Condition of Working People in Different Counties.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 179, 20 November 1886, Page 5

Condition of Working People in Different Counties.

A congress of Trade Unionists is now meeting in Paris. Yesterday it held its first sitting, the English delegates, as might have been expected, representing organisations far stronger than are to be. found in any other country. Incidentally, though the chief cause of their going is to attend the congress, the Englishmen will aleo see what the French workman can do in the practice cf their trades ; for the International Workmen's Exhibition is Btill open Excellent as is the beat English work in 1 point of strength and durability, there are departments in which the French. still beat ue, as they have beaten, us in the past. Few persons, who had to buy a first rate gun or a first-rate watch, would buy any but an English one; but, on the other hand, the choicest bookbinding and the choicest specimens of purely ornamental metal-work'will continue to come from France. To imitate or approach the French in these and some other branches of art is difficult. Their prowess in thorn aetoni?hos up, just as, according to our Paris correspondent, the cleanliness of the vro.kmen's les aurant to which the English delegates vvere taker* to lunch, and the cheapnees and excellence of the meal, astonished them. They would bedoing good service to their country, by the way, it they could turn this feeling of theira to practical use, and help to import clean, cheap -\nd good restaurants into the humbler quarters of London, The middle-claes restaurants have certainly improved of late years, under the conduct chiefly of Italian, and Swiss restanraicwb ; but the workmen's houses, where they exist in any other form than the public-house bar, are still comfortless, ill-served and wretched To improve the organisation of eating houses, however, is not the main object of our delegates' visit to Parid. On the occasion of their first visit they greatly impressed the French workmen with their calm, practical, and, in the main, moderate views of things ; with their preference of things to words ; with their total avoidance of phra c es and declamation. There is as much need now as there wag then for them to impress these qualities on their foreign fiiends. The stnke at Vierzon, following that at Decazville, the Belgian riot?, and the spread of a violent form of socialism in Amsterdam aro symptoms not encouraging to those who had hoped that the relations between classes are improving on tb.6_ Continent. At the meeting of the congress yesterday the first subject was tne political and economical position of the working class in different countries. The debate took the form of a sories of more or less personal experiences, beginning with M. Anseele on the state of Belgium. It was only natural thai, this speaker should draw a very dark picture of the condition of (he Belgian labourer, who has been one of the first and chief sufforers from the universal fall in prices. Certainly, their condition is very bad, and, though wo may readily admit tha,t the Charleroi riots were themadie^t possible way of attempting to raise wages, it is certain that the poverty of the Btlgian workmen is deplorable, and that it ia often extremely difficult for them to get together the barest necessities of life. As M. Anseele showed, the laws for the protection of women hardiy exist in Belgium ; a woman in the coal districts is liable at the present? time to all the tasks which the English Parliament declared illegal many years ago. The abominable tiuck -system, too, prevails in Belgium still. The retnnrk of the Austrian delegate, who asked for time to write hi? vie^vs lest in the heat of the moment ha should say something to compromise his friends at home in the eyes of the Austrian police, threw a strong side-light upon the hardships which the workmen, especially the would-be reformors, have to endure in despotic countries. Of coursp, there were no suggestions of this kind in tha speech of Mr Maudesley,. the Chairman of tbe English Trades Union Parliamentary Committee. But none the less are his remarks well worth reading. They deal with the long continued depression of trade, and with the question whether any remedy whatever is to be found for it. Mr Maudsloy is despondent, and believes in no remedy except that of limiting the output of all goodß —without, be it understood, thereby reducing the workman's wages. How this last condition is to be secured wo. are not. precisoly told. We much fear that in Cleveland, whera Mesera Bolckow and Vaughan are reported to have just blown out three or four furnaces by way of limiting the output of iron, the workmen will suffer, not gain. And even if— and the assumption is a, large one a great simultaneous lessening of production were to take place all over the world, it ia more evident that prices would rise than that wages would rise with tbem. — " London Times," Aug. 24.