War— Strikes— Dearth

London, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 1853

[ War ]

The news of the cannonade of Isakchea [1]
had hardly reached London, when the intelligence was telegraphed from Vienna
to London and Paris, that the Porte, at the request of the representatives
of the four Powers, had issued orders for the adjournment of the hostilities,
if they should not have already commenced, till the 1st November. Is the
exchange of cannon-shots at Isakchea to be or not to be considered as a
commencement of hostilities? That is the question now stirring the Stock
Exchange and the press. In my opinion it is a very indifferent one, as
in any event the armistice would have elapsed to-day.

It is rumored that the Turkish army had crossed the Danube at
Widin and Matchin, viz.: at the north-eastern and north-western frontiers
of Bulgaria. The accuracy of this dispatch appears very doubtful. According
to the Paris Presse of to-day, it was resolved by a military council
held in the Seraskirat [War Ministry of the Ottoman Empire — Ed.]
on the 15th or 16th Oct., that as soon as the refusal of Prince Gorchakoff
to evacuate the Principalities would be officially known, the hostilities
were to commence in Asia, on two different points: against the fortress
of Poti, at the Black Sea, and on the frontier of Georgia. The same paper
informs us, that Gen. Baraguay d'Hilliers, the newly appointed French Ambassador
at Constantinople, has set out accompanied by a staff composed of officers
of the génie and of the artillerie. Mr. Baraguay is
known as a bad General and a good intriguer. I remind you of his exploits
at the famous Club of the Rue de Poitiers. [2]

[ Strikes ]

While the first cannon bullets have been exchanged
in the war of the Russians against Europe, the first blood has been spilt
in the war now raging in the manufacturing districts, of capital against
labor. On Friday night a riot took place at Wigan, arising out of the contest
between the colliers and the coal kings; on Saturday the town was stated
to be perfectly quiet, but to-day we are informed by electric telegraph
that at the colliery of Lord Crawford or of the Earl Balcarres, an attack
was made by the colliers, that the armed force was called out; that the
soldiers fired, and that one of the workmen was killed. [3]
As I am to receive private information from the spot, I adjourn my report
on this event, only warning your readers against the reports of The
Daily News and The Times, the former of these papers being in
the direct pay of the Manchester School, and the latter being, as The
Morning Herald justly remarks, "the bitter, unforgiving, relentless
enemy of the working classes."

In 1842, when the Manchester School, under the banner of free
trade, enticed the industrial proletariat into insurrectionary movements,
and, in the time of peril [4], treacherously abandoned
them, as Sir Robert Peel plainly told the Cobdens in the House of Commons
— at that epoch their watchword was: Cheap food and dear wages.
The Corn Laws having been abrogated and free trade, as they do understand
it, realized, their battle-cry has been changed into: Cheap wages and
dear food. With the adoption of the Manchester commercial system by
Government, the millocracy had imposed upon themselves a problem impossible
to be resolved under their regime: the securing of an uninterrupted continuance
of brisk trade and commercial prosperity. For the hour of adversity, they
had cut off any position to fall back upon. There was no more deluding
the masses with Parliamentary reform, as in 1831; the legislative influence,
conquered by that movement for the middle classes, having been exclusively
employed against the working classes; and the latter having, in the meantime,
got up a political movement of their own — Chartism. There is no more
charging the aristocratic protectionists with all the anomalies of the
industrial system and the deadly conflicts springing up from its very bowels,
as free trade has worked for about eight years under wonderfully fortunate
circumstances with a California and an Australia — two worlds of gold,
extemporized, as it were, by the imaginative powers of the modern demiurge.
Thus, one by one, step by step, the industrial bourgeoisie have removed,
with their own hands, all the carefully propagated delusions that could
be conjured up at the hour of danger, in order to deturn the indignation
of the working classes from their real antagonist, and to direct it against
the antagonists of the millocracy, against the landed aristocracy. In 1853,
there have waned away the false pretenses on the part of the masters and
the silly illusions on the part of the men. The war between those two classes
has become unmitigated, undisguised, openly avowed and plainly understood.
"The question," exclaim the masters themselves in one of their recent manifestoes
— "is no longer one of wages but one of mastership." [Here
1853. — Ed.] The Manchester liberals, then, have at last thrown
off the lion's skin. What they pretend at — is mastership for capital
and slavery for labor.

