THE BIBLE SOCIETY'S BINDERS.

A correspondent at Cardiff has asked us to inquire into a complaint frequently made, to the effect that the persons engaged in binding the penny Bibles issued by the Bible Society are grossly underpaid and overworked. In accordance with his wishes, we have made the necessary inquiries.

On visiting the chief binding establishment at Walworth, where the greater part of this work is carried on, we were at once admitted, shown over the workrooms, and supplied with information on every point.

It appears that the directors of the Bible Society take every precaution in their power by stipulating in each contract they make that the wages paid shall be the full average wages of the trade, and that the comfort of the workpeople shall be regarded. In order to ensure the carrying out of these regulations they reserve power to visit at any time the factories in which their work is carried

on.

It is evident that at Walworth the wishes of the directors are fully carried out. The wages paid are at least equal to those usually paid for similar work. The hours of labour are within the legal and customary limits. The workrooms are spacious and well ventilated, and the general appearance of the workers is superior to that of ordinary factory hands.

There is obviously no ground whatever for reflection either upon the directors of the Bible Society or upon the contractors. On the contrary, much praise is due to them for the care and consideration which is bestowed on their employés, who evidently enjoy more than the average rate of comfort and

emolument.

This conclusion is arrived at on taking into account "the highest average standard of morality of the day," by which alone is it fair to judge of our neighbours, as that is the standard by which we judge ourselves.

The fingers would never have been mado of flesh their natural and proper occupation. However, and blood if needle driving for ten hours daily was the work has to be done, and it is done. Thousands of people begin, continue, and end their working lives in such occupation, and the competition for honest employment is such that for every vacant place there are numerous applicants.

When the jaded workers leave the factory there are glaring gin shops and convenient brothels ready to receive them, and to take away for the moment that sense of weariness and pain, the result of labour which exhausts physical nature and gives no satisfaction to the mental and bodily requirements of mankind.

Esau, the great historical fool, sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. The majority of our factory workers do this daily. Their whole life is a constant strain for the barest satisfaction of the lowest animal requirements.

What would any member of the middle or upper classes think if their sons and daughters were subjected to such constant and monotonous toil for a payment which amounts on the average to less than thirty pounds per annum ?

The misery of the matter is that we are not only satisfied with such things, but positively rejoice in the fact that men's souls are so brought down with labour-that they devote thereto the whole energies of existence. that the spur of necessity and the thong of competition has mastered them so completely that they are content to be only machines, and actually covet a position in which the better elements of humanity are often altogether lost, and their existence is always imperilled. We pride ourselves upon having carried this system to a degree of perfection which enables us to supply Bibles and Testaments and other manufactured articles to all the world.

Is such a fate for poor and industricus people the inevitable condition of human society?

The great feature of the establishment, which must be apparent to the most casual observer, is the intense earnestness of the workers. Both young and old apply themselves every moment to the driving of needles through paper as if their salvation depended on obtaining the utmost speed. From eight o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock in the evening, with time allowed for meals, this work goes on, and the proficiency attained is amazing. The young people become excellent binding machines, although at the best, and after exclusive and intense devotion, human fingers are not so quick or so regular in their action as the teeth and claws of well-constructed machines. Day after day, week after week, year after year, from the age of 14, our brothers and sisters are doomed to stitch, stitch, stitch, with brains and fingers that were evidently intended for other work. The brains are, of course, left out of account; in the ordinary sense of thought they are not wanted.

It is not so. Nature, or Providence, is not so inexorable as that! We are not straitened in Him-we are straitened in ourselves.

Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn.

In the present day this inhumanity takes the form of robbery according to law. In the great city where these people toil and spin from youth to age, the idlers vote into their own pockets and receive for doing nothing more than half of the wages which the toilers earn, but do not receive. Such work as we have described must be done, but it is not necessary to keep young lives ten hours daily in such employment. If "work and labour done" were recognised as the only ground for procuring reward there would be no need for long hours and short payments. Every honest worker would have time and means for the exercise of those higher faculties which were not created for the purpose of being destroyed.

Man cannot live by bread alone, and the millions who are unjustly doomed to a life of mere breadwinning toil are as ruthlessly destroyed as if fire, sword, and famine had devastated the land.

