The Express.
London, England, 1867-05-22 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, MAY 22, 1967.

NATIONAL REFORM UNION.—St. James's-
-1 all,Besset..stret am! PI ontlIlly„.

A SFAXIND OREAAT REFORM MEETING ill be held hi the
above Hall on SATURDAY EVENING next, May SS, at 7 o'clock.
Doors open at O.
SAMUEL MORLEY Esq. In the chair.

Th. meetinti;;iiibiraddieis7.4l;y:idiitiiiiiiimiu, seq.,
Y. P.,
A. 11. Ward, Dn., M.P. Thomas Harley, Nay., M.P.
WUliam tiehollehl. rag., Y.P. Thomas Hughes. Eaq., Y.P.Charles Unpin, tag., M. P. The irlhiumibue.
Sir Jolla Gray, M.P. T. Mason Junes, EM.

Admlasiou roa

TELEGRAPHIC INTELLIGENCE.

(iiima's TZLEGRANS.)
FRANCE.

PARIS. MAY 21.

In to-day's sitting of the Chamber of Deputies
M. Picard brought in the following interpeUs-
tion to the government :—" Will the liberty of
meeting for electoral purposes be henceforth ap-
plied in individual elections of deputies to the
chamber, and in the approaching elections of
members to the Councils-General r

Queen Isabella of Spain will arrive in this
capital upon the 20th June, with the King and the
Prince of the Asturias. The royal party will take
up their residence at the Tuileries.
Intelligence from Rome states that the Pope has
refused his consent to the project brought forward
by Signor Ferrara in the Italian Chamber relative
to the ecclesiastical property.
The Etendard of this evening states that the
treaty negotiated at the London Conference received
the signature of the Grand Duke of Luxemburg
yesterday. The King of the Greeks is stated to
have addressed from St. Petersburg, where ho is
I now staying, to the cabinets of Paris, Berlin, and
Vienna, an explicit and detailed memorial relative
to the existing subjects of dissension between
Greece and the Porte. The Pattie of this evening
publishes letters from the island of New Caledonian,
dated March 8, containing the following :—" The
English emigrant ship Challenge, which arrived at
Nonmea on the ith March, delivered to the autho-
rities a report setting forth that mutinies had
broken out on board the ships Curlew, from the
Sandwich Islands, and Mary Iva, from Sydney.
The European portion of their crows were massa-
cred and the vessels destroyed."

PARIS, MAT 21, Evssrca.

The French Mediterranean squadron is to sail
to Malta, and await there the arrival of the Sultan
of Turkey. His Majesty will be received at Toulon
by the French Minister of Marine.
The Etaulard of this evening says :—" Private
letters received here from Roumania state it to be
likely that important events will shortly take place
there. The party hostile to a close union of Mol-
davia and Wallachia demands that both Princi-
palities be independent of each other, and be
united only by the tie of a common ruler,
namely, Prince Charles.

AMERICA.

(FROM OCR SPICIAL COI

NRY? YORK. MAT 7.

