SATURDAY, SEPT. 4, 1886.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2209, 4 September 1886, Page 2

SATURDAY, SEPT. 4 , 1886.

In our last issue we traced the condition of labour up to the time of Henry the Eighth- The latter part of this king's reign marks the change of the labourer's fortunes from flood to ebb. By the action of Henry and the gang of robbers who squabbled for the protectorate of his son, the labourer was placed between two fires. First of all the coinage was shamelessly debased. Previous to 1543 the pound of silver was coined into 45 shillings, with 18dwt. of alloy; by 1551 the pound of silver gave 72 shillings, with nine ounces, or 75 per cent, of alloy. Plainly the poorest and worst educated suffer most from a debased coinage ; even if they understand their loss they cannot afford to risk the expense and delay of disputes ; they must accept payment as tendered them. The result was not long delayed. Meat rose to nearly three, corn to nearly two and a-half, dairy produce to fully two and a-b alf times the old rates, while wages rose barely 50 per cent. Thus the labourer got 9d instead of 6d per day, but paid for meat 3s, for bread 2s sd, for butter and cheese 2s 6d, where he paid before Is. Part of this rise was no doubt unavoidable, as there had been a gradual rise from 1530 to 1540 and the cheapening of silver, then the standard metal, by the discovery of Mexico and P^ru would have appreciated all other products ; but a gradual I! riae such as this would have been, i for Spanish silver dribbled very slowly into England, would have had far different effects from the sudden rise which actually took place. Not. merely was the labourer robbed by the debasement of the coinage, by which every shiDm.^ of his earnings was lower 8 d to 9d, 6d, or even 3d, hisit his guild estates were confis1 eatod. These guilds existed in most cou/atiy towns and villages, and, I 1I 1 bra ides forming a rallying point for M; -our, were benefit societies, apjxr enticing poor children, pensioning w idows or worn out members, lendir ig money free of interest, portioning dowerless maidens, etc. All y uli3se estates wer.t into the insatiate uinw of Somerset, Dudley and their cr eatures j London guilds alone they feared to touch and certain chantries co.nnected with colleges in Oxford a\ul Cambridge. That such London f jnds have long been diverted to o ther objects is no proof that the t ,\mds of country guilds would have

