The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-01-06 00:00:00

JUSTICE TO THE WORKING CLASSES.

A correspondent, " If. C.," has written two letters to
The Times, on the question as to what the working
classes might rightly claim from the Legislature, and
in the following letter he proposes to carry the research
a little further. He says :

At the present moment the authority In ftngland Is
chiefly wielded by the upper middle classes. if the power
to be taken out of their hands,i t will pass over the hels
the lower middle classes, who are the Gallion of out
society, and will fall to or be seised by the nissses, by our
working men and artisans. One need not consult the Alma.
sack of Wide] or the Prophecies of Cumming to torten that
thestruggle fur the next twenty years will be for supremacy
between these two classes. Perhaps, without golins, out of
the beaten tracks of observation, one might emundate the
further proposition that it is a mere question of time when
the working classes, with more or less despotism, will hold
the destinies ot England, her prosperity and honour in their
roping.

If this be so, it behoves us to consider, not only what the
working classes may claim as a right, but also what they
will endeavour to claim na a right, and as a consequence to
educate them to a jolt perception id their true interests,
At present they have many ambitious guides and patrons
honest and earnest lut most ot us are inclined to
repudiate the wisdom and excellence of their lesson,.
Are Messrs, linollangh and 'bluer, Professor Beesley, and
it Charles Mike fair representatives of the fair requirements
of their clients? Do the lower Masses desire or need train-
ing in the branches of haute politigere, orsin the more simple
rudiments of religion, decency, aobriety, education, and
domestic happiness? Are they so thoroughly persuaded that
voting by ballot is a divine panacea Do they really, and,
indeed, hanker after the gaily-painted fruits of atheism, re-
publicanism, communism, and revolution 1
There are many straws which seem to show that the cur-
rent does not set strongly hi this direction. Even if it does,
mismall majority of comm.-sense individuals would think
It well to stem such a streankwith all the strength that God
has endowed them with, and to divert the Bowing tide into
the stiller channel of domestic legislation, instead of allow-
ing it to undermine the roots of an ancient and workable
Constitution. Factory, mining, education, and Poor Law
Bills are more likely to promote the welfare ot the working
classes than Ballot Bills and the overthrow of the House of
Lords. What these classes require, what they will demand,
what justice, public opinion, and the strong arm will more
or leas willingly concede sootier or later is, that, now they
have come of age, they should step into their inheritance
—the elements of civilised life in a Christian country.
They have not received this inheritance yet. Many thou-
sands of willing-hearted and able-bodied men cannot get
work to do and rannot emigrate. To many thous:mils a
days illness means a day's starvation for them and their
wives and children. Education in the three Ws wail given
them lint last year, and up to the present time no efficient
provision has been made to prevent the manihild horr,a, of
overcrowding in pestilential courts. If any one, desirous to
earn something of the condition of our lower classes in Lon-
don, turns with dismay from dry statistics he may, with
great advantage to himself, run over the admirable pages of
such a little aortas Epionles of an Obscure Life.

An estimate of what the elements of civilized life in a
Christian country are has somewhat enlarged in our days.
At present England says. even to the lowest of the low, " We
Wad ourselves to give you a night's lodging and prevent you
from starving; we bind ourselves to commence the mental
and, in some sense, the moral education of your children."
Will it not follow as a corollary that she will be compelled to
add to the decent and respectable artisan, 'We bind our-
selves to provide you with decent and respectable homes, and
to prevent the present indecent and unhealthy overcrowding
of London courts I"
But will not this pauperize the recipients? No doubt at
first it will tend to do so. But, on the other hand, the main
reason that the giving of charity demoralizes the recipient

Is because the recipient acimmta it not as his due, but as
charity. It does not demoralize the public servant to get
his retiring pension. Ile says,—" I get this yearly income
and I do nothing for it, and I am not ashamed ;" nor need
be. Then, again, our present system of charity, which is not
system, which is not so much indiscriminate as dleerlmin !
ate In giving to the clever Inipestor who live, by his trade,
I, at the rant of the demoralization of the poorer clansea. If
they could see that charity was equal-handed and clear-
aighted, I do not think there scald arise PO hitter a cry
against pauperising. I do not think that charity assuming the
form of justice will do much harm—certainly will not do
rolonged harm. Evil is hydra-headed, and ills well if, in
icing id! ten heads, only one grows its place. There
a manifest evil. At all coats it meat be redressed. No
Mt the halcyon ilays %ill never come when ear kitchens
a all roll away as a ecrall,.when there will be uo need to say
" No" to • beggar, when a working man shall seek in vain for
a fitting London rookery to lodge himself and his belongings.
Rut "he who aims at the clouds may chance to hit a tree.'
Something may be done.
Two won's to the political economist. It will pay to lodge
our pigs, poultry, dogs, horses, workman, and all other
beast, of civilized life, each in a manner suitable to their
kind. We preside in our stables and kennels over certain
natural instincts if their temente in order to improve their
temper, the length of their life, their strength and health-
fulness, their geaeral usefulness to their masters. It will
pay, if, solar Os we can, we regulate the conditions of life
of the lower classes, and see also to their kennels. It Is
well to Improve the breed. It is not consistent with our
" enlightsned civilization" that the inmates of our towns
Should be e head shorter than the Inmates of our villages,
and that, when draughted Into the Militia or Line, the work
of the former, expressed mathematically in foot-pounds,
should be so startlingly lean than that of the latter. Our
present system of neglecting the back-slums is "worse than
• crime—it Is a blunder."

- -
The two letters that you, Sir, have permitted me to seal to
your columns do not exhaust the subject. I fear, however,
I have exhausted your patience, and will not trouble you
with a third letter on the French mistake in Imperial times
of providing unlimited work with no definite limits of
wages in Paris, or with the future out-look of the Pea-
body treats, or with the exceedingly difficult question how
to provide sufficient work for all men able and willing to
work. It only remains for me to end as I began my first
letter I am a Nobody. Ifs society con be formed with
a Somebody at the head, with two definite objects—the
mat, to move the Legislature to prevent overcrowding and
to regulate lodging-houses in a more efficient manner: the
next, to buy up the foul Lomlon courts and to introduce
light, air, cleanliness, awl the love of God inside them, I,
for one (l speak as a Nobody), should be must happy to give
ES a year.