The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-03-14 00:00:00

eur Tonlon brrtsponbent.

TWA deem it right to state that ire do v.t. at AOC 'lmes
oil/Iml,, with Our cOrreSp.iitalt'd 1,1

The reconstructed Minigtry has resumed the parlia-
mentary campaign under difficult and yet somewhat
favourable circumstance.. Ireland, the Irish and
Scotch Reform Bills, the Alabama claims education,
bankruptcy reform, the Abyssinian war, the budget,
and the demands of the more advanced Reformers,
constitute so many difficulties; but there appears to
be a pretty general desire to give the Ministry a fair
trial, and no factious oppoeition for opposition sake is
anticipated. When Mr. Disraeli accepted the onerous
and important poet of Prime Minister, it was
very generally remarked that he was the natural
successor of Lord Derby, and his conduct during the
debates since his accession to this high honour has borne
out the remark. Ile speaks somewhat slower and in a
more dignified way than when he was Chancellor of
the Exchequer, as though he felt the additional weight
of honour that rests upon him. The Foreign Secretary's
speech on the Alabama claims has produced a very
favourable effect. All hope of an amicable settlement
is not lost, and it may be hoped that ere long John
Bull and Brother Jonathan may come to a mutual ar-
rangement.
It might have been thought that we have had dis-
cussions enough as to the propriety of this or that
suffrage relating to men, but now we are threatened
with an agitation for women suffrage. A petition
signed by 1,500 inhabitants of Liverpool has been
presented to the House of Commons, praying that in
any future measure for the reform of Parliament, pro-
vision may be made for granting the suffrage to
women, under similar conditions to those of men. Of
course there are arguments in favour of women having
votes, amid perhaps the world will come to this some
day, but women are scarcely prepared for them yet.
But about the greatest ai imment against giving votes
to women is the practical argument that they don't
want vtitee. Let the reader make inquiries among his
female acquaintances, and he will find that • woman
having a desire for a vote is quite a rare exception.
Why, then, should we encourage a new agitation?
Woman's true sphere is home; and society would not
be improved by the establishment of a Woman's '
Suffrage League; by bands of women parading the I
streets with bands and banners; or by public meetings
with Mrs. Strongmind as chairwoman, and cut-and-
, dried resolutions moved and seconded by women.
A meeting of delegates from the London trades has
just been held, with Mr. George Potter in the chair,
which suggests some important considerations. The
chairman, after having referred to the manner in
which he et insiders tratles'-un ions work, says : "But
(1 if the workmen were made a party to the contracts for
work, and were to participate in a share of the profits
realised, then they would take a wider and fairer view
of the demands made for services, because labour
would then receive, not a hypothetical share which
wages represented, but a bona fide share in the profits
arising from industry." It is rather strange that the
advocates of tradesbunions should thus advocate the
workmen having "a share of the profits realised," and
yet shut their eyes to the obvious corollary to such
a proposition— that the right to a share in profits
ought to involve the liability to a share in the
lose. I share in the opinion that co-operation, where
practicable, would be a powerful corrective to the evils
of trades-unionism (even their staunchest advocates
must admit that there are some evils connected with
it), and co-operation of course includes a share of losses
as well as of profits. A great conference on the rela-
tions of capital and labour is talked of, and a National
Labour Parliament is to be convened in London during
the first week in May. This has a very grand sound,
and the performance is scarcely likely to come up to
the promise ; but too much praise cannot be given to
any attempt to settle disputed questions by fair argu-
ment rather than by strikes. This Labour Parliament
will discuss the position and prospects of trades.
unions, the advisability of legislation on the subject,
a plan for organised emigration fur surplus labour,
raid the representation of labour in Parliament.
Sufficient attention has never been devoted to one
of these points—emigration. It has been proved over I
and over again that fainilies could be aided to emigrate
for less money than they can be supported in the
Union workhouse—not a very extravagant supposi-
tion ; and yet this alternative is always presenting
itself, and always the most costly step is taken.
Could we have an organised system of emigration,
for instance, applied to the still existing distress in
East London, what a boon this would be to the per-
sons assisted to emigrate, to the ratepayers of the die.
trict, and to the workmen who would thus be relieved
of poor and competing brethren.
Mr. Charles Dickens has had a glorious reception
and a brilliant success in America. On the 18th of
next month the journalists of New York will give him
• farewell banquet, and on the 23rd he leaves for
England. lie will be heartily welcomed here as a
matter of course, and on dit that a number of English
journalists, actors, and artists, not wishing to be out-
done by their American brethren, intend to give him a
hearty welcome in the good old-fashioned style, namely,
at the festive board.
Here is an advertisement of a gentleman who
expresses his readiness to deliver three lectures " con-
taining an uncompromising exposure of the mental,
moral, physical, social and economical evils r•sulting
from the use of tobacco." What a fearf al bill of
indictment against smokers is here indicated ! If all
these varied evils do exist in cigars and tobacco, verily
we as a nation are in a bad way, for the consumption
of tobacco is largely on the increase. It seems that
while in 1861 there were only thirty-five million
pounds of tobacco consumed in the United Kingdom,
in 1865 there were thirty-nine million pounds, or
twenty-one ounces per head per annum; so that the
anti-tobacco missionaries do not make much headway.
By-the-way, what has become of the Anti-Tobacco
Society ? If it is alive it shows no signs of animation.
The weather is genial, seasonable, and promising,
and I suppose it is Spring—early Spring. we will say;
but we condemned Londoners see nothing of "Spring's
delights" which are supposed to be now reviving."
No doubt "verdant leaflets clothe each spray," or some
of the sprays at all events, though we are yet far from
" blithe May-day." But we in London see nothing of
all this, for every tree and every bit of greenery has been
cleared away, and the denizen of the great city may
say with Tom Hood (it is a great compliment to the
younger to say that the Tom Hood is meant) :
Where are ye, Landon meads and bowers,
And gardens redolent of flowers
Wherein the Zeph}r woos?
Alas • Moor Yields are field, no more;
see Hatton Garden bricked all o'er,
And that bars wood, St. John's.
I have a personal grievance, and will relieve my
mind by grumbling, especially as others must sutler
from the same thing. Not to mention names—for the
grievance does not exist in connection with one railway
only—let me state that I have a season ticket to
travel on the North-North East Railway, betwe-n
London and Greenheath. Some five miles beyond
Greenheath, on the same railway, is Slushtomin-the-
Hole, where a friend has the misfortune to live. Now
when I do myself the pleasure and the misery of going
to Slughton to see my friend, the railway people
Ignore my season ticket to Greenheath, and make me
pay from London to Slushton, although I have pur-
chased the right to travel as far as Greenheath on
merely showing nay ticket. Of course, I can avail
myself of this right; get out at Greenheath ; and go
on to Slushton by the next train ! But I submit that
I ought not to be called on to perpetrate such an
absurdity.