Lock-out vs. Turn-out, is the great lawsuit now pending
in the industrial districts, and bayonets are likely to give judgment in
the case. A whole industrial army, more than 70,000 working-men are disbanded
and cast upon the streets. To the mills closed at Preston and Wigan there
have been added those of the district of Bacup which includes the townships
of Bacup, Newchurch, Rawtenstall, Sharnford, and Stanford. At Burnley the
mills stopped last Friday; at Padiham on Saturday; at Accrington the masters
are contemplating a lock-out; at Bury, where about 1,000 men are already
out of work, the masters have given notice to their hands of a "lock-out
unless they discontinued their contributions to those out of work in their
own town and at Preston;" and at Kindley, three large mills were closed
on Saturday afternoon, and more than a thousand additional persons thrown
out of employment.

While the hypocritical, phrase-mongering, squint-eyed set of Manchester
humbugs spoke peace to the Czar [5] at Edinburgh, they
acted war with their own countrymen at Manchester. While they preached
arbitration between Russia and Europe, they were rejecting scornfully
all appeals to arbitration from their own fellow-citizens. The workmen
of Preston had carried in an open air meeting the resolution

"that the delegates of the factory operatives recommend the Mayor to
call a public meeting of the manufacturers and the operatives to agree
to an amicable settlement of the dispute now pending."

But the masters do not want arbitration. What they pretend at is
dictation. While, at the very moment of a European struggle, those
Russian propagandists cry for reduction of the army, they are at the same
time augmenting the army of civil war, the police force, in Lancashire
and Yorkshire. To the workmen we can only say with The People's Paper.

"If they close all the mills of Lancashire do you send delegates to
Yorkshire and enlist the support of the gallant men of the West Riding.
If the mills of the West Riding are closed, appeal to Nottingham and Derby,
to Birmingham and Leicester to Bristol and Norwich, to Glasgow and Kidderminster,
to Edinburgh and Ipswich Further and further, wider and wider, extend your
appeals and rally your class through every town and trade. If the employers
choose to array all their order against you, do you array your entire class
against them. If they will have the vast class struggle, let them have
it, and we will abide the issue of that tremendous trial."

[ Dearth ]

While, on the one hand, we have the struggle of
masters and men, we have, on the other, the struggle of commerce with overstocked
markets, and of human industry with the shortcomings of nature.

At a very early period of the Chinese revolution, I drew the attention
of your readers to the disastrous influences it was likely to exercise
on the social condition of Great Britain.

"The Chinese insurrection," we are now told by The Examiner,
"is rampant in the tea districts, the result of which is that teas are
looking up in the market of London, and calicos are looking down
in the market of Shanghai." "At Shanghai," we read in the circular of Messrs.
Bushby & Co., a Liverpool house, "the tea market has opened at prices
about 40 to 50 per cent. above last season. Stocks were light, and supplies
coming [...] slowly."

The last advices from Canton state that the

"insurgents are [...] generally spreading themselves throughout the
country to the entire ruin of trade, that manufactures, almost without
exception, have given way in price, in some instances, the fall is very
serious. Stocks are large and fast accumulating, and we fear the prospect
of amendment is rather remote. At Amoy the trade in imports, beyond a few
chests of opium, appears at an end for the present."

The following is described as the state of the markets at Shanghai:

"Both black teas and raw silks have been offering freely, but the conditions
imposed by holders have been such as greatly to restrict operations; no
desire appeared to take manufactures, and transactions have been chiefly
effected by means of opium at very low prices, and bullion from Canton.
Large amounts of treasure have been removed from that place, but the supply
is rapidly being exhausted, and we must look to other quarters for silver
bullion and coin, without which we shall soon be unable to purchase produce,
unless a great improvement should take place in the import market. Business
in the latter has been very limited, and chiefly confined to sales of damaged
goods at auction."

In the commercial circular from Messrs. Gibson & Co., dated Manchester,
Oct. 21, we find noticed, as a most prominent cause of the actual depression,

"not only present bad advices from our great Chinese market, [...]
but the prospect of such continuing to arrive in that absence of confidence
in monetary transactions there, which must so inevitably be the result,
and for a protracted period, of the complete and radical changes which
appear likely to be effected in the government and institutions of that
vast Empire."

