Current:

Leader (1850-1860), 23rd August 1851, Edition Town of 2, Page 802, Untitled Article

Page 802
Page 14
14 of 24

On this page

  • Text (6)
  • Transcript

    • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

      Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

      Untitled Article

      much the paramount test of right and wrong : "Will it pay ? " is the test of right : " It will not pay , is moral condemnation . Hence , in orderly , commercial England , we breed an uncommon supply of thieves and forgers ; in moral England , a vast host of debauchees and all their train ; in religious Scotland , a tremendous and eternal race of drunkards and diabolists ; while in France , revolutionary , non-commercial , free-thinking , free-living France , crime abates . Perhaps they are more chivalrous in

      France ? Perhaps they interfere less with Nature ? An empyric , acting on the French experience , might almost propose a general curtailment of royalty as a short cut to moral improvement . Another might propose to free education from the trammel of the " religion" upon which no one can agree . A third would pronounce English education , as it is taught at " commercial academies , to be bad—demoralizing . We judge not ; but it is evident that Baron Platt suggests some very subversive ideas .

      Untitled Article

      BETRAYAL OF THE LAW BY A MAGISTRATE . Jane Maskell is placed before Alderman Wire , at the Guildhall , for illegally pawning two boys' coats delivered to her to make up by a Mr . Haven Kaye , a clothier , bne gets sixpence each for the coats ; she finds the trimmings ; each coat takes her about seven hours to make . She had sent to Mr . Kaye , she said , for Is . 8 d ., which he owed her ; but he had not paid it , and being ill , she had no resource . She had given security to her employer , and she believed that her emp loyer meant to apply to the security . Under these circumstances , Mr . Wire discharged her . #

      Now why ? We do not believe that he had any right to exercise any such discretion . The offence alleged was not rebutted ; and the application to the security was only stated on " belief . ' - ' But the fact is , that the laws against the labourer are often so oppressive and cruel that the administrators hesitate to enforce them . The alderman went further than the discharge of the prisoner—he ordered the officer to pay the amount for which the goods were pledged ; one of the most distinct instances of recognizing a penal offence as the direct act of necessity which we remember . But does Alderman Wire do this for the hundreds of women who are as cruelly distressed as Jane Maskell , and yet resist the temptation to break the law ?

      Untitled Article

      rnOHIIUTOHY POSTAGE AUUOAI ) . In our Postscript of Saturday last we quoted what the Roman correspondent of the Times said of prohibitory postage of English journals in Home . All Liberal journals arc excluded ; but while certain French journals are admitted at a postage of six sous , the postage of English journals ranges from throe shillings to a dollar . Why not prohibit the English journals at once ? Perhaps that would look too anti-British . A correspondent of the Times has mentioned that at Rippoldsau , in the Duchy of Baden , the postage on the " English journals varied in a remarkable manner : in the Times it varied from lOd . to Is . 5 ( 1 . ; on the Spectator , from Id . to Cxi . He could obtain no explanation of the fact from the postmaster . We lately stated that in Prussia about Is . Od . has been charged on our own journal ; not , we tmpposc , solely , but only as one of thi' English press . Thus the exclusive use of prohibitory postage is becoming common to the Absolutist ( JovernincntH .

      Untitled Article

      A Cil Kl ' . KINO FACT . Tur . Times mentions as " a cheering fact , " that " an extensive { igriculturiHt of UiccsU-r , King ' s Mud , a few days Hince , rode upwards of twenty miles on an unsuccessful effort to obtain a Hiiflir . ient number of men for harvesting bis crops . " A strange nort of " cheering fact" ! lint . it . is cited " as indicating full employment , for labourers . " Ho that , under our admirable system of u : conomy , you cannot , be » ure that labourers art ; fully employed , until 1 ' armern are " unsuccessful" in obtaining hands , and the crops arc ; in danger of rotting on the ground . And when that in the cane , it . is " a cheering fact . " What . must , be the disconsolate nature of that Bytsteni in which such a fact , is " cheering" ?