The labour strikes still continue all over the
country, and if they succeed in nothing else,
they certainly have succeeded in effecting a serious
derangement of industry. The cause of all the
trouble is of course the excessive lowness of wages.
I doubt if in the history of this country wages
have ever been so low, estimated, as they ought
to be, in food, and clothing, and house rent, and
not, as they too commonly are, in money. The
harvest last year was a bad one, and the result has
been that flour,which usually sells at nine or ten dol-
' lars a barrel, has been eighteen dollars through-
: out the winter, and is now 21. In fact, the dearth
has been so great that the Northern States,
perhaps fur the first time since the coun-
try was settled, have been importing wheat, and
the demand has been so great that it has actually
paid to send it from San Francisco round the Cape
,to New York—a fact all the more extraordinary,
because until the last year or two California has
netAlg been able to supply her own wants. The con-
sumption and waste of cattle during the war has
also been severely felt in the markets. Beef and
mutton are double their old price, and show no
sign of falling. The high tariff and heavy internal
taxation of course keep up the price of clothing.
A coat costs more in this country now than a whole
suit used to cost four years ago. The abrogation
of the Reciprocity Treaty with Canada, which
the protectionists were able to secure by the
aid of the hostility towards the Canadians, bred
by their conduct and language during the war, of
course at once nearly doubled the price of timber,
as the greater portion of the timber to be found in
the market in this part of the country has for many
years been drawn from the great Canadian pine
forests. As most houses in America outside the
large cities are built of wood, the effect of this rise
has been, of course, almost to put a stop to house-
building. It is safe to say that it Low costa
three times as much to construct a house in any
material as it did three years ago. Of course
people must have shelter, and the population is
!growing as rapidly as ever ; consequently house-
building would go on as of yore at any price
if there were no fear of a fall. But everybody
feels satisfied that the present state of things will
Inot last, and that either on the resumption of
ispecie payments, or at some period not very re-
I mote, prices will come back, if not to the old
standard, to one very near it. Consequently there
is a general reluctance to fix capital in any way
that can possibly be avoided. Men do not like the
idea of putting ten thousand dollars into a thing
which in three or four years may only sell for, or
yield them interest on, five thcusand. There has
accordingly been an almost total cessation of house
building for the last three years. This may sound
like an exaggeration, but it is really no exaggeration
at all. In the large cities wealthy men, who will
be comfortably lodged, and to whom the price of
any house is but a trifle, have every year been
building themselves a few dozen mansions in each
of the great towns ; but it is safe to say that the
inc ease in the number of houses for the class of
moderate means, or for the working class, has not
been one-twentieth part so large as the increase of
the population. In New York the state of things
is rather worse than elsewhere ; rents here have
I more than trebled since 1863 ; but all over the
Icountry there is positive distress for house room.
People of small incomes are compelled to deny
themselves all their luxuries and many of their
comforts in order to keep a roof over their heads,
while the working men are crowded into miserable
lodgings, or find themselves forced to choose be-
tween absolutely bad food and bad clothing and the
surrender of their homesteads.

During the war, the excitement, the steady rise
of prices under the expansion of the currency, and
the great demand for labour kept up by the enor
mous drafts made on the market by the army and
by government orders, kept the labouring classes in
good spirits ; but they now find themselves down
upon what gold miners call the "hard pan," and
they can think of no mode of relief but a rise in
wages. The manufacturers go to Congress every
year, and plead the dearness of labour as a reason
for asking for higher protection ; this raises
prices, and the labourers in their turn
go to the manufacturers, and plead the
dearness of living as an excuse for asking
higher wages, and so on, in one unvarying
round. The manufacturers, of course, find trade
extraordinarily dull ; there is no demand for any-
thing : and yet prices remain high as ever. Many
of the great mills and workshops are kept going
merely to keep the operatives together, and pre-
vent suffering. There, therefore, could hardly be
a time when "strikes" would be leas reasonable or
less likely to produce any result than at this mo-
' ment ; and yet strikes are the order of the day.
There is no trade in which a strike is not raging.
The trades unions are not here the perfect organiza-
tion they are with you. The couutry is too large,
and the working men are too little of a distinct dam,
and are divided by differences of origin and religion
intotoomany distinct sets, for any union tosecuretbe
`widener of ramification or perfection of discipline
secured by those of England. The consequence is
that strikes are partial, isolated, and desultory ;
but they are incessant. They are at this moment
more-general than they have over been, and there
lis no immediate prospect of their termination. The
eight-hour law, which was passed by the Illinois
Legislature last winter, and which has just gone
into operation, has thrown the large towns in the
State into commotion, and given the striking
mania in the West a violence which it dues not
display in this part of the world.
Anything more absurd than this eight-hour agita-
tion has been from first to last it is difficult to
imagine. It was begun by some of the better
class of workmen, who believed, I think
I sincerely, that in most branches of manufacture
a reduction of two hours in the day's labour would
produce such favourable effects on the moral and
, physical condition of the labourers that there might
be as much work done in eight hours as in ten, and
I think the idea of a large number of them was,
that the change could never be brought about
without making it compulsory by legislation.
When the thing came to be fully discussed of
course the difficulties were fully exposed, but owing
Ito the enormous profits which the manufacturers
were making two years ago the economical objec-
tions to the scheme made little impression on the
agitators. They denied that a reduction in the hours
of labour would materially diminish production, and
maintained that even if it did it ought not to cause