The Express.
London, England, 1867-09-10 00:00:00

THE WORKING CLAS4K.4.

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Commenting on the proceedings of tho " National
Labour Congress" held last month in Chicago, the Times
observes that one is almost tired of hearing America
pointed out to us as the place where the working man en-
joys all the rights belonging to him, and lives in amity
with his employer. But when we discard the effects of
imaeution and look at the country u its inhabi-
tants see it every day, there is little in its social
state but a faithful reproduction of the evils which
were once thought peculiar to the Old World. The '
American workman is no better satisfied than the
English, and, indeed, ho is apt to be even more discon-
tented, because he finds it impossible to realise the vision
of perfect equality of conditions. Our chief men do not
strive to impress upon the minds of the people the notion
that " it was never intended" one man should work while
another looked on. That theory is a sad ono for the
millions of the human race who are born to a condition in
which manual labour is an honourable necessity ; but, de-
plorable and mischievous as all must consider it, it is the
only contribution yet made by America to the solution of
the labour question. The time will come when the mis-
fortunes of the American working classes will cause them
to be even more dissatisfied, unless they accommodate
themselves to the only usage which has never varied in
the human family, and which is certain to endure while
the world lasts.

The longer the Manchester commissioners pursue their
inquiries into the operations of the local trades' unions
the more thoroughly, says the Herald, does it be-
come manifest that the public has been over hasty
in the judgment it has passed upon /:roadhead and
the Associated Sheffield Saw-grinders. From the first
day of the inquiry at Manchester it became evi-
dent that we were but entering upon a second stage of
the same journey along which Messrs. Overend and his
colleagues had led us ; that we were but beginning a fresh
chapter of the volume wherein the exploits of Crookes and
his compeers are inscribed. The modas operandi varies,
but the spirit and intent of those who use it arc precisely
the same. Rattening changes its form, but is the same in
nature, and "acts of intimidation, outrage, and wrong,"
almost worthy to take rank with the murder of Linley and
the blowing up of Fearnehough, are cropping up quite

Those who read the evidence before the Manchester
commission will, says the Standard, be inclined to con-
clude that Broadhead was not such a rare monster after
all, and that Sheffield can no longer claim any special pre-
eminence in crime.

The organisation of labour takes to-day a shape very
far removed from the narrow and selfish exclusiveness
which was the first result of the awakening of the classes
that live by daily toil to a sense of their own importance
in the social scheme—to a belief in their own necessity as
an intelligent constituent element in the economy of a
modern state. The policy which has been endorsed by the
International Congress of Working Men at Lausanne is one
which, in the opinion of the Star, must command the
sympathy of every true-hearted liberal whatever may be
his sectional partialities, whatever may be his class pre-
judices; even more than the programme of the Peace
League at Geneva, because bearing the greater impress of
practicability and political thoroughness.