Current:

Leader (1850-1860), 24th March 1860, Edition 1 of 2, Page 275, COMMERCIAL MORALITY.

Page 275
Page 7
7 of 24

On this page

  • Departments (1)
    • COMMERCIAL MORALITY.
  • Text (3)
  • 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

      ¦ ci ples defended in every age . Parliamentary Beform proceeds on the acknowledgment that principle has been violated . Ihe multitude were discontented in 1830 , and the privileged few , convinced of the justice of their claims , then by a compromise conceded much to them . The concession has been followed by almost wonderful improvements in the spirit of our legislation , by more contentment in the people , improved conduct , and increased welfare . It is now again admitted by the leading politicians -of both parties that the concession did not go far enough , and that the claims of the multitude for an additional share of the representation are well founded . Prom further concessions , . similar ^ ind greater benefits will probably ensue . This is an almost universal opinion . How the concession is to be carried into effect , will be decided by the strength of parties , and the debates in Parliament ; but to make it has become indispensable .

      Parliament , we know , is guided by forms and traditions to which every measure must conform . The exact shape into which it is actually forged always depends on circumstances foreign to its merits , such as the compromises of politicians and parties . What Parliament has oiice done , it is likely to do again , and having conceded a £ 10 household suffrage to towns , it will probably be ready to concede it to counties . Though such a measure is not consistent with any abstract principle , it is . likely as a practical result to become a law . What will be its consequences , ultimately no man can foretell . Parliament so encumbers its measures with words that it conceals tlveir substance i and hinders the formation of rational opinions concerning their effects . - Nor can they be separated from the consequences of an increase or decrease of . national growth , which continually

      alters the . relations of property and the . jwyer of classes . To provide for these by any law , or to adjust any law to their everyarying proportions , so that no class shall ever find any discrepancy between its . claims and the law regulating representation , is a hopeless undertaking . This project , however , is entertained by those who are now scheming for " practical results , " and describe their own " presumptions" as the essence of deliberate thought , far superior to the plain and certain dictates of principle . '

      Untitled Article

      BIIRLY Dr . Johnson , in one of his patronising notes on ShaKspere ' s Henry IV ., goes out of . his way to lament the costermonger times , " when the prevalence of trade has produced that meanness that rates the merit of everything by money" How far the son of the hypochondriacal bookseller , of Liehfield had a right to decry trade as the chief business and object of a nation we will not inquire , but we might venture to suggest that the London philosopher ' s pungent , remark was more suitable to the present than the past time ; not , however , that we are Quixotic , enpug-h to break our lances against popular windmills ; , we do not wish to attack the morality of trade as it might be , but to condemn commercial morality as it is , ' There can be no longer a doubt , whether the ideal be high or low , that trade is now the recognised mission of England , as the philosophical cant of the day has it , just as that of Borne was conquest , and of CJreece civilization ; the nations who see us from the outside see us all as working bees with commerce for the great purpose of our lives . According to our enemies , we fiyht , rimlce treaties , conquer or makepeace , all with reference to trade and trade alone ; as the bird Hies and the fish swims , the Englishman trades , As our commerce is , impersonal , and has no pulse that can be felt , it is only indirectly that we are ever enabled to ascertain the state of its moral health , and it is from stray paragraphs in papers that we sometimes glean symptoms of our internal disease . The other day , says a recent Birmingham paper , a wholesale dealer from London came into a large button house in the former city , and oh a member of the firm , who knew him well , offering him his hand , he angrily refused it , and throw down a parcel of buttons , which ho accused the Birmingham tradesmen of selling to others at a lower pYitie than they did to him . The firm , astonished at the charge , examined the parcel of buttons , and found the paper wrapper , the stanip , the trade escutcheon—everything , the sumo as their own j but on pulling the buttons to piqees they were discovered to be internally of bad construction , though so close in their imitation that their own workmen were at first deceived . They were forged buttons , that had been introduced into the market , in defiance . of all honesty and honour , to tl * o immonEte loss of the Birmingham firm , We have all hoard complaints of the tricks of retail traders ; but surely if the manufacturers themselves are to venture on doings like this , we shall soon aeo commerce tainted at the very source . We need some modern Abistotj-e to write a book of ethics for modern trnders , for the short line in the Decalogue devoted to their use , it seems , scarcely comos home to them sufficiently . It ia possible that we shall even have to wish that Turkish Jaws wore our laws—that lame ducks could be caught up suddenly and bastinadoed in Cupel Oourt , or that the stately pillory could bo once more fitted up opponite the Exchange , To see a ohoa ' ting 1 Whiteohapel baker ' s ear nailed to his shop door for selling bone flour to the poor , would startle but not pain us . Will there come ft time whom trwde gets so corrupt , so netted up with tricks and lies—euqh a labyrinth

