The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-08-31 00:00:00

STRIKES AND PRICES.

A Correspondent, "Z.," has sent the following to The I
Times
The controversy which now prevails between ems
ployers and operatives suggests for the consideration
of the political economist, and equally for the domestic
economist, whether society is or is not in danger of
putting a hasty construction upon facts, of adopting a
wrong view and thence a wrong remedy for only a
transient disturbance. Is it overlooked that we have
had strikes before and high prices before, and that
these have suhsided and fallen, or, in plain language,
found their level by an inevitable and natural law, the
action of which it is desirable on all sides not to inter.
rupt by an over exercise of artificial expedients?
Let as, for instance, take the price of coals; here
the rise has been very sudden, and at an unusual
season of the year, winch is a mitigating circum.
stance. The very poor are not able to indulge in
coal fires, and those who occupy the next superior
strata of life will discover, if they have kept house-
hold books, that coals were for a period much dearer
than they are 110,1 less than 20 years ago. Obviously
the most pleasant alternative to the consumiug opera-
tive for olsarness of fuel is to obtain a corresponding
gift or rise in salary from his employer such as
wid enable him to consmoe the name quantity of coals
as before without a thought of ego tomy or substitutes,
the same qtaantity of jaunty elating for his family in
place of what would be cheaper and warmer, and the
same quantity of meat requiriug to be cooked in
place of changing his dietary somewhat, or buying the
cheaper meat from Australia, which is iblr,atly cooked,
—vegetables and all, if he pleases. If employers do
this out of good nature, or out of the smpetflucus
profits, or out of the profits not entirely their own
which in these days of joint-stock companies they
undertake to administer for others, what happens?
Why, beyond • doubt, that the inconvenience of
high prices in coals, lamest, and in sumptuous cloth-
ing is prolonged until for many of the consumers
dearth approaches to total abstinence or famine, and
when many of the employers, however unconsciotusly
to themselves, will have assisted in creating a tumified
tariff of wages or salaries for those more humble
members of their craft who had difficulty enough
already to make both ends meet.
Oh, it is answered, you forget that Mr. Jevons and
M. Chevalier have told us how since gold has become
permanently 'heavier commodities hays become per.
, manontly doom. and hones the propriety, if not
, usisoftlei, of affw Matsu lietwesa =Own mad

persons engaged by them at fixed paymenta in money.
Notwithstanding these professional authorities. I tnke
leave to assert another doctrine. I contend that as gild
falls in price by reason of its abundance, the same
rule applies to it as to any other commodity in
this, that labour flees from it and seeks a new point of
occupation. lam prepared for any extravagant pro-
position, such as to suppose • mountain of gold or •
fountain of gold; they are but creations of the fancy
not to the purpose when we are speaking of thingswhich
are the result of continuous labour and industry, and
not antagonistic to the universal law of supply and
demand. A paragraph in your paper of three days ago
tells us that the yield of Australian gold for the first
seven months of this year has been leas than in
the same seven months of 1870 and 1871. Treating
this, however, as nothing in the argument, I venture
to say that if commodities of one variety are dearer
than they were a quarter of a century ago, another
variety is cheaper, and that, by a law analogous to
that of Nature, which orders a mean of moisture or a I
I mean of temperature, it is impossible to be otherwise,
except for periods of not very long duration. Agaiva
the dearness of coals, meat, and house-rent I oppose
the cheapness of tea, sugar, fish, and conveyance ; corn
and rice are neither dearer nor cheaper.
I would not be understood to deny that gold is
somewhat cheaper than it was, becalve the release
of large masses of it by the forced employment of paper
money in populous countries, such as France, Italy,
and the United Slates, coupled with the continuous,
however diminishing, streams from the producing places,
must have a certain effect. I only urge that when we are
told of a general rise in the gold-price of commodities of
25 to 30 per cent, the effect is enormously exaggerated.
I am more disposed to calculate the rise by estimating
the ancient and the existing relations of gold towards
c.irn or silver. We know that for the first 50 years of
the current century pure gold towards pure silver was
in the steady relation of 1 to 15i, as ascertained by the
double or shifting standard in those proportions at
which the French Mint was abundantly supplied with
either of the precious metals. The relstion is lower
now, but not yet so low as Ito 15. Judged of by this
criterion the rise in commodities ought not to be esti-
mated at more than 3 per cent, and, judged of by the
criterion of corn, it would not be so much.

A word now about strikes. The earliest strikes we
read of in the history of England occurred in the 15th
century, after a period of fearful sickness, which had
so thinned the number of workmen and artisans as to
enable them to refuse to be employed at the previous
e ale of wages; and they were right. Yet the
most cruel laws, even to capital punishment, were
put in force to compel them to resume work ;
then followed, on the other side, the ill-treating
and murdering cf each othe4 beyond anything
we have seen of late years, which has sometimes
been bad enough. Subsequent legislation gra-
dually relaxed what were called the Strike Laws until
Joseph
Hums, efforts of Huskisson, and eventually of
Hums, reduced them to insignificance. When I de-
fend strikes as an expedient for raising the remunera-
lion of labour, I do not defend the generally inherent
vice attending them of intimidation or misdirection by
agitators and backers leading on the men to miscal-
culate their employers' power of endurance, and pro-
bably of their own; not that this can defeat the
ultimate and only possible adjustment, but greatly
injuresby retarding it.
' •

In nearconnexion with the strikes the manufacturing
engineer has to face for his old contracts the augmented
price of iron, easily enough explained by its employ-
ment in place of wood in every direction, and almost
for every purpose, but especially in shipbuilding. In-
deed the time may come, probably will come, when
every fishing-boat will be a steam-boat; but if it were
possible for the rate of wages to be unduly and for any
long time raised by strikes, the capital and the high de-
gree of engineering skill which are now the just pride of
England will migrate to-other countries with a facility
and rapidity greater even than can be obtained by the
lower class of workmen through emigration. Nothing
goes to the best market so cheaply and so easily as capital
and skilfulness. Already our steamboat companies are
beginning to look about them, and instead of entering I
upon contracts to build. are seeking for steamers which
it is well known are to be bought ready built at not ex•
receive prices, or are meditating to run their old
steamers for a year or two longer, awaiting the time
when they foresee that they will be able to build more
advantageously. Strikes may disturb trade and do so
, very seriously, by driving inilustry eyen within the
I country out of one occupation into another, to the in-
jury and inconvenience of the workmen generally, but
especially for the artisans; for all that, I venture to
maintain that the operative classes have not the fa-
culty of commanding the price of a commodity, except
for a short period of time, and it is clear as daylight
tnat if they are unable to do that which is impossible
—namely, to make a new scale of prir..es throughout
the world, it is utter vanity for them to supptee that
they can command anew scale of wages.