The Bee-Hive. — 1876-04-29 (London, England)

THE BEE-HIVE.  DROWNING SAILORS.  _ Since Mr. Plimsoll commenced his agitation on this subject, the oPposition it has evoked from the class directly interested, and the support and countenance that opposition has met with in the House of Commons, calls pp forcibly the state of things attending the discussions on the Factories and Mines Acts. We see now, as was seen then, the employers of labour, with certain honourable exceptions, acting in a compact mass for the purpose of protecting  what they call the shipping interest, and so blind and utterly stupid in their action as to defend even its worst abuses. They think their profits are going to be interfered with, and in protecting these they lose sight of the sacredness of human life. They would not sanction the drowning of sailors for the mere pleasure of drowning them—we do not accuse them of that —but they protect and seek to perpetuate a system by which they are drowned, lest those holy things called profits should suffer. Custom has made this in them a "property of easiness." They have corne to regard the wrecked sailor, not as a drowned man mourned for by widow and orphans, but as converted into cash— as transformed into riches by the magic touch of insurance.  "Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange."  We are, as a nation, in certain parts of our business becoming perfected in villany. We care not how we make money, so that we do make it. The lives of men, women, and children never did stand much in the way, and never will. There must be deliberately framed law, and carefully administered law on this merchant shipping question. And the only power in the country that can see to the making of this law, or insist on its enforcement, is in the hands of the working people. We are dispOsed to think that the speech of Mr. Plimsoll at the Westminster Palace Hotel on Tuesday evening cannot be replied to in a satisfactory manner. Daily and hourly men are being drowned, and so far as the interests of the country are concerned it would be better if onehalf the men on both sides of the House of Commons were smothered than that such murder-work should be allowed to go on.  There is no use in uttering a word against Mr. Disraeli. He has something else to think of than drowning sailors. Sir Charles Adderley need not be spoken of; what he can get into his head is already in it, and a desire to save the lives of our merchant sailors is no part of his mental furniture. There is one chance for the sailor, and only one, hnd that is the dogged determination of the working men to prevent traffic in men's lives. There never was an outside question that took so firm a hold of the trade unionists of the country, and if they cannot E ecuro protection for the sailor in the House of Commons they must prove to those in it, that when they again appeal to their constituencies every honest and thoughtful man in the country will be against them, whichever party they may belong to. There must be po mistake about the matter. Hourly and daily our sailors are being drowned, and we must not stand patiently by whilst this is going on.  We say, therefore, to the working men,' watch carefully the votes on this Merchant Shipping Bill, and when those who have gone against the Ballots appeal to you for your votes, prove to them that men's lives are not to be traded in, and that there is a punishment for those who sanction in any way the iniquities practiced against those who man our merchant navy.