SIR,—Your hearty endorsement of Mr. Higginson's letter on the above
subject in last week's Spectator distresses me, it seems so inconsistent with your support of Free-trade. If our merchant seamen are to have higher wages, better food, and better accommodation, the rates of freight must be raised, and the "food of the people" will inevitably cost them more. But the whole theory of Free-trade is based upon the argu- ment that cheap food and cheap commodities generally are essential to the welfare of the working man,—I think I might almost say to the very existence of the nation. And to see the editor of the Spectator supporting a plea which must tend towards increasing the cost of living gives me quite a nasty jar. Thanks to the low rate of wages prevailing in the mercantile marine, to the inferior quality of the food, and to the inadequacy of the accommodation, we owe that inestimable boon, the big loaf. Thanks to the East End sweater, the sweated can buy his boots and trousers for a few shillings, and his wife and daughters who work in a jam factory on starvation wages can, thanks to their cheap labour, get their marmalade for 5d. a pound. In advocating the cause of the merchant seaman I am afraid, Sir, you have for once in a way forgotten the consumer. "We are all consumers," as you have said before now ; and so long as we have cheap bread, cheap clothes, and cheap marmalade, why interfere with the state of things that procures us those priceless blessings F—I am, Sir, &c., S. F.
[Our correspondent is singularly misinformed if he thinks that low wages and bad conditions make for cheap production either on sea or land. Unless the labourer is well fed and well treated, his work as a rule will be bad and dear. Every one realises this to be true in the case of horses, and sees that it does not pay to starve or make uncomfortable the inmates of the stable. It is just as bad economy to place the labourer under unfavourable conditions. Proper treatment of sailors will not make marine transport dearer, but cheaper.— ED. Spectator.]
THE BASIS OF CITIZENSHIP.
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