The Wilmington daily Republican. (Wilmington, Del.) 1890-1902, 1891-01-19
FAMINE AND FREE TRADE.

II Is estimated that there are In Lon
don about 10000 men without work,
and every other city In the kingdom
reports proportionate number. This
is glimpse of a state Of social affairs
In the United Kingdom that Is sicken-
ing to contemplate; but to appreciate
the full force OF tho situation II must
be remembered that these men are not
only out of work, but they and their
families are out of food. They are
not, like most unemployed men in this
country, In possession Of little ready
money or within reach of aid from
relatives or labor organizations TO tide
them over temporary suspension.
They are paupers, and they are starry
ng. A despatch says:
The public courts are filed with
men and women charged with stealing
food, OF. that which they might ex-
change for food, and many Of the poor
creatures actually crave the food of
the prison to save them from starva-
ton on the streets" Their sufferings
are aggravated by the severity of the
weather, which has decreased the sup
ply OF fish and vegetables, until they
are held at famine prices. The British
laborer even when at work, expects to
taste meat but seldom; he lives on
meal, fish and vegetables, and II these
provisions are doubled in price at the
same time that his scanty income is
cut off, his is pitiable state indeed.
The condition of the British poor
presents q problem, not merely for the
philanthroplst, but for the statesman
and political economist as we'll. That
SO large proportion OF its laboring
population can be idle, without
special cause, denotes an unhealthy
social condition in any country, and
the observer Is constrained to ask II
there is not something radically
wrong with its system of government.
England is pre-eminently a country
where the rich constantly grow richer
while the poor grow poorer, and the
Socialist agitators, who labor among
the lower classes of the population
with a persistency worthy of better
cause, are never tired of telling their
hearers that they, the starving thou
sands, have u moral right to a portion
of the Astounding luxury OF the
wealthy hundreds which is constantly
before their eyes in the aristocratic
West End OF London. Is not this
great but constantly increasing in
equality another symptom that there
is something wrong with tho country's
public policy?
Such u conclusion seems to us inevi-
table, and it also seems to us that
England's national hobby, free trade,
Is responsible for large share of the
distress. The arguments which led
England to adopt this system were
good ones to certain extent. As u
consumer Of more than she produces
in certain lines-notably provisions
she IL right to encourage free trade in
those lines, but she has brought misery
upon her people by making 1t hobby,
it to all lines OF trade, except
where duties are imposed for revenue,
and trying to force il upon other ma
tions. Even in the production OF food
this policy has been carried To an in
furious extreme. In recent article
Professor Robert Ellis Thompson,
speaking of the evils described in Cen
eral Booths book, 'ln Darkest Eng
land, says: .-.....
''rhe growth in the volume of the
evil is due largely TO the altered eco
nomic condition OF England. First,
the conversion of small farms into
larger holdings, in the earlier decades
of the century, and then the recent
conversion of arabic into grazing land,
under the pressure of foreign compe-
tition in the grain market, have ope-
THLttl 10 tllht llt itttlOIlllB tiu1EHS ltllO
the cities, and 10 fill up every corner
and Granny with dense population
under conditions highly unfavorable
to health, well-being and morality.
When the Flanders provinces
of Belgium have nnd feed 1.S0O people
to the square mile, England should
not feel overburdened with 4S4 to the
square mile, and with 1900, 900 acres of
land lying absolutely idle-much of it
in the most fertile parts of the king
dom.n
Seven and half millions of fertile
land lying absolutely idle and at least
seven and half million people con-
stantly on the verge of starvation for
want of the food that might be grown
on those acresl Is there not some
thing wrong about that? But this Is
not oil, nor the worst of the evil that
her Free Trade hobby has wrought in
England. In her zeal to break down
the Protection idea in America and sell
her wares here Notwithstanding our
tariff, she has cleapened the cost of
production in every possible way, and
especially by cutting down the wages
of labor. She has stripped her farms
to crowd her factories, and then
starved her factory hands to sell her
goods. This il the condition in which
England finds herself to-day, after half
a century OF persistent devotion to the
hobby of Free Trade ballot.