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

" STRIKES.'?

A number of Massachusetts manufacturers, re-
presenting capital to the amount of hundreds of
millions of dollars, assembled in Boston recently,
and entered into an agreement to resist the eight-
hour system. They are to aid each other and ener-
getically oppose the movement.
The strike of the mill operatives in and around
Westerly continues, and all the woollen machinery
is still, with no signs of yielding on the part of
either employers or employed.
The cight-hour men have, in Illinois and 'Wis-
consin, succeeded in having eight hours declared to
be a legal day's work, in the absence of any agree-
ment between the parties; but so many classes of
labourers are excepted from the operation of the
law that it may be said practically to have no effect.
Large numbers of employers, however, seem dis-
posed to accept eight hours as a day, provided there.
is a corresponding reduction made in wages ; but
eight hours' work does not seem to have much at-
traction for the employed when saddled with this
condition. Strikes still continue in all parts of the
country, and their prevalence is a striking illustra-
tion of the difficulty men often have, when suffer-
ing from any cause, in finding out what is the
matter with them. The trouble all over the country
just now is to find profitable employment for capital
—and to ask it, under these circumstances, to pay
more for labour is, for the labourer, suicidal.

THE EIGHT-HOUR SYSTEM.—lllinois is the first
American State that has adopted the eight-hour
system, but Illinois has made the exceptions greater
than the rule. By the law. recently passed in that
State it is provided that from the first of May eight
hours of labour between the rising and the setting
of the sun are to constitute and be a legal day's
work in all mechanical trades, arts, and employ-
ments, and other cases of labour and service by the
day. But the Act is not in any way to apply to
farm labour (Illinois being a great agricultural
state), nor to labour or service by the year, month,
or week, nor prevent parties from agreeing for as
many hours di work as they think proper.
In Chicago much interest is manifested by em-
ployers and employed in view of the eight-hour law,
which goes into operation on the first of May. The
former have given notice of a reduction—in other
words, " eight hours' pay for eigbt hours' labour,"
which means, we presume, if there is less workthau
formerly there will be less pay. The Tribune says :
—" In relation to wages, it seems to be generally
conceded that a reduction will be acceded to,
although some of the unions hold that the employers
should bear one-half of the loss—that is, that they
should pay at the rate of nine hours' wages for eight
hours' work."
All the collieries in the Shamokin region, in the
north-east part of Pennsylvania, are now reported
idle, the men refusing to work for the wages they
had been receiving, and demanding an advance of
from 15 to 30 per cent., which we learn they arc not
likely to receive, as present prices of coal do not
justify any advance to be made in labour. At some
of the collieries no advance was asked, and the men
were satisfied with the wages paid them, but were
compelled to stop work by a party of unruly and
lawless men who make that their business. The
strike in
,the Lehigh and Schuylkill regions con-
tinues, with no immediate prospect of compromise.
The ship carpenters and caulkers of Chicago have
resolved to work but eight hours a day after May
1, but have agreed to a reduction of wages from
four dollars to three dollars and fifty cents per day.

DR. GOLDTVIN SMITH AND THE COR-
RESPONDENT OF 7HE " TIMES."