      Untitled Article

      SOCIAL REFORM . CONCERT THE SALVATION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS . TO B . H . ' August 18 , 1851 . My dear Grandfather , —I address this one of my letters to you , not only because I am glad to place on record my grateful remembrance of your unfailing and affectionate kindness — unfailing through every change of adversity and prosperity , of constant intercourse and of distance—but because you have been yourself in trade ; you have experienced the reverses of trade , have seen its working ; and your strictly practical mind is precisely the most candid , and perhaps the toughest , of that kind which I desire to reach . I was much struck lately with the remark which a friend told me he had encountered from more than one trader , " Oh ! you Socialists mean to do away with us ; " and undoubtedly there is a feeling among Socialists , as well as their opponents , that the middle class is somehow to be superseded , swept away , annihilated . Now , nobody likes the idea of annihilation , at all events in his own person , even hypothetically . We have , at all events , a bias

      against a doctrine which we expect to annihilate us ; the more so , if its advocates admit , or rather boast , of such an effect ; and we take refuge in the presumption that the doctrine is visionary . It is very desirable that such an impression should be removed , since nothing could be more calculated to hinder the peaceful and thoroughly advantageous progress of Association , and nothing could be founded on a more fundamental misconception .

      I have always endeavoured to keep distinct these three things—the principle on which Association is based , and which I have denned to be general concert in the division of employments ; secondly , the immediate and practical application of that principle to the actual condition in which we find society , so that such condition may be improved ; thirdly , the ulterior , theoretical , and speculative results , which are necessary to complete the rationale of the subject , but are as little likely to be realized at the moment , as the principle which has been enjoined upon Christians for rather more than eighteen hundred years—that they should love one another . In fact , retail traders are themselves suffering from the want of concert , not only amongst

      themselves , but among the different classes of industry . While others were attacking traders for their dishonesty , when the Lancet disclosed the enormous adulterations practised in various provision trades , all Communists were immediately struck with the effects of competition which that practice betrayed . The Lancet showed that in many cases the adultera- tion proceeded to the degree of fifty or even a hundred per cent . When you are supposing yourself to buy " coffee , " for example , you are buying a mixture , perhaps half coffee , perhaps half chicory ; possibly chicory , beans , and other things , with a mere spice of coffee . It was shown that some of the most largely professing houses , and not the cheapest , were among the most guilty . This was not confined to the coffee trade , but prevailed in

      every kind of grocery . We find it in every other business . 1 have myself been condemned to write upon paper which was , I believe , " felt" touched up with plaster of Paris . I know , on the very best authority , that the trade in medical drugs is in an equally vitiated state ; and you might see from the letters of Mr . Joseph Flint , that the same kind of thing- i . s seen about the country ; soap offered to the institutions in Lincoln at five shillings a stone , a sum , with the carriage , less by two shillings per hundred weight than he could buy it for , though ho takes ten tons at a time .

      Thus we find the trader supplying , m the name of food , rubbish , or even poison ; defrauding the sick man in his medicine , and making some unaccountable " contract'" even with the managers for the poor . They could scarcely have become so lost to moral considerations , so hardened to the precepts which they profess , so deadened to common good feeling for their fellow-creatures , if they were not themselves the sufferers under the system . The same trick is played all round ; each trade is taught to regard itself as an interest isolated from the rest of humanity , with all other interests opposed to it . JKach trader is commercially a Cain in a nation of Cains . All moral consideration is

      reduced to the rule recently proclaimed from the lips of our Finance Minister , " Caveat emptor , " " Buyer , beware . " People talk about the danger of dissolving society into its elements , but 1 ask you if this is not dissolving the Social system i Man is set against man , and in taught from the highest bench in the Legislature that it is not

      wrong , not practical infidelity , not unchristian , anarchical , antisocial , if he defrauds his fellowcreatures of their food , the sick man of his medicine , and the poor of their allowance ; but the phrases which are not applied to the man who thus performs his social duties , are applied to those who suggest a plan that would not compel the trader to seek self-defence in fraud . I know that no set of men , much less a whole class , would resort to practices like these , if it were not under the pressure of some great necessity , and I find the necessity confessed in

      the very resort to devices . Those practices must tell against each man more than they tell for him ; in the bankruptcy which hangs over every trader , threatening him with destruction if he flagged in the race of competition ; and also in destruction which threatens him in another shape . The aggregate amount of bankruptcy officially recognized which falls every year upon the class of retail traders is enormous ; but how much larger is the additional amount annually disguised under the form of " composition" ! How much humiliation does the trader have to undergo when he has to

      meet creditor or commissioner , and to be rebuked in his mortification for careless accounts , reckless trading , or " not stopping soon enough" ! Yet I often think that offences of this kind are not half so bad as those which are justified in high places—the giving to a fellow-creature poison for food or rubbish for medicine . The retail trader vainly apprehends destruction for his class from the principle of Association , while , in fact , his class is actually undergoing a destructive process by the operation of capital . Where are the small haberdashers that used to be