gone the same road or any justification' of Ijh«;:<>iijgJpfe;r N obbers. The amount so v stolen was Considerable ; what would "it hive risen to by now" | - :;$ v Thus the object so long unsuccessfully sought by the "Statutes of Labcfarerß.," wa§ last secured only too successfully, as we feel now. It may seem strange that in spito of the rise ip tbo, prices of agricultural, produce tents-did n6t rt|e ntf all nor wages proportionally.'' As regards the former, owing to the rise in wages and the price of implements in the fifteenth century the capitalist landlord farming his own land had been gradually giving place to the leaseholder or the yearly tenant. But t reAts,risa as. a, rale,. Qfilj ifr.ow improvements in farming methods, and for these we must wait till the beginning of the seventeenth century. Then come great" and progressive improvements in fanning, coupled with a rapid rise of rent. How the labourer fared we* shall see. His wages rise generally from one of, three causes— an increasing demand for labour, a diminished supply, or the action of trade unions. The last were ruined, the population was increasing, the substitution of sheep rearing for til- j lage demanded less labour. Need we then wonder that wages nominally one half higher were really more than a third lower ? Two highly important enactments affecting labour were passed in Elizabeth's reign. By the first Justices in Quarter Sessions were empowered to fix the wages of labour, while the farm labourer was tied down to his station by a clause requiring seven years' apprenticeship to any trade. This, the third in the causes that inevitably led to pauperism was completely successful, as wages did correspond to the rates fixed at sessions in spite of a constant rise in food prices. This remained law till 1812. At first no doubt the effect of depreciated earnings was alleviated by the provision in the same reign of an allotment of four acres with each cottage, and by the peasant's rights of commonage. But the allotment system died out, if it was ever in full vigour, and the enclosures of the 16th and 18th centuries left little commonage for the landlords of the 19th to "convey." It may seem strange that this act was enforced while the statutes of labourers failed so completely, but the labourer was now in a far less advantageous position for resistance ; weakened by debased wages, by loss of his insurance funds and guild organisation. Further, the old acts were administered in the manorial courts, in which the peasant had a powerful, if silont, influence, whereas the justices, his employers, were charged with carrying: out the later. The second enactment of Elizabeth alluded to above was the direct outcome of th© fall in wages resulting from the knavery or policy of her family. In spite of emphatic denials it is indisputable that a chief recognised duty of mediaeval Christianity was the relief of destitution. Monasteries, subsisting themselves on tithes or free gifts, were expected to devote at least one third of their income to poor relief and next to heresy or sorcery the heaviest charge against the cleric was avarice. That their charity encouraged pauperism may be true ; certain it is that they relieved it not merely by doles of food but by gratuitous medical attendance, etc. The guilds existing, as we have seen, in every town and village were also relief agents. The confiscation of these funds, superadded to the other conditions we have mentioned, caused great distress. Just before the dissolution of the monasteries, in 1536, parish ministers were directed to appeal to their congregations for voluntary offerings. Edward's guardians in his first year relieved the destitute by sentencing them to work in chains. Two years later two collectors are appointed in each parish, and those who refused contributions after exhortation by the parson and the wardens, are to be reported to the bishop. In 1563, it is provided that if this fail they be assessed at quarter sessions. Finally in 1601, Elizabeth's famous Poor Law, not made permanent till 1629, levies rates on occupiers for providing work for the able bodied, relief for the infirm and binding apprentices. This remained in force till 1835, and after a general survey of wages and prices from | Elizabeth's reign we shall return to | a consideration of its effect on the labourer. By the end of Elizabeth's reign wheat, which had averaged under 6s a quarter before the debased coinage, when wages were 6d and 4d a day (the first is the artisan's rate), had risen to 31s lljd, while wages may be taken as Is and Bd. By the Restoration, when wages were Is 6d and Is at the highest rate, wheat was 44s 6d. Thus the artisan and the labourer at the earlier period earned 1-1 2 th and 1-1 8 th of a quarter of wheat, but in 1660 only l-32th and l-44th, a comparatively favourable statement as a few years earlier or later, the fractions were only l-46th and l-69th ; that is, Avages were little more than one quarter what they had been 120 years before. In the first half of the 18th century the labourer's lot is slightly alleviated ; his wages may be taken as ranging from Is 6d to 2s, and from Is to Is 6d. The great impulse given to enclosures and improvements in farming led to a fall in prices, while rents rose largely and wages slightly. When Arthur Young began his tours in 1767 the average farm wages ranged from 5s 2jd in Wilts and Gloucestershire to 11s 4d per week in Kent and Middlesex. The Woodstock steelpolishers got 15s to 42s ; excluding these, the colliers of Newcastle are highest with 15s, and textile workers lowest, sinking at Lavcn-

