CONDITION OF THE WORKING CLASSES IN ENGLAND.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 24, 20 August 1842, Page 96

CONDITION OF THE WORKING CLASSES IN ENGLAND.

, [From the Sunday Times.'] Hitherto the statements that were made of the destitute and diseased condition of the working classes were stigmatized as so many falsehoods and idle fabrications manufactured for partisan purposes. Now, they are not only admitted to be true, but, instead of being fabrications or exaggerations of facts, are declared to be much under the real state of things, and to be but very faint descriptions of the heart-rending miseries of the people. All Tories, Chartists, Radicals, and Whigs, now agree in declaring that the pestilential airs and lingering tortures of the most unparalleled distress and destitution pervade the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. All trade? all* manufactures are at a dead stand-still, while enterpriee and industry are completely paralysed, and the elements of death and desolation are widely scattered in all directions. Take the several trades, and then will be witnessed a sad reverse, which any benevolent mind cannot Hut contemplate with horror. In the brassfoundry trade wages have been reduced from one-half to one-third. For the very articles for which they were paid 155., the men are now receiving only ss. They formerly earned 50s. and 60s. a week, now they are glad to earn 20s. or 255., and in some instances 10s. a week. In fact, Germany and Prussia have put them out of the market, although they exceed both in workmanship. In the lamp trade wages are reduced two-thirds; and instead of seventyeight persons very fully employed as formerly in certain houses, there are only thirty-six now employed, and even that number have work only for four days and half in the week. The gun and brass trades are equally' depressed. The average wages of the men of those trades were 255. a week; at present they do not exceed ss. lid., which, after deducting 2s. Id., the average rent, leaves a mere trifle for the support of a family. In the silver trade not only are the wages reduced, but the men are not even employed beyond three or four days in the week. The wages of the sawyers and wood-turners are so much reduced that they are only paid 3s, 6d. a gross for work for which they formerly received 10s. a gross. Never have the men engaged in the tailoring tirade been so reduced as they are at present; even the profits of the masters have been dsclining during the last five years in the most rapid degree. The coal and iron- trades are not in most cases more one-half, and in many not two-thirds, of what they were. In Bolton 6,157 persons are on the relief fund, receiving eleven pence .three farthings a week, and this is exclusive of the sums granted to others by the guardians ; during the past year the poor rates increased 300 per cent. At Ratcnffe-bridge the twist-winders can only earn 7s. 6d. a week, and all the people are in the greatest poverty and want. In Birmingham the starving operatives are parading the town collecting contributions from all those who choose to assist them, in tin boxes. Those contributions are afterwards divided amongst those who form the procession; the haggard and spectre appearance of these creatures excites general compassion. In Crompton an inquiry has been instituted into the state of the operatives, the majority of whom are starving. The following is the result of the inquiry, .viz. : — Population ( . . . . 7,622 Operatives '. . . . 3,284 Persons in full employ . . 1,680 Partially employed . . 798 Without employment . . 786 The average earnings per head per week of those in full work are. ss. Oid., and of those partially employed, not exceeding 3s. 6d. In Stockport there are 3,763 families living upon Is. H4d. each family. In Leicester, such is the distress that the people are begging in mobs of 300 and 300. In Westhorpe, Arnold, and the surrounding villages, the greatest excitement prevails lest hunger may force the working classes to acts of violence. Some idea may beibrmed of the distress prevalent in Leeds by the fact that in the first nine days of 1841, the cases of relief were 3,647, and the sum given away £650, while in the first nine da/s of this year 5,129 cases were relieved, and £914 4s. 6d. was distributed. In Henslett the working classes are reduced to the utmost destitution and want. In this town 512 families, consisting of 2,237 persons, are starving, their only support arising from the weekly allowance of is. Id. granted per week to each person. In Stroud wages have been reduced 40 per cent. In Glasgow the unemployed are holding meef? ings of 500, 1,000, and 1,500 persons for the purpose of devising some plan forgetting work. At those meetings the poor fellows recite heartrending tales of their wives and children perishing from the want of the common necessaries of life. Those meetings are composed of ironmoulders, brassfounders, printers, and tailors, ajl of whom declare that all they want is employment. In this city all classes are suffering', ana it is a matter of notoriety that many individuals who make a respectable appearance, are solely enabled to do so by pawing thenfurniture and clothes. While the working classes Bes throughout the country are thus drinking the dregs of adversity, the bitter cup of misery w rapidly passing to the lips of the middle classes, upon whose footsteps poverty and ruin are closely treading, in consequence of the unnatural and artificial trade which they are compelled to carry on. All their skill, all their industry, and all their talent, appear to be of no jyail in averting the ruin and misery which threaten them. Amidst all this national destitution and distress, upwards of 70,000 of our best and moat industrious operative* have emigrated during the last year, to enrich foreign

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- _____ countries by their ability and skill as manufacturers ; thus do Saxony, Prussia, Germany, and America rival us in wealth and prosperity It is calculated that during the last ten yean 400,000 of our most skilful, talented; and industrius artisans and mechanics, have left their native shores to seek in foreign climes thai existence which their "father land" denied. These frightful results are the natural offshotd of the folly, cruelty, and crime of a few hearts less monopolists, who are banded together foi the purpose of coining the sweat of the pool man's brow into gold, that they may riot iij pomp, luxury, and dissipation. Here are facts and figures which prove that mal-legislation, based upon grinding monopoly, has crippled our commerce, ruined our trade, pauperised oux population, and so prostrated our productive as to convert our once cheerful, healthy, and happy homes, into the murky denj of destitution, disease, and death. Those fact* and figures contain "statements frightfull| accurate" — statements which not only demand the immediate attention of the legislature, bujj which imperatively require of the legislature to adopt prompt and remedial measures, lest the evil may become too enormous to combat with, and lest the well-tested patience of the martyrs of cruel and heartless persecution may be converted into a virtuous indignation, .which, no power can resist — a result which, though painful to contemplate even at a distance, cannot but be expected from the present convulsed, state of society.