The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1870-07-05

Inc great trade strike In YORK, Dased as ~ 10
| upon the action and influence of a number OF
labor unions combining together to exclude
competition from their line o. industry, is sad
illustration Of the fact how intelligent men,
when blinded by prejudice and carried away
by unre6ecting excitement, may forget the
lessons that the history Of their own country
affords. No community on earth has been so
victimzed by arbitrary and violent action
against her skill and workmanship as Ire
land. Two hundred years ago the fame of her
WOODEN manufacture was heard all over
Europe. The products of the Irish loom were
sent to all the north countries, and even to
France, Spain and Portugal, whence came
profusion of wines, fruits, oils and silks in
return, with host of other commodities that
beauti6ed the Irish homes of other days and
encouraged in the Irish gentry the refined
tastes which, amid all the misfortunes Of their
native land, they still retain. The French
government even gave Irish manufacturers
standing contracts, by which they furnished
the peculiar kind of cloth that was used for its
army wear.
Says Swift in his instructive 'Letters -
''The condition of our trade was glorious and
fourishing. I" At that time the cur
rent money Of Ireland was foreign silver. A
man could hardly receive one hundred pounds
sterling without finding the coin of all the
Northern Powers and of every prince of the
German empire among them"
But in 1896 the manufacturers of Bristol,
England, jealous of this beautiful Irish pros
perity, petitioned the King, complaining that
'the cheapness of provisions in Ireland, the
advantages of water power and the goodness
of the climate doth invite over his Majesty's
subjects to settle there, and if stop be not
put TO it by legislative enactment that coun-
try QrelanD would possess itself of the chief
trade of the empire" To this the King re-
piled that he wonld 'do all in his power to
discourage the wooden trade Of Ireland" On
June 8, 1893, both Houses Of Parlia-
ment addressed the King on the same
subject, and referred especially to the
excellence of the material as one
great cause of Irish success. Finally the act
of 10Th and 18th of William III. was passed,
prohibiting the export of wool and woollen
manufactures from Ireland under penalty Of
forfeiture of goods and ship and five hundred
pounds sterling fine The expectation of full
ler's earth, so necessary in the manufacture Of
cloth, was prohibited in England, and the
Irish trade was thus additionally crippled.
Twenty-Five embargo laws were subsequently
passed in forty years, and all Irish merchants,
whether Catholic or Protestant, were abso-
lutely prohibited from importing or exporting
anything excepting directly from or to British
merchants resident in England, the goods to
be conveyed exclusively in British built ves-
sells. These laws drove out of Ireland forty
two thousand families, or about two hundred
thousand people, for one-tenth Of the whole
population had been engaged in the wooden
manufacture They fed to the Continent, and
were received with open arms, particularly in
Germany, whose children are now so harshly
met at the Irish threshold with disorders,
fomented, as investigation would more than
likely show, by agents not Of Irish birth, but
coming from the same centre whose emissaries
are now agitating France. From that moment
until in 1882, Ireland began to feel the delight
of self-government through Parliament of
her own, and from that time on, to use the
expressive language Of Lord Glare, mo nation
on the habitable globe advanced in culture,
commerce and manufactures with the same
Artisans focked in from all neighboring
nations and were we'll employed; population
rose from three to five millions, and the wages
Of labor doubled and trebled. In Dublin
five thousand carpenters were busy; few
years ago there were but five hundred. In
the same city were over fifteen thousand
silk weavers, and lately there were but three
hundred, although the city is now twice its
former size. The magniHcence of Dublin, the !
wealth and elegant display of its resident |
gentry and the rich splendor of its archi- |
lecture became the wonder of the most
distinguished visitors from England and
the Continent Yet even all this material
grandeur was eclipsed by the genius
of her orators, her statesmen, her phi
losophers, poets and patriots, who made
that brief period memorable forevermore in
Irish annals. But this gorgeous picture of
prosperity faded away again when Ireland lost
the last semblance of her independence, and
trade went down so low and its decline pro-
duced so fierce a competition among the many
half-starving workmen that in 1888, when
Daniel O'Connell the '1iberator" and the true
friend of Ireland, denounced the outrages that
had been committed by the trades, and
rebuked them openly at their great meeting
held in the Royal Exchange in Dublin, he
only narrowly escaped with his life from the
Infatuated leaders. Indeed, he had to be
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