The Sun.
London, England, 1868-10-09 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC jOURNASI,O;

The Mita discusses Professor Fawcett' theoiles
Iwo remedies of the employed against employers—strikes
and co-operation. The Professor interposes; like a bene:
ficent genius, between political economy and man, between
'science and facts. A " strike," if it be done fairly, he
says, and with a scrupulous regard to the liberty of indi-
viduals, is the proper and only remedy for the case of an
employer who chooses to do what he pleases with hie
own under the sanction of political economy. What is
a " strike ?" It is only one form of a negative, for
every negative in trade is a "strike." If a man re.
fuses to take a price offered for his commodities, or
to undertake a contract upon given terms, or to lend
money, he may be said to "strike." Just now, for example,
it might be said that capital is " on strike ;" a good deal
of it absolutely "on strike," and the rest getting higher
terms in consequence. Let us not be frightened by a
word. A " strike "is a strictly commercial act, though
on the part of many against one or a few. Then, what
has humanity to say to it? A man must live, and it is
better he should live well, and have time to take care of his
health, improve his mind, and learn the duties of his posi-
tion. If the Legislature cannot possibly favour " strikes,"
which would be one-sided, neither ought it to go out of
the way to discourage them, which is also one-sided. All
that is wanted is that a purely commercial transaction
shall be done in a purely commercial manner, without
injury, insult, or interference with those who may not
choose to join in the transaction. Happily, however, this
is not the only remedy, for Professor Fawcett would not
leave the British workman alternately at work and " on
strike" as the natural and proper mode of conducting
what is called the battle of life. He has another remedy
more continuous in its application and more hopeful.
It is that class of arrangements by which most people
may be enabled to share the profits of the business,
whether entirely or after the declaration of a fair
dividend as the profits of the managers or proprietors.
The history of a considerable number of examples would
be a most valuable contribution to social and political
science. How did they come about ? How were they
fonnded and conducted? What have been the results?
There can be nobody who has had ever so little to do with
the industrial classes who is not painfully aware of many
instances of tyranny, of oppression, of ruin, and even of
death, through the operation of " strikes ; " while every
day brings up new illustrations of the fearful extent to
which working men can he imposed upon by the profes-
sional fabricators of associations on vicious principles. We
should not be surprised to find that at least a million a
year is got out of the poor, and squandered, it is hard to
say how, by persons whose sole claim to their confidence
was that they were utterly unknown, and the proposed
organisation itself an utter mystery.
The Post agrees with Mr. Fawcett that the principle
of industrial partnerships might be extended to joint-stock
companies, but in the case of individuals preferring to
maintain the position of private employers many diffi-
culties present themselves not easily overcome. It might
not, however, be impossible for an employer to give his
workman an interest in his success by affording to them
the opportunity of sharing, in however small a degree, in
his profits ; and to the same extent that this principle was
applied would the employer be insured against the risk of
strikes. Mr. Fawcett's suggestion, as he admits, is not
entirely novel, but, judging from the results which have
flowed from its partial adoption, it is well worthy the
attention of those whose interests are most keenly affected
by the constantly recurring conflicts between capital and
labour.

The new claimant for the estates of Derwentwater
inspires the Standard with pity. Melancholy is the sketch
drawn of that poor lady, dependent for fire and food and
shelter upon the charity of people who, while she claims
the tumble-down towers of Dilston as her ancestral home,
pity her as a monomaniac, and witness her roadside
misery. Interpreted anyhow, the narrative is extra-
ordinary. Where did this woman pass her youth?
What has been the chronology of her house? Where and
what are those minute documents upon which she is said
to rely ? And what can neutralise an act of attainder ?
We are afraid that the canvas-topped hut in Tynedale
will confer upon her no better title in law than the
roofless rooms of Dilston Castle. There may be
Derwentwaters wandering over the earth, possibly; any
Radcliffe can claim to be affiliated with that unfortunate
yet still ambitious lineage. So there are Plantagenets, so
there are Stuarts, so there are Sobieskis; yet, as Southey
says, they must all or most of them consent to have their
pretensions judged " with leave of Greenwich Hospital."
Now that Greenwich Hospital is becoming a phantom,
we candidly say that we would prefer the Earl of Der-
wentwater to the Lords of the Admiralty as permanent
"men in possession ;" but the lady who asserts herself as
" countess " cannot make out her case by " squatting,"
as colonists phrase it, on the Queen's highway in a tar-
pauling tent, borrowing a kitchen grate from a neighbour.
ing grange, and adding no more to her claim by her
tenacity than if she tore up the title-deeds of the Green-
wich estate, and thereupon proclaimed herself the substi-
tute-tenant of the Crown.

