The Sun.
London, England, 1867-05-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, MAY 11, 18GT.

WAGES AND STRIKES.

Strikes are extensively prevailing among various
classes of artisans and other working men. In
several cities the masons, carpenters, and others em-
ployed in building have succeeded in obtaining au
advance in wages, but at the same time their suc-
cess has caused a suspension of works already com-
menced, and the delay of more that has been pro-
jected. So that while those actually employed gain
an advantage for the time, many members of their
crafts suffer the loss of all employment in conse-
quence. This is a manifest evil, but it will soon
correct itself, for if the advanced wages are really
too high they will soon be reduced by com-
petition, and if not, employers will adapt
themselves to them after a while, and make
their contracts accordingly. The exact point of
equity in the matter of wages cannot readily be
determined, and there seems no better way to reach
it than by the natural action of supply and deniand.
It is most unfortunate for both parties that there
should be collision or ill-feeling in the matter; and
there wool I be very little of this if it were not for
the attempts at compulsion by those who engage in
strikes. Any number of citizens have a perfect
right to combine in demanding higher wages, if
they think it right and for their intere,t ; but when
they undertake to compel all of the same craft to
join with them, they outrage the ino.A common
is n rights.ec e s
slafr
yto
they say that this degree of compulsion
the success of their effort itself,
and neither
ntheeitheeffrordtemseursvtesbenobrawseidll
win permanent on false principles ;
suc-
cess. The strikes in the coal and iron mines are
attended with shocking violations of personal
rights, and ought to be promptly suppressed so
Itfaris as
alleged,tiwy
coannsdist see in s the reign
be reiga of mob law;
the fact, that
prices of labour. are not relatively as high as be-
fore the war. Some classes of skilled labourers are
better paid, in proportion to the means of living,
m
but, taking all classes of labourers together, wages
have not risen as rapidly as have the necessaries of
life. Carefully prepared tables of wages and retail
prices in New York, comparing those of 1860 with
those now prevailing, show that it costs the labour-
ing man very nearly double to live now that it did
before the war, while his wages are only eighty per
cent. more. This spring there is a small reduction
in the prices of some of the staple household sup-
plies, but this is more than counterbalanced by the
extraordinary rise in rents, which in the cities are
truly oppressive, and many a man payS more per
week for comfortless shelter than the whole cost of
housekeeping besides. The need of an advance of
wages in most occupations is obvious enough. But
the question is not what we need, but what we can
get. If our disordered currency has produced so
unhealthy a condition of business that employers
cannot afford to pay as good wages as they did
before the war, how is the case to be remedied ?
Not surely by strikes that will suspend business
altogether. Better live and suffer together than to
stop the wheels of trade and bring common ruin.
And the first question for any class of working men
to ask is, not whether they need higher wages, but
whether their employers can afford to pay them.—
Spiingfield Weekly Republican.

The State of Mississippi has been refused permis-
sion by the Supreme Court to file its bill for an in-
junction against the President. But the State of
Georgia, which did not aim so high, and only asked
to have General Grant and other commanders re-
strained, has got permission to file, so that the whole
question of the power of the court and of the con-
stitutionality of the Reconstruction Bill will now be
argued, but it is not likely that the court will pass
upon the latter point. A denial of its own juris-
diction will probably relieve it of this necessity.

We are all so much incline], in view of the pre-
sent hope of a speedy reconstruction, and a recon-
struction from the foundations, to let bygones be.
bygones, and to forgive and forget whatever may
have been wrong in
the conduct of the Southern
whites, that we shall be in danger of condemning
too severely the negroes who, it is possible, have
been perpetrating some high-handed crimes in
Southern Georgia. But if it is true that negroes
(name not
" in one. county"
given) have broken
open the gaols and allowed negro prisoners to
escape, and " in another county" (name no
given) have hung
men to trees by the road-
side ; and " in Southern Georgi k " generally
u
have revived " the wildest days of St. Do-
nngo," let us recollect that thac are numbers
of white men " in
Southern Georgia" who, since
the negro2s were emancipated, have, first and
last, drunk and sober, killed without compunction
.from one to half a dozen negroes apiece. There are
some young men in
Central Georgia who, if even
they are' living now, cannot said ought not to ex-
pect to live more than a month or two longer. They
are known to whites and blacks as wanton mur-
derers. As for the gaol deliveries,
the negroes, as
Dr. Nott says, are an imitative race. It used to be
white mobs that took negro prisoners out of gaol.
Hanging the most notorious of the white ruffians
to trees by the roadside is, we fear, even more cer.
tainly impolitic on the part of the negroes than it is
wrong; but that we should have much re.ison to
be surprised if the thing were done no one can pre-
tend to say who considers the customs of the

Southern country. As for " St. Domingo " it
comes as naturally to the mouth of the Southern
cavalier when his pen is in rest as " St. Iago" to
the mouth of a Castilian bent on slaughter; it is a
war-cry and no more, and a war-cry that is not
believed in by the men who kill under it. Fortu-
nately, Georgia is just now in pretty good hands,
and much may be learned by both blacks and whites
before the working of the new system is left entirely
to them.