(From the Anglo-American Tinier.)
The American correspondent of the Times devoted his
letter, published on the 31 instant, to an attack on Mr.
Goldwiu Smith. There was not ono word of American
news, the entire two columns being given up to a critical
analysis of that gentleman's essays on Reform, so far as they
referred to America. This has called forth a rejoinder from
Mr. Smith, addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette :—" I will
not," says that gentleman, "go into the general questions
on which my views and my information differ.from those
of the correspondent and his editor ; 'more especially as I
could scarcely do so without transcribing the insolence in
which a superior insight into American affairs, so often
proved by the decisive test of accurate prediction, has sin-
gularly entitled the Times to indulge. But the tangible
proofs of my incredible ignorance,' and of my being
wrong from beginning to end in facts and dates, as well as
in arguments and conclusions,' are, I believe, four in num-
ber, strung together in the same paragraph of the letter."
Notwithstanding the Times correspondent, the truth of
what Mr. Goldwin Smith asserts will be generally acknow-
ledged in the United States, where the Times, if it ever was
one. has long ceased to be an oracle. "We don't think
much of your Times," said a gentleman connected with the
American press to us the other day. "We acknowledge
the ability of its writing, and we respect still more the
power it exercises in Europe, but its prejudice and
ignorance on American affairs is a bye - word in
our country, and we have long ceased to trouble our-
selves about its opinions. That it can exercise very
little influence in fulfilling its own predictions has been
proved by the errors in prophecy, of which its pages are
a record." Mr. Goldwin Smith defends the four points
on which he has been attacked. The first was as to the
date of the last war with Great Britain, which is scarcely
worth defence. The second was kr. .Goldwin Smith's
assertion that the Vice-President was an unimportant
officer during the life of the President. Comparatively
speaking the office is unimportant., and when the feeling
against Mr. Johnson ran highest, the great body of the
American people blamed themselves for not being more
careful in their selections for the post. An office may be
one of groat distinction and importance in itself, while at
the same time it may be so overshadowed by another
with which it is intimately associated as to dwarf its pro-
portions ; and when Americans speak of the office of Vice-
Prestdent as one of insignificance, they do so simply in
comparison with the grand dignity into which the incum-
bent might at any thus step. The third point relates to
party names. There was no Republican party, says the
correspondent of the limes, at the date alluded to by Mr.
Smith. To which Dr. Smith rejoins that the party now
called Republicans was then called Whig, just as our Con-
servatives were formerly called Tories. Ile then proceeds :
4.1 have called the assassination of Lincoln "a truly
Southern act," whereas, it seems, I ought to have been
aware that the assassin was a Northern man. I was well
aware that Booth had been stated to be a Northern (or
rather I think a Border) man ; and it was iu the full light
of that knowledge that I called his act a Southern act, an
act emanating from the same violent and lawless temper as
the assault on Mr. Sumner. Further, to expose the ab-
surdity of my statement that the assassination was a
Southern act, the correspondent adds' that " the worst
sufferers by it have been the Southern States." The
Southern States have also been the worst sufferers by se-
cession.

I did not say that there were no trades' unions in Ame-
rica. What I said was that no organisation of the work-
ing classes so compact and so hostile to the employer class as
our trades' unions existed on the other side of the Atlantic.
I noticed the present prevalence of strikes, and as-
cribed it to the derangement of prices, which is
one of the many bad effects of the Legal Tender Act.
My general position is that the disputes between
workmen and employer in America rre, as compared with
those in Europe, "rather difficulties of contract than an-
tagonisms of class." I formed this opinion from inquiry
on the spot, and though I may be driven from good evi-
dence to the contrary, I am not to be driven from it by
mere contradiction, even though the contradiction may be
enforced by coarse abuse.
Again, I did not say that in America " the rich were
actually equal at the pelts with the poor." I said that the
rich " were not systematically excluded from the represen-
tation." lam pretty-safe iu say ine; this, as I happen per-
sonally to know rich men who have been elected. In
fact,. the cry now is that wealth is carrying the elections by
b..ibery. But if it be true, us the correspondent intimates,
that the rich in America hanker for the aristocratic privi-
lege of primogeniture and entails, and that they refuse to
live in their own country and do the duty of citizens be-
cause this gratification is denied them, there may be other
reasons, besides jealousy of their wealth, for their not being
very frequently selected as guardians of -Republican insti-
tutions.

My essay is not a piece of flati:ery addressed to the
American people. It was written without the slightest
reference to American sentiment. It is one of a series of
essays on English li.tfonn, and its only object was to
refute the arguments against an extension of the suffrage
here, which are drawn from the evils, real or supposed, of
the American!public. It sets out with affirming the
existence of a great amount of political evil of various
hind 41 the 'United States. It speaks, among other things,

of the want of high culture among the Americans in terms
at which the correspondent himself takes fire in a way
which leads me to surmise that he is not an Englishman
but an American, whose political sympathies are with the
Democratic party. It endeavours to trace all this evil to
the right source, though not to the source to which the
Times, and the correspondents who follow the cue of their
journal, habitually trace it—free institutions.

Miscellaneous American News.

__..__

A post of the Grand Army of the Republic has
been established at Middleboro. This association,
which is the most powerful organisation in the West,
and numbers over a quarter of a million members,
is rapidly spreading over New England, and will
soon swallow up the " unions" and other societies
of the soldiers and sailors.

