Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1909-10-30
What It Has Cost England.

England and Wales show that one
person in 81 is dependent upon his
country for the necessities OF life
doled out to him in charity. The first
months of the year 1909 We're made
notable by the application Of 100000
persons for relief and on New Years
day there were 145,735 able bodied
paupers vainly seeking employment,
1t is estimated that the number of oc-
casional paupers seeking aid has
increased Is per cent in the last nine
Years. The English poor law authori-
ties expend sSO,00O,000 and the local
authorities dispose of 5000, 900, 900 an
nually for charity.
Such grave condition of affairs, in
a country so far advanced as Eng
land, is easily explained. England
adopted the doctrine of free trade,
presented as the "millenium" for
English wage workers, the theory be-
ing that with cheaper food English
workingmen could live on lower
wages and the cost of manufactured
products would be so low that COM
petition with other countries would be
eliminated. At that time there was
a very considerable population
OF agriculturalists in the British
Isles, who had lived more or less
comfortably, at least as well as
their brothers similarly employed in
other lands. But with the introduce
ton of the food products of other
nations free of duty it soon became
for the English farmer to
for his share of the wages OF
the employee in factory, mill ana
work shop. There was no longer any
profit in farming. His farm was
permitted to lie idle or was worked
under the most rigid economy and at
a great disadvantage. The farmer
sought the towns and cities and de-
pended upon the prosperity of the mill
and factory for his daily bread. The
soon ceased to be con-
tinuous. Short periods of idleness
became longer as other countries
manufacturing the same products,
adopted the protective system, thereby
giving to their wage earners an ad-
vantage the English workman did not
possess. Idleness developed the
known as the "Hooligan."
became more and more
and less and less of a dis
grace until a large pauper population
came to be taken as matter Of
course.
The war in Africa called these
conditions sharply to the atten-
ion Of the British government. It
vas found that England had been pro-
1ucing, or rather developing, a class
If men totally unfit to withstand the
rough usage of military campaign.
So small a percentage of those who
offered themselves for enlistment
was acceptable in the eyes Of the
surgeons that it was evident that
serious was the matter
discovered that it was
factory life, varied only
oy long periods of privation incident
20 idleness and pauperism that had
worked havoc with the sons and
grand sons of the men who once made
England famous for their sturdiness
and longevity.
England can trace more than
one of her ills to the fallacy
urged upon her by Cobden She
is now face to face with the
problem again and behind the Budget
which has SO excited our British
may be seen a demand on the
part of the thinkers of the British
nation for a system Of protection, to
the end that agriculture in the British
Isles may be revived: that the race
may resume it's normal standard Of
growth and physical strength and
that her future prosperity NAV be