Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-01-26 00:00:00

suppose ; because, it is plain, they do not want
What they desire, is for every one to be

left at liberty to do as. he likes : a state of things
under which there can be no order, or safety, or

tranquillity ; and. in the continuance of which it
would certainly be found that " chaos had come

again." It was said by a great philosopher, that
" the surest way to prevent seditious (if the times
do bear it), is to take away the matter of them."
But when the people not only supply the matter
themselves, but as fast as it is taken away in one
direction, reproduce it in another, seditious become

too inveterate to be prevented, whether the. times
will bear it or not. They must therefore be
grappled with, and exterminated. The snake must

not merely be scotched, but killed outright

ADVANCE IN FACTORY WAGES

WE had occasion, the other day, to censure

those mischievous combinations of workpeople

called " strikes." But, in doing so, we acknow-
ledged the right of the working classes, equally
with the rest of the community, to look after

their own interests. We admitted that the working
man had the same right to take his.labour to the
best market, as the manufacturer had- the products
of his mills, or the merchant the cargoes of his
ships. That of which they make merchandise,, as
we showed, is their industry ; and this they are
not only at liberty to dispose of to the best'
advantage, but it is often an imperative duty to
do so. What we object to, is the attempt to

impose unreasonable demands upontheir employers;
and, worse than all, the having recourse to any
coercive means to make others comply with what
they do not consider it expedient or proper,. under
the circumstances, to do. Workpeople are certainly
not to be debarred from requiring such wages as
they think they ought to have,and to obtain them
if they can ; but they arc to do so in a spirit of
peace and subordination ; anti, on no account, are
they to intimidate their fellows who,moy decline
going along with them, or to, interrupt them, by

violence or otherwise, in peacefully pursuing their

own cOurse.

It is gratifying ,to find that the factory operatives;
of this and the adjoining counties, finding it
necessary at this moment to. seek an . advance efi
wages, are acting in a very different manner front,
the colliers, whose " strike" at Wigan was the
occasion of our recent remarks.. They have made
a draught of a memorial_ to their employers, setting
forth their views upon the subject,—the movement

evidently assuming the character altogether of a
respectful request, not, as in the other case, of a
peremptory demand. They set out by stating to
their employers, that " as it is the unquestionable
right as well as duty of every man to remote his
own interest and the well-being of his family by

every fair and legitimate means in his power,"
they feel justified in addressing tUera upon this.

They then remark, that it '•is a fact
upon which both employers and workmen may
congratulate themselves and each other, that the
various agencies which had acted for some time so
injuriously upon our commeree, and paralysed the
industrial energies of the country, haves entirely
ceased their operation, and have been succeeded

occasion

by a renewal of prosperity in many of our manu-
factures, especially the cotton trade," in which
both parties have so deep an interest. And having
thus given the grounds of their application, they
proceed to show that although "it is often
affirmed that employers and workmen have an

identity of interest in the various undertakings
in which they are engaged," they yet feel con-
strained to declare that, however true such an

assumption may be in the abstract, they can by

no means reconcile it with their experience of the
last few years,—for that they have not been
permitted duly to participate in the high state of
prosperity to which the great extension of manu-
facturing operations, and the large fortunes which
have been made thereby, so forcibly testify. The
accumulating wealth of the country, thus pro-

duced, has naturally occassioned an enhancement

of the value of almost every eammodity

I yet it is all i/AcontrovertilAq fact they point alit,

" that the working man who did not receive an
advance in his money wages corresponding to
the increased price of commodities, did actually
sustain a reduction in his power to purchase those
commodities ; that he was, in fact, placed in a
worse position th.an he previously occupied, with

the certainty of a further dminution of consuming
power on a revulsion of trade." This revulsion, as
we all know, has been experienced, and the work-

people;

as a matter of course, were the first to feel

its effects

As they go on to show,-

The trying

ordeal of .a commercial panic we have just passed
through, and, as might have been expected, not
without loss to the employers and suffering to the

workmen ; but that the condition of the working
man should have been permitted to deteriorate in
a period of unparalleled prosperity is an anomaly

so extraordinary that the accuracy of the state-

ment might not have passed unquestioned, if the
following figures did not place' the matter beyond
dispute." And then they adduce• the returns of the
exports of yarns and goods for the last ten years,

which exhibit an increase of about as much as

two-thirds in that Comparatively short period.
The home consumption, on the other howl, has not
only not kept pace with it, but has declined; which
leads them, they declare, to apprehend ' that a

greater regard has been paid to foreign than to

home consumption ; that to create or increase a
foreign demand home interestshave been sacrificed ;

that our enormous export trade has been built upon

the diminished consuming power of our own po-

pulation, seeing that it was less in 1857 than it

was nine years previously

that, in short, our

employers have been pursuing a: suicidal course