London, Tuesday, Sept. 27,? 1853 

The intelligence that the combined fleets had passed up the 
Dardanelles, concurrent with rumors of a change in the Ministry 
and of commercial difficulties, produced a real panic at the Stock 
Exchange on Saturday: 

“To describe the state of the English funds, or the scene that has prevailed in 
the Stock Exchange, would be a task of no small difficulty. It is rare that such 
excitement is witnessed, and it is well that it is infrequent... It is perhaps no inflation 
to assert that the Bearing at the present time equals almost what took place during the 

French Revolution.... Funds have this week been done at 91 "fo [...] and [...] have not 
been so low since 1849... . In the railway market there has been an incessant fall.” 

Thus says The Ministerial Observer.” All the leading railway 
shares were about 68 s. to 80 scp. under the prices of the previous 
week. As to the sudden pressure of stock upon the market, it 
would not signify much, as the mere time-dealers are able, at a 
given moment, to turn the market and intimidate the bona fide 
stockholders. But, coinciding, as it does, with general symptoms of 
a commercial crisis, the great fluctuation of funds, even if it be of 
a mere speculative character, will prove fatal in its consequences. 
At all events, this consternation in the Money market is 
condemnatory of any State loans looming in the future, and 
particularly so of the Austrian ones. Moreover, capitalists are 
reminded that Austria did pay, in 1811, a dividend Is. 7d. 

farthing in the pound on their promissory notes; that, notwith- 
standing her revenue having been screwed up from £12,000,000 
to £18,000,000 sterling, by means of a greatly increased pressure 
of taxation exerted on Hungary and Lombardy since 1849, her 
annual deficit amounts, on an average, to more than one-quarter 
of her whole revenue; that about £50,000,000 have been added to 
her national debt since 1846; and that she only has been 
prevented from a new bankruptcy by the interested forbearance of 
the children of Israel, who still hope to rid their tills of heaps of 
Austrian paper accumulated in them. 

“Trade has been pushed on somewhat beyond its proper limits, and our 
commercial liabilities have partially outstripped our means,” says The Observer. 
“Tt is useless,” exclaims The Morning Post, “to evade the question, for although 
there are [...] some favorable features in the pending crisis which did not exist in 
1847, it must be perceptible to every intelligent observer of passing events that, to 
say the least of it, a very trying condition of affairs has arrived.”* 

The bullion reserve in the Bank of England has again decreased 
by £338,954, and its reserve of notes—i.e., the fund available for 
discounts,— amounts but to seven millions, a sum fully required by 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer” for paying off the dissentient 
holders of South Sea stock. As to the state of the Corn market, we 
learn the following from yesterday’s Mark Lane Express‘: 

“With average crops we have for [...] years consumed some millions of quarters 
of foreign wheat per annum. What, then, are our requirements likely to be under 
existing circumstances? The produce of wheat at the utmost cannot be estimated at 
more than three-quarters of an average, and there is [...] no excess in the yield of 
any other crop. Potatoes are seriously affected by disease, and have been forced 
into consumption so rapidly, owing to their unfitness for storing, that this article of 
food must very shortly become scarce. So enormous has been our consumption that 
with an importation of 3,304,025 qrs. of wheat and 3,337,206 cwts. of flour during 
the eight months ending the 5th inst., the stocks in granary are by no means 
excessive.... We are anxious not to exaggerate the difficulties the country may be 
placed in, but that difficulties exist it would be folly to deny.... The reports as to the 
yield of wheat are very unsatisfactory; in many cases where the produce has been 
tested by thrashing, the quantity turned out littke more than half of what had been 
calculated upon.” 

While thus the bright sunshine of commercial and industrial 
prosperity is hidden by gloomy prospects, strikes are still forming, 
and will for some time yet form, an important feature of our 
industrial condition; only they are beginning to change their 

“ The Morning Post, No. 24887, September 26, 1853.— Ea. 
“ Of September 26, 1853.— Ed. 

character contemporary with the change that is now going on in 
the general condition of the country. 

At Bury a new advance of 2d. per 1,000 hanks has been asked 
on the part of the spinners. Masters refusing, they left work, and 
the weavers will do so as soon as they have worked up the yarn on 
hand. At Preston, while the weavers still demand an advance of 10 
per cent., being supported by the operatives of the surrounding 
districts, six masters have already locked up their mills and the 
others are likely to follow them. Two thousand operatives have 
thus been thrown out of work. At Blackburn the mechanics of Mr. 
Dickinson, iron-founder, still remain out. At Wigan the capreelers 
of one mill have struck for an advance of 1d. per score, and the 
throstle-spinners of another mill refused to commence work until 
their wages were advanced. The mills were closed. At the same 
place the coal-miners’ strike, embracing about 5,000 hands, is 
going on. The Earl of Crawford, and other extensive coal-miners 
in the neighborhood, dismissed their hands on Wednesday 
evening. A numerous meeting of the colliers was then held in 
Scales’ Orchard. At Manchester 5,000 looms stand still, besides the 
minor strikes going forward, such as that of the fustian-dyers, the 
skein-dyers, felt-hat makers, etc. At Bolton, meetings of the 
operative cotton-spinners are being held for an advance of wages. 
There are shoemakers’ strikes at Trenton, Bridgewater, etc.; 
cab-drivers’ strikes at Glasgow; masons’ strikes at Kilmarnock; 
threatened turn-outs of the police at Oldham, etc. At Birmingham, 
nailers demand an advance of 10 per cent.; at Wolverhampton, 
the carpenters one of 6d. per day; the London carpenters ditto, 
and so on. While through the principal manufacturing towns of 
Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, etc., the operatives are holding 
public meetings, to decide upon measures for the support of their 
suffering brethren, the masters on the other hand are resolved to 
close their establishments for an indefinite period, with the design 
of starving their hands into subjection. 