ham to 5s 9d. These wages, he tells us, had risen 30 to 50 per cent, in the past twenty years. Prices, however, now began again to rise. In ,4744-0 wheat was 21s to 225, after 1780 rarely below 50s, and by the end of the century double that price. Harvests were often bad, the population was steadily growing, factories were absorbing labour, and so-called protective legislation deprived England of the benefit of the cheap and abundant harvests of the Continent. The slight rise in wages bore no proportion f© the rise in the price of necessaries. In 1801 Arthur Young tells us that the labaurer could have 60 years before bought for 5s what would then cost l)im ,26s sd, while his wages and parish allowance at the best wero only 15s. Theihours of labour were also extended, for in 1684 the "Warwick justices fixed 14 J hours in summer, less 2J for meals and half-an-hour for sleep in the hottest part, and from daylight to dusk from September to March, with a fine of Id an hour, 50 per cent, over earnings, for absenQt. The helpless position of the workmen, in face of this state of things, may be see* from the following :—: — Charles the Second's Pensioner Parliament confirmed an Act of Edward VI., forbidding, under penalties of, fine, imprisonment, mutilation and infamy, combinations ofworkmen " concerning their work or wages ;" Charles' Act is explicit, Edward's apparently strained by the courts. A similar, but more comprehensive Act was passed at the end of the 18th century, when wheat was at the famine price of 100s to 150s. Magistrates were now beginning to supplement Quarter Sessions assessments of wages by Poor Law allowances. They had two inducements to prefer this course to the direct increase of wages. The Parochial Settlement Act of 1662, authorised the removal to his place of legal settlement of any new comer into a parish who occupied a tenement of less than £10 annual value. In 1697 emigration was allowed on license from churchwardens or overseers, the effect of which was that if an immigrant bei came chargeable he might be rej turned to his parish with his family though born in the new parish. Subsequently it became ausfomary for employers in need of extra-parochial labour to give bonds of indemnity to the parish. l£^ will also be remembered that poor rates were paid under Elizabeth's Act by the occupier, not by the employer. The Justices being mainly employers, paid half the labourer's pittance in wagos and saddled the rates paid by occupiers whether employers or not with the balance Those who owned an entire parish pulled down workmen's cottages so as to make them reside in, and be chargeable on, another parish, careless of the time and toil which the distance of his work inflicted on the labourer with every recurring morning and evening. Thus the law of settlement not merely made the hind a serf ad senptus glebae, bound to the soil, but enabled the wealthy landowner, who under the poor law could rob the non-employing occupier, to rob his neighbours in the next parishes too. It was towards the end of the eighteenth century that the Berkshire magistrates, struck by the inadequacy of wages, which in food value were only of those of 1540, inaugurated this ingenious system of doublebarrelled robbery. This is quite on a par with the action of landowners in 1662 in relieving their estates from the burden of the military defence of the country by an i excise on the community at large. ' The natural consequence was an enormous rise in poor rates, which : in 1802 were four and a quarter millions, and in 1813 over B£, or 13s 9d per head of the population, while Young's estimate of the agricultural rental of England in 1775 was £16,000,000. Assume that doubled and the proportion is still enormous. In fact open parishes, that is those in the hands of several owners, would rapidly have been ruined but for the development of factories with their demand for labour. We give an abstract of an analysis of wages by Sir Frederick Eden, compiled from the actual earningsin 1795-6 of 53 families scattered over twelve counties. In Hunt?, where the average weekly earnings per family were 9.3 3d, the average deficiency was £2 los 4d; in Herts, with average wages 12s 6£d they fell below expenditure £22 3s 6£d ; one family in Lincolnshire, man, wife and tt child with 11s 3d wages are only 7s 4d short at the end of the year, but live on bread alone. We have now reached the beginning of the nineteenth century, which f©rms a distinct period by itself. Enormous war expenditure in the first 15 years, gigantic manufacturing strides, the repeal of the laws against combination, free trade, cheap communication, and education are but the most notable agencies which essentially diversify the problem we have been considering.

In the football match, New South Wales v. Nelson, played on Thursday, the visitors \ron by two points to nil.

We are glad to hear that Mr W. Cussen, under tho skilful care of ])r. Waddington, is making very favourable progress.

The usual monthly meeting of the Kirikiriroa Road Board convened for yesterday afternoon lapsed for want of a

quorum. The usual fortnightly sitting of the Resident Magistrate's Court, Cambridge, is adjourned from yesterday to next Tuesday, when Mr Nortncroft, lI. M. will sit.

A plain and fancy dress ball is to bo field in the Public Hall, Cambridge, on the lfith instant. A larpo number of invitations have been issued, and a very enjoyable dance is looked forward to.