      < scattered about London and other towns ? In place of them you find a few very large establishments , the Morrisons or Shoolbreds , each employing shopmen by the hundred . A Morrison devised the plan through which the capitalist is enabled to undersell the small trader , by taking a fraction only of the profits which enabled the small dealer to go on , and yet the many fractions put together form an immense return in the aggregate . By this process the great capitalist has converted the small dealers into his shopmen . The trader who employs a hundred shopmen , may be said to have eaten up a hundred small dealers . incon

      < i ; Now , under any form of society ,-it is - ceivable that people would be able to do without the functionaries represented by traders—those who carry on the exchanges of the products oi industry ; and , unquestionably , if we were to arrange our business matters on the most desirawe footing for all classes , we should desire to have traders in sufficient numbers , and furnished vitn sufficient means , to conduct their operations effectively . It is a remarkable fact , that w terrible lesso u

      traders are beginning to learn , in the of bankruptcy , and in the more terrible trespass " of adulteration , how desperate is the strugg k . Uuj are maintaining against Competition the prow . ou of Association are making practical arrange ntn j to keep up the efliciency of exchanges , in thirty-five or forty agents , the 1 eople b i «« Leeds may be said to have created so many traders ; who carry on their business , howevti , ^ a strict understanding between themselves . ¦

      wholesale producer , and their consumers , working together in concert . . in Several of the Associations in Paris ' nilin * | lter . their " ge ' rant , " or manager , the exact i . . ^ part of the trader ; only it is a trader wn <> i > - ¦ ^ perfect understanding with Ins WOI J je j tl « s ruined pianoforte-maker , whose stock foil ^^ stock in trade of the Associated Pianoioi to -l > ^ —the thriving company that may be ""¦* " ' j ; t ; 1 i , l « adopted his children , and has sent sucii . < n adopted ma cuiiuii'ii , ««>• »••*>• _ llrit II '' - ^

      specimens of its work to the KxpoHiUon— ' ^ ( Jl (! may be regarded as typifying the * ll t 1 " 1 ' , ' (; c , iUal retail trader . The establishment ol 1 - - " ' , t ra »« - Agency in London will further exempl « y w <> r kiii <*» mutation of the trader alienated from ! " ' w () r ju , u : ii . into the trader incorporated with w ^ , jlU i ; iliut I must reserve for a second letter a ¦ " ( o , tion of the manner in which Concert j ^ t jl 0 the safety and advantage of the traci « i > ^ competitive HVHtem subjects him to srin i „ ,,. of ruin-tho eating up of the ^ l ^ X >^ 'f great capitalist , the bankruptcy of those ^ devouringmid that ailulternticm wluc £ , „ , lll (

      , an escape from the pressure ol com ^^ i which corrupts the very substance thil ) f , H tends to destroy the production ol ; l ^ ^ houtf ' on which trade clependH . --Your attcaion . ^^ Communist , A IIOH

      Untitled Article

      arftflteatre r * [ Saturday , ovW . .

      Untitled Article

      NI ' . WM FOR YARMOUTH . Tine Catholic Bishop of Kdinburgh at the late Dublin meeting , ih reported to have uttered the following iu-n ~ tcm : e which must , . strike tenor into the House of IjOkIh , and 1111 the good people ol' Norfolk with wonder : " II in in the power of every venerable bloater to put on liin cliniiiHfor the keeping oil hm Movereign ' H conscience , Heat hiirnu-lf on the Woolmick , and » poit a Chancellor h wig . " Fancy a bloater , " tail on end , " addicting the Houho from the Woolttack , adorned with hin chains , and ( porting a Chnnoellor'b witf , agiiiuat the Papal Aggreuwion !

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 23, 1851, page 802, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1897/page/14/