The Nation says :—.Messrs. Weed and Greeley
have resutned hostilities, and are now exchanging broad-
sides three or four times a week in the columns of their
respective papers. Mr. Weed no longer labours under the
disadvantage of having to borrow a medium for his retorts,
and now has as much space at his command as Mr. Gree-
ley's case seems to require, while Mr. Greeley, for some
unexplained reason, treats "T. W." with unwonted
courtesy. The war thus far has reached the year 1837,
and the precise point under discussion is Mr. Weed's feel-
ings towards the negro race, as illustrated by his com-
ments in that year on the conduct of William C. Bloss in
taking the communion in company with a number of
coloured persons in a church at Albany. We have no
doubt that the period on which the combatants have now
entered, 1837 to 1840, will prove unusually interesting,
and will furnish many points in the career of these two
gentlemen which we should all like to have cleared up.
Where Mr. Weed boarded, for instance, in the winter of
1839, or whether he boarded or "kept house," is a question
about which this generation knows very little, and on
which Mr. Greeley can, no doubt, throw some

THE ISRAELITES AND THE INSURANCE COM-
PANIES.—The Israelites of Memphis, Tennessee, indignant
at the conduct of certain insurance companies in prohibit-
ing them from insuring in said companies, have held a
meeting and unanimously resolved as follows :—Whereas
the recent actions of the following insurance companies,
the Manhattan, Hanover, Niagara, Republic, and Germania,
all of New York, proscribing the Israelites as a class, in
variance with the spirit of our Constitution and the pre-
sent age of enlightenment, where merit and integrity, not
religion or nationality, should be the test of eligibility in
all the walks of life ; therefore be it resolved that we will
act in unison with our co-religionists in other cities by
cancelling policies in the above-mentioned companies and
in all other companies adopting a similar course. Be it
further resolved, that we recommend the formation of a
Home Insurance Company under the auspices of the Is-
raelites of Memphis, for our mutual protection. The Is-
raelites of Chicago have also taken ground against the
proscriptive insurance companies in New York similar to that
assumed by the Hebrews of Cincinnati, Memphis, and else-
where. On this subject the Nation says :—" There has been a
somewhat amusing correspondence between the insurance
companies of this city and the Jews ; or, as it is the fashion
to call them on solemn occasions —we never exactly knew
why the Hebrews,' touching the refusal of the com-
panies to insure ' Hebrew' property. Mr. J. Lorimer
Graham, for the companies, defended them on various high
grounds; but the gist of his letter was that the companies
have found that German Jews have more insured property
burnt in proportion to their numbers than any other class
of the community. A simple statement of this fact is all
that an insurance officer need make by way of answer.
Neither ethnology nor moral philosophy nor religious
toleration has anything to do with the matter. Insurance
companies exist not to set examples of liberality or of any
other virtue, but to make money; and if they find they
cannot make money out of Hebrews, why they must refuse
to deal with Hebrews —and there's an end on't. Nobody
can appreciate the force`Of an argument of this sort more
readily than a gentleman of the Hebrew persuasion."
Colonel A. J. H. Duganne is preparing a volume
of poems for the press.
The maple sugar crop in Indiana is very large
this year, and that in Vermont, is very small.
Nine thousand dollars premium is offered for the
best design for the Illinois State House. '

A great discovery of antique jewellery has been
made in an Indian mourid in Tennessee.

PAYMENTS FOR Corros.—The amount of the
payments made for cotton in the first two months of this
yoar was £6,264,889, as compared with £10,055,150 in the
first two months of 1866, ftnal £7,057,244 in the first two
mouths of 1865. The decline in this year's figures was
attributable to the small arrivals of cotton in January
and February ; in March, however, the imports in--
creased, and they ware also very heavy last month.
It appears that the value of the cotton imported
into the United Kingdom in 1866 averaged 13.51 d.
per lb., as compared with 16.201 in 1865, 21.01 d. in
1861, 21.97 d. in 1863, 14-21(1.in 1862, 7-393. iu 1861, 7,17 d.
in 1860, and 6.760. in 1859. In 1859. the total sum paid
for raw cotton wits £34,553,636; in 1860, £35,756,889 ; in
1861, . £31,653,498 ; in 1862, 31,093,015 ; in - 1863,
£56,277,953; in 1861, £78,203,729 ; in 1865, £66,032,193 ;
and in 1866,. £77,521,406.