The Herald maintains that we are bound to defend our
Asiatic Empire. Concede that Russian progress in Cen-
tral Asia is a bugbear ; allow that native chiefs ought not
to be annexed simply because British India is deficient it
sanitary centres; the fact remains that we have incor-
rigible neighbours, uncivilised and predatory, who are the
perpetual enemies of the British dominion. It is useless
to think of alliances in these quarters. No conventions
will ever bind the Hazaree or the Wahabee tribes. Thei;
religions, their traditions, their prejudices, their supersti-
tions are, and ever have been, against us. They inhabit the
caverns—they infest the ambushes of the earth. We have
had enough to do with their complicated intrigues, any'
the time has arrived for occupying permanently the true
limits of our Eastern Empire. Nothing beyond the most
sentimental and ridiculous enthusiasm can affect a ten-
derness for Wahabee or Hazaree freedom. It is merely a
question of evil or well-being to our Indian subjects.
These North-Western tribes are our implacable foes, and
will never cease from troubling until they are our unques-
tioned subjects.

The Standard says it is impossible, so long as we thin/_
it worth while to retain our empire in India, that we can
permit the Peshawur Valley to pass into any foreign
bands. We must keep it, however onerous the possession
may be. The Indus itself is no frontier in any military
sense. The valley of Peshawur is the vanguard of our
Indian Empire. Even if it were valuable on no other
account, it must be retained now, for political reasons, at
all hazards.

On the fact that one thousand women will, as far as
can be foreseen, cast their votes at the next election, the
Daily News observes that there is a strong feeling still that
an entrance into political life will tend to degrade woman,
and there is in the apprehension some confession of those
superiorities upon which old Agrippa expatiates. But
the reply to this is, that all those accompaniments of
'political life which it believed would be degrading to
woman are equally degrading to man, that they must ba
clone away with, and that there is reason to believe the
enfranchisement of woman will set in motion several very
potent influences against them. She will demand, and
men will-demand for her, the abolition of such shameful
accompaniments of our elections as would make he:
'shrink from participation in them. Wherever woman
has gone, by social and legal consent, she has always been
a purifying element, and unless it be shown that violence
and corruption are essential to representative government;
the whole matter resolves itself into the question whether
we prefer to retain those evils, or to admit the influeno'
which would render them intolerable, and necessitate a
more determined effort for their removal. Nor must there
be omitted in the consideration the notorious fact that
women already exert an important influence in our elec-
tions, and that such secret and irregular influence is always
less healthy and more liable to perversion than it could be
if confined by legal recognition to direct and constitutional
channels.

The Telegraph thinks that Sir Daniel Gooch, ALP., an
chairman of the Great Western Railway, holds in very
low estimation the good sense and discretion of the travel-
ling public. Addressing his constituents at Cricklade the
other night, he complained that railways were harshly
treated, and asked if it was not monstrous that, under a
late Act, passengers could stop a train "on the most
frivolous ground—probably if suffering from the stomach-
ache, or for the purpose of lighting a cigar." Anyone who
knows how frequently insults are offered to unpro.
tected female passengers, or remembers the recent
accident to the Scotch express, will answer that, even if
stoppages were sometimes brought about by such foolish
motives, yet if, in just as many cases, violence or danger
were prevented, the gain would be well worth its cost.
But two things, of which Sir Daniel Gooch takes no ac-
count, must powerfully avail to prevent false or silly
alarms. There is a little public opinion in the compart-
ments of railway carriages, which travellers inclined for
"larking" will not often venture to brave ; while it would
be easy for the railway company to punish, by fine at
least, any passenger who might he found wilfully and
recklessly bringing the train to a stand, and thus discon•
ceding the arrangement.

A BOLD TIIIEF.—A thief of an original turn
of mind, named Cartel, had selected for the scene of his
operations the Prefecture of Police at Paris. He was
accustomed to walk about the corridors, and picked the
locks of office doors during the absence of their occupants,
and abstracted any small sums or portable articles. He
was at length detected, and has just been brought up foi
trial. His excuse was that ho wished to give a lesson of
vigilance to the police, but in spite of this ingenious
explanation he wAgsstlynced to flys years'

