Connecticut western news., 1883-04-18
Labor TrOqaRpl@s.

departments Of labor No sooner are the wages. adjusted for one trade or class of production than a strike breaks out in some other department of skilled labor and the country is kept in state of suspense and uncertainty most of the time The iron industry has suffered greatly and the great strike which re- gently occurred among the rolling mill operatives, puddlers and iron workers will long be remembered. After the inflated prices which have prevailed for few years past, it seems almost impos- sible for the laboring class to submit to the necessary reduction of prices for labor and 1t seems equally hard for the manufacturers to meet the present low prices for their products but while the laboring classes of this country think their lot hard one, they ought to bear in mind that the manufacturers here have to compete with the pauper labor of Europe and without further comment we present view of the situation in England It is a deplorable condition of affairs and England ought to provide measures to improve the condition of these wretched people. We copy the following from the Scientific American of April 2 :-
 Those who are so apt to jump at the conclusion in the abstract that machine ry and invention throw manual labor out of employment and so encourage pauperism, would do well to take a les son from some of the industries which are carried on by hand work and study the phases which they present. One of these pictures, which quite eclipses the 'Song of the Shirt" for squalor and wretchedness, has just been drawn by Mir Robert F. Porter in the Tribune. Mir Porter was @ member of the late tariff commission and is clearly close observ- CT of matters concerning industrial la- Dor. From his last letter we gather the following:
 The country which MT Porter visited was the "Lye Waste region in the Back Country, district located partly in Stafford and partly in Worcester, Eng land. In this district, situated seven miles from the great manufacturing in dustries of Birmingham and dismal be- yond description, is to be found an army or A,OOO persons engaged in making nails and rivets by hand. A place where only wreck and ruin, squalor, filth and wretchedness abound, it is yet peo- pied by some of the most industrious people in England. The work of nail and rivet making is done in little smith ies attached to the novels, which are filthy and horrible beyond description. The father, mother and children all en- gage Tn the industry, while the wages of two parents and daughter, say of IA, are barely sufficient to keep the family from starving. Mir Porter puts it in this wise: An expert mailer, working steadily from Monday morning to Friday night can only make two and a half bundles of iron rods into nails. for which he gets 6s. 1-2d per bundle. or for his weeks work, 16s. Sd, exactly S4 Now, his wife, by working every moment of her spare time and late into the niob+ neglecting the wretched little children can make bundle of commoner nails for which she is paid 3s. Id, and inc little half starved, ,stunted girl of 12. with her brown arms and steady. unerrino, aim, will hammer out half a bundle. 1s 1-2d. Total earnings of an industrious and hard working family, three at tbe forge, for the entire week:
 English United States Er money. money. Eatper F.te l6s Sd. $4 00
 Mother 3s. Id. n
 Daughter Is. 711d. 90
 Total gross earnings
 of family per week 21s 41%d 13.
 But out of this pittance must come Sd. for carriage of iron from the s.foo- gers" and returning the nails, Is. for the smlthy fire and 3d. for the wear of tools. Net earnings, $4 " per week. the united earnings of three industrious, sober persons.
 The saddest feature of this business is that the young women should be allowed to work at the machines called ssaliyes. i" heavy machines made of iron and work ing with treadle, employed in fiatten- ing the heads of the large eipht-inch bolts. Hundreds of women work at these machines and do not earn over $1 20 week and this work has been done in this way for a century. The poor operatives scarcely have an addi- uonal comfort over what was obtainable 100 years ago.--.a ------- -----
 The effect of such work and such sur roundlngs upon the morals of the com munity are what might be expected. We have no reason to believe the picture at all overdrawn which describes the young women as living most wretched- y. Not only do they marry early--sev- erai g1ris not over l7 being pointed out to Mir Porter as mothers of children two or three years of age-but the London otandafd tells story appalling for it's Wretchedness. According to that jour- confinement have been known to work in the agony of exhaustion. in order to earn few pence at the hearth mol the hearth of home but the sheartb' of the forge; they have been known to TO. turn to work in day or two after child birth, emaciated in constitution, weak and weary for the want of simple nonr- ishment Their children, ragged and i'll fed, have had to lead miserable and wretched lives, with no hope before them but life of wlckedness and vice."
 1t goes without saying that the reme dy for such state of slavery is emigra tion. The United States may not be paradise where gold grows in the streets and diamonds crystalline on trees but it at least is country where such soual- or and wretchedness are comparatively unknown. And in this condition of affairs as is here described some of our large manufactures may find hint for their supply and no form of philanthro- py could convey the spirit of 0 truer beneficence than that which should lift such people out of their squalor and surround them by the comforts, the earnings, and, we may add, leisure as well, which are to be met with in so many of the industrial towns of the Tinted CfafaS