points at issue between them can be fairly understood by any persons not
conversant with the practical details of the trade...

"2. Nor do I think they have put their case as well as they might. For
instance, if it be true that they themselves have invented many, or most,
of the improvements in their tools and machinery, they have an argument in
favour of keeping out unskilled labourers, which is unanswerable, and yet,
that they have never used--viz.: 'Your masters make hundreds and thousands
by these improvements, while we have no remuneration for this inventive
talent of ours, but rather lose by it, because it makes the introduction
of unskilled labour more easy. Therefore, the only way in which we can get
anything like a payment for this inventive faculty of which we make you a
present over and above our skilled labour, for which you bargained, is to
demand that we, who invent the machines, if we cannot have a share in the
profits of them, shall at least have the exclusive privilege of using them,
instead of their being, as now, turned against us.' That, I think, is a
fair argument; but I have seen nothing of it from any speaker or writer.

"3. I think whatever battle is fought, must be fought by the men
themselves. The present dodge of the Manchester school is to cry out
against us, as Greg did. 'These Christian Socialists are a set of mediaeval
parsons, who want to hinder the independence and self-help of the men, and
bring them back to absolute feudal maxims; and then, with the most absurd
inconsistency, when we get up a corporation workshop, to let the men work
on the very independence and self-help of which they talk so fine, they
turn round and raise just the opposite yell, and cry, The men can't be
independent of capitalists; these associations will fail _because_ the men
are helping themselves'--showing that what they mean is, that the men shall
be independent of every one but themselves--independent of legislators,
parsons, advisers, gentlemen, noblemen, and every one that tries to help