The Sun.
London, England, 1853-10-19 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 19, 1853.

THE STRIKE MOVEMENT.

SPURTING INTELLIGENCE.

(From the Times.)
It seems to be the unvarying will of Providence
to mingle iu the sweetest cup of our prosperity so
much bitterness as may remind us how transitory,
is its enjoyment, and how changeable its ingre-
dients. Be the causes of public well-doing ever
so deeply rooted and so easily traced, there aro
never wanting secondary agencies to counteract and
diminish their efficiency. agencies
have, undoubtedly-,
passed through a period of great prosperity, and
there seems no reason to fear that we have exhausted ,
the benefits derivable from the policy of free trade.
Yet, two circumstances have considerably detracted
from the lustre of our success, and reminded us that
no policy, however wise, far-sighted, and beneficent,
can prevail against the adverse laws of nature, or
the unruly passions or propensities of man. The
first of these is the failure of the harvest over this
country and a considerable portion of the con-
tinent of Europe. We are so used to abundance, we
have so long revelled ifl plenty, that we regard as
a symptom of dearth a price which a few years
ago was held by very competent authorities to be
merely and barely remunerative, and, in fact, a
necessary condition of the cultivation of our land.
This rise of prices has been sufficient to withdraw a
very considerable sum from the purchase of
other commodities, and to occasion a large exporta-
tion of the precious metals to foreign countries.
To this inevitable visitation we have only to
submit with patience and thankfulness that we
are so well provided to meet it. But there
is another cause at work, to which it is not
so easy to reconcile our minds, because it arises,
not from the powers of nature, but from the unruly
waywardness and wilfulness of man. At the very
time when production was most required, when the
capital from which the labourer must derive his
wages, as well as the master his profits, was most
rapidly increasing—the working classes of this
country were seized with the mania of " strikes,"
and, forgetful of former misery, and unschooled by
bitter experience, have been spending in voluntary
idleness months which might have been devoted to
a labour more than ordinarily profitable. It is, of
course, neither unnatural nor reprehensible that the
working classes should desire to have their share in
the general prosperity, and that when all milder
means of persuasion fail they should exert the
power they possess of at once arresting the
operations of their masters. This ultimate re-
medy, however, is resorted to with incre-
dible levity. A " strike" partakes largely of the
nature of war, of which it has this essential
characteristic, that the striking pasty inflicts
certain and immense injury on himself, in order to
cause an equal injury to his antagonist. It is a
game from which both parties generally rise losers.
The workman imagines that he is only destroying
the property of his master, forgetful how large a
portion of that property must, in the course of
business, necessarily become his own. Should
the master yield at once, and should the state
of the trade be able to bear the advance, an
advantage may no doubt be gained ; but a few
weeks of a " strike" necessarily anticipate and
devour beforehand all that can be gained by its
success, without counting the destruction of
capital, which necessarily impairs the permanence
of the advanced rate of wages.

BETTING AT MANCHESTER-TIIESDAr.

There was a crowded room this morning, notwith-
standing a goodly number having left for Warwick, bet-
ting was for the most part confined to the events de-
cided there to-day. For the' Cambridgeshire we have
little change to notice since our last ; for the Derby we
did not see a bet laid, Closing prices :

CAMBRIDGESHIRE STAKES.
9to 1 agst Nabob (taken to 701).
10 to 1 agst Orestes (taken).
12 to 1 agst Haco (taken).
15 to 1 agst Mistletoe (taken).
16 to 1 agst Balrownie (taken).
16 to 1 agst King Pepin (taken).
20 to 1 agst Invasion (taken).
30 to 1 agst Cineas (taken).
40 to 1 agst Boarding School Miss (taken to 211.)
50 to 1 agst Talfourd (taken).
50 to 1 agst King of Trumps (taken)
500 to 20 agst Black Swan, Begum colt, and Grey
Tommy (taken).
Talfourd was the only outsider in force.