TEN LEAMINGTOXITAILTVAT:tiCapgIM
ciaPtarn Tyler, the inspecting officer of iailviiiYs to the
Board of Trade, was a witness at the inquest on the
bodies of John and Joseph Davis (father and son), who lost
their lives in the railway accident on the Rugby and
Leamington branch of the London and North-Western
Railway. After describing the place of the accident and
the damage done, the witness said : The cause of the
accident is evidently due to the failure of the fastenings
between the three chairs which were first pushed out-
wards on the right, and the sleepers to which they
were attached. These three chairs with defective fasten-
ings having been more or less disturbed by the passage
of the engine, had so far bulged out, by the time the
tiring wheels of the tender came upon the rail over them,
that, whilst the off wheel remained upon the rail, the
near wheel dropped down inside the near rail. This
tended to increase the mischief. The leading break-van
left the rails on reaching the same spot. The off rail was
further burst outwards, and the last four carriages ran
down the embankment in the manner described. The
fastenings between the three chairs first pushed outwards
must have been trenails, and these must have been in a
defective condition. If there had been even one wrought-
iron spike through a trenail in each of these chairs the
accident could not have happened. The absence of
fracture in these chairs, and of bending in the rails
which they supported, indicates that the chairs had been
pushed out without the exercise of much violence.
The accident illustrates a subject which is of very great
importance to the safety of the public travelling on rail-
ways. By far the greater number of accidents that have
occurred of late years from objects of permanent way
have been caused by the failure of wooden trenails or
fastenings between the chairs and the sleepers. I have at
this moment before me the printed reports of myself and
other inspecting officers respecting fifteen accidents which
have been caused since 1860, wholly or partially, but for
the most part wholly, by failure of such fastenings.
I am therefore anxious to draw attention pointedly to
the subject. Wooden trenails were at one time
employed very extensively as railway fastenings, and
they have this advantage, that whilst the iron spikes
are apt, after a certain length of time, to get loose, the
trenails, as long as they remain sound, hold the sleepers
more firmly to the chairs. At the same time the trenails,
whilst safe in a track of this description when first put in,
and where the line is straight, are liable to be sheared off
by side strains or curves. They are also liable to fail,
sooner or later, on straight portions of the line, giving way
gradually between the chair and the sleeper, without
affording upon the surface any indication of their failing
condition. They are thus of a treacherous character,
and a chair may in reality have little or no fastening
when the head of the trenail is sound. The plate-
layers, though examining the line daily, may have very
little idea of the real condition in this important
respect. The only symptom of failure that attracts their
attention is probably a slight disturbance of the ballast,
which tells them that one or more of their fastenings have
given way, and only after the failure has occurred. In
the case of the present accident there was probably no
symptom of failure visible to the platelayers before the three
chairs were suddenly pushed outwards as the engine of
the train passed over them. The moral to be derived
from this accident cannot be too extensively applied by
every body of railway directors and every engineer in
charge of permanent way in the kingdom. It is, that no
railway chair should be allowed to remain fastened to the
sleeper by trenails only. The best fastening that can be
used is the fang bolt, or wrought-iron bolt, with fastening
nuts. The next best is the hollow trenail with a wrought-
iron spike driven thkugh it. This combined fastening
has the double advantage of good holding and security
from fracture.

Captain Tyler was cross-examined by the representatives
of the various interests present, but little was elicited
beyond what appears in his statement. In reply to an
observation by the coroner he said, if he were a platelayer
he would not be responsible for the safety:of the line unless
it was properly spiked. He did not consider thirty-two
miles an hour an extraordinary speed for a train to run
down an incline. On a straight line, with the metals in
proper order, it might with perfect safety go at the speed
of sixty miles an hour.

Mr. Sewell, district inspector of permanent way between
Rugby and Leamington, and his foreman platelayer, were
next examined. Their evidence simply went to show that
the line was examined in the same way as all the London
and North-Western lines are, by the platelayers, and that
as far as they knew it was in good order on the day before
the accident.

In reply to a question from the coroner,
Mr. Blenkinsop said the trenails were not used on the
wain line of the railway. If the jury recommended the
use of spikes instead of trenails on the Leamington and
Rugby branch they should be substituted.
The Coroner briefly summed up the evidence, and the
jury retired to consider their verdict.

After an absence of half an hour they returned into
court, and handed in the following:—" The jury is of
opinion that the deceased persons met their deaths by
the displacement of the rails caused by the defective state
of the trenails ; that the present mode of inspecting the
permanent way is too superficial to guard against similar
accidents. The jury recommend that the attention of the
directors should be called to the fact that trenails alone
are not sufficient to ensure the safety of passengers, as
proved by the recent accident ; and that iron spikes should
be used with joints fitted, as recommended by Captain
Tyler."