Mr J. S. Bond is filling an order for 37» r > volumes for the Cambridge District School Library. A careful selection has been made by the gentlemen empowered to chooße the books, Messrs W. S. Stewart and Hey. J. Kishworth, and a fine library for the school will be the rwult,

The football match Hamilton v. Huntly will be played At the latter place today.

The standard examinations at the Hamilton Bust school were concluded 011 Thursday, and yesterday Mr Fidler wan engaged at the Went school, To-day he goes to Kirikiriroa, returning to complete hi* work at Hamilton Wont on Tuesday. The Cambridge school will be examined m standards noxt month. The Hamilton East school broke up yesterday for a fortnights holidays.

In consequence of there being counter attractions, it hns been decided to postpone- tho peforinance of "Our Boys " at tho Oddfellows' Hall, Hamilton, from Tuesday evening next to Thursday, the lGth inst. The inannßemont are taking pains to render the representation as perfect as possible in the niattar of scenery and stage appointments. The cast will be the name as on the two former occasions.

The i following, letter has been received by M> McMillan, treasurer of tlio Auckland Benevolent Sooiety :—": — " Dear sir, — Kindly accept the enclosed on behalf of the Auckland Benevolent Society from Alfred and myself, l , in affectionate memory of our late dear father.- -Yours very truly, Laurence D. Nathan " The cheque enclosed was for the sum of £100.

The bad weather experienced of late culminated on Thursday, when the barometer fellj to a lower point than it has reached all winter. The wind and rain were terrific. Yesterday there was scarcely any improvement, the wind increasing greatly in force last night. The roads are bad in all directions, and the rivers and creeks are abnormally high, but so far we have heard of no damage.

The Auckland Herald says •■— Professor Kirk had a lively time at the Assistant Surveyor-General's office, Parlia-ment-street, yesterday (Thursday). From an early hour iti the moraing he w*s waited on by large numbers of men seeking employ • ment on the proposed forest plantation at Rangiriri. Upwards of 80 applied for employment, and of thd«e Professor Kirk has taken on 30 to do work at fencing and clearing the land. It is expected that the men employed will be set to work on Monday next.

Notwithstanding the wretched state of the weather yesterday a large number of the leading settlers of this district attended the funeral of the youngest daughter of Mr S. T. Seddnn, of Knighton, Hamilton. The remains were interred in Hamilton East cemetery, the Rev. \V. Galder, Incumbent of All Saints', Ponaonby, officiating in the absence of the Rev. R. O'C. liiggs, who was to« indisponed to be present. The large gathering gave proof of the genuine sympathy felt for Mr and Mrs Seddon in tneir affliction.

Mr Richard Wright, who has been connected as a teacher with the Sundayschool of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Cambridge, for the last nine years, was presented on Monday with a handswine copy of the book "The (Jiant Cities of Bashan," as a slight recognition of his «ervices and a token of regard on his approaching departure from Cambridge. The pre Mentation was made by the Rev. W. Evans, on behalf of the Sunday-school teacher* and scholars, and Mr Wright responded in feeling terms. Mr F. J. Brooks, superintendent of the Sunday-school, also addressed the meeting, adding his testimony to the value of Mr Wrights services. A programme of musical selections and readings was afterwards given, and a pleasant evening spont.

Another old colonist, Mr James Gribble, hiw just passed a\v;vy. Mr (Jribblo arrived in Adelaide in 184(5, and a year or two after came to Auckland, when* ho worked as a miner in the Kawau copper mine, and afterwards at tho Barrier mines. With many others he went to Ballarat, returning to Auckland in ISSG. He was well known on the Thamoß goldfield, and was manager of pome of the principal mines there, wich as the Moanataiari and tho Albumin. He afterwards nettled on a farm in Waikato, but for the last few years has been living on his property at Kingsland, near Auckland. He has been in feeble health for some months, suffering from asthma. Ho leaves a widow, five sons and six daughters, four of his children being married. — Herald.

