The Express. — 1867-09-10 (London, England)

THE WORKING CLAS4K.4.  - ---•- ----Commenting on the proceedings of tho " National Labour Congress" held last month in Chicago, the Times observes that one is almost tired of hearing America pointed out to us as the place where the working man enjoys all the rights belonging to him, and lives in amity with his employer. But when we discard the effects of imaeution and look at the country u its inhabitants see it every day, there is little in its social state but a faithful reproduction of the evils which were once thought peculiar to the Old World. The ' American workman is no better satisfied than the English, and, indeed, ho is apt to be even more discontented, because he finds it impossible to realise the vision of perfect equality of conditions. Our chief men do not strive to impress upon the minds of the people the notion that " it was never intended" one man should work while another looked on. That theory is a sad ono for the millions of the human race who are born to a condition in which manual labour is an honourable necessity ; but, deplorable and mischievous as all must consider it, it is the only contribution yet made by America to the solution of the labour question. The time will come when the misfortunes of the American working classes will cause them to be even more dissatisfied, unless they accommodate themselves to the only usage which has never varied in the human family, and which is certain to endure while the world lasts.  The longer the Manchester commissioners pursue their inquiries into the operations of the local trades' unions the more thoroughly, says the Herald, does it become manifest that the public has been over hasty in the judgment it has passed upon /:roadhead and the Associated Sheffield Saw-grinders. From the first day of the inquiry at Manchester it became evident that we were but entering upon a second stage of the same journey along which Messrs. Overend and his colleagues had led us ; that we were but beginning a fresh chapter of the volume wherein the exploits of Crookes and his compeers are inscribed. The modas operandi varies, but the spirit and intent of those who use it arc precisely the same. Rattening changes its form, but is the same in nature, and "acts of intimidation, outrage, and wrong," almost worthy to take rank with the murder of Linley and the blowing up of Fearnehough, are cropping up quite  Those who read the evidence before the Manchester commission will, says the Standard, be inclined to conclude that Broadhead was not such a rare monster after all, and that Sheffield can no longer claim any special preeminence in crime.  The organisation of labour takes to-day a shape very far removed from the narrow and selfish exclusiveness which was the first result of the awakening of the classes that live by daily toil to a sense of their own importance in the social scheme—to a belief in their own necessity as an intelligent constituent element in the economy of a modern state. The policy which has been endorsed by the International Congress of Working Men at Lausanne is one which, in the opinion of the Star, must command the sympathy of every true-hearted liberal whatever may be his sectional partialities, whatever may be his class prejudices; even more than the programme of the Peace League at Geneva, because bearing the greater impress of practicability and political thoroughness.