The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-03-16 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

from our colonies, and from some of our best
foreign markets, shows very little symptoms of re-
suming an active state. Altogether, the state of our

manufacturing interest is most depressed

We hear in many quarters of the town anxious
inquiries as to what is doing by the Sanatory Com-
mittee, and what are their views as to the mode in
which its provisions are to be carried out. We
must confess ourselves to he as much in the dark
as the bulk of the inquirers ; and really must sub-
mit to the committee the propriety of supplying
the public
,with a little more detailed information
than is to be procured from their reports as read to
the council. Plainly, we should like to see the
reporters for the press admitted to their meetings.
The Sanatory Committee is now a most impor-
tant body, with very extensive powers affecting the
interests of all classes of our community. It num-

bers 27 or 28 members, comprising amongst them
a large portion of the intelligence of the council;
and has three sub-committees, viz. a Committee of
Finance, another to which is intrusted the con-
struction of buildings, baths; &c., and a third,
which has the management of sewering, paving,
and the supply of water. Now when it is remem-
bered that the highway board, with vastly inferior
duties and powers to the last of these sub-com-
mittees, admitted reporters to their weekly meet-
ings, we cannot but think that the Sanatory Com-
mittee itself would do well to imitate the example.
We are certain that they need fear nothing from
the most extensive publicity being given to their
proceedings. At the same time we know that by
their constituents such a concession as we have
suggested would he most gratefully received.

The Ten Hours Factory Bill goes into committee
to-morrow, when, no doubt, a strong effort will be
made by the millowners and their friends to sub-
stitute for ten an eleven hours clause. The poor
factory worker is grudged the full boon of justice
and mercy which lie asks—the additional hour to
be devoted to self-improvement, to the training up
of his family, or to domestic avocations. That one
hour is the Rubicon over which, if the millowner
is forced, his ruin and the loss of our pre-eminence
as a manufacturing nation, he asserts, must be the
result.

Yet this is urged—the fact that eleven hours'
working daily is necessary to enable us to supply
the markets of the world—at a time when the whole
manufacturing power in the country is not working
five hours ; when thousands of our best operatives
are either totally unemployed or upon half time
and wages !—at a time when most of our foreign
markets are loaded with accumulated stocks, and
there is little prospect that we may, for some years
to come, be able to procure a sufficient supply of
the raw material to work the long hours contended
for. It is made in the face of the fact that the
average working hours for many years past, partly
owing to strikes and suspensions of working arising
from the propensity of the manufacturer to over-
produce, have not been ten hours per day. It is
urged that we must have not less than eleven hours,
because, in case of a sudden revival of demand,
the manufacturer cannot expand his production
with sufficient rapidity. He prefers alternations of
stagnation and inflated prosperity—short time and
long hours—to steady, and continuous production,
and moderate prosperity in its result. He asks to
be allowed to bind down his workers to a meal or
half a meal a day, in one part of the year, and to
drag the very flesh from their bones with excessive
toil in the other portion. .

The sound politician, however, will tell him that
this cannot be
,permitted. The object of all commer-
cial legislation ought to be to prevent, as much as
possible, these violent fluctuations of the demand
and supply, not only of goods, but of labour. The
operative classes are quite alive to this truth. They
have felt the oppressiveness of the existing system;
and we warn Lord John Russell that agitation will
never cease upon this question until a ten hours
bill is conceded. He has now the opportunity be-
fore him of reaping a harvest of gratitude from the
working classes by his support of this bill. Let
him not be seduced to cast from him so invaluable
a reward.

IN another column will be found a letter from
C. W. Williams, Esq.,. Upon the subject of,,tlk
attempted bill for converting a great public work—
the Harbour of Refuge constructing at Holyhead
—into a railway monopoly, and acknowledging
some humble services of ours in drawing attention
to the subject in terms for which we cannot but
feel grateful, although we fear they rather exceed
in value anything which we have deserved. To

the acute discernment of Mr. Williams himself,
we, and this community, owe a deep debt of grati-
tude for the frustration of this attempt. If, by
acting upon the warning first furnished by him,
we have aided in bringing about the withdrawal of
the bill, we are sincerely thankful.
We have little doubt that the authorities of our
town will henceforth be watchful as to the terms
and objects of such private bills ; and it would be
only proper courtesy and justice towards those
authorities, and the authorities of other ports, if
her Majesty's advisers would allow no bill of the
kind to be entertained in Parliament without those
interests, however remotely, being made acquainted
with its features in detail. A railway company
cannot pass within a hundred yards of a farmer's
or a landowner's out-house or planting *without
notice being given; but it seems that they may,
without offending the standing orders of Parlia-
ment, inflict tolls upon the shipping of an empire,
without the necessity of a word of caution being
given. We certainly owe to Mr. Williams an obli-
gation which the absurd stringency, in many re-
spects, of the standing orders of Parliament has
not afforded us.

We learn that, accompanied by a deputation of
the Shipowners' Association of London, Mr. Wil-
liams waited, yesterday, upon Lord Clarendon, at
the Board of Trade, in connection with this sub-
ject ; to-day he is to wait upon Mr. Strutt and the
Railway Commissioners ; and to-morrow the subject
will be brought by the same parties before Lord
John Russell.