ce
when they became known. In the case of children it was admitted from an
early date, it was urged by Cobden himself, that the principle of free
contract could not apply. Admitting, for the sake of argument, that the
adult could make a better bargain for himself or herself than any one
could do for him or her, no one could contend that the pauper child
apprenticed by Poor Law guardians to a manufacturer had any say or could
have any judgment as to the work which it was set to do. It had to be
protected, and experience showed that it had to be protected by law.
Free contract did not solve the question of the helpless child. It left
it to be "exploited" by the employer in his own interest, and whatever
regard might be shown for its health and well-being by individuals was a
matter of individual benevolence, not a right secured by the necessary
operation of the system of liberty.

But these arguments admitted of great extension. If the child was
helpless, was the grown-up person, man or woman, in a much better
position? Here was the owner of a mill employing five hundred hands.
Here was an operative possessed of no alternative means of subsistence
seeking employment. Suppose them to bargain as to terms. If the bargain
failed, the employer lost one man and had four hundred and ninety-nine
to keep his mill going. At worst he might for a day or two, until
another operative appeared, have a little difficulty in working a single
machine. During the same days the operative might have nothing to eat,
and might see his children going hungry. Where was the effective liberty
in such an arrangement? The operatives themselves speedily found that
there was none, and had from an early period in the rise of the machine
industry sought to redress the balance by combination. Now, combination
was naturally disliked by employers, and it was strongly suspect to
believers in liberty because it put constraint upon individuals. Yet
trade unions gained the first step in emancipation through the action of
Place and the Radicals in 1824, more perhaps because these men conceived
trade unions as the response of labour to oppressive laws which true
freedom of competition would render superfluous than because they
founded any serious hopes of permanent social progress upon Trade
Unionism itself. In point of fact, the critical attitude was not without
its justification. Trade Unionism can be protective in spirit and
oppressive in action. Nevertheless,