The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-04-01


some pretense or other, so that the aver.
age is kept down to about 20 shillings
Clerks get from So to IS per week, anC
bookkeepers from SIS to SO per week.
can give you figures in the other occupa
tions, but they are in about the same
proportion to American wages, 80 to 30C
per cent, lower
English labor has had its vitality
sapped. The laboring classes do moi
know what life is, and, blindly and stub
bornly deluded by the idea that England
is the greatest Nation on the globe, they
refuse to believe that any other country
can be better. They are dull, sluggish,
unambitiOus, unenterprising, and almost
content. with their wrethed existence. In
massive and heavy machinery they alone
equal us. In ingenius implements and
tools they slowly adopt American work
The printer of whom l spoke told me
that all the fine work in London was
done by American printers, who were
paid American wages, and that in every
large newspaper Office in the city the
American Hoe press was in use. l could
give you dozens of instances where they
are using American machines of light,
quick, and perfect action. In my own
line of business l was comp elled to laugh
at English work. England is fifty years
behind us. The work is rough and
poorly done, and hardly building is
completely or properly equipped
1.-THE inventive genius of England is
dead, the laboTing man half dead. Eng
land is on the decline and the cause is
the pursuit of the god of cheapness. To
undersell other Nations their labor has
been oppressed and paralyzed. To sell
cheaper, women and children have sup
piled the place of higher priced men and
there is no field of employment which
woman has not entered. There are
twice as many women in England as
men, and the men are gradually being
driven out by the cheaper labor of the
women.
England has compelled her own peo-
pie to be small consumers to gain the
markets of other Nations. She is now
losing these by the superior statesman
ship of our statesmen, but the want and
stagnation and hard times is not made
public. 1t is there in all its horrors.
Any workingman can see it for himself.
The National Republican Committee
should charter a steamer and take one
representative intelligent, laboring mau,
a Democrat, but not politician, from
each large community and give him a
free ride to England and back, with a
month to look around and a month to
talk in after his return.
Americans learn nothing of this
from the English press, which is too
proud to admit the truth, and nothing
from the laboring men, who are too
dead and spiritless to do anything but
accept the situation as they find it, but
it is true statement of the condition in
England.
1.-THE English masses are not great
consumers. The Nation has learned the
secret of wealth in producing much and
CONSUMING little, but the capitalists do
the producing and get the wealth and
the masses do the consuming. They use
earthenware instead of tin and the tin is
shipped away. The home demand for
most of their product is light, and there
is no profit in catering to the home trade.
When they lose foreign custom the in
dustry dies. The tin plate mills are
closing one by one on account of the
Mckinley bill. The Nottingham lace
mills have closed down, throwing 20
600 girls out of employment. The pro-
prietors say that they will wait until the
fall election, and if the Mckinley bill is
HOJ ueledJ6u Will dDduuO0 UU6 business.
And speaking of Mckinley, there is not
a man, woman or child in England who
does not know him. In passing along
the streets of London, Liverpool, Not
tingham and other places we expert
mented by asking some boy or man with
whom we got into conversation, whether
he knew Mckinley. The answer was
almost invariably, Yes, d-n him.
There is no question but that his tariff
bill has transferred to American soil and
American laborers some of England
greatest industries
Every man by his vote helps to de-
eide what policy America shall pursue.
That vote should always be cast for pro-
lection, that the American masses may
be large consumers and prosperous and
happy. Anyone can see clearly that if
the tariff were removed England would
at once flood this country with the pro-
ducts of English cheaper labor, such as
| have described, and that thousands of
American workingmen would be COM
PEELED to work for the same wages that
are paid in England or get none at all.
Protection is the best for all, for the
masses cannot buy with no wages to buy
with, and the farmer and the business
man would suffer equally. LOgdnsport,
(lndtdnd), Journal.