But probably the worst effect of a " strike" is
the interruption or rather the annihilation of all
kindly feeling between masters and men. It is,
after all, impossible to reduce the relation between
master and labourer entirely to pounds, shillings,
and pence. Even the agriculturists of Essex must
eke out wages under ten shillings a week by the
occasional donation of a pound to some fortu-
nate labourer. So, in the manufacturing districts
one master contents himself with the payment of
the sum agreed on to his hands, and considers
that when they have left his mill he has no
further interest or concern with them till they
return to it ; another employer regards his people
as almost a part of his own family. He builds a
schoolhouse for their children, he establishes a
library, he provides them with decent cottages at a
reasonable rent, he studies their intellectual and
moral improvement. Yet sad experience shows that
if these two men pay the same rate of wages, al-
though the contribution of one towards the well-
being of his labourers is so much larger than that
of the other, both will be equally liable to the in-
fliction of a " strike," and thus the benevolent
master will find that the money spent by him in
promoting the comfort and raising the condition of
his people is entirely overlooked by them, and will
regard it as totally thrown away.' This does not
arise so much from unkindness or ingratitude on
the part of the men as from the peculiar manner in
which these " strikes" are got up. Nothing could
be a greater mistake than to regard this wages
movement, as it is called, as the spontaneous act of
the persons who are ostensibly the movers in it.
The men who must bear the weight of the "strike,"
and_ whose relations with their masters, perhaps
during the whole of their future lives, will be un-
favourably influenced by it, are the mere instru-
ments of associations of which they are members,
and which act utterly without regard to these con-
siderations. It will generally be found, if the
history, of a " strike " be attentively investigated,
that it originated from one or two professional
agitators, who find their account in keeping up
a spirit of animosity, upon which they are sure
to thrive at the expense of the belligerent
parties. These men are implicitly obeyed, as re-
' presenting a power which no working man dares
to set at defiance, however well convinced he may
be of the impolicy and injustice of its requisitions.
The enormous faith of many made for one is no-
where better illustrated than in the spectacle, with
which we are unhappily too familiar, of the dis-
turbance and overthrow of a system of industry
elaborated and perfected for the reciprocal advan-
tage of both parties, merely to gratify the selfish-
ness and greediness, the turbulence and self-im-
portance of a few agitators, whose vocation it is to
live on the fears, the passions, or the follies of
their neighbour. Just as the animosities and heart-
burnings created by war survive for many years
the cessation of hostilities, and often influence
the relations of nations after the cause has been
forgotten, so have those blind guides whom the
working men have shown themselves too ready to
follow laid the foundation of feelings of bitterness,
and checked the advance of improvement and good
feeling to a degree of which they have themselves
no idea.
We commend the case to the consideration of the
Peace Society. Let them try their hand in recon-
ciling those intestine wars which are tearing out
the very vitals of our industry. Let them apply
the doctrine of arbitration to the disputes between
masters and men, and when they have persuaded
individuals and associations of individuals to calm
their heated passions, to lay aside those means of
mutual annoyance which anger suggests, and sub-
mit the rights of their quarrel to the decision of an
impartial tribunal, they may with the better heart
proceed in their career as the reconcilers of irri-
tated nations and the mediators between contend-
ing monarchs.

ROWING MATCHES.--The race between Rice, of Lime-
house, and T. Coombes, which was expected to have
been a very close affair, disappointed those who had tra-
velled eastward to witness it, circumstances occurring
which divested it of all interest within three minutes of
the start. George Rice is almost unknown to the aquatic
world, but his opponent is the brother of the celebrated
Robert Coombes, the ex-champion, and has rowed with
him and alone a number of gallant races against the re-
nowned Claspers and others for years past. The stake
was 501., and the distance from Old Barge-house to Lime-
house-hole. At the moment of starting Rice had the
nose of his boat a little more in front than usual, but
Coombes, immediately they got to work, was alongside
of him, with a slight temporary lead. They had scarcely
proceeded three hundred yards when a heavy surf threat-
ened the immersion of Coombes, and while he was guard-
ing against it his opponent went right away and won
easily. Simmet and Curtis contended over a small part
of the same course shortly afterwards. They were said
to be extremely evenly matched ; and although the stakes
only amounted to 101., there was a great deal of specula-
tion upon the result. For a short distance after the
start the race looked like Curtis's, but his opponent fairly
outrowed him, and won by 150 yards.
A SENSITIVE MURDERER.—It very frequently happens
that sentences of death, tardily pronounced by the
Audiencia of Caraccas, cannot be executed for want of
a hangman. In these cases, the barbarous custom is
observed of pardoning one criminal on condition of his
hanging the others. Oar guides related to us that, a
short time before our arrival on the coast of Cumana, a
Zambo, known for the great ferocity of his manners, de-
termined to screen himself from punishment by turning
executioner. The preparations for the execution, how-
ever, shook his resolution—he felt a horror of himself,
and preferring death to the disgrace of thus saving his
life, he called again for his irons, which had been struck
off. He did not long remain in prison, and he under-
went his sentence through the baseness of one of his
accomplices. This awakening of a sentiment of honour
in the soul of a murderer is a psychologic phenomenon
worthy of reflection. The man who had so often shed
the blood of travellers in the plains, recoiled at the idea
of becoming the passive instrument of justice in in-
flicting upon others a punishment which he felt that he
himself deserved.—llumboldes Travels.
TREASURES SUNS AT NAVARINO.—The Official Gazette
of Savoy states that an inhabitant of Chambery has just
quitted that place to attempt, in concert with a com-
pany organised for that purpose, to save some contents
of the vessels which were sunk at the battle of Nava-
rino, particularly the admiral's ship, a three-decker,
which, it is said, had on board at the time she went
down a sum of six millions of francs in gold. All the
necessary apparatus has been embarked, a number of
divers have been engaged, and in addition to the ordi-
nary diving-bells all the recent inventions for such pur-
-1 poses will be put in requisition.