I see that in Liverpool there is a movement for
obtaining a farthing local postage for letters posted
and delivered within the borough. With all due
respect to the Liverpoolliana the arguments in favour
of so great a change must necessarily be to a great
extent one-sided. It may be perfectly practicable to
have a cheap local postage—although a farthing
seems unconscionably cheap; but we must bear in
mind that the grand principle of the penny postage is
the average cent and profit. If you post a letter to a
friend living half a mile off, the charge of one penny
may in the abstract appear rather high, but what
about a man living at John o'Groat's sending a letter
to a friend at the Land's End for a penny? The
United Kingdom penny postage as it exists is a
glorious boon, and there is nothing in it to grumble at.
Would it not be better to agitate for a halfpenny
postage for newspapers? The anomalies of news-
paper postage are great. As much is charged for
carrying the smallest newspaper in existence a few
miles as for conveying anywhere in the United King-
dom a paper that weighs nearly four ounces. The uni-
form penny postage for printed matter under tlis weight
in a great improvement on previous systems, but we
want further reform in the same direction. We might
take a lesson in this matter from America. There any
newspaper under thrce ounces maybe Btllt to ally part of
the United States for one cent postage, each additional
ounce or part of an ounce being charged enother cent;
and weekly newspapers sent by the publither to actual
subscribers within the county where published go free.
The latter arrangement wouhl never find much favour
here, for it is obviously unfair to the Post Office. It
is partly owing, however, to this system of cheap
newspaper postage that 'America is so far ahead of us
in the number of her journals. And npeopos of
America, I am very iforry to hear that the reduction
of postage on letters to and from that country and
our own, from one shilling to sixpenoa, is atfout to be
altered. The old rate of one shilling is to lie restored.
Ifdfore's the pity. 'rite sixpenny rate, it is said, does
not par. Perhaps not, at first; but give it time to