committees, every trade ought to have its central committee at the principal seat of manufacture. The central committee of the cotton trades ought to be at Manchester; that of the silk trades at Lyons, etc. He did not consider it a disadvantage that trade unions kept aloof more or less from politics, at least in his country. By trying to reform the State, or to take part in its councils, they would virtually acknowledge its right of existence. Whatever the English, the Swiss, the Germans, and the Americans might hope to accomplish by means of the present political State the Belgians repudiated theirs."—pp. 31-2.