HEALTH OF LONDON DURING THE WEEK.

( From the Registrar-General's Report.)

The weekly return of the Registrar-General shows
that the number of deaths registered in the metropolitan
districts in the week that ended on Saturday was 1,039.
In the ten corresponding weeks of the years 1843-52,
the average number was 949, which, if raised in propor-
tion to increase of population, will give 1,044. A com-
parison of the actual and estimated results shows that
London last week suffered not more than its ordinary
rate of mortality.

Cholera, which has made its appearance felt in vari-
ous parts of the metropolis, and during the four weeks
that followed 10th September, showed a small but con-
tinuous increase, does not appear latterly to have gained
ground. The deaths from this disease were 66 in the
first week of October ; last week they declined to 45.
It is a somewhat remarkable coincidence that 45 was
the number registered in the corresponding week (viz.
the 42d) of 1848 ; for many weeks thereafter the deaths
rose and fell, dropping so low as one and two in the
spring of 1549, till the epidemic broke out with violence
in summer. The fluctuations which mark its previous
history may attend its course again ; but experience
affords sufficient warning that a temporary abatement
should not lull into security those whose business it is
to prepare for the attack. The 45 deaths of last week
(21 of which occurred to males, 24 to females) were thus
distributed over London :—ln the West Districts 6, in
the North 3, in the Central 2, in the East 6, and on the
South side of the Thames 28. The following are the
cases in detail :

• WEST DISTRICTS. Population 376,427.
KENSINGTON— Brompton.—At 6, Sloane-place, on
11th October, a footman, aged 44 years, "cholera
Asiatica, not seen till collapsed ; diarrhoea (3 weeks)."
Mr. Stone, the registrar, says—" Sloane-place has been
repeatedly reported by me as being unhealthy ; the me-
dical attendant attendant says—' This man has been
suffering from diarrhma for three weeks, and was not
seen by me till collapsed. There is a decomposing
vegetable matter at the back of the house and a most
offensive smell in front, most probably from the yard of
a cowkeeper opposite, pigs and cows being both kept
there."
KENSINGTON—St. Paul, .Hammersmith.—At 27,
Brook-green-Place, on the 13th October, the daughter
of'a labourer, aged 4 months, "exhaustion from cho-
leraic diarrhoea (6 days)."
KENSINGTON—FuIham.—At Sand's-end, on 10th
October, the wife of a gas-labourer, aged 26 years,
"cholera Asiatica (15 hours)." Mr. G odrich, the me-
dical attendant, remarks—" The house is in a very dirty
state, and not fit for human habitation. Within a few
yards of the back door a hole has been formed, where
all the refuse seems to have been poured. The privies
of both this and the adjoining house are quito full, and
the soil running over the yard, and this has been the
case, I am told, for 3 weeks. Behind the privy is a
large open drain, which is very offensive. The 2 chil-
dren of deceased are now suffering from diarrhoea ; there
is also diarrhcea in the neighbourhood."
CHELSEA ; North-east.—At 3, Cadogan-row, King's-
road, on 11th October, the wife of a labourer, aged 36
years, " diarrhoea (5 hours), cholera (13 hours.)"
WESTMINSTER ; St. Margaret.—At 35, Palace-street,
on 9th October, a steam-engine driver at a brewery,
aged 23 years, " diarrlice (7 hours), Asiatic cholera (11
hours)." Mr. Driver, the medical attendant, says :
" The diarrhoea was not attended to until collapse had
taken place."

In the same sub-district, at 24, Smith's-rents, on 12th
October, the daughter of a servant} aged 8 months,
" cholera (14 days), phthisis from birth."

NORTH DISTRICTS. Population, 490,396.
MARYLEBONE; All Souls.—At 19, Carburton-street,
on Bth October, a coach-painter, aged 43 years, " diar-
rhoea (5 days), English cholera (2 days)."
MARYLEBONE; St. John.—At 22, Upper Carlisle-
street, on 14th October, the daughter of a labourer, aged
14 years, " cholera (4 days)."
ISLINGTON; West.—At 2, Grove-street, on 9th Oc-
tober, th• daughter of a carman, aged 7 weeks, " cho-
lera infantum."