useful must be used, and unless the Companies can carry
the THE panic about Prices caused by the sudden and excessive people at a cost less than the cost of walking the distance rise in the price of coals, the incessant recurrence of strikes, barefoot—an object actually accomplished in Bengal—their and aquantity of sensational writing about both of them, is, we think, usefulness can never commence. It is clear from Sir Rowland a little sharper than it need be. People with limited incomes seem Blennerhasset's figures that the Irish Companies cannot to be horror-struck, to believe that because coal has risen, and comply with this condition, cannot even make an effort to do gold is " falling," and labourers are striking, and the country is it, many of them being, with their high fares, in an ember- very prosperous, therefore there will be a sudden rise in the price reseed condition, and all betraying the greatest unwillingness of everything, and that by Christmas their incomes may be worth They have not the means to build the plant necessary for not unnatural, is indeed well founded as to the ultimate the cheap conveyance of coal, marble, iron ore, sulphur, and a course of affairs, but it is much exaggerated as to the near- hundred bulky products, out of which, were the charges for ness of the dreaded result. The world is much more conser- transport not so heavy, great trades might be produced. They vative even as to prices than timid people imagine. The coal cannot, or at all events do not, carry fish at a price which famine which has so frightened the public is to a great extent the makes it worth while to work the fisheries, while their charges result of an accident,—the sudden increase in the demand for coal for passengers, the poverty of the people being considered, are for the iron trade which has cleared off the stocks at the pit, and for almost prohibitory, and are all the more vexatious from the a moment caused the demand to exceed the supply, thus enabling, and indeed compelling the masters to charge new purchasers enormous rates. This cannot, however, last long. There is no exhaustion of coal, no diminution in the quantity procurable,
be in a much better position than the Companies, for no change beyond a rise of wages in the cost of pro- apart from its splendid credit, which would enable it to duction ; and as profits are very large—we hear of collieries save two per cent. on the Railway mortgages, it would dividing forty per cent. — and wages are very high, sup. substitute a single Board for the fifty-six which at present pliee must awn be procurable sufficient to bring down exist, a single Manager for the 436 Directors, and a the price. New collieries will be opened and new labourers single system of management for the multiplicity at present take to the trade. Meanwhile people must buy cheaper coal, mix employed. It would have no motive for embarrassing traffic coke with it, use fire-balls, allowance their kitchens, and put in to injure rival owners, and no temptation to avoid in- force all those devices by which good housewives contrive to re- crease of work, which if equally profitable, could only adjust their incomes to any new demand. That manufacturers bring to it similar increase of patronage. The sum thus will suffer severely for a time is possible, but most private persona saved could be used in gradual reductions of fares, par- waste coal so much that a very little more care, or a permanently ticularly for goods, till the level is reached at which, the useful expenditure on economic stoves, will enable them to endure demand being fully supplied, reductions cease to attract for one year a demand of 40s. a ton for the best Wallsend. The fresh masses of business, and therefore to be profitable difference will not exceed an ordinary increase in the Income-tax, to the department. The gain to the people from such an and the great laws of supply and demand can be trusted more experiment, if it succeeds, must be enormous, greater perhaps fully than Mr. Lowe. As to the increase in other things, it will economically than any probable gain from any other experi- tend very much to correct itself. The complaining housewives ment, and it is certainly not one which ought to frighten a forget that while a few things have risen in price a great many British Parliament. The wildest calculation of outlay is others have as distinctly declined, that the effect of all this resort only £30,000,000, and the net income of the Railways, as now to machinery which has so raised the price of coal is to lower the managed, with all the directors and engineers and jobbing price of all manufactured articles. Rent has not seriously risen of contracts to burden them, is £1,043,000, or more than late years, except in one or two districts, the great cities being three per cent. upon the total. The difference between over-built, and the price of houses in the little towns kept down that sum and 3i per cent., at which it is certain the by the emigration from them to the great cities and the country- State can raise the money, is only £150,000 a year, by aides. Bread, though a little higher than it was ten years ago, is no means a large sum to risk in so splendid an effort very much cheaper than it was in the time of the last generation, to govern Ireland as she would govern herself. Even this when 80s. a quarter was a common price for wheat. Clothing, amount, moreover, is calculated on the supposition that Par- though dearer than before the American war, is very much liament agrees to be plundered, that no saving is secured by cheaper than it was forty years since. Furniture costs less by unity of management, and no additional traffic is attracted 30 per cent. than it did fifteen years ago, though we use very by the readiness of the Department to promote the public much more ; and lighting has been reduced more than 100 per
with which the one hundred Irish Members in the House of cent. Every luxury of food except meat, and milk, with its pro-
