Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/110

 years at present wages. Were a few of our great landowners and millionaire capitalists so inclined, they might, by clubbing together, keep an army of 100,000 fighting men about them, whose maintenance, at their present wages, would actually not be missed out of their enormous revenues. At £15 per man, the annual cost would be only a million and a half, which, divided amongst Sir Robert Peel's 1,500 city addressers, would weigh less heavily upon them than a penny a week subscription upon a poor Chartist weaver.

And while this monstrous hell-begotten opulence stares us in the face wherever we go, what find we to be the condition of the men to whom we owe the very bread we eat, and without whom England would be a howling wilderness, namely, the agricultural labourers? We find them, in order to escape death from starvation, driven to the very brink of rebellion, as may be collected from paragraphs like the following, which may be seen in almost every agricultural journal we may chance to take up. We quote from a Wiltshire paper:—

"—The farm-labourers of the district round West Lavington, Devizes, have been resisting an attempt to reduce wages from seven to six shillings a week, by forcibly stopping farm operations. The men having got a hint of the contemplated reduction, a number of them waited upon the steward of Lord Churchill, the owner of the principal farms, with a view of inducing him to intercede in their behalf. This led to no beneficial results; and the men finding that their masters were determined on reduction, about a hundred and fifty of them assembled in front of the house of a Mr. Spencer, and stopped men, horses, and agricultural implements that were proceeding to work by that road. Having persuaded other labourers to join them, they went round to all the farms and completely stopped all operations. They took horses from ploughs, opened sheep-pens, and prevented all labour being proceeded with. On the following day some of them returned to work; but warrants being issued for the ringleaders, more than a hundred men formed themselves into a band and paraded the streets, armed with staves. The assistance of the constabulary was then obtained, and something like order restored. The next day a man named Kite was taken before the magistrates and committed to prison. He had not been long in custody before a large body of his fellow-labourers, armed with sticks, came into the town for the purpose of rescuing him, but were deterred by the presence of a strong military detachment."

Here we find soldiers and policemen (whose keep costs for each man more than double the labourer's pay) employed to force Englishmen to choose between starvation and toiling all the week round for six shillings. Supposing these unfortunate labourers to work every day in the year (Sundays excepted), their wages, at six shillings a week, would be just £15 12s. for the whole year! Here is a sum wherewith to keep a wife and, mayhap, five or six young children! Mr. Edward Smith has told us how common it is to see nigger-slaves in America making and spending from 50 to 150 dollars