The workingman's advocate. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1864-1877, 1870-07-02
HOW MEN LIVE IN ENGLAND.

HOW MEN LIVE IN ENGLAND.
The London correspondent Of the New
York Times gives most deplOrable picture
Of the poor Of the large cities Of England.
Millions of people in England live almost
entirely upon bakers bread. Here, for
example, is the way of life Of a sober,
hard-working Englishman, who earns lbs. a
week (say $3.50 gold standard }, and has a
wife ana six children. He neither drinks
nor smokes, and hands over bis whole
wages to his wife. This is a common prac-
tice in well-ordered families. She pays As.
a week for rent; Is. for Goals; candles,
soap, etc.. Cd. penny a week each for
the six children to Q burial club, Cd. on a
Doctors bill due, Is. Here are rs. and 3D..
of the 18s- gone, and nothing to eat. Nov
the bill Of fare for those eight persons One
pound Of bread dry for each-the children
scarcely taste anything elae-comes to rs. a
week 20 pounds Of potatoes, Sd. one
pound Of butchers meat on Sunday, and
two pounds Of salt pork for week days, 2s. !;
one pound Of sugar, half pound OF butter,
one ounce tea, 13d., make up the week 5
account. No milk, no fruit, no clothing.
The only way they can have that is for the
children to get work or die ; then something
would come in from the burial club. Thou
sands and thousands of men work hard for
twO-thirds of these wages, or less.
The New York World tells Of a host Of
emigrant mechanics landing at Castle Gar
den, who could not live in the Old World,
and Of English masons aud carpenters among
them, telling Of getting but $3.50 to $3.50
per week in gold, and paying 90 for miser-
able board, while laborers get from SO to SIS.
Who ever heard of ship loads of American
mechanics landing in Liverpool, to escape
starvation and get better pay? A. Mr..
Hodgkins, Of New York, an Englishman
and free-trader, said lately in an essay at
Brooklyn, that the ore and coal and lime
stone, for making iron, were as cheap and
as abundant in Pennsylvania as in England,
or more so, but the labor was cheaper in
England, giving them the advantage. 60
for protecting labor in this country, and not
for pushing it down to the pauper level Of
England with her free trade theories.
A correspondent of the the New York
Ecemtng Post gives the wages Of five edge
tool makers in that city as $50 33 a week
in gold, and S35 in London, and the Post
tries to make out that English workmen
can live as well as ours. and says that their
wages will buy more yards Of carpet and
poplin, more silk stockings and spool thread
All well, if men and women could eat
carpets and use spool thread for sauce, but
three-fourths of a workman's expenses are
for fuel, &c, and for food easier to masti-
cate and digest, and cheaper with US, GER
tainly used with far more varied abundance.
Savings banks hold mainly the deposits
saved by working people. In 1850 these
banks in Maine, New Hampshire, Massa-
chusetts, Rhode Island, Philadelphia and
Newark, held see. 500 1907, and the next
year 81 ,23S, 3O4 less.
In 1868 the same banks with only one
dime savings bank added) held 1888, $685.
667 an increase of S25 ,O64 ,O2S over 1867.
Similar official reports from other regions
show like result.
Extract from tic Speech t'tho Hon. Aus-
liz Blair, lM @. Of 1Mchigan- Wash
ington, March 25M, 1870.
And here it is proper to remember that
the protection Of our industries is the