This, in fact, is the whole of the difference between restriction and prohibition; between tampering with evil and pruning it, and the only moral method of dealing with it, viz.uprooting it. No. 122, age 28, with nine years' schooling, says :—' Much more happiness if there were none.' Why limit happiness by licence? No. 149, age 30, at secular school six years, and Sunday six, says: All the public-houses should be shut up.' Of course she means from selling drink, since no one can have any objection to good inns, for rest and refreshment, like 'The Trevelyan' in Manchester, 'The Cobden' in Glasgow, or 'The Cockburn' in Edinburgh. No. 172, age 25, with eight years' schooling, ascribes her fall to Drink and bad company.' She gives her opinion of drink facilities in terse and axiomatic form: If there were fewer public-houses there would be fewer imprisonments.' No. 200, age 44, seven years' schooling, and ten years at Sunday-school. Reducing the drink-shops: 'Very good; would empty the prison.' No. 204, age 40: There would be more food for the poor.' No. 214, age 20: Good for soul and body. Ruined me.' No. 226, age 30, nine years at school. Cause of fall, 'Drink and misfortune.' Lessening spirit-shops-'Very good; great blessing; empty prison.' No. 233, age 53: I wish there had never been any public houses.' No. 256, age 17: Should be put down altogether.' says :-'Very good; would be telling many a great deal' (of truth, she means, by revealing the true cause of crime). No. 269, age 33, says: Were there no public-houses and no pawnshops there would be little need for gaols.' We conclude with some testimonies that absolutely suggest the clauses and penalties of a Maine law. No. 70, age 30, seven years at school: Spirits should be only sold in the doctors' shops, as medicine.' No. 80, age 26, six years' secular schooling, says: Publichouses lead to all kinds of mischief; druggists alone should be allowed to sell spirits.' No. 140, age 40, says :-'Whisky should only be sold by druggists.' No. 147, age 33, says: The people that sell drink should be put into gaol, and not us victims.' We have now done with these Voices from the Prison. The suffering they reveal will touch the humane. Let us hope that that the truths they proclaim will suggest to the genuine patriot wiser and more radical remedies than have hitherto been tried. If a tree is known by its fruit,' the licensed traffic in strong drink stands condemned on this indictment, by an amount of evidence as appalling as it is conclusive. The time, we predict, is not far off when the existence of a trade which inevitably and always produces crime, and antagonises good government, will no longer be tolerated by a people calling themselves Christian, much less sanctioned by a Christian parliament. The sooner the anomaly ceases, the better for the interests of this great nation. THE ART. IV.-ON STRIKE AND ON SPREE. HE extreme scarcity of money, which was so severely felt by commercial and professional people in the summer and autumn, did not exist in anything like the same degree among the upper sections of the working classes, and gold, like water, found its way to its lowest level, not indeed necessarily to stay there. With the last-named there has been no want of money. It was and is to be had almost to any extent simply by working for it. In certain trades and handicrafts wages have been exceptionally high, and are likely to continue so unless unforeseen events occur. These very high wages rule in particular trades, as with masons, bricklayers, navigators, joiners, engineers, and in general wherever some intelligence and considerable physical strength are required. These men can earn from 5s. to 7s. per diem, and do it easily. The enormous amount of building, demolishing, draining, and improving, which is going on in England under the auspices of hotel companies and others under the Limited Liability Act, besides the numerous extension lines of railway in progress, cause a steady demand for this description of labour. It is not as if an artisan could have employment for one month, but not for two; the work is far more regular than the labour, and a man with industrious habits can earn £70 or £80 per annum. Colliers, miners, grinders, and the men of Birmingham, Sheffield, and Staffordshire, get even more than this, and their rate of wages is often between two and four guineas a week. During the harvest women earned 2s. per day with rations, and the men a guinea a week with food, and wages in general have a tendency upwards, both in the agricultural world and among domestic servants, as married men very well know. During the great strike of the iron workers in the north, there was a corre spondence spondence between the representatives of the men and the secretary of the Ironmasters' Association, which was afterwards published in the newspapers, and the public were not a little taken by surprise at the statements it contained. Mr. Jones, on behalf of the masters, affirmed that he had examined the pay-sheets of several large iron firms, and found that the puddlers' earnings for six months averaged £2. 11s. 5d. per week of five days; the ball furnace-men, £3. 12s. 6d. per week; shinglers, 19s. 4d. per day; forge rollers, £6. 17s. 11d. per week; rail mill rollers, £8 to £11 per week; merchant mill rollers, £6 to £8; plate mill shearers, £7 to £7. 15s. per week. Mr. Jones states that for the first six months of 1866 the plate rollers earned on an average at the rate of £550 per annum to each man. When these figures were published they created a profound sensation, and though the men advanced many arguments that went to show that there were deductions, fluctuations, and other matters which were to be set against these returns, yet even they admitted that within the last few years wages had advanced 30 per cent. Without entering on the vexed question of strikes, it may be observed that while latterly strikes have been very numerous and frequent, the object is very often now, not as before only to get higher wages, but combined with that to have less work to do for them. House rent has not been perceptibly affected in the country, but it has advanced enormously in the metropolitan districts; indeed, in London, the difficulty now is, not so much that rents have risen until workmen can no longer afford to pay for them, as that house room can hardly be procured for love or money. It is impossible to predict with certainty as to the food