In the great city where these things occur sixteen millions sterling are annually taken from the industrial classes by idle landlords, who, in the name of law, demand blackmail from all who desire to work on the land which Nature has freely provided for their use.

In the country districts a still larger sum, in proportion to the population, is ruthlessly demanded, and the exaction of these sums and the restriction of industry drives down wages until nothing but the merest subsistence is derived from continuous labour. The intense application required for the production of the necessaries of life have left the people without time or brains for the study of their own just claims, which have hitherto been in abeyance. But the time is coming, and now is when it will be well for those who rule, and for those who support our rulers, to give heed to their ways, and see to it, "that they offend not one of these little ones."

:0:

To the Right Hon. Sir W. V. Harcourt, M.P. SIR,-The attention of the Executive of the English Land Restoration League has been called to a passage in your speech in the House of Commons on the 21st ult., reported in the Daily Chronicle of the following day as follows:

HOW ENGLISH

A well-known Wiltshire farmer, named Thomas Lavington, having been compelled by the depressed state of agriculture to quit his holding at Fyfield, near Marlborough, a demonstration was made at the sale of his stock on Thursday in condemnation of the action of his landlord's agent, who has let the farm to another tenant at 30 per cent. less rent than the outgoing tenant has been giving. The owner is Sir Henry Bruce Meux. Mr. Lavington complained of the manner in which he had been treated after he had cleaned and improved the land during the ten years he had occupied the farm, and his remarks were loudly applauded by the large company of farmers present. Some time ago Sir H. Meux offered a prize of £50 for the best cultivated farm on his estate, and the prize was awarded to Mr. Thomas Lavington. He now leaves the farm with a loss of £14,000.

The

An inquest was held at Beachampton Hall, Buckingham, on Thursday, touching the death of Thomas Flowers, aged seventy-three years. deceased was the tenant of a farm which had been in the occupation of the family for over 160 years, and through the depressed state of agriculture he had decided to sell off part of the stock on Thursday wherewith to pay the rent to his landlord, Sir James R. Walker, of Yorkshire. On Wednesday the steward brought two men as bailiffs to remain on the premises, and this seems to have terribly grieved the deceased, who shortly afterwards threw himself into the water and was drowned.

whether your words are correctly reported in the
Daily Chronicle, and, if so, (2) whether you will
kindly refer them to any statistics or other
authority which might be useful in demonstrating
the above-quoted fact, so little known at present,
to that large and increasing body of the public
which keenly interests itself in the English Land
Question.
I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your obedient servant,
FREDK. VERInder,
Secretary English Land Restoration League.

II.

7, Grafton-street, W., Oct. 10, 1886.

SIR,-The report of my speech to which you refer is substantially correct.

The fact that a very large portion of the rent paid by the occupier of land simply represents the interest of the capital expended by the proprietor is often overlooked. When I put it at the figure of two-thirds of the rent I spoke roughly; of course the proportion will vary largely according to the circumstances; but to give an example of what I intended, the following instance may be taken :— Suppose a farm of 300 acres of mixed arable and grass yielding a rent of £300, at £1 per acre. We must consider what would be the ordinary capital expenditure required to bring the land from a wild, uncultivated state into a condition capable of yielding this rent. First, it must be grubbed, cleared, fenced, ditches, gates, and roads for access must be made. This could not be done for less than £300 or £400, probably more. The grass land would have to be sown at a considerable expense. After this is done the land must be drained-probably 200 of the 300 acres would require to be drained at a cost of £5 per acre, or £1,000 for the 200 acres. Proper farm buildings and steadings

must be erected. These could not well be done

for a

farm of this size at less than £1,800. These figures will amount to a capital expenditure of nearly £3,500. As the works are all of a character which will require renewal within a limited period, it would not be possible to put the remunerative interest upon them at less than 6 per cent. The interest, therefore, would absorb more than £200 for the capital expended, leaving not more than one-third for the rent of the land, which corresponds to my statement. I think this is a fair average calculation, though, of course, it is difficult where the thing is not begun de novo to trace back all the former expenditure. There may be many cases where the capital expenditure will have been less, but I should doubt whether it ever fell below half of the rental. In most cases, in England especially in recent times, the whole of this expenditure is defrayed by the landlord, except in the case of improving leases, where, of course, the corresponding deduction is made from the rent.-Yours faithfully, W. V. HARcourt.

