Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878] Being the Extended Title of the Wairarapa Daily, with which it is Identical. THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 1892. THE ENGLISH LABORER.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XIII, Issue 4093, 21 April 1892, Page 2

Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878] Being the Extended Title of the Wairarapa Daily, with which it is Identical. THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 1892. THE ENGLISH LABORER.

Mr Gladstone has contributed to the first Dumber of the Weekly Star a long letter on the condition of the , laboring classes in England—a letter ' which ho thinks is justified by the urgent need that exists for a cheap weekly journal to circulate among the villages and rural communities, and i supply them 11 with what may be i thought the best lights upon politioal ! subjects." He begins by tracing the 5 history of the Labor Question from 5 the time, somo sixty or seventy years ago, when the combination laws were s repealed \yluch had made it an offence ! for laboring n)en to unite for the purpose of procuring by joint action, through peaceful means, an augmentation of their wages, From this point, he remarks) progress began; and at , this point it becomes necessary to digtingttish the case of artisan, mami-'-"turing, and mining labor from that 'Tn ~' ,n »lation employed in ol the rural . r . ' the cultivation of the land, The first division, together with I their steady and continuous advance ' in the path of freedom, is dismissed in a brief paragraph, The second division occupies the rest of Mr Gladstone's attention: " The case'of the rural population employed upon the land has been politically, economically and socially different. In political changes Parliament had never intentionally drawn any distinction to its prejudice until a quarter of a century ago, when the first act for household suffrage in towns excluded the rural !■ population from the vote, except within the precincts of tho smallest borough, where their dependent condition and the limited area made them subject to influence. Only in ' 1885 did they receive their great charter. Under this entrancbisemept, no longer local but universal, it rests with themselves to establish their full equality with the rest, of the population," Economically, Mr Gladsi ne remarks, it is one of the puzzling facts of our experience that tho relatively high wages of the great towns for a long time act on the value of agricultural labor only within the narrowest circle around them. Four miles from the outskirts of Liverpool, when Mr a Gladstone was a boy, the farm .laborer earned 16s a week-; within 20 mil® from that town bis wages did not l exceed, if they even reached 9s. Such slow progress, as is shown by these facts, cannot be accounted for by the supposition'that the cultivator of the land ranks simply as an unskilled laborer. "Letsuch as think all,their tusks can bo,performed without skill! try their hands a l , building (so to call; it) a haystack, or at charging a cart; in harvest time with a load of wheat. | It is not the low order of the peasant's labour which has kept down his wages." / Mr Gladstone then proceeds to enumerate tho real causes as follow: " Other onuses, strongjntbe aggregate of their social agency, have been , fttfork, - law of settlement lie was in a spent jjegwe bound to the spot oni which bo • lived ; )ie jjadi practically, no choice of markets for the sale of his labour, : which was the only commodity ho had to dispose of, ■ Worse still, he had, until 1831, been hppn subject, to the operations of a j&OF Lag? wbiPlli until' 'it''had under- , gfln.e a sltfjiige/it '-pfotff, sectrjef) like , an elaborate .contrivance, not only for iireveutipg- hi? v iyagejs' froip ■ Rising higher, than just. »bp stai'VAtjioji pointy 1 but also for destroying selE-reliance,' 1 shutting out hopes from r his' horizon, and sinking him into an .unmanly and even < abjeot dependence.' The effect, sooial of thejjß evil systems does . pjgt at pass pjjiy" yith' the jod ffjieji we con'-' 1 aider how t(io'r«r,al Jjaijourpr has |)'cen handled bv us in the past, t[)t; true marrel is that he should be; what he is, in.point of forward movement; manly.resolution', ana forecast of the future. In' two otliiT important points he stands at a disadvantage jn

! >^; r I*>■ comparison with the inhabitant of the populous districts. He is too com* monly a'ubjoot to a greater amount of depressing influences/ of influences which tend to restrict his fair and legitimate Rolf>avscrtion, from his contact with the landlord, the clergy" man, and the farmer, and this quite apart from the occurrence of cases which are to be censured as tyrannical. Again," he labours of necessity nnder the further and perhaps yet greater difficulty, which arises from the sparseness of the rural population. Hiii work is diffused over the general surface of the land; to him it is vital to be near his work, In comparison with the condensed population, he loads, both during and after labour, a lonely life, in so far that he has not the same facilities for communicating ideas, for cherishing sympathies, and for organising common action," The letter concludes with the following words" I think lam not wrong in saying, especially after the recent gathering of rural deputations in the metropolis, that the movement for a reasonable and manly self-assertion has fairly and iully been started among our rural popnlation, and that, having been once begun, it should on no account be allowed to drop. We are warned in this sense by a diminution of numbers in the country districts, which we all lament, and which may be found to admit of sound economio remedies, It must surely be painful to Englishmen and Scotchmen of the wealthier classes,' when they travel on the Continent of Europe,' to see in most of the countries plain Bigns that tho cultivators oi the soil have much larger access to the use of it for their own direct udvantuge than they can be said to enjoy in this free and, in so many ways, favoured country. If we wish to save the aged laborer from tho workhouse, the first and safest step of all is' to increase his means of reasonably providing for himself and bis family. It is coming to be more and more seen that the extension of the small culture in all its branches, animal as well as vegetable, may hecome a powerful instrument for the increase of the wealth derived from the kindly earth, and also for the social elevation of the tiller of the soil. It is more and more felt that the legislature should no longer palter with this question, and that !ie laborer must he allowed to hold a more free and generous and inspiring relation to the land; that with this, and for this, but not for this alone, he ought to be provided, in the parishes of the land, with an effective local government at his own doors; and that these great objects, with whatever else may lie within his due, uow lie also within his power of attainment through the manly and discriminating use of the widely extended and thoroughly protected franchise."