CorroN A•r SEA.—There are at present at sea
from Bombay to Liverpool 61 ships, with 335,634 bales of
cotton on board; from Rangoon there aro 850 bales; from
Kurrachee there aro 3,362 b tles ; from Calcutta there aro
19 ships, with 69,669 bales ; from New Orleans there are
about 46,000 bales; from New York there are 4,081 bales;
from Nassau, 1,793 bales ; from Galveston, 7,850 bales ;
from Mobile, 18,000 bales; from Charleston, 7,000 bales;
and from Nassau, 6,500 bales. From Madras to the
Thames there are 26,048 bales of cotton afloat; from Cal-
cutta, 26,033 bales; from China, Cochin, and Tuticorn,
28,707 bales; from Bombay and Kurrachee, 3,867 bales.
The negroes, it seems, have adopted sides in the
South, and have taken to the stump kindly. This is not
remarkable, for even in their savage state they are fluent
orators. In Africa their "palavers" are condu3ted with
dignity and decorum. But the negro is an imitative crea-
ture, and has already learned to wield the weapons of the
American politician. Mr. Nash, a Conservative gentleman
of colour,- has denounced the R ;publicans in no measured
terms. A rival ne,grY orator (Republican) accuses him of
having once passed three mouths in a penitentiary. Those
who imagine that the negro's votes will be devoted to the
North from motives el' gratitude will, we suspect, be mis-
taken, and the planters, who are already taking their hats
off to them and patting them on the backs and saying,
"We have always been your best friends," will find that
they have to deal with one of the most shrewd and suspi-
cious races in the world. We aro inclined to think that
the negroes will vote in favour of their own interests, and
they are clever enough to find out for themselves what
those interests really are. They have already shown that
they have a ready appreciation of high wages by their
emigration from Virginia and the Carolinas t•o the south-
west, and they are driving bargains with the landowners
as merciless as those which the Africans drive with Eng-
lish traders in the oil rivers of the West Coast.—Pall Mall
Gazette.

Westfield, New York, is lighted with natural gas,
which is brought in pipes from a gas spring, a mile and a
luarter distant. It costs consumers four dollars per thou-
sand feet.

A NEW FIRE EXTINGUISHER.--A new contrivance
for extinguishing fires has been invented at Philadelphia,
and if it possesses the merits claimed for it, the world will
be largely indebted to the inventor for insuring the safety
of property from conflagration. The Inquirer thus describes
the contrivance, and the result of a recent experiment with
it at the country seat of Jay Cooke, Esq., the eminent
banker. "The Fire Extinguisher is a simple but rommkably
efficacious contrivance, consisting of a cylindrically shaped
apparatus, occupying no more space than a water bucket,
and weighing, when ready for service, from 701 b. to 901 b. ;
extremely portable, easily operated, and an almost
instantaneous annihilator of fire, no matter how fiercely or
stubbornly it may be burning. A closer description of
the apparatus may be unnecessary here, but a brief
relation of its practical operations will be found to possess
interest. A large number of petroleum oil barrels, com-
pletely saturated with that inflammable substance, were
piled ono on the other and then set fire to, producing quite
a respectable conflagration. When the flames were at their
height, and it was thought nothing could subdue them
while a vestige of the material of which the fire was com-
posed remained, a gentleman present strapped the
extinguisher to his back, took his position in front of the
burning mass, presented the end of 'a small gutta percha
tube, connected with the apparatus, at the fire, turned a
small top-cock,- which forced a thin stream of water,
strongly impregnated with carbenie acid gas, through the
tube and on the' flames, when lo ! iu the short space of
ten seconds what was a densely burning mass was trans -
formed into charred and blackened, half-consumed oil-
barrel without a vestige of fire remaining. The experi-
meat was repeated several times, with even increased suc-
cess ; and the entire affair gave the greatest satisfaction to
the witnesses present."
The word " white" has been struck out of th©
city ordinances of Mobile.

GEORGE WILKES AS A Pnorurr.c-In speaking of
the steamship Great EaSier,l, Mr:Wilkes, in his paper,
says:—" She is the finest plssengcr ship evar built, and
there never will be such another." " Never': is a long time,

The remains of 2,181 Union soldiers, who fell
during'M'Clellan's memorable struggle on the Peninsula,
have recently' been interred in a beautiful national ceme-
tery erected in the vicinity of Yorktown. The cemetery
stands on the Yorktown and Williamsburgh-road, about a
quarter of a mile outside the old rebel intrenchments, and
is tastefully laid out in four equal sections of ground, with
large grass plots, trees, and shrubbery intermingling with
a happy effect. The graves are arranged parallel to each
other, five feet apart from centre to centre. The bodies
here interred were obtained only by the greatest exertion
from the different battle and -skirmish fields at Lee's
Mills, Grafton Uhurch, Warwick Court House, Williams-
burgh, Bickerton, White House Landing, Cumberland
West Point, Brick House Feint, King William Court-
house, Euoch's Church, Crump's Cross-roads, Hanover
Court-house, Young's Mill, Ship Paint, Upper Grafton

