The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-06-20
The Labor Question In England.

We publish in another part of to-day issue
an interesting letter from our correspondent
at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, on the labor
strike in the eastern counties of England The
combined movement OF agricultural laborers
in any part of England to increase their wages
and to improve their condition is a new thing
under the sun, and it is more remarkable in
those comparatively isolated and landlord
ridden counties of Suffolk, Norfolk Cam
bridge and Lincoln. In the middle and
manufacturing counties, where the better
informed working classes, as mechanics
and manufacturing laborers, might ex-
ercise an influence over the farm work
men, and where the railroad, telegraph
and press reach them, it would not
have been surprising to see combined
efforts of even the agricultural class. But
this movement in the east Of England, where
there is little contact with the rest Of the
world, and where the people have been hardly
better than serfs from the time of the Norman
conquest to this day, is truly astonishing. 1t
shows in the first place. that the people, being
goaded to desperation and having a glimmer-
ing of the light of this nineteenth century,
are ready to assert their right to live and not
to starve amid the wealth of the richest coun-
try in Europe However the movement may
terminate, at present it is undoubtedly an in
cipient revolution that must eventually change
the social and political character of England.
Uneducated as the mass of these agricul-
tural laborers of the east of England are,
they have the sturdy common sense and
logged courage of their Saxon ancestors. The
people Of the counties we refer to are the
most purely Saxon of all England. They are of
the race and stock of Shakespeare, Milton, Ba-
con and Cromwell, and not OF the De Courcys
and other Norman families of the aristocracy.
Though they have been kept in darkness, dis
franchised and bound to the soil and their
narrow localities like serfs for centuries, there
is still the latent brain and love of independ-
ence OF the old Saxons. 1t only required the
to show their true character. The poor
wretches who have to live and support fam
lily upon two dollars week, or even less, have
been taught at last to compare their situation
with that of the luxurious farmers and the
landlords who roll in wealth. Suffer they may
and suffer they will in the unequal struggle in
which they are engaged, but the stubborn fact
Of their deplorable poverty and pauperism in
the midst of wealth cannot be eradicated. The
end must be an amelioration of their condi-
ton by the consent of the so-called upper
classes or bloody revolution
We wish that these honest, hard working
and sturdy Anglo-Saxon agricultural laborers
Of the eastern counties of England could
come to this country of freedom, cheap lands
and well paid labor. No better class of
immigrants could come, and we should well
come them as the best It is of that stock
mainly that the foundation of the North
American colonies and this Republic was
laid. But how can they come? They have
no means. They are about as powerless to
move from their villages and the soil they till
as the serfs of Russia were If our enter
prising landowners, capitalists and railroad
companies would organize the means to bring
them here, with system Of emigration
from the agricultural districts of England
both this country and these poor people
would be benefited. At all events, the agri-
cultural laborers Of England have the SYM
pathy OF the American people in this move
ment to improve their condition.