The Tamworth Examiner and Working Men's Journal. — 1874-09-19 (Tamworth, Staffordshire, England)

HUNGER-AN IMPULSE TO LABOUR.  Hunger is one of the beneficent and terrible instincts. It is, indeed, the very fire of life, underlying all impulses to labour, and moving man to noble activities by its imperious demands. Look where we may, we see it as the motive power which sets the vast array of human machinery in action. It is hunger which brings these stalwart navvies together in orderlygangs to cut paths through mountains, to throw bridges across rivers, to intersect the land with the great iron-ways which bring city into daily communication with city. Hunger is the overseer of those men erqcting ,alaces. prison-houses, barracks, and villas. Hunger sits at the loom, which, with stealthy power, is weaving the wondrous fabrics of cotton and silk. Hunger labours at the furnace and plough, coercing the native indolence of man into strenuous and incessant activity. Let food be abundant and easy of access, and civilization becomes imKreirbliem;pufter irn higher linidiseirsoCle n are dneePrenTeonthi no; our rt the nec,ssities of food will force man to labour, which he hates, and will always avoid when possible. And although this seems obvious only when applied to the labouring classes, it is equally, though less obviously true, when applied to all other classes, for the money we all labour to gain is nothing bat food, and the surplus of food, which will bay other men's labour. If in this sense hunger is seen to be a beneficent instinct, in another sense it is terrible ; for when its progress is unchecked it becomes a devouring flame, destroying all that is noble in man, subjugating his humanity, and making the brute dominant in him, till finally life itself is extinguished. Besides the picture of the activities it inspires, we might also place a pictere of the ferocities it evokes. Many an appaling story might be cited, from that of Ugolino in the famine-tower, to those of shipwrecked men and women who have been impelled by the madness of starvation to murder their companions that they might feed upon their flesh—Smiles.  KENT LABOURERS' lINION.—A report has been issued by Mr. Simmons, the secretary of the Kent Agricultural Labourers' Union—one of the districts connected with the Federal Labourers' Union—which shows that— Two years and a half ago there was no labourer's union in the county, but since then more than 12,000 labourers have enrolled themselves on the books of the onion. Nearly 2,000 of these men have either emigrated or migrated, and after allowing for those who have died, and for some who have left the union, there are at the present time about 10,000 paying members. Since the formation of the union the men have subscribed about £4,000 to carry on the a orb, of which sum £BOO has been expended in protecting members who were either locked out by their employers or had legal proceedings taken against them. The committee have just decided upon establishing a sick and burial fund in connection with the union, the contribution to which is to be 4d. a week, to include all management expenses, the members to receive relief for a certain number of weeks in each year upon a graduated scale regulated according to age.