capitalists in most of the cases of ordinary enterprise. When strikes did occur in the twentieth century, the alternative of having co-operation to fall back upon was always one of the considerations of the case, and a consideration which the employer, most of all, had to keep precautionarily in view. Indeed not more important was it for the welfare of the striker himself, than for that of society at large, that the former should strike for the alternative merely of a different form of work, rather than for a complete cessation from labour.
The tactics of obstruction by small minorities, as on the occasion of the grave and perplexing Irish questions, which crowded upon our Parliament towards the close of the nineteenth century, were not by any means the sole cause of parliamentary block, although they happily contributed a powerful and timely stimulus towards the eventual removal of a continually increasing difficulty in national legislation. All could see that the endless legislative needs of an advancing civilization could be but inadequately responded to in parliament under the old accustomed modes of procedure, even if these were never otherwise than honestly dealt with. Some process was wanted by help of which, within reasonable hours, or even, for that matter, within any possible hours whatever, all the required public measures could be adequately discussed as well as passed and enacted. Prior to that great and complete cure which was