      Commercial Morality

      of crooked paths , that the honest man will rather brave the firedamp in a coal mine , the wild sea at the fiercest , or whale fishing among the closing white teeth , of the iceberg's jaws , than be an English merchant ? " . ' The small disclosures of trade deceptions are perpetual . Now ifc is the universal corruption of food that is being discussed ; now the extravagant profit . of some special trade ; now a general lamentation as to the hastiness and flimsiness with which things are made . Everywhere you meet with honest tradesmen , who lament the tricks of trade , and complain , that they are inextricably entangled in immoralities which have grown habitual . Nor is the degradation confined altogether to the higher classes connected with trade— -its black roots stretch to the lowest strata

      of workmen . Neglected by capital , and ill-used , the wprlenian . seems often to think no means however base by which he can recover . or assert his rights . . A Sheffield paper of a few days ago , while exulting in the thriving trade driven by the fabricators of steel hoops for crinoline , and in the i * eturn to a sane mind by the awl blade makers who had been on the strike , relates the following occurrence ,-which seerns to us of the most alarming significancy , as showing , in large manufacturing ; towns , tire passionate violence of ignorant selfishness , when imagining itself to be injured by capital equally selfish , though , perhaps , more enlightened , and of a wider mental vision : —A manufacturer of the cutlers' town . aforementioned has lately invented a machine for grinding saws , by which we imagine a machine that slices out the thin pjates of "

      steel , polishes their surfaces , and bites their edges into teefcb . This machine has excited , since its erection , the horror and indignation of the grinders . ¦' , It has been talked of at artisans ' clubs as if it were a Hydra that fed on children ; as if the oil that lubricated its cogs and wheels were mixed with murdered women ' s blood . Tho"se who it was to deprive of labour , to starve and pinch arid render homeless , grew desperate .. The machine would destroy them or they must destroy it . How were they , grown old , with unpliable minds and stubborn fingers , to retrace their lives and learn new trades P Who was to feed their wives and children while they learned those trades ? Can we wonder that , inciting 1 each other

      the more violent forcing the weaker , they tried every means to blow up and crush and destroy that lnachhie ? - —that secret clubs of angi-y men put their heads together to toss that monster machine into the bottomless pit , from whence they swore the fiend had sent it , to drive poor , innocent , industrious men to penury , temptation , and crime ? Threatening letters reached the speculative ; triumphant master , that if he did not siop his new-fangled machine , silent bullets from air-guns would reach him some morning as he sat at breakfast with his chijdren ; that shells might be thrown in at the window , or that accidental fires might some day soon break out in liis workshop .

      At first he disregarded them , but the threats grew blacker and darker ; life became a misery to him . Death ' s hollow face stared at him between the fire bars , through the v > blinds , between the window curtains , from behind every opening- door . He looked back with regret to the happy days of quieter and slower profit . He issued , afc last , a reluctant notice to the scowling workmen that he would remove the machine and resume the old g ^ rindings by hand . The workmen tyrants—the intolerant shouters for toleration- —the manly , generous , English wox ^ kmen , ( for once the advocates of assassination and terrorism—the would-be ribbonmen and murderers , ) had triumphed . masters should

      Is this the conduct that kind and considerate receive from their workpeople ? Is the old blindness that made pur rural mobs break to pieces threshing machines and curse steam never to cease in England ? It was this- wild Conservatism thai ) made watermen hate coaches whoa they wore first started , coachmen hate railways , and bowmen arquebuses . It is that wicked hatred for what is . now and better that has always bqen the curse of the world and the chief barrier to its improvement . But the workmen , too ,, have their sufferings and wrong-s , as the recent facts elicited about the'children employed by the Bolton bleachers prove incontestably . Wo do not like to see legislators officious or interfering with self-government , but wo do think-that whilst trade is so greedy and selfish and unhesitating as it is , that some

      check must be found to the cupidity of the musters , who rely on the poverty and necessities of the children ; foot blood-raw ; fingers bleeding and sore—labour , even for children , unduly prolongod , to the destruction of future body and mind , insufficient sluep , are ovila which must notjje allowed to exist . It never must ho that popular feeling shall view every great manufacturer ' s palace as built in a vast churchyard where his victims Bleep ; or that those prints and stufft shall go forth to the world bearing stamps of blood on every bale . Let it not bo said that if every yard of cotton Manchester produced wore a shroud , it would not furiUHh sufficient for tho poor children its erreat Jutrprernaut mills have ground to death .

      Let it not bo that some future satirist , Htcrnor than lIoaAUTH , and fiercov than Gii / miay , shall have to depict a oannilal fuotory at work , tho horrors of which shall vie with tho Hell Pronms of D \ ntej , nnd the fantastic purgatories of that errant genius , Gustave Doiie . Let him not show us tho slook , prosporouH Domhjiy of commerce , watching * smilingly the vast world of wheels spin round , grinding live children to gory pulp ; nor represent half-crushed men and w . omon drawn out in tortuvo on the broad quivering straps , or flattened in the huge cylinders ; while shrouded shupos feed tho hoppers and shoot tho shuttles , and skeleton hands sort tho refuse nnd twist the fragile threuds with horrible indifference . # We had hoped that tho day for this cruel rapacity nnd godless indifference to human suffering had passed . To floma timorous

      Untitled Article

      March 24 , 1860 . J The Leader and Saturday Analyst . 27 $

      Commercial Morality.

      COMMERCIAL MORALITY .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), March 24, 1860, page 275, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2339/page/7/