The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1884-12-20 00:00:00

C4e ,Steinrbrittge Viserture
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20th, 1884-

"UNFAIR TRADE WINDS."

We borrow the phrase from-our contempor-
ary Punch, who this week illustrates it with
d.isei.al picture of peverty and despair
winch fi!l too many homes to day, and
venteli will characterise many more humble
English dwellings 'ere the last days of the
year are spent. The question why such a
state of things exists in a country notorious
for the industry of its people is one that may
well occupy attention at a time when Par-
liament is out of session, and when practi-
cally there are no other formidable problems
•of pressing necessity shackling the Govern-
ment. Trade depression to the extent from
Yrhich we are all suffering, is all the more
inexplicable from the fact that the year has
been the best in agriculture of very many.
For -a number of years the steady but certain
decline in our trade was excused by one-
sided free traders on account of bad harvests,
unfavourable seasons, and the like ; but
shrewder and less bigoted observers marked
graduai yet inevitable collapse, which
seems almost now to have reached its con-
-animation, although Liberal politicians pay
no hoed to the impending disaster. There is
as much indifference on the part of the
overnment to the ruin of English trade and
agriculture, as there is manifested in-
dividually by the Vice-President of the
Council of Education to the mental destruc-
tion which the present educational policy is
entailing upon the intellects of the rising
generation. The Statistical Society have
just had a meeting in London, and it may
not be inappropriate to refer to its proceed-
ings conjeintly with the chronicle of current
events given in the same daily newspaper
which reports those proceedings. Before
the society an elaborate paper was read upon
the eornparative efficiency and earnings of
labour at home and abroad, and the Secre-
tary of the Iron and Steel Institute, who
was the author of the paper, maintained that
in nearly all the leading industries of the
world England occupied a superior position,
both in regard to the extent of the manufac-
tures, and the individual efficiency of the
workers. So that may be—in fact it is an
assertion which no British artisan would
desire to combat ; yet in spite of this statis-
tical fact an enormous proportion of our
working population is reduced to beggary to
day. Side by side with Mr. Jean's paper is
the report of a police court ease at Woolwich.
An able bodied Scoteliman, aged forty-six,
was charged with begging He had the ap-
pearance, report tells us, of an intelligent
working man ; he was grateful to the con-
stable who took him in charge, for he was
weary and footsore after a tramp of 800
miles in search of work. During all the time
of the dreary tramp he had never eaened a
penny; and so, said the magistrates, he
Might go on, under present conditions of
trade, a thousand miles longer. A man,
added his worship, who is thrown out of
work juat now has very little hope. Yet,
forsooth, our efficiency and earnings (?) of
labour are comparatively superior to those
of other countries! The 'Woolwich case ia
not an exception, and Mr. Harry Furniss,
w n 11(i tfined the despairing artisan an I.
fele ree,ereLy-st•rieken wife and child in full
view of the vessels carrying our commerce
from oar shores, was inspired by a knowledge
of the dire distress which is pinching more
keenly than over the industrial communities
in our large cities and towns. Nor is it to
the manufacturing centres that extreme
poverty is confined. The ca,ase that has
made trade stagnant threatens the agricul-
turist with absolute ruin. Farmers are
arrr ing fer re:le-iced rents, which land-
:oie.is Cid i:/ a,'..er-1 to concede, and as Lord
ideceaiii said the other day the agricul-
taea: Oarometer now stands at a lower point
than it has done for many years. The vital
Owl:ion then under the circumstances is—
What is the remedy P That is precisely
what the Liberal Government has been sup-
plicated to find out. Hitherto, however,
they have looked complacently on, caring
more to give Hodge a vote than to increase
his physical well-being—they have done
more. They have refused point blank to
enquire in an independent spirit into the
cause and probable remedy of this universal
depression, and the only hope that the
fleitisn working man has of obtaining the
ki.t ;id rte. L ion which is his due is to join
heaetile tee agitation being inaugurated in
London to bring about the investigation
prayed for by the recent conference of
artisans,