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SIMPSON AT HOME. War ought no longer to ...
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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.
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How' To Make Bread Cheap The Price Of Br...
ateirac ^^ from ; ineaus ,- ; ju & i > as water tirawn from one r ^ servoh- loafers the level of all those that are open to it . There is yet a further reason why food is dearer- At present we do not know what the actuaj deficiehey on the Continent is , and we do not know , because Government has not established the means of collecting statistics , what the actual produce in this country is . We
have therefore no accurate measure of the shortness of the supply , either at liorce or abroad . Those who deal in com naturally desire to obtain as . good a price as they can . Not knowing accurately what the price ought to be , they wait to see if it will not rise more , and their keeping corn out of the market helps the rising of the price . It is this that makes the people indignant .
There is yet one more cause . Those who deal in grain not only wait to see what will be the natural price—wait , as it were , for information- ^— but hold back for the express purpose of forcing the price up . Since the establishment of free-trade , this class of people have to a great extent lost their power . They can only exercise it when artificial laws are established- —when powers are concentrated , and they can abuse those powers for their own purposes . The accidental coincidence of a deficient and a delayed haivest , with the uncertainty upon the subject , perhaps enable these people to drive their trade a little more briskly than usual .
How can bread be made cheaper ? There were fonr proposals before the meeting in Hyde Park on Sunday last . One was to appoint a People ' s Provisional League , admission 2 d ., in order " to resist the combination . " It is probable , however , that before sucli an organization can be fairly at work , the combination of the dealers will be effectually swamped by the arrival of the supplies . It will at all events be superseded by our knowing proximately the amount which we are to have , and then prices , finding their natural level , will no longer beat the mercy of the dealers . In free trade there is only one circumstance which can enable dealers to take
advantage of an opportunity like the present—it is complete ignorance , for a period , of the natural produce . If we had an effectual knowledge of our own produce in this country , as we have abroad ^ coupled with free trade , coming prices would settle themselves , and dealers could no more control them than they could control the rise of the tide in the sea . There was n second proposal . It was " to create a fund , " by which bread might be purchased and " sold to the poor at a reasonable rate . " Corn for the poor can , of course , only be
purchased at the current rates ; and unless gentlemen picked out of the Park , and conversant with other kinds of business , can do the bakers' work better and more cheaply , it is probable that the Committee of the Provision Leaguo , carrying on this bread business , would either sell their bread at a dearer price , or shortly find themselves bankrupt and stop . Would they return all tbo twoperices paid on admission ? , . There was a third proposal ; it was "to provent the export of corn . " The French Government has just adopted this plan , and wo see one . ojf the most immediate and most cortain effects .
As the export of corn is prohibited , - although tho Import is not , no dealer crtn land corn in Franco unless ho has determined 'ii > eoll in tho French market without power of drawing back his corn . Ho will not , of course , carry it whore the price will not remunerate him . If he takes it to an English market , ho can carry it away when ho . pleases , should prices fall in England . If ho . takes it to a French market , he cannot retract it , and tho pice must be permanently and certainly d & Wjer in Franco before he will finally commit himself to that choice . ; Ho would prefer to go to England for tho chances of trade , although tho
price should be a little below , the French level ; because in the one case he is free , and in the other not . Heiice , no additional supplies will be taken to France , unless the level of French prices keeps above the level of English . There is , however , a still greater reason why we should not prohibit exports . Freedom of trade can never be one-sided . France , which permits imports , and refuses exports , cannot
claim credit for freedom of trade , and will not be a customer in whom the corn producing countries can have confidence , since she may treat them according to her own caprices or temper , rather than her permanent interests . With England it is exactly the reverse , and we gain far more by imports than we lose by exports . No amount that we are likely to send over to France or Germany will equal the amount we are certain to draw from America .
There was a fourth proposal , which was , that the Government of Great Britain should buy corn , make large stores , and " throw it into the market to keep down rising prices . " If the English Government resorted to any such practice , they would proclaim to the producers of corn in all parts of the . world , —in the Baltic , in tlie Black Sea , or America , — that if they ventured to send supplies to this country , they might , in the moment of realising their profits , be met by the reserves of the stores j and it must follow as a matter of course , not only that
dealers in America , the Baltic , and the Black Sea , would refrain from sending their supplies t © this country , but that growers in those parts would discontinue the practice of growing for a market so capricious and so dangerous . Hence prices would be penrmtbnentl y raised . No Government could command such supplies " to throw into the market" as would equal the supplies that come to us from the great corn , growing conn tries . It is those supplies that really keep down prices as they do , and will do , with much greater force than any Government reserves . Our true security , therefore , is to
continue that freedom of trade which constantly checks any attempt to make England a close market . "We only want one thing to complete the efficiency of this plan ; it is that more accurate knowledge of our own produce and demands which would be supplied by agricultural statistics . There i 3 one assistance which the State can give and which it ought to give . Under the existing constitution of society , there are great inequalities in tho condition of various classes . Our extremely systematised arrangements preclude the poorer and less educated class from finding those substitutes for employment which are to be found on waste lands in wilder conntries .
