The public is