THE ENGLISH LABOURER. His Miserable Wages and Hovels.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 103, 23 May 1885, Page 5

THE ENGLISH LABOURER. His Miserable Wag es and Hovels.

One may well stand appalled before the labour problem as we find it in Europe. Levi, Giffen, and others, estimate that the average annual earnings of the industrial classes in England is about £40. I often doubt if it reaches this amount when I ste the poverty in which they live in large cities When one sees the squalor of such cities as Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Glasgow, and some parts of Birmingham, to say nothing of London, the crowded houses, the cellar* reeking in filth, one is terribly shocked. Yet we are told by one of England's greatest statesmen that this is the result of England's prosperity— the increase in the value of land. Thousands of families have only a single room to dwell in, where they sleep, eat, multiply,;and die. For this miserable lodging they pay a price ranging from 2 to 5 shillings per week — one-quarter ana sometimes ©nethird of their earnings. A tale told the other day by the Chairman of the London School Board illustrates the terrible character of this struggle for house room. Three schools were taken and the condition of the children was ascertained. They came from 1,129 families. Of these, 871 tamilies had only one room to live in. In the majority of these cases the families living in one room contained five or more persons— in some cases as many as nine. This condition of affairs is not confined to the towns in England. I propose in a subsequent letter to present some startling tacta on the decadence of the agricultural population of the kingdom that will effectually dispose of Mr Bright's rant regarding che improvement of the agricultural classei in England.

Misery and Degradation. flow does the following, taken verbatim from an official report recently made to Parliament, strike those who fondly talk of the improvement in the condition of the labouring classes in England under free trade? " At a block of six cottages -One of these cottages is occupied by a man and his wife and five young children. They have but one bedroom. The next cottage which your committee report upon is one occupied by A., with his wife and three children, who have but one bedroom. Two children hero died of the fever. Qrfbil death reduced the family there were seven persons sleeping in one room. "In a cottage occupied by 8., a widow with five children and a grandson, namely, a son aged 25, a daughter aged 19, three more sons aged 17, 15, and 11 respectively, and a grandson aged 5, there is but ono bedroom. " In a cottage occupied by C, a tailor, there are four grown up persons sleeping in one room, namely the father and mother and a grown-up son and daughter, "A cottage occupied by D., who withhia wife and five children sleep in one bedroom, which, though small, is open to the roof. " The next-door neighbour under the same roof has but one bedroom, in which sleep the father and grown-up son and daughter. There are indeed two bed 3, but the room is ao small that there is barely two teet between them. " Your oomtnittee report upon a row of five cottages. In one occupied by E. there is but one bedroom, part ot which is partitioned off, and forms what looks more like a cupboard than a room, without door, or window, or fireplace. In this one room, with its open cupboard, a family of eight have been brought into the world, and with the father and mother still use it as their sleeping place. Two sons and one daughter are grown up. and the rest, consisting of three sons and two daughters, are under 16. The grown-up daughter haa just been sent to the workhouse to be confined (she returned in a fortnight's time with her child). " In another cottage occupied by F., with his wife and five children, there is but one bedroom, reached by a broken staircase, the two bottom step 3 of which have disappeared. "In a third, occupied by G., with hia wife and four children, there are two small bedrooms, but only one is used, because the other i 3 so damp. "In a cottage occupied by H., there ia but one room upstairs and one downstairs. In the latter are two beds, in one of which liea Mrs H., bedridden ; the other is used by her husband. Five grown-up men, a child and the woman who waits on Mrs JEL, sleep in the bedroom, "In a cottage occupied by 1., there ia but one bedroom ; the family are f ttherand mother, two grown-up sons and one grownup daughter : they all sleep in the same, room. When your commutee was there chey found, in addition to the usual occupants, a married son, with his wife and child, staying on a visit."

Not by any Means Exooptlonal. Is it possible, I ask ia all seriousness, to crowd a more terrible account of abject poverty and degradation into the same space ia a column of a newspaper than we have here ? I think not. This is a plain statement from an official report. It ia no exceptional case. There are hundreds of juso such villages and thousands upon thousands of just such, coctages in the rural districts of England. Indeed, the clergyman of this very village says he will answer for it that in the single rural union of which it forms a part there are at least four villages where the cottages are equally bad. And this is an ordinary English country village, with a squire and a parson and the uaual charitable appliances, including a stately workhouse.

The Labourer's Unimproved Condition. I cannot believe, with thi.se facts cjnfronting us, that the condition of the English labourer ha* greatly improved of late years. The same terrible conditions of life may be found iq the large cities ad were found in LB4O, and the same conditions may be found in the rural districts. The great daily journals wholly ignore these facts. " What is the use?" they say ;/' no good can come of publishing them"— and so matters grow from bad to worse. Mr Chamberlain has recently been exposing the terrible condition of the agricultural labourer, and asking howhe can live and maintain his family on 10 shillings a week, 74 per cent of which amount (according to the above-named gentleman, who is President of the Board of Trade) ia taken from him by the existing unfair Bystem of taxation. What the British labourer will do when an additional 2,f 00,000 are enabled to vote it is difficult to say. The economic pendulum may swing to the other extreme, ac it has done in Germany. The wage-earners are dissatisfied, a large number of them are out of employment, and great distress exists in all labour centres* Many of the large towns have organised for the distribution of food and blankets, and the town councils have voted sums of money for this purpose.— Special Correspondence of "S. F. Chronicle. 1 *

A sentence of three months' i^prfsonmen passed at the Gateaheaii Police Court avenges soc'ety at The Celling, a Tyneside village, for the gtiei oaused to many families by the sud,ttaft disappearance of their favourite ga.to, and also for the pangs since suftpYftd by other inhabitants of the village aq a, cansequenoe of the discovery that thoy had partaken of the remains under the false r representation that thoy if&^Q ''cheaa Wchharee*"