III.

To the Right Hon. Sir W. V. Harcourt, M.P. SIR,-I laid your letter of the 10th inst. before our Executive last evening, and am directed to convey their hearty thanks for the great courtesy of your reply to their inquiry.

The Executive have read with much interest the particulars of the case given in your letter as an illustration of your statement in the House of Commons on the 21st ult., but they venture respectfully to submit that the popular idea isand they cannot but believe that it is founded on fact, and supported by authority-that the case you suppose represents the exception rather than the rule; and that, even in England, the clearing, draining, and improving of the land has not generally, nor even in more than a small minority of cases, been done by, or at the cost of, the landlords. On the other hand, there is a widespread complaint, which seems to be justified by facts, that this work of improvement is done by, and at the cost of, the tenants, and that the continuous rise in rents simply means the confiscation from generation to generation of tenants' improvements by their landlords.

or

Undoubtedly, in the case of unimproved agricultural lands, landlords are often content obliged to accept rents small in actual amount; but the annual value of the land is small also; and the current belief that the landlord usually gets at least as much as the land is worth, and that, as the tenant improves the land, the landlord "improves" his rent pari passu, is unhappily justified by abundance of instances.

The Executive are glad that their inquiry has been the means of making it clear that, in your speech of the 21st ult., you were referring only to agricultural land. They remember with pleasure your sympathetic speech in the House of Commons, when, on March 16 last, Mr. William Saunders, M.P., moved a resolution in favour of imposing a direct assessment on the owners of ground-rents. If the Executive have been mistaken as to the question of agricultural improvements they will be

SIR, Since the scheme for regaining the land which I advocate in "The Land for the People has been criticised in a recent number of your paper, and has been brought to the front by Professor Wallace having adopted it in preference to his own, I am glad to avail myself of your genial permission to state my position on this all-important matter.

I am not going to make a detailed answer to Mr. Saunders' article, as that has been well done by Mr. Jameson already, but simply state, as shortly as possible, my views on the subject. There are three classes of objections raised :1.-Those of detail. I am told the price I pro

pose

is too much-the interest is too high-that there ought to be an inquiry into how the land was obtained by the present owner, and a difference made accordingly, and so on.

2.-It is urged that rent will probably not risethat it is more likely to fall, and that, therefore, I am building a scheme on a false assumption.

3.-It is held that the principle of compensation is wrong, and that the land must be restored without any payment to the landlords.

I acknowledge the fairness of all these objections, and in answering I shall endeavour not to give the idea that I think there is but one side of the argument, but merely to state the reasons that made me, after much consideration, suggest the method of regaining the land I have.

The first set of objections, those of detail, I will now put on one side by referring my readers to the first few paragraphs of Chapter II., where it is very plainly shown that whatever details I suggest and figures I adopt by way of illustration I am far from wishing to dogmatise about them. I begin as follows:-"In approaching the question of how to transfer the land from private into public hands, two things are apparent at the outset. One is that the best scheme is not the best theoretical scheme, but the best practical at the time; the other that every possible scheme must entail compromises and injustices." Again, a little farther on, I say, "The best practical plan is the best plan that people can be induced to adopt, and what this is depends altogether upon the temper and sense of justice of people at the time." The figures I gave as illustrations were more to show how the arrangement would work out, even with the most liberal compensation to landowners, than as a statement of what I should consider fair could I have my own

Let

way. Of course the cost of management would be deducted in valuing ground rents-I should be very pleased to make the landowners take less; if the interest was more than current rate the bonus could be "converted," as the funds are now. there be an inquiry and restitution of commons, &c., as Mr. Chamberlain once proposed, by all means. These are all matters of detail to be settled at the time, which it is as useless to try and settle now as to divide your chickens before they are hatched.

