Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-09-20
HARD TIMES IN ENGLAND.
The Wretched Condition to Which She
Has Been Brought by Free Trade.

The following article is taken from 9
recent number of a London, England,
journal called Fair Trade, which copied
it from another London newspaper, the
Weakly Bulletin. 1t draws a fearful
picture of the miserable condition to
which English workingmen and farmers
have been reduced by unrestricted
foreign competition, commonly called
free trade.
''At the present time there are. be-
yond ali question, something like 900,-
900 able-bodied men out of work in this
country-with their dependents. $780,
900 souls-to say nothing of the hun
dreds of thousands of poor men, women
and girls who have been forced and
ground down by what is known as the
sweating system, which in its incidents
is worse than any American or West
Indian black slavery; and there is not
the slightest doubt about it that all this
out of work and working at starvation
wages can be traced directly to, and, in
fact, is the legitimate and natural out
come and result of unrestricted foreign
competition. Our agriculture is already,
to q great extent, ruined, and one
British industry after another is collaps-
ing. Lord Salisbury, speaking on the
subject of return to protection some
few months ago, said: Protection
means nothing less than civil war"
Why, he did not cOndescend to explain.
and we fail to understand. Who would
rise? The farmer, who would be enabled
to grow wheat at living profit? The
manufacturer, who now sees his profits
vanishing, because he is at the same time
shut out from foreign markets and eX-
posed to fierce competition in the mar
kets at home? The small Cor big) trades
man, who foresees an early prospect of
the Bankruptcy Court? The working
man, who, but for this ruinous compet1-
ton, would find it less impossible to get
fair and regular wages2 There only re-
mains the capitalists, the foreign inves-
tors, the pensioners, the people with
settled incomes-the rich, in fact, who,
by our unrestricted imports, get the
necessaries and luxuries of life some
what cheaper. What do they care that
this unnatural cheapness is bought at
the price of ruin and misery and hunger
and nakedness to hundreds Of thousands
around them?
But what Of the nearly one million
able-bodied men who are stalking
through the land, half-maddened with
starvation, ready, like hungry wolves,
FOR almost any deed of violence? What
of the tens OF thousands of wretched
girls driven TO the streets for bread?
Are they no element of danger which
may at any moment excite the flame of
civil war? "Emigrate, my good, starv-
ing people" says the philanthropic
statesman. Yes, emIgrate, and leave
room for the scum of other nations to
do your work at starvation prices. But
emigration is no more remedy than
force. Its end is to relieve undue pres
sure. Expatriate million souls to-
morrow and their places would be filled
up in week by German and Russian
paupers And we deny that we are
ver-populated Belgium can keep q
hundred more to the square mile than
we can. Why can not England do the
same? That is the question for states
men to answer. Matters have come to
this pass-that men willing to work and
anxious to work and able to work can
not get work to do in the land of their
birth, while other countries maintain in
comfort and prosperity a far larger
population to the acre. Surely it is not
a mere accident that no other country in
the world opens its doors to unrestricted
foreign competition but ourselves.
Either we are the one wise nation of the
earth, and the rest are fools, or the re-
verse is the fact. Future articles will
aim to throw upon this great question
the light of the judgment and experience
of not mere theorists, but Of men who
are large employers of labor aud actively
engaged in business through the country.