Karl Marx

The Rise in the Price of Corn –

Cholera –

Strikes –

The Seamen’s Movement

From the English.

["New-York Daily Tribune", No. 3873, September 15, 1853]

London, Tuesday, August 30, 1853

The *Breslauer Zeitung* reports that the export of grain from Wallachia has been definitively prohibited.

At present there is a somewhat more important question to solve than the Oriental one, namely the question of supply. Corn prices have risen in Königsberg, Stettin, Danzig, Rostock, Cologne, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, and of course in all importing markets. In the most important provincial markets of England wheat has risen by 4 to 6 sh. per quarter. The continually rising wheat and rye prices in Belgium and France, and the consequent dearness of bread, are causing great alarm. The French government is buying up grain in England, Odessa, and the Baltic countries. The final reports on the harvest in England will only be made known next week. The potato disease is more widespread here than in Ireland. The export of grain has been prohibited by all governments in Italy, including the government of Lombardy.

During the last week some ascertainable cases of Asiatic cholera have occurred in London. We have also learned that cholera has now reached Berlin as well.

The struggle between labour and capital, between wages and profits, goes on. There have been new strikes in London of the coal-porters, the barbers, the tailors, the makers of ladies’ boots and shoes, the makers of umbrellas and parasols, the shirt-makers, the sewers of underclothing in general, and others employed by clothiers and wholesale export houses. Yesterday several masons and the Thames lightermen, who transport goods between the quays and the ships on the river, gave notice of a strike. The strike of the coal-hewers and ironworkers in South Wales continues. To this list must be added a new strike of the coal-hewers at Resolven, etc., etc.

It would be too tedious to go on enumerating letter by letter the many reports of the various strikes that come to my ears week after week. I shall therefore only now and then deal with those that bear particularly interesting features; among these, the pending conflict between the police constables and their chief, Sir Richard Mayne, deserves mention, even though it is not yet a proper strike. Sir Richard Mayne, in his circular addressed to the various divisions of the London police, has prohibited policemen from holding meetings or combining, and at the same time has declared himself ready to attend to individual complaints. The policemen replied to him that they consider the right of assembly as a right of which no Englishman can be deprived. Sir Mayne reminded them that their scale of wages was fixed at a time when provisions were much dearer than now. The policemen answered,

“that their demand was not only based on the price of provisions, but rested on the conviction that men are no longer so cheap as they once were.”

The most important incident in this history of strikes is the declaration of the Seamen’s United Friendly Association <Seamen’s Association>, which is called the Bill of Rights <constitution> of the Anglo-Saxon seamen. This declaration refers to the Merchant Shipping Bill <the Merchant Shipping Act>, which repeals the clause of the Navigation Laws requiring British shipowners to have at least three-quarters of the crew of their ships consist of British subjects. By this Bill, the coasting trade is now opened to foreign seamen even where foreign ships are not admitted. The crews declare that this Bill is not a seamen’s bill, but an owners’ bill. The manning clause had, to a certain extent, put a check on captains as regards the treatment and confinement of crews; the new law would deliver the seamen completely to the power of every bad officer. The new law proceeds from the principle

“that all 17,000 captains are very friendly men, overflowing with generosity, charity, and amiability, while all sailors are obstinate, unreasonable, and naturally bad.”

The seamen declare that the owner may send his ships wherever he pleases, while they, on the contrary, are restricted in their labour to their own country, since the government has repealed the Navigation Laws without previously providing the seamen with corresponding employment on ships of other nations.

“Since Parliament has sacrificed the seamen to the shipowners, we, as a class, are compelled to combine and take measures for our own protection.”

These measures consist mainly in the intention of the seamen, on their part, to hold fast to the manning clause, while they at the same time declare

“that the seamen of the United States of America are to be considered as Britons, and that an appeal is to be addressed to them to support their association. Furthermore, as after the 1st of October, when the above-mentioned law comes into force, there will no longer be any advantage in sailing as a British subject on board ships, but, on the contrary, service as a foreigner on British ships in time of peace guarantees against being pressed or drafted into the service of Her Majesty’s navy in time of war, and as the possession of American citizenship rights affords greater protection in time of peace, the seamen will procure themselves citizenship certificates of the United States when they come into a port of that republic.”

Karl Marx