Memoir and Letters of Francis W. NewmanSieveking, I. Giberne (Isabel Giberne)
Religion
Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman
Sieveking, I. Giberne (Isabel Giberne)
Newman, Francis William, 1805-1897
produce articles which they could have bought in a better finished state
had the market of the East been open to them. The present writer was
informed by an Englishman who in the American Civil War had penetrated
very far West, that he had seen with his own eyes a colonist _burning
wheat as fuel_, because he had it in so great excess. Probably he had
plenty of green maize for his horses and pigs.
Whenever a man retains a house of his own, and has neither rent to pay nor
any excessive taxation, if only he have a moderate plot of land for
workshop and garden, he is not made destitute, though he do not directly
raise food for his household, but works at some domestic manufacture. Our
"Spitalfields" poor who fought a long battle with the hand-loom against
the loom driven by steam power, might not have been at length utterly
ruined if they had had freehold houses and some small garden in a healthy
country. If the system of huge factories had had to compete with domestic
manufacture conducted by private families living in small freeholds, it is
possible that the battle might simply have driven the independent workers
either to buy small steam engines for their aid, or what now is more
obvious, to hire power from some company, as from a Gas Company or Water
Company, which had it in superfluity. Such, in the opinion of some far-
sighted men, may very possibly be even now the solution of our difficulty.
At present the Trade Unions gravely mistake the end for which they ought
to strive. They mischievously unite two objects. First, they are Benefit
Societies. The funds of a Benefit Society ought to be forbidden by law to
be spent in warring against capitalists; this enables the directors, or a
majority of them, to confiscate the whole contributions of any member who
disapproves of the war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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