INDUSTRIAL AND PROVIDENT PARTNERSHIPS. (Hansard, 18 March 1852)

§ MR. SLANEY

, after presenting two petitions in favour of Industrial and Provident Partnerships, proceeded to move for leave to bring in a Bill to legalise the formation of such partnerships. He said that the discussion which had just taken place was not a bad introduction to the Motion of which he had given notice, showing, as it did, how difficult it was for the humbler classes of society in this country to find a safe mode of investing their scanty savings. His attention had been devoted to the subject for many years. So far back as 1830 he obtained a Committee of the House to consider the means of lessening the evils arising from the fluctuation of employment in manufacturing districts. On that Committee he had the able assistance of the late Lord Spencer, and the Report which the Committee afterwards presented to the House stated the difficulties under which the working classes laboured with respect to their investments, and pointed out certain remedies for the purpose of removing those difficulties. In 1840 it was his good fortune to obtain another Committee on the evils affecting the humble classes in large towns; and it was his lot, in connexion with that inquiry, to meet with many intelligent operatives in different parts of 1257 the Kingdom, who all expressed their earnest desire that facilities should he given to them to make investments of their savings. In 1850 he was fortunate enough to obtain a Committee to investigate the legal obstacles which stood in the way of investments of the middle and humbler classes, and those obstacles were clearly pointed out in the Report of that Committee. Last year a Committee sat upon the Law of Partnership, and the obstacles which that law placed in the way of these humble parties, and they reiterated the recommendations stated in the first report, that those obstacles ought to be removed which prevented the advantageous employment of small savings. The main principle which affected the welfare of the wages of the people, was simple and clear. It was too often neglected, but was of the first consequence to be understood. Their wages must depend upon the proportion of the supply to the demand, and the amount of capital employed. The legal obstacles which stood in the way of the accumulation of capital, and of the use of that capital in the demand for labour, were extremely great. When these parties joined together their capital and industry, if one single person took hold of the partnership property, there was no tribunal before which he could be brought to answer for his misdeeds; there was no mode in which they could sue or be sued. What they asked was this: the enactment of a simple law, enabling them to invest in directors of their own choice their own property, and the establishment of a simple tribunal for the settlement of those disputes. They did not ask for unlimited liability, but simply that the provisions of the Friendly Societies Act (13 & 14 Vict., c. 115) should be extended to them.