BRITISH WORKMEN & NATIONAL PROSPERITY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5016, 21 April 1877, Page 3

BRITISH WORKMEN & NATIONAL PROSPERITY.

Mr. Bathbono, M.P., addressed a meeting of the working men of Liverpool on the responsibility of: the industrial classes in respect to national prosperity. Pointing out the increasing competition against which this country as the groat commercial centre of the world had to contend, Mr. Eathbone proceeded to show by the universal rise of wages and fall of profits that the laboring classes were now receiving a very much larger share of the income of the country than previously could be commanded by them. The classes who formerly got this money might many of them have spent their share foolishly and extravagantly, but a largo proportion of the income was nevertheless saved, and those savings became in turn' capital, stimulating the national ■prosperity and furnishing the fund out of which higher wages were paid. But a different order of thing was to bo witnessed now. Wc wevo spending faster than wo wore making, consuming more than we wore producing. Wo had escaped, and for a time only, serious disaster, because this country had, under the discredit which at present attached to many foreign securities, sold out. enormously the foreign stocks in which her former savings were invested ; and if by this process the available hard cash of the country had been temporarily increased, we had sacrificed a largo portion of this capital and greatly reduced our future income. It would bo impossible to continue thus to burn the candle at both ends,’ and at the same time maintain our present position and prosperity, and what concerned tile working classes was the diminution of tho fund out of which the Country had boon enabled to pay higher wages than any other country except America. The expenditure and savings of the working classes presented a serious contrast. In 1872, when trade was exceptionally prosperous, and tho country was earning a large income, £131,000,000 was spent in drink, against

£119,000,000 in the preceding year. In 1875 the exceptional jn-osperity had passed away, the pi ice of coal and iron had fallen heavily, many of our furnaces were blown out, the foreign trade was unprofitable, the freights of our ships were falling, and large numbers of bankruptcies occurred, showing the unprofitable nature of the trade of the country. Yet there was no economy to meet these difficulties. While wo exported £33,000,000 loss than in 1872, we actually imported £19,000,000 more, and we spent in drink £11,000,000 more than even the extravagant amount returned for the prosperous year of 1872, the same excess showing itself in tea, tobacco, and other articles of which the working classes are the principal consumers. The figures for 1576 were even more unsatisfactory, the balance against this country having risen from £10,000,000 in 1872 to the enormous sum of £118,000,000 in the first eleven months of 1870. While this large expenditure w.as going on the number of bankruptcies was greater than in any year since 1808, especially in those trades for which England furnished both the raw material and the labor. Turning to the savings, he found that the increase in deposits in the savings banks was greater by £200,000 in 1872 than it was in 1875, although in the latter year £11,000,000 more was spout in drink. He had investigated the other forms of saving adopted by_ the wqrking classes to see whether there had been any increase proportionate to the increased expenditure, and found that in the funds deposited in the friendly societies and in the funds deposited in the industrial and provident co-operative societies, there had been in the two years ending December, 1874, an increase at the rate of only half a million a year irr the funds of the friendly societies, and a similar increase in those of industrial societies. As to investing in house property, he applied in Liverpool to one of the hanks whose deposits are not only very large and collected from a very wide basis, but which receive the funds of numerous building societies, and the result was to find that out of deposits of upwards of £5,000,000, not above £IO,OOO was deposited directly by the working classes, and that the funds now in the hands of the building societies were principally derived, not from the laboring classes in receipt of weekly ivages, but from small tradesmen and other capitalists. Formerly in Liverpool these societies looked largely for their funds to the savings of the working classes, but now they were used mainly by other people. While this was so, competition in labor was coming in more and more from abroad. Wood-work in a fully manufactured state could bo sold here imported from the United States and Norway at 40 per cent. less than prices in this country. In 1860 we were receiving timber from the Baltic no longer in the form of logs, to be sawn in this countx'y, but sawn into planks ready for uso ; and now, in 1877, this wood came not only sawn but manufactured. Inquiring how the work could bo done in America at the price, ho was told that the workmen in that country worked on Mondays, while many here did not. America, to recover from the effects of her cival war, had been economizing steadily, had been rapidly paying off her debt, and was one of our most formidable competitors. The condition, of the people of Frauce was shown by that country’s prosperity. French public funds were largely held by the working classes. In 1870 in that country there were 1,187,290 inscriptions of pors.ms in the books of the National Debt and certificates issued to bearer, and the number had since more than trebled. It was by the savings of the people that France paid off the German indemnity. In this rich country only 108,000 persons held investments in the national funds ; in France the number was over 2,000,000, though in the latter country wages had never been on the level obtained in this country. During the last two years a considerable portion of the wages for labor in England had come not out of earnings, but out of capital, and this could not continue without producing a serious crisis in which the working classes would be most severe sufferers. Ills advice was, “ Lay up now while you have good wages, so as to be prepared to meet the trouble which threatens at no distant d de to overtake us.”