The question is, am I on the right lines or not? Is my scheme based on a true assumption with regard to the rise in rents? and is compensation a proper principle to work upon? Mr. Saunders says no to all these propositions, which brings me on to the second class of objections to my scheme. Mr. Saunders says, in his article in this paper of August 14th, that royalties, agriculture, and town rents are likely to decrease, instead of increase in future. I take it that in making this statement Mr. Saunders is not making his calculations on the number of sovereigns taken, which may possibly be less now than 10 years ago, but upon the purchasing value of those sovereigns, which is, probably, at least, as great as it was at that time. In other words, I understand Mr. Saunders to mean that the amount of real wealth (because the incidental value of a sovereign is neither here nor there) that the landowners are able to abstract from the people of this country has not only reached its height, but will, as years go on, decrease. This somewhat staggers me, as I had always thought Mr. Saunders agreed with Mr. George's main contention in "Progress and Poverty "-that as population and invention increase the productive powers of the people increase, but that in the long run the increase goes into the pockets of the landowners, that, in fact, the more we make the more they take. Is this true? Because a decreasing rent appears to me to mean, without going into side issues and possibilities, which there is no space for here, either that it is not, and that Mr. George is wrong in his main contention in "Progress and Poverty," or that invention and population will cease to increase in England. Mr. Saunders says that cheap drained and virgin soil abroad are reducing rents here, and I admit that they are on some lands. Mr. George shows how the landowners' power to extract rent is kept in check in this way. We have felt its action ever since the Corn Laws were abolished, but it has spent its force for the most part rather in preventing agricultural rents and royalties from rising as fast as they otherwise would have done than in causing any absolute diminution of rents in the country as a whole. But for the sake of the argument I will accept Mr. Saunders' assertion that rents are going down, and are likely to continue to do so. What then? Is this to go on till there is no rent? Or is the influence which is causing this reduction in reats likely to have spent its force by the time we are able to nationalise the land. In the former case we may cease to trouble ourselves about the ever-increasing ground-rents we hear so much about in this paper; the problem will solve itself. In the latter case the present decrease of rent will make my scheme only the more practicable when

the question is ripe to be dealt with. I never proposed buying the land at an inflated price, nor was I ever sanguine enough to believe that we should be able to nationalise the land during the next few years. It is true, however, that independent of external influences, it is possible that the different footing that labour would be put on after the land was nationalised might tend to diminish rent in spite of the increased wealth of the community. I have good reasons, which I have not space here to explain, to believe that this would not be the case, but if it were, and a tax were imposed to make up the deficit, the people would then be paying no more than under the old régime. I should, however, advocate a condition being made to begin with that in no case should more interest be paid to the bondholders in any year than the nett rent collected.

Now for the third class of objections to my scheme, or those who believe in what is called confiscation. I quite admit that they can show a good case, the rent is a robbery and a cruel one; then stop it. The land was obtained by force, the tithes rest on force legalised as it was obtained; so let it be regained. What right have those who believe in force to complain of our fighting them with their own weapons.

You can make a capital case for confiscation so long as you shut your eyes to the realities of life and to the fact that ages of darkness on this subject have raised institutions which, faulty as they are, will crush countless numbers of perfectly innocent people who have been taking shelter under them if they are violently hurled down, while the new ones, good as they may be, will take time to build, and educate the people to their proper use. For my part I cannot forget also that but few even of even the élite have been converted to the true faith for many years, and that it is as well that we should endeavour to avoid that violent feeling against those of our forsaken creed which is proverbial with proselytes. True, the landowners have no moral right to the land, but they have a moral right to consideration. I shall be asked at once if the victims of the present system have not a greater right still, or as Mr. George expressed it in a passage of surpassing eloquence at St. James's Hall, "Stop to compensate the landlords, let any man or woman go down to the lanes and alleys and see little children lying down there in squalor and dirt, children brought up to worse than physical death, to the brothel, to the penitentiary, to distortion of soul as well as distortion of body, and then say that nothing could be done to remedy this injustice until the landowners were compensated," and, then, after a pause, "For their very souls' sake they daren't."

Let me admit at once that I consider these little ones ought to be considered before the landowners, and that had I the power to confiscate the land, and thought that by doing so I could put these poor little souls in the positions God intended them to be in, I would do it at once-I would do it with pleasure. But to return to prose, we have neither the power to confiscate the land nor of saving these little ones. These little ones must be provided with virtuous parents, healthy homes and surroundings, and undiseased bodies and minds