Commons will worry its chief whenever they get a chance. ducts, such as butter and cheese, including tea, coffee, and sugar, For this risk we shall gratify a desire expressed by the has been reduced by legislation more than 100 per cent., while it whole Irish representation, which on this point is unanimous, is probable that with the great hay harvest and root harvest of shall double the number of State employe's—a great gain in this year meat and milk will remain stationary for some time to Ireland, where State employe:s, e.g., the constables, have shown come. The fall in the value of gold, though it continues and may unswerving loyalty—and shall teat in the most complete way increase in pace, has not as yet exceeded one-half per cent. the assertion that the State manages certain concerns better per annum, and is diminished by the enormous expansion than private individuals. Wherever the department is tested which the influx itself, as well as the new habits of man- by efficiency only, as in the dockyards, the State is an expensive kind—the habit, for instance, of working in huge partner- and lax agency ; but wherever it is tested by efficiency and ships—has given to every description of trade, manufacture, profit, as in the Post Office, the Telegraphs, and the Mint, it is or business. The fall looks more severe when old figures are coa- st once penurious and severe. If the experiment succeeds treated with those of a year like this, but if we compare seven years in Ireland, where the railways are comparatively unprofit- with seven - years, and confine the comparison to raw materials, able, where agriculture is backward and manufactures scarcely we shall find that it does not exceed the proportion we have thrive, where the mass of the people are poverty-stricken, stated. As long as the rise is not too swift, everything will adjust and where bat three great cities exist, it will surely succeed itself, the man who is doing anything getting more for his work, in Great Britain, where every condition is so much more even though he spends more to obtain what he wants. A large favourable. It is true, no doubt, that in selecting Ireland as section even of those who possess fixed incomes will suffer little the field of trial we run the risk of discrediting the experi- from the rise, the price of Consols, for example, being inflated by the ment, but, on the other hand, failure there would mean less abundanceof gold, justastheprice of cottonis. All receivers of wages than failure anywhere else ; the system of Railways is corn- will distinctly benefit by the rise in price, and so by and bye must
that discontented class the agriculturists, for although the price of their corn is fixed by the Russian harvest, and not by the Eng- lish demand, the effect of a fall in gold extends to the whole world, and the price of their produce, corn excepted, must rise with that of labour and of all other commodities.
It is only during the time of readjustment that serious incon- venience will be felt, and that can be encountered in most in- stancea by a little more economy and painstaking. This is an era of waste. People tell each other complainingly of the small in- comes on which their fathers lived, and entirely forget to describe how little their fathers wanted, how they valued their moveable property, how seldom they renewed anything, how long they made carpets last, how jealous they were of anything approaching to household waste. One-half the things which the middle-class, even the poorer middle-class, think necessaries are not necessaries at all, but luxuries conducing very little to the amenity of their lives. Even now when, as Punch said, "the one thing dearer than life is living," it is astonishing with how little money the few families who keep up the old tradition contrive to get along. The clergy, for instance, who of all classes will feel the change most severely, their incomes being dependent on the price of corn, which of all prices will rise most slowly, have for thirty years set an example of good domestic management which the whole middle-class would have done well to follow, and will follow if prices press on them so hard. Life in those quiet vicarages, supported on, say 180 a quarter, is neither uncivilised, nor gloomy, nor distasteful, is very often much more pleasant than life in houses maintained on three times the money. If a rise of prices were to force us all back towards the old frugality and reluctance to spend, it would do us all good ; but the rise will, in fact, be too gradual, and counteracted by too many influences, such as the increase of business and profit, and communication with new countries, to affect in any perceptible way the national habits. The rise we should chiefly dread is the one which has occurred so extensively on the Continent, a rise in house-rent, which in many capitals has tripled; but there is as yet little sign of this in England, except in districts like Belgravia and the fashionable quarters of very great cities, where no rise in price matters much to men flashed with new prosperity. To the majority of persons the tendency of rent to rise, which is undoubted,—bricks, wood, and builders' labour all increasing in price—is counteracted by their willingness, a willing- ness entirely confined to England, to go away from the towns, to give up general society in consideration of other comforts. If a man's rent rises in London, he goes ten miles a-field, and corrects his outgoings that way, and he can continue the process up to the point at which the time and health lost in travel- ling involve too heavy a tax on his means. There is an immense belt of country round London, for instance, quite within the " practicable " distance, and still unfilled, and till it is filled the power of building on comparatively cheap sites keeps the rental of houses upon the dear sites within endurable limits. Failing a rise in rent of the Continental kind, there is nothing that we see in the prospect before us to alarm the majority of people, or affect them with more than a temporary annoyance, caused by the difficulty of adjusting prices, salaries, and fees which are fixed in part by use and wont, and in part by the reluctance to make a charge in fractional parts of a coin. The clergy and those who live on annuities will suffer most, but even on them the screw will be very gradually pressed down, and they will have some compensations in the improved chances which will open before their children and their friends.
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