The late session (says the "North Utago Times ") consisted of sixty-five Mttiug days, of un a\erago duration of seven hours and ninetoen minutes per day. In that case, the 138 members each of whom gets an honorarium of £'210, were paid at the rate of about £3 -Is 7d per day or about £Lfl 7« Gd per week of six days, which, with the free passages and railway fares, means that during the late session each nie.iibor was paid at the rate of £1001) a year. Are the services rendered worth so much ? Do the members of the Legislative Council and the Hiuse of Representatives, either individually or collectively, render the country services equivalent to payment at that hi«h rate? If they do, the comm3rcial morality of Parliament is perhaps sound ; but if they do not. it must surely re in a deeply deplorable state. What do the taxpayers think of the matter ?

Tne Wellington correspondent of the Timarn Herald says:— The larrikin element prevail* stnmtfly among some members of the house. Th i other night, whilst Sir G.'onje Grey was delivering his impassioned oration, the burly member for Waimei (Mr John Kerr) was invited by one of his brother members to take a pinch of snuff, with the result that in his voluntary sneezes completely drowned the sound of Sir George G rey's voice, and it was some few seconds before the sneezer recovered his normal condition. The same member who entrapped him into accepting his hospitality next appeared behind the member for Waimea'rt back, and appended to his coat tails a printed slip of paper containing a well-written skit on the pious member for the Bay of Islands (Mr Hobb>), who it will be remembered at a recent prayer meeting stated that tho members for Parliament sadly needed praying for. The ladies in the gallery wore fairly convulsed with laughter as Mr Kerr passed from seat to seat, dangling tho white appendage from his coat tails.

The following in reference to the Kimberley goldtield ia published in the Sydney Morning Herald of the Uth inst., being telegraphed from Adelaide :—" The Linda Weber has arrived at Port Darwin, four days out from Wyndham, with aoventy-five passengers from Kiiuborley. Some of the passengers have been to th« goldhVlds, and are returning disappointed. Others, meeting returning diggers, turned back, find some never left Wyndham. The population at the diggings is estimated at 3000 to 4000. Numbers are returning dissatisfied. At Wyndham the wages dropped from half-a-crown an hour to working for •tucker.' The Government pay 12s Gd per day for labour, but, having employed the necessary compliment of men, now only offer the rest work for ' tucker,' and several have accepted it. The Wyndham water supply is carted three miles. Mr Welden has crossed the Leopold Ranges to Cambridge Gulf. Horses sold by auction at £7, £10, to £15, and previously £40 was refused for some of them. The blacks aie becoming troublesome ; half a dozen men are missing along the Derby track.

This is what the Sydney Bulletin thiukß of football : — " For right down brutal sport commend us to a dog-fight, Gneco-lloman wrestling, and last, but by no means least, a game of Rugby football. In the intercolonial match on Saturday one of the Queensland men was carried off the field with a broken collar-bone, and another with his head open. We presume that the authorities put their foot on prize-fighting on account of its alleged brutalising tendency. If such is the case, then why allow Rugby football as a lawful game '! In a pmo fight a bloody nose and a black eye aro usually the worst injuries. If a man is thrown diuinar a fight he has but one man to fall on him. In Rugby football it is ' Siicks-on-the-mill,' and God help the undermost, who is lucky if he escapes with a broken collar-bone. We don't object to the young 'tins maiming themselves if it pleases them, but it seems a farce for the law to make fish of one and fowl of tho other, on the score of brutality, as there have boon far more permanent injuries between the goal posts than between the pobts of a prize ring."

Tho Waikato Land Association invite tenders for ;ib<mt five miles -A drain in?. Mr Bcttley, Hamilton, and Mr Lang, Hantapn, advertiae for lost heifers. The Newcastle Road lioard invite applications for the post of engineer* the board. Mr Coy, dental surgeon, announces that he will pay a visit to Cambridge next week, and that ho will make periodical visits in future, should sufficient inducement offer. Attention in directed to ioveral alterations in the action sales advertised by Mpssra Alfred Bueltland and Co. The usual relign us services are advertised in another column.