The Degradation Of Labor In England

Jn tho Black Country, within seven miles of the city of Birmingham, 24,000 people are engaged in making nails and rivets. About 16,000 of these opertives are females. A writer in the London Standard, who visited this eenter of English industry not long ago, draws a vivid picture of tho poverty and distress there witnessed. He says: "In the muidle of a shed whioh joins a squalid-looking house there is a whole family at work ia the production ofthonails; father, mother, sons and daughters- daughters, too, very young in years, bnt with that sad look of premature age which is ahvays to be noticed in the faces of child-workers. The gayety of youth, its freshness and its gentleness, seem to be crushed out of them. In the center of the shed, with its raftered ceiling- a bleak and wretched building throuffh the walls of whinh the wind readily finds its way - there is a "hearth," fed by "gledes" orbreezes. Probably there is a girl or .voman blowing at the bellows, while the strips of iron from which the Dails are made become molten." The homes of these unfortunate laborers are said to be dismal beyond description. In many instances "they are more like hovels than human dwellDg places." They are devoid of all rVfIi n Q l'Tr innTranimi nnr. Tl .1. .1. V4UMUUJ k-uuvcujeuuca. j.xiey sneller, and tliat Ia all, the toilers who for a few short hours rest within their rickety walls. In nine cases out of ten there is ooly one room below and two above; in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they are inhabited by large families. "How they manage to exist at all in some of the houses is a problem which may well oxercise the ingenuity of some soeial philosopher to solve." As to the wages these people g(;t the ; aiiiu wii ter saya: "The remuneration they recelve is ineredibly small. It ia no unusual thmg- on the contrary, it is rather the usual custom- for a family of three or four person3, after working something like fourteen hours a day, to earn L1 (S5) in a week. But out of this money there has to be deducted Ís 3d for carriage to convoy the nails to the "gaffers, " as they are termed in the mei; men tnere is allowanceto bemade for fuel and tho ropairiug of the machinery, which reduces the L1 to about 16s 9d ($4 18) for three people- for three people who have eommenced to work every morning at half past 7 or 8, and who have worked on through all the weary day, with nosnbstantialfood. nnt il late at night." All of the Black Country laborera, old and youag', men and women and children. are ratnrp.d. miaarMa nn.i hopelessly wretched. They seldom or never taste meat froin one week's ond to another. One workwoman said to the Standard writer: "When bread comes hot from the bake-house oven on Saturdayweeatit liko ravenous wolves." It vrould bc hard to believe thata large class of Euglish working people were in such a condition as here described if the I evidence did nol come from high En-lih authority. I