Testimony of Mr. Alfred Mault, Secretary of the General Builders Association, to the Royal Commission on Trades Unions, June 5, 1867 Earl of Lichfield: What is your idea with reference to the amount of work done now, compared with what it used to be some years ago? Mr. Mault: I am sure that as much work is not done now as used to be done, and that is attributable to the feeling generated by the union which I have just referred to, namely, that a man in his contract with his master must just make it simply a matter of bargain. But the old feeling of his having a duty to perform, and his pleasurably doing that duty to his master, is to be put upon one side, and that he is to think that if he does too much work, other people will be kept out of employment. It is to the feeling generated by that idea or principle upon which the union is founded, that I attribute a great deal more of the difficulties and evils that characterize the present condition of the intercourse between master and man than to anything else. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
