[1] The following table taken from the Statistical Returns, presented by the Board of Trade, shows in a clear light how much of the position of the working classes must have been improved by the removal of fiscal burdens. Almost all the impositions of taxation between 1850 and 1864 have fallen upon the wealthier classes:—
| Repealed or Reduced. | Imposed. | Diminution or Addition. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £ | £ | £ | ||
| Customs | 12,208,604 | 3,291,820 | D. | 8,916,784 |
| Excise | 5,607,000 | 6,380,000 | A. | 773,000 |
| Property and Income Tax | 16,265,000 | 14,764,000 | D. | 1,501,000 |
| Other taxes | 2,608,800 | 600,000 | D. | 2,008,800 |
| Stamps (including succession duty) | 1,428,000 | 2,411,200 | A. | 983,000 |
| Total | £38,117,404 | 27,447,020 | D. | 10,670,384 |
[2] In 1846, according to the Report of the Registrar General for that year, out of the persons married in that year, one man out of three, and one woman in two, signed the register with marks. What was being done for the children of that year may be gathered from the return for 1864, where it is shown that only eighteen in 100 of those marrying in that year were unable to write their names.
[3] Speech at Newton-le-willows, July 22, 1865.
[4] By way of giving an example of our meaning, we would adduce the case of the workmen employed in the large brass works of Messrs. Guest and Chrimes, Rotherham. When one of their number, for instance, gets married, instead of the accustomed hard-drinking, the men and their wives drink tea together, and a piece of furniture of substantial value is presented to the newly-married pair, paid for out of the subscriptions by the men. On one of these occasions it is related, that the head of the firm was asked to present articles which had been bought for two newly-married couples, and Mr. Guest complied and introduced the business as follows: “The custom you have adopted deserves the warmest commendation and support, and is well worthy of superseding those footings, fines, treats, &c., which, until recently, had become a source of the most cruel, heartless, and unjust robbery to which workmen could possibly be exposed by each other. Thank God that wicked system is fast passing away.”
[5] In 1851-2 a large and well-known engineering firm in Leeds had a serious struggle with their workmen on account of the masters having determined to pay the men according to their merit and the character of the work turned out. A determined strike was the result, which, though the original difference was only with eight men, threw eventually more than 600 out of employment. Fresh hands were obtained with the usual difficulty, and these were subjected to great annoyance and even danger; in eighteen months, however, the works were again all going and were efficiently manned. The masters henceforth made it a condition of employment under them that no member of a trades' union should be engaged, and the sequel was a better behaved and superior class of men. Not only so, but the masters are now enabled to make their own regulations for the benefit of those employed under them, which before, owing to the interference of the trades society, they could not make. They have instituted a sick and funeral fund to which the men contribute by working ten minutes additional time when necessary, an arrangement which we recommend to other large employers of labour and large bodies of workmen. That the masters should be acquitted of any selfish motive, they allow the funds to be managed and applied by a committee of workmen appointed by themselves from their own number.
[6] “No labourer,” says Mr. Smiles in his Workman's Earnings, &c., “is better worthy of his hire than the English one. It is not merely that he works harder than the labourer of any other country, but he generally produces a better quality of workmanship. He possesses a power of throwing himself bodily into his occupation, which has always been a marvel to foreigners;” and he then recurs to the well-known example of the surprise created among the French peasantry when gangs of English navvies proceeded with the works of the Rouen railway, and worked amidst constant exclamations, of “Voilà! voilà ces Anglais! comme ils travaillent!”
[7] We put the matter quite mildly here, though it is customarily and very properly spoken of much more severely. For example, Mr. Norris, one of the Government inspectors of schools, in speaking of the well-paid miners and iron workers of Staffordshire—who doubtless are little worse than the same classes throughout the country—says in one of his able reports: “Improvidence is too tame a word for it—it is recklessness; here young and old, married and single, are uniformly and almost avowedly self-indulgent spendthrifts. One sees this reckless character marring and vitiating the nobler traits of their nature. Their gallantry in the face of danger is akin to foolhardiness; their power of intense labour is seldom exerted except to compensate for time lost in idleness and revelry; their readiness to make ”gatherings“ for their sick and married comrades seems only to obviate the necessity of previous savings,” &c.
[8] Much of what we have said in the foregoing pages is admirably summed up in a sentence or two in an article on “Savings Banks,” which we would not be far wrong in attributing to Dr. Wynter, and which we had not seen before these pages were written: “Contemporaneously with the growth of savings banks, we have seen a growth of civilization among the poorer classes. Thrift has not effected all that amelioration of morals which contrasts so happily the mid years of the century with its younger ones; but it has been no mean confluent to the tide of progress, the softening of manners, the spread of education, the humanising of popular sports and pastimes, the wakening up of the natural dignity and self-reliance of the people,—the broad and indispensable basis of every other virtue.”—London Review.
[9] Quarterly Review, 1859.