Church, and Mechanicsville. There are buried hero : 1
adjutant, 3 captains, 9 lieutenants, 2 quartermaster
sergeants, 28 sergeants, 28 corporals, 1 bugler, 4 unknown
officers, 647 known privates, 1,408 unknown privates, 11
known coloured troops, 1 unknown, 4 strangers or citizens,
1 Confederate lieutenant. Pennsylvania, New York, and
Massachusetts regiments have the largest number buried
here, but many other of the Eastern and also Western
regiments are now and then seen engraved on the head-
boards.

The official returns of the Connecticut election
gave English a majority of 987 for governor, in a total
vote of 94,153. There are 124 Republicans iu the House
and 114 Democrats, and in the Senate the Republicans have
a majority of 1, as at first stated. A recapitulation of the
governor vote by counties, wiih the corresponding vote of
last.year, is as follows :

1867.

180.

t---.• --Th /- -
Counties. Hawley. English.. Hawley. English.
Hartford, 9,072 9,678 8,618 8,937
New Haven, 9,379 11,696 8,636 10,781
New London, 5,833 5,437 5,610 4,60'
Windham, 3,782 2,136 3,566 2,144
Litchfield, 5,019 5,058 4,771 4,653
Fairfield, 7,698 7,805 7,094 7,337
Middlesex, 3,340 3,174 3,206 2,939
Tolland, 2,455 2,281 2,479 2,032

46,.585

47,572 43,980

43,233

The Legislature of Maryland has voted an appro-
priation of $150,000 to construct an ice boat for clearing
harbours of ice.

AMERICAN IRON MANUFACTURE.—The statistics
presented at the last meeting of the American Iron and
Steel Association show a product for 1866 in pig iron of
nearly a million (939,956) tons ; in rails, new and rerolled,
of 339,764 tons ; in nails of 129,838 tons ; in castings (over
101bs. weight), 946,613 tons, &c. The following is the
complete table, in which the very large import strikes the
eye, the native product of pig iron being overbalanced by
the castings alone :

Tons of

2,000 lbs.
Pig iron of all kinds
Rails, new and re-rolled

Iron advanced beyond blooms, slabs, and loops,
but not beyond bars
Bars and rods made from iron on which a duty of
$3 has been paid 23,073
Blooms, slabs, ani loops
Band, hoop, and sheet (all sizes) 142,829
Plate iron (all sizes)
Rivers, nuts, washers, and bolts 99,281
Cut nails and spikes . • 119,858
Castings, for bridges and other prominent struc-
tures 33,309
Castings exceeding 101bs in weight
Stoves and hollow ware

Iron advanced beyond blooms, slabs, &c., the
duty to which it was liable in the forms of
blooms, slabs, &c., not having been paid
Wrought railroad chairs, &c.
A comparative view of the proportion of the several
States in the above product will be found interesting, as
follows:—Of the 939,956 tons of -pig iron made—

Tons.

Tons.
Pennsylvania pro- Missouri
duced 197,584 Massachusetts 11,126
Ohio 118,498 Kentucky 9,723
New York
New Jersey 29,768 Wisconsin
Maryland 27,080 Tennessee
Michigan 15,823 West Virginia '757
Connecticut 14,208 Virginia • 474
Of the 339,764 tons of rails there were produced in

Tons.
Pennsylvania 180,854
New York
Illinois
Massachusetts 29,575
Ohio
Indiana 15,920

Tons.
Michigan 11,003
Kentucky 9,238
New Jersey
Tennesso
Maryland 3,279
West Virginia 3,213

COUNTRY MARKETS.

LINCOLN.-FRIDAY.

Our market to-day was tolerably supplied with wheat,
and fine samples brought last week's money. Barley was
scarce, at extreme quotations. Oats met with a fair de-
mand, and prices rather better. Beans in good demand,
and is dearer. Peas unaltered.
New white wheat, 60s to 68s ; new red, 58s to 69s per 36
stone. Barley for malting, 49s to 54s per qr ; grinding,
32s to 36s per 30 stone. Oats, 25s to 30s. Beans, 44s to
50s per 38 stone.