Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1870-09-01

them. 1t is necessary for community
as crowded as ours that every industry
should exist amongst us to give employ
ment to our redundant population.
With vast overcrowded population
confined to our geographical limits by
the melancholy ocean," and unable to
expand, number of small industries
are absolutely necessary to the existence
of our work-pe ople, and every industry,
however small, becomes of vital import
ance.
Short work in the manufacturing dis
tricts means increased poor rates, in
creased idleness, drunkenness and
crime, with all the corresponding costly
means of repression. The indirect tax
alton the upper and middle classes would
pay by the imposition of a moderate ad
ualorem duty on foreign manufactures,
would not be felt half so much as the
direct taxes now levied for Poor and
Police rates and other expenses necessi-
tated by the increasing crime and pau
perism of the country. The pauperism
and crime of the country are increasing
so rapidly that we must look the diff
Guilty in the face and try to mitigate it,
or we must shut our eyes and ears and
let destruction come upon US. At the
rate they are now increasing this need
not be very long; in the year 1S43 fifteen
years ago, the amount expended in
actual relief of the poor was under five
millions; in 1868 it was seven and half
millions, an increase of so per cent. in
fifteen years. Nearly the whole of this
increase of crime has been in the manu-
featuring districts; in the agricultural
districts they have remained nearly
stati onary.
English operatives by the thousand
have been and are being pushed out Of
their home market by foreign competi-
ton, and have no others opened to
them; it must soon become question
what is to be done with them. The re-
suit of our commercial legislation has
been to throw them out of wo rk; to sup
plant their own articles of industry by
cheaper articles from abroad; they can
not work but they will not starve. If
they think their Government or the
ruling classes have been go Indifferent
to their interest are so selfish as regards
their own as to aid in this result, it is
only natural they should look to them
for some other source of livelihood.
What are they prepared to do9 Are
they prepared to support vast portion
of the operative class permanently in
idleness; or are they prepared for a
wholesale emigration, which would ferce
wages still higher, and make a foreign
competition still more ruinous? Which
is the most just, the most reasonable,
the most economical mode of procedure,
to export whole classes Of the best of our
work-people. thus adding to the proper
tion of the useless and ill-conditioned
left at home, raising the scale of wages,
and increasing the already existing ad-
vantages of foreign nations, or to strive
by moderate customs duties to secure to
the workman a certain preferential in
terest in his home market, and thus en-
able him to find work and a fair means
of livelihood at home, and to take his
share of the burdens and taxation of his
own country instead of adding to the
skill and wealth of another?
The difference between England and
her young manufacturing rivals is sim
pie, but alarming. France, Austria,
Prussia, Belgium, Switzerland, have in
creased their export trade and their
home consumption; England has in
creased her export trade, but her home
consumption has fallen away in the
matter of cotton alone, IS per cent. in
three years!*
In the present condition Of manufae-
turing industries it is foolish to tell the |
operative class to attribute the prosperi-
ty to Free Trade; they are not prosper
GUS; it is a mockery to tell them to
thank God for full stomach, when they |
are empty! they are not well of; never
has starvation, pauperism, crime, dis
content been so plentiful in the manu-
featuring districts-never since England
has been manufacturing country has
every industry great or small, been so
completely depressed, never has work
been so impossible to find, never have
the means and savings of the working
classes been at so low an ebb.
*Value of home consumption of cotton goods
for 1865 was nearly thirteen millions; for 1858,
nearly seven millions.