Justice , therefore , requires that society , which keeps these people off the land , should secure to them an equivalent for the simple occupation of land , by giving them bread if they cannot get it by hired labour . Society only consults its own advantage in preventing those irresistible incentives to disorder—hunger and despair . It is for this purposo mainly , that our poor law is established . It is at present administered partly on the now oxploded " repulsive" system , which presumes for its principle that the people have no right to be aided , and that the aid ought to be accompanied by disgrace and confinement to
prevont the peoplo from seeking it . There is no disgrace in seeking food from the hands of the State which onght to give it ; there is disgraco in'withholding aid that ought to bo given , and there is danger in exasperating hungry people by a stinted diet and an . insulting form of charity . During a hard winter , aid ought to be given to tho very poor , liberally , and without any humiliating accompaniments ; and if tho English people understand their own rights , they will see that the aid foi * the very poor is administered in that just and welcome spirit . By this time tUo reader understands how
bread can be made as cheap as it can possibly be . It is to be done by preserving that openness for our market , that perfect' safety for the dealer , that perfect fairness in dealing , which will make the grower and the merchant , in every part of the world , feel that it is safe and certain to seek England as the central market . It is by this means that bread is actually cheaper with us
than it is on the Continent ; for , although the labonrer may sometimes see the money price lower in continental countries * he will find that in these same countries the money-price of labour is proportionately low , and that the cost of conveyance is much higher than in this country ; and he will be able to test the consequences , by finding that the people actually eat a less amount of bread than our own people are able to com
mand . There is one other reason against any such measure as prohibiting the export of trade . If corn is exported , it is because the people of other countries want it more than we do . Their dearth is greater , their need more severe ; and if we were to prohibit the export , we should save ourselves at the cost of much greater suffering to them . If nations understood their true dignity and interests , they would feel the same sympathy
for each other as the individuals feel . If I have half a loaf , but see my neighbour with no loaf at all , I am willing to share my dole with him . It is not in hnmau nature to refuse , and the half loaf would be again halved . It should be the same with nations . And we know ^ that those individuals and those nations who seek most to consult the laws that regulate the universe in which we live , find , in the long run , that their own material interest is promoted by their fidelity to the laws that regulate life and production .
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Simpson At Home. War Ought No Longer To ...
SIMPSON AT HOME . War ought no longer to be reckoned among the deadly occupations—at least not peculiarly so . We let alone white-lead-works , aquafortis , and vitrol manufacture , or any other campaign in which the British workman continually enlists . We speak only of the ordinary business of life—of the conditions that attend upon us when we open our shutters every morning as
stationers , put together our goods as linen drapers' assistants , answer customers as shoemakers' shopmen , or pass along our streets on our way to the lawyer ' s desk . Southwood Smith used to tell us that the deaths in the old war did not equal the deaths inflicted upon this country by m-sanitary arrangements ; and we are now told by Dr . Farr the same thing of the new war .
" If all the deaths of British soldiers in tho Crimea during the last three months were added to the deaths in England , the sum would bo less by some 20 , 000 than tlm deaths registered in England during the three summer months of 1854 . More lives may be saved by sanitary arrangements at homo every year than have ever perishod abroad in the . years of our greatest losses in war ; and the enlightened people of this kingdom will suffer no such em * barrassment as the registrar of WorUington has recorded if this result be realised , as they know that all effectual measures for tho improvement of the human * race receive tho blessing , because they are tho inspirations of divine Providence . "
This establishes the fact that tho same gallantry is required to walk about London streets as to fo « e the Russians . It is true that on the storming of the Redan we see a more concentrated amount of Harnage ; but life in the trenches was comparatively healthy . Our Redan is chronic , only wo do not see the corpsos . Instead of being exposed to view , hanging over the wallj or lying in the trench ; they are up courts , and down alloys , veiled by the obscuriea of the poor .
Besides , as Ernest Jones says , in his " Factory Town , " tho deaths that tho Begistba . u-General records do not at all express the total amount of death inflicted upcu the
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 3, 1855, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_03111855/page/12/
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