As to the Australian markets, The Melbourne Commercial Circular
states, that

"where goods purchased only about a month ago [...] have been sold,
if then delivered, at a profit of no less than 100 @ 150 per cent., [...]
now [...] they would not realize enough to cover the expenses."

Private letters from Port Philip, received last week, are also extremely
unfavorable with regard to the state of the markets. Goods continue to
pour in from all parts of the world, and the prices they could command
were so low, that rather than submit to immediate sacrifices, ships were
being purchased in numbers, to be used for storage.

We can then not be surprised at the commercial circulars continuing
to record dullness and declining prices in the markets of the industrial
districts. Thus we read in the circulars of Messrs. Fraser, Son & Co.,
dated Manchester, Oct. 21:

"The extent of operations, whether for the home trade, or for foreign
parts, has been on an exceedingly limited scale, and prices have suffered
throughout to a greater or lesser extent. The further decline in 7/8 prints
and madapolams may be stated at 1 1/2d. to 3d. per piece; in 56 to 66 reed
34 in. to 36 in. shirtings 4 1/2d. to 6d. per piece; in 36-72 reed shirtings,
3d. per piece; in 39 in. shirtings, of low quality weighing 5 1/4 to 6
lbs., about 4 1/2d. per piece; in 39 in. 60 to 64 reed shirtings 3d. per
piece; in 45 to 54 in. shirtings 4 1/2d. to 7 1/2d. per piece; in low 5
to 8 jaconets 1 1/2d., and in 14 to 16 square jaconets 3d. per piece; in
T cloths 1 1/2d., in long cloths 3d. per piece and in domestic of certain
classes about 1-16d. per yard. In yarns, watered twist has declined the
most for common and middling qualities, which may be considered as 1/4d.
to 1/2d. per lb. below last month's quotations. Mule yarns have been most
affected in No. 40's, which have been selling at a reduction of fully 1d.
per lb. from the highest point of the year. [...] Other yarns at 20s. below
60 have been similarly affected."

As to the food market, the London Weekly Dispatch states:

"In so far as wheat is concerned, the opinions of farmers, as they
proceed to thrash their grain and count their stocks, is that the crop
will be shorter still than they anticipated. Indeed they call it [...]
a half-crop."

The wetness of the weather since about a fortnight, highly unfavorable
for wheat-sowing and seeding in the ground, evokes, too, serious apprehensions
for the harvest of 1854.

From Oxfordshire it is reported as follows:

"As to the wheat crop, as a whole it is a miserable failure; farms
that usually produce from 40 to 44 bushels per acre are this year yielding
from 15 to 20 bushels; and some well cultivated wheat and bean lands are
yielding but from 8 to 10 bushels per acre. [...] Potatoes sadly diseased,
are an insignificant yield."

A Yorkshire report informs us that:

"The wet has caused a complete cessation of all active out-door operations;
and the remains of the latter harvest, we are sorry to say — all the beans,
the bulk of spring wheat, and some oats, are, by being exposed to the action
of the weather, rendered so soft as to prevent the hope that it can ever
be fit to thrash after the drying winds of spring. It is, moreover, sadly
sprouted, and a sad waste of this last resource will doubtless inevitably
take place. We give a faint idea of the extent of the loss to which we
now refer. Commencing at the Tees, and from thence to Catterick, at Stokesley,
and embracing the lowlands of Cleveland, and eastward of Thirsk to the
sea, westward of Harrogate and from the Humber to the sea, [...] , vast
quantities of corn are abroad and spoiled by the wet, with a rainy sky
overhead; a full fifty per cent. of the potatoes irrevocably diseased,
and a new demand for seed has sprung up, with small stocks of old corn.
It is certain that the whole of the wheat-growing districts of the country
are deficient and spoiled beyond any former period within our recollection."

A Hertfordshire report states:

"It is very extraordinary at this period of the year not to have
concluded the harvest in this country. Such, however, is the fact,
as there are many fields of oats not yet carted, and a considerable portion
of the spring-sown beans, with an occasional field of barley; indeed, there
are some fields of lent-corn not yet cut."

