BAD TIMES THAT WERE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4871, 31 August 1925, Page 3

BAD TIMES THAT WERE.

BRITAIN'S PRESENT DEPRESSION. RECALLING PAST CRISES. “This is not the first time In our history, as Lord Emmott recently reminded tlie House of Lords, that the immediate outlook has been anxious, gloomy, and menacing. A century ago, after the Napoleonic wars, it was infinitely woree. In what lie rightly called the enormous improvement in the position of .the working classeswhich has taken place since that period there is, as he said, a. good deal of consolation to be found. The inhuman conditions of those days nolonger exist. In the trade of the country there were then, as there is now, a period of acute depression, which lasted for nearly a generation. From this depression it is, the business of tlie nation to find now, as it did then, a way of escape. All men and all parties are concerned in the quest.”—“The London Times.” Lord Emmott, in tlie House of Lords recently, rendered a great service (says “Public Opinion”). It is a commonplace for politicians and speakers, to refer vaguely to tlie great slump after the Napoleonic wars, and tlie eventual recovery of the British nation. Lord Emmott deserves the thanks of all for a speech that in detail gives the average man and woman just the information they require on this matter. We quote the vital passages, which deserve to bo recognised as one of the striking features of this week’s, issue. Lord Emmett said :—

“There is no doubt that tlie financial and industrial position of thfe country is - serious. Comparing it with our position before the war, the decrease in volume of our overseas trade, the increase in unemployment in tin’s country, do constitute an anxious position, and one which may even be called gloomy and menacing.

“But if one takes a wider view of affairs, and goes back a hundred years, there is a good deal of consolation, and even hope, to be derived from the enormous improvement in tlie position of the working classes during that longer period. Then, as now, the country was suffering from the aftermath of a great war. “No doubt the exhaustion following the. Napolenoic Wars was very great, but, after all, the effort which this country made in the Napoleonic Wars was small compared to the tremendous effort which it put out in the war that was still raging seven years ago. and there would be little to be wondered at if the exhaustion of the country to-day was greater than it was then. “Even then the depression in trade lasted almost for a generation. Historians, tell us that the acute period of that depression lasted from 1816 to 1836, but, as a matter o.f fact, it ran well into the early ’forties. “Many records remain of those times, but I think the records that would occur to most of your ’Lordships at once would be the speeches and writings of three men of genius, and the particular works and speeches that would occur to one, 1 think, would be Disraeli’s ‘Sybil,’ Carlyle's ‘Past and Present,’ and the speeches of Mr Cobden during the ’forties, the speeches that converted the country, and eventually converted Peel, to the impolicy of the then practice of food taxes.

“, : f we look at the differences between that time and this, tney are very great. A hundred years ago the franchise was very restricted. The Combination Laws were only repealed, I think, in the year 1825, and tlie tra-’e unions did not obtain real power to use their funds until 1809. There was no uncovenanted unemployment benefit at that time —What we now call ‘the dole.’ And the Poor Law was a thoroughly bad Poor Law. “There were no old-age pensions, which give so much relief to some of our aged poor to-day. There was< no workmen’s compensation, or nothing wo thy of the name. There was no health insurance, no unemployment inrnrancc, there was practically no factory regulation, and the condition of education ws astich that 1 believe the majority of our children were illiterate. Children were sent to woi k at seven years of age, and even as young as five. “There are stories of babies being put down the mines and placed by their fathers’ food in order that tliey might do something to scare away the rats. And many of your Lordships. will remember Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem : “ ‘Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years ?’ “Carlyle tells a horrible story of a

man and wife who were brought up at the Stockport Assizes for killing three of their children in order that they might obtain the benefit from a burial society. He says the thing itself may not have been so much, it may have been the act of a madman, but the point was that there was no effort to get over the thing as, quickly as possible, not to probe .too deeply, for fear c.f the result it might have on people’s feeilngs. “Then look at the condition of women at that time. Women worked for twelve or sixteen hours down the mines, dragging the lorries about in chains, through water ; and the difficulty oi those who- did not go down the mines is given in that wellknown poem of Hood’s, ‘The Song of the Shirt.’ And, remember, tlie population then was less, than half what it is to-day. Carlyle speaks of 2,000,000 people sitting in the workhouses, and '5,000,000 existing on potatoes, that is, never having meal from week-end to week-end.

“And Cobden, in 1842, talking of depression in trade, says the stocking frames of Nottingham were as idle as the looms- of Stockport, and speaks of the depression there was among the glovers c.f Yeovil, the glass-cutters of Stourbridge, the miners of Staffordshire, and the potters of tlie Stoke district.

“Things are bad enough now, but they are a great deal better than they were then. The death rate must have been halved during the century. Ihe consumption of tea, sugar, meat, and tobacco, which were relatively luxuries then, has- enormously increased on the part of the great body of the people.

“And as to wages, although prices were somewhat lower then than they are to-day, perhaps in 1825 about onethird lower than they are to-day, wages have enormously increased. The wages c.f skilled mechanics and of miners, which were relatively—l only say relatively—high then, and are relatively extremely low now, have not increased as much as some of the others, but the wages of agricultural labourers, though they are low enough to-day, are two and aiialf to three times what they were then. Tlie weavers of Lancashire wore earning on the -average about 10s 8d a week then, and they are earning from 35s to 45s a week now.

“The so-called minders were carding 27s or 28s a week then, and they are earning from 67s 6d to 95s to-day, and some of the other classes of labour are earning very much more. The ‘big pieccrs,’ who were then earning 7s a week, now earn 28s to--33s 6d, and the ‘little piecers,’ who were then earning Is 7d are now earning from 20s 3d to 24s 6d a week.

“There has been ajn enormous improvement in the condition of the people, compared with the period of savage repression and of inhuman conditions which existed in this cotin*Ty a hundred years ag'o, and I dq think there is some consolation to‘bc derived from that fact.”