The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1879-01-30


cases by letter only, addressed to box l62
postofice, Manchester. All applications
must be accompanied by reference to last
employer and one or two respectable
househclders.n You can imagine how
widely spread is want in Manchester
when you learn that on last Friday, at
one agency alone, relief was asked for
l0,S00 souls. In Kent the farmers have
resolved to turn out of their cottages
,laborers who refuse to submit to reduc-
ton of wages and to withdraw from the
laborers union. The laborers have held
meeting and resolved to emigrate to
New leland unless the farmers stopped
playing their pranks." Why New Eel
and? Is not America much nearer?
THREATENED STRIKE OF THE coLL1ERs.
But the one hundred thousand colliers
on strike! That is momentous fact
more to be considered than the glorious
Afghan news, with which all England
should be thrilling in patriotic ardor, but
about which no one seems to care. Who
can rejoice over beaten and fugitive
Ameer, with bread so hard to earn and
ones piano and sewing machine and sa-
cred wedding ring going to the pawn
brokers' shop? Here is leading news
paper article, calm and we'll considered,
on the hundred thousand colliers. Their
wages have been pared down and down
until they can hardly keep shoes on their
feet. Remember this distress has been
coming slowly for long time, and these
proposed Christmas reductions are only a
step in O series of reductions. Now the
colliers are asked to come down twelve
per cent. The good times which were
promised as every clipping came off their
former pittance-the radiant, sunny times
when every Englishman would earn
enough to insure him at least a warm
dinner, with beef and baked potatoes
where are they7 As far off as ever, and
still greater cutting down. The colli-
ers argue that while all trades have suf-
fered their trade has been the least affec-
ted; that people must have Goals, whether
poor or rich, and that they are pinched
not because the masters suffer, but be-
cause they wish to take advantage of the
general distress to increase their profits.
I am afraid this argument has holes in it
and will not carry water. In time of
such unexampled misery every industry
will suffer alike, and one feels quite GER
tain that nothing but q necessity which
could not be surmounted leads to the
measure which has summoned the colli-
ers to arms. If the government can find
o way to avert this strike it will avoid q
serious difficulty. One hundred thousand
men out of employment, and angry be-
cause they feel that their idleness is a
grievance enforced upon them. what may
not result? The argument of the work.
men, as / quote it from an authority IA
yorable to the masters, paper entirely
in the Troy capitalists interests, is this:
'The fworkmen say that the masters
promised that no reduction should be
carried further than the removal of all
the addition to wages made since the be-
ginning of that extraordinary expansion
Of trade which few years ago so en-
riched colliery proprietors and their
hands at the expense of the consumer
that is to say, of nearly all trades, and OF
every family in the country" The mas
tiers deny that any such promise was
made. No reasonable business man
would promise, because be had success
full series of years and had put away large
profits, that in years to come he would
pay more for wages than he earned and
use his profits in the future to meet bad
times. In all such quarrels, where the
point at issue is matter of.Eersonal ad-
vantage, there are right and wrong on
both sides. The masters pressed their
advantage when times were bright with
out considering the workmen-now the
workmen meaii to press their sheer force
against the masters without making al
lowance for the distress. It is hard to
spend the profits of 1875 in supporting
workmen in 1878. It is also very, very
hard to keep body and soul together and
have children around you on the wretched
wages paid to collier, more especially
if twelve per cent. is to be taken from
them. One cannot we'll see how the
problem is to be solved; and the impend-
ing strike of hundred thousand colliers,
which appears to be accepted as iueyita-
BILE, seems to me the gravest fact in the
present history Of England.
AMERICAN INFLUENCES CAUSING DIS
TRESS.
You have heard that committee is at
work distributing bread and meat, and
also making searching inquiry into the
causes of the distress. Many reasons are
assigned-the main reasons, the prosperi-
ty of the United States. Nothing seems
clearer than this, that England is falling
back simply because America is advanc-
ing. Peace, it is written, hath her victo-
ries no less renowned than war. How
wise it was in those who governed Amer
lea to be content with peaceful contro-
yersy with England. l am not writing
in any spirit Of e1ultation because /
never have seen cause for rejoicing in
any war, peaceful or otherwise, and ]
believe ifthe relations between the fami-
ly of nations were adjusted on sound
basis you would not see what pains one
so much-the suffering of nations like
Germany and England, and the prosper.
ity OF nations like France and America.
One cannot help feeling that, having had
our day of sorrow, it is sweet once more
to see the sun. But, sooner or later, the
distress here must affect the most pros
porous of nations. If you look for the
causes of this trouble what do you find
There is the distress in the iron trade
Well, in ten years America has added
twelyefold to her iron production. Every
ton Of ore produced is so much taken
from England. We can make iron even
in Tennessee and Alabama cheaper than
it can be made in England, and as a con-
sequence the export trade of English iron
once the largest item of our imports, is
confined to the Atlantic coast. Very
soon it will be driven out and we shall be
sending our manufactured iron to this
market. This makes an immense chasm
in the profits of English labor. There is
distress in the cotton trade. Not long
since England had virtual monopoly o.
cotton manufacture. She purchased oul
raw cotton aud sent it back to us in clcth
and the industry assumed prodigious pro-
l. Trl,o =