“We find,” says the Sunday Times, “that, generally speaking, the demand for an 
advance of wages has not exceeded 6d. a day; and, looking at the present price of 
provisions, [...] it can hardly be said [...] that the demand is an unreasonable one. 
We know it has been said that one aim of the present strikers is to obtain a sort of 
communistic share of the real or supposed profits of the manufacturer; but the 
comparison between the increased demand for wages and the enhanced value of the 
prime necessaries of life, furnishes an ample refutation of the charge.’ * 

When the working people ask for more than “the prime 
necessaries of life,” when they pretend “to share” in the profits 
resulting from their own industry, then they are accused of 
communistic tendencies. What has the price of provisions to do with 
the “eternal and supreme law of supply and demand?” In 1839, 
1840, 1841, and 1842, while there was a continued rise in the 
price of provisions, wages were sinking until they reached the 
starvation point. “Wages,” said then the same manufacturers, 
“don’t depend upon the price of provisions, but upon the eternal 
law of supply and demand.” 

“The demands of the working people,” says the Sunday Times, “may be 
submitted to when urged in a respectful manner.” 

What has respect to do with the “eternal law of supply and 
demand?” Has any one ever heard of the price of coffee rising at 
Mincing-lane* when “urged in a respectful manner?” The trade in 
human flesh and blood being carried on in the same manner as 
that of any other commodity, give it at least the chances of any 
other. 

The wages-movement has been going on now for a period of 
six months. Let us judge it by the test acknowledged on the part 
of the masters themselves, by the “eternal laws of supply and 
demand,” or are we, perhaps, to understand, that the eternal laws 
of political economy must be interpreted in the same manner as 
the eternal peace treaties Russia has concluded with Turkey? 

Six months ago the work-people, had they even found their 
position not strengthened by the great demand for their labor, by 
constant and enormous emigration to the gold fields and to 
America, must have inferred the enhancement of industrial profits 
from the general prosperity-cry uttered by the middle-class press 
exulting at the blessings of Free Trade. The workmen, of course, 
demanded their share of that so loudly proclaimed prosperity, but 
the masters fought hard against them. Then, the workmen 
combine, threaten to strike, enforce their demands in a more or 
less amicable manner. Wherever a strike occurs, the whole of the 
masters and their organs in pulpit, platform and press, break out 
into immoderate vituperation of the “impudence and stupidity” 
“of such attempts at dictation.” Now, what did the strikes prove, if 
not that the workmen preferred applying a mode of their own of 
testing the proportion of the supply to the demand rather than to 

trust to the interested assurances of their employers? Under 
certain circumstances, there is for the workman no other means of 
ascertaining whether he is or not paid to the actual market value 
of his labor,”** but to strike or to threaten to do so. In 1852, on an 
average, the margin between the cost of the raw material and the 
price of the finished goods—for instance, the margin between the 
cost of raw cotton and that of yarn, between the price of yarn and 
that of cotton goods, was greater, consequently the profit of the 
spinner and the manufacturer was undoubtedly larger than it has 
been in 1853. Neither yarn nor goods have, until very lately, risen 
in the same proportion as cotton. Why, then, did the manufactur- 
ers not advance wages at once in 1852? There was no cause, they 
say, in the relative position of supply and demand justifying such 
a rise of wages in 1852. Indeed? Hands were not quite as short a 
year ago as they are now, but the difference is out of proportion 
to the sudden and repeated rise of wages forced out of the 
manufacturers since then, by virtue of the law of supply and 
demand, as expounded by turn-outs. There are, certainly, more 
factories at work than last year, and more able-bodied workmen 
have emigrated since then, but at the same time never has there 
been such a supply of factory labor poured into our “hives of 
industry” from agricultural and other pursuits, as during the last 
twelve months. 

The fact is that the “hands,” as usual, perceived only too late, 
that the value of their labor had risen 30 per cent. many a month 
ago, and then, in the summer of this year—only then—they 
began to strike, first for 10 per cent., then for another 10 per 
cent., and so on, for as much, of course, as they could get. The 
constant success of these strikes, while it generalized them all over 
the country, was the best proof of their legitimacy, and their rapid 
succession in the same branch of trade, by the same “hands” 
claiming fresh advances, fully proved that according to supply and 
demand the work-people had long been entitled to a rise of wages, 
which was merely kept from them on account of their being ignorant 
of the state of the labor market. When they at last became acquainted 
with it, the manufacturers, who had all the while preached “the 
eternal law of supply and demand,” fell back on the doctrine of 
“enlightened despotism,” claiming the right to do as they liked with 
their own, and propounding as their angry ultimatum that the 
work-people don’t know what is good for them. 

The change in the general commercial prospects must change 
the relative position of the work-people and their employers. 
Sudden as it came on, it found many strikes begun, still more in 

preparation. No doubt, there will be more, in spite of the 
depression, and, also, for a rise of wages, for as to the argument 
of the manufacturer, that he cannot afford to advance, the 
workmen will reply, that provisions are dearer; both arguments 
being equally powerful. However, should, as I suppose, the 
depression prove lasting, the work-people will soon get the worst 
of it, and have to struggle—very unsuccessfully —against reduction. 
But then their activity will soon be carried over to the political field, 
and the new organization of trades, gained in the strikes, will be of immense 

value to them. 
Written on September 27, 1853 

Tribune, No. 3900, October 17, 1853;