market; corn, flour, and of course bread are dear, and may be dearer. The root crop was abundant and excellent, and ought, certainly, to affect the price of meat favourably. On the whole we may assume that wages have risen much higher in proportion than either food or rent. The question is, in what way this state of things has acted on the men? Looking back on the events of 1866, has it affected their morals, habits, and general conditions, and if so, how? Last autumn we made careful inquiry on the subject, but though we met with some very gratifying exceptions, we were unable to come to the conclusion that the extra amount of wages was generally either saved or expended in education, better house accommodation, or the purchase of furniture. Too often the public-houses reaped most of the benefits. Unquestionably the workmen were enabled to pay off old debts at the shops which, as a rule, even the poorest most conscientiously do when they can; bedding, blankets, and furniture were were got out of pawn, clothes were purchased, and the overplus went in eating, drinking, and pleasure excursions! We will give the evidence of some of the masters on these points. 'Sir,' said a master painter employing many hands in a northern county, 'I am paying my men each 7s. a week more than my father did, and they only work four or five days out of the six for it, often not that.' 'We are offering from 8s. to 10s. per day, or 1s. an hour, for colliery hands, and cannot get them,' was the complaint of the South Yorkshire colliery proprietors. 'I see my men scamping their work, and doing it purposely so slow and reckless, that I leave them to it.' 'I cannot stand by and see it done so,' says another master, and I dare not say a word, for, if I did, in all probability they would take up their tools and walk off.' 'I have begun to pay my men by the hour instead of by the day,' one employer states, so as to try and get some sort of justice out of them.' I cannot persuade my men to lay by,' remarked another; 'no, not even when wages are so high. Sometimes I have to advance money for them in the middle of the week, even to clever, good hands too, who are earning as much as £2 per week.' Of course, we must not be understood to affirm for an instant that all the men act thus. Workmen may be roughly divided into three classes :-(1) Those who are successful, and quickly rise to be masters; (2) those who do not so rise, not from want of ability, but from faults quite under their own control; and (3) those who are unsuccessful rather owing to their deficiencies than their faults, and who have been unfortunate, and had what is called a turn of ill-luck. Men of the first class are to be frequently met with, especially in the provinces, where individual merit is quickly observed and recognised. They are steady, handy, dexterous fellows, sometimes with a fair education, sometimes endowed with a natural ability and shrewdness which in some degree compensate for the lack of it, and cause one to regret that such good material should be inefficiently prepared. A man of this kind is in constant demand; at twenty-six he will start on his own account, save money, and in half-a-dozen years will employ workmen of his own, buy land, build houses, or take contracts, and become a thriving individual; and then, generally in proportion to the degree of education which he has not or has received, he is hard with his men, and bitter against the Union and strikes, or the reverse. The second class is composed of men who have skill and ability, but who are incorrigibly unsteady, and though, perhaps at infrequent intervals, this circumstance prevents their ever being relied on, they earn high wages, and spend them as quickly quickly as they receive them; and, never being a farthing beforehand in the world, in times of scarcity or sickness they often come to grief. An intelligent person, who had lived a long time in Staffordshire, described the working men there as enjoying, with their families, all the prime joints, and French brandy at six shillings per bottle, for the first three days in the week. While this goes on they sit with their door set well open; but,' he added, 'Thursday and Friday they are mostly "clemmed," and then they shut up their houses till Saturday comes round.' A large master shoemaker, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was complaining, in the autumn, that he could not accomplish his orders. My best men are off" on spree," and I cannot say when they will be back,' he said; four or five days, perhaps. They can earn from thirty'five to forty shillings per week easily, but I am often obliged to advance part of their wages in the middle of the week.' Now, to go on strike is often demoralising enough, unless with very exceptional natures, but to go on spree is always so. It does not mean simply getting intoxicated; it means continuous drinking for several days together. A man will leave his home with the best part of a week's wages in his pocket, and wander about from one public-house to another, spending it as long as it lasts, and then going on credit, if it be furnished to him; sometimes he will send out and pawn his tools, or a portion of his clothes, in case any difficulty arises on that score. He drinks ale or gin, changing from one vile compound to another, and passing through all the stages of drunkenness. He gets quarrelsome, stupid, surly, helpless; then he tumbles off his seat, and crawls or is hustled into a shed or loft, where, in his dirt and degradation, he in some degree sleeps off his debauch. As soon as he awakes he commences again, and so on for several days. Often there is a fight in which he gets the worst of it; or he gives some one else the worst of it, and he is taken to prison and fined or locked up. Not unfrequently he has an attack of delirium tremens, or, as it is familiarly called, a fit of the horrors,' which leaves him for months a wretched, moping, trembling, half-palsied object, weak and irritable both in body and mind. Occasionally a still more dreadful catastrophe results, and, for this world, there is an end of him. That these remarks convey no kind of exaggeration, the most cursory readers of the daily journals are perfectly aware. Cases of this sort constantly appear before the magistrates, and with the almost invariable explanation that the culprit had been drinking for some days.' The following was stated some time ago by a writer in the Pall Mall Gazette : |