The Economist of last Saturday publishes the following table, showing
the quantities of wheat and grains of all kinds, and of meal and flour
of all kinds imported into the United Kingdom during the period from Jan.
5 to Oct. 10, 1853:

———————————————————————————————-
Countries from Wheat, Wheat. Corn [...] Agg. of
which expt'd qrs. meal. or of all meal and
flour, kinds, fl'r of
cwts. qrs. all kinds,
cwts.
———————————————————————————————-
Russia, viz.:
Northern Ports 69,101 64 307,976 65
Ports within Black Sea 704,406 — 1,029,168 —
Sweden 3,386 13 3,809 13
Norway — 1 561 1
Denmark 220,728 5,291 733,801 5,291
Prussia 872,170 3,521 899,900 3,521
M'kl'nbg-Schwerin 114,200 — 123,022 —
Hanover 19,187 — 146,601 —
Oldenburg 2,056 — 19,461 —
Hanseatic Towns 176,614 53,037 231,287 53,066
Holland 58,034 306 132,255 308
Belgium 15,155 353 20,829 353
Channel Islds.
(foreign produce) 526 4,034 629 4,034
France 96,652 857,916 470,281 858,053
Portugal 4,217 4 21,657 4
Azores 630 — 14,053 1
Spain 13,939 177,963 48,763 177,985
Gibraltar — 9 4,368 9
Italy, viz.:
Sardinian Territories 7,155 2,263 8,355 2,263
Tuscany 48,174 67,598 45,597 67,598
Papal Territories 39,988 — 41,488 —
Naples and Sicily 8,618 2 11,977 2
Austrian Territories 44,164 370 106,796 370
Malta 28,569 — 56,281 —
Ionian Islands 82 — 16,220 —
Greece 1,417 — 10,221 —
Wall'hia and Moldavia 209,048 — 601,481 —
Syria 21,043 — 24,686 —
Egypt 297,980 — 543,934 —
Othr. Turk'h Dom'n 218,407 7,370 689,703 7,340
Algeria — — 21,661 —
Morocco 3 3 13,451 —
British East India — 205 — 205
British N. America 45,587 232,216 62,626 232,493
U.S. of America 434,684 2,388,056 630,324 2,389,283
Brazil — 3 237 320
Other Parts 1 148 8 148
———————————————————————————————-
Total 3,770,921 3,800,746 7,093,458 3,802,743

The total of wheat is qrs. 3,770,921
The equivalent of 3,802,743 cwts.
of meal and flour is qrs. 1,086,522
Total of grain, flour and meal qrs. 8,179,980
———————————————————————————————-

The Economist, in order to allay the apprehensions of the city merchants,
draws the following conclusions from the foregoing table:

"In 1847, notwithstanding the extraordinary stimulus of high prices,
we imported of wheat and flour, in the whole year, only 4,464,000 quarters.
In the first nine months of the present year we have imported, without
any such stimulus, except during the last two months, 4,856,848 quarters.
[...] Now, one of two things must be true with regard to these large
imports as they affect our own home supply — either they have to a great
extent been consumed, and have thereby saved in the same proportion our
own home production, or they are warehoused, and they will be available
hereafter."

Now, this dilemma is utterly inadmissible. Consequent on the prohibitions
or the threatened prohibitions of the export of corn from the continent,
the corn merchants thought it fit to warehouse their stores meanwhile in
England, where they will be only available hereafter in case of the corn
prices ranging higher in England than on the continent. Besides, in contradistinction
to 1847, the supply of the countries likely to be affected by a Russo-Turkish
war amounts to 2,438,139 quarters of grain and 43,727 cwt. of flour. From
Egypt, too, exportation will be prohibited after 30th November next. Finally,
England has this year to look only to the usual annual surplus of
other nations, while. before the abrogation of the Corn Laws, it had at
its disposition, in seasons of want, the foreign stocks accumulated during
the favorable seasons.

The Weekly Times, from its point of view, sums up the situation
in the following terms:

"The quartern loaf is a shilling — the weather is worse than it has
been for half a century at this season of the year — the operative classes
are in the delirium of strikes — Asiatic cholera is raging among us once
more, and we have got a war mania. We only want war taxes and famine to
make up the orthodox number of the plagues of England."

Signed: Karl Marx