The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-03 00:00:00

THE BUILDERS' STRIKE.

(Froni the Daily News.)
An attempt is now being made on the rights and
iberties of the working class of England, as insi-
dious, audacious, and perilous as any that has been
made in our time. It is our proper business to
watch over the rights of all classes of our fellow-
citizens ; and our vigilance is always keenly
directed to the case of those who are still unrepre-
sented in the Legislature, and who should, there-
fore, be especially befriended by those who are.
A large portion of that class are now in danger of
an insufferable tyranny, bringing on every kind of
misery—discontent, disrepute, poverty, and ruin.
Unless they and their friends exert themselves im-
mediately to expose and defy this tyranny, and to
assert their own eights and liberties, this year will
be a calamitous' one for many thousands of the
working men of England, and an introduction to
something even worse.
If there is a right more sacred and indisputable
than another, in our country and our time, it is a
man's disposal of his own industry. At this day, it
ought not to be necessary to explain, anywhere out
of the school-room, that wherever men are not in a
state of chattel-slavery, their labour is their own
property, over which they have an absolute and ex-
clusive right. We pity the Russian serf because
he is not the owner of his own labour. We pity
the French workman whenever the Government
thinks proper to fix by law or authority the rate of
wages, or the price of commodities which wages
must buy. Government then tyrannically inter-
feres with a man's first and dearest right—to dis-
pose freely of his labour. We pity the Egyptian
peasant who is forcibly set to work upon canals or
public buildings, and paid such' wages as the au-
thorities please to give. We even pity the German
artisans, who are hedged in by restrictions which
were once imposed in England, and long ago found
to be intolerable. With a view to keep up wages,
and to give privileges to a few at the expense of
the many, and also with some sincere, though mis-
taken, notion of maintaining a high quality of exe-
cution in handicraft trades, guilds are kept up in
Germany with extreme strictness ; multitudes
of willing workmen are prevented from pur-
suing the calling they prefer, and are com-
pelled to emigrate if they will not starve. The
prodigious and increasing emigration of a pau-
perised multitude, which now alarms the rulers of
Germany, is mainly owing to the bondage to which
industry is subjected under ancient methods which
the times have outgrown.
While considering the case of all these working
classes abroad, we have been accustomed to congra-
tulate ourselves on the freedom enjoyed by the same
order of society in England. There were once
guilds in this country, and attempts to fix prices
and wages by act of Parliament, and, up to a recent
time, restrictions on the supply of food, and there.
fore on the development of industry. One by one
of these ;tyrannies of ignorance have been got rid
of, and, as the Legislature and the nation grew
wiser, we exulted in the spread of freedom and the
growth of spirit, intelligence, and prosperity among
the working men. But now, as too often before, a
rude check is given to our hope and satisfaction,
and we are almost ready to say that there seems to
be a fatality against the largest cl iss in the nation
ever securing the full enjoyment of their dearest
rights. It is the tyranny of ignorance again that
we have to combat ; but this time it is not the
ignorance of rulers or of society at large, but of
the class immediately concerned.
There are about 60,000 skilled labourers (besides
an unknown number of unskilled) employed in the
building trades in London alone. This great body
of workmen have, for the most part, wives and
children at home ; so that we may consider that at
least 300,000 persons in London and the neighbour-
hood depend on the skilled part of that branch of
industry. The workmen receive about five shil-
lings a day, or thirty shillings a week ; an income
equal to that of the majority of curates of the
Church of England, and to that of many a half-pay
officer of the army'and- navy, and a multitude of
fundholders. Such an income, prudently laid out,
will support wife and little ones till the little ones
become able to work for their own support. These
wages are paid for 581 hours' labour per week :
that is, for twelve or fifteen hours less of work than
most people in England, America, France, and Ger-
many choose to set themselves when they work
in the establishments of employers, or by the piece.
Our London builders work ten hours for five
days in the week, and eight and a half on Satur-
days. Wherever they could go, at home or abroad,
they must work at least that number of hours, or a
greater, for the same wages ; and most of them are
satisfied. Unless very ignorant, they must know
how glad their fathers and grandfathers would have
been to have obtained such wages in days when
provisions are comparatively cheap and taxation is
largely shifted from the working-classes to the aris-
tocracy ; and for the most part they accept their
lot as a favourable one. But they are not allowed
to live and work in peace and content. They are
threatened, overborne, disturbed, and likely to be
ruined, not by government or aristocracy, but by a
few of their own comrades. It makes a free citi-
zen's blood boil to read of the meddlesome tyranny
which is spoiling many a poor man's home at this
moment, driving the husband and father from his
work, robbing him thereby of his wages, compell-
ing him to spend his precious days in idleness, and
to take money which he has not earned to buy his
children bread. In a certain number of weeks there
will be no money and no bread, and then the work
which he never wished to leave will be irrecovera•
ble, and ruin will have overtaken his happy home.
And why is all this ? Who does it ? And who
has any right to do it ?
A certain number of wrong-headed or wrong-
hearted men—we need not settle which—have been
going about preaching for some time past that men
had better not work more than nine hours per day ;
hinting that, in fact, eight hours are enough, and
will be agitated for by and by. "Nine hours a day
will meet our present requirements," they say which
indicates that a further reduction will be asked for
by and by. They speak of the advantages of mo-
derate labour, and of a portion of leisure for all ; but
there is no evidence that ten hours' laboar in the
open air is injurious to health, while they leave
several hours for other pursits. Some of the
greatest men in England have achieved their great-
ness under harder conditions of labour. All this,
however, is a matter on which every man may .have
his own opinion ; and he ought to have perfect
liberty to form his own plan of life. Any man who
thinks he can do his duty by his household by nine,
eight, or seven hours' toil, has a perfect right to
arrange accordingly ; and so has the man who, at
piece work or otherwise, chooses to work eleven or
twelve hours. They have the choice between less
work and less pay, or more work and more pay.
But here we light upon the circumstance which
proves the dishonest character of the agitation
stirred up by the tyrants of the building class.
Their demand is that the employers shall pay the
same wages as before for an hour's less work per
man per day ; in other words, for 300,000 hours'
less work per week in London alone. Such rob-
bery of the employers will, of course, not be per-
mitted. The employers will not submit to it; so-
ciety at large will not countenance it; and the
workmen themselves do not for the most part
desire it. Yet are they subjected to the disiepute,
loss, and hopeless prospects which belong to such
a movement. They say by hundreds that they have
no choice ; that they are under compulsion ; that
they and their families shall suffer for it if they
refuse to strike. They are thoroughly aware that
a few :mischievous men, who are fond of notoriety
and power, and of the salaries which are paid to
the agents of strikes, are making tools of them,
and dragging them into an enterprise which must
fail; but they dare not resist; and thus are the
stout, able-bodied, industrial flower of English
society made slaves of by a handful of self-seekers,
who have no manner of right to interfere in their
affairs.

'The string of had reasons given by the agitators
shows the true character of the movement. They
want to introduce working by relays, or by in-
creased numbers, not for the same sum of money,
but to make up the same amount of time. They
assume that there is a certain quantity of work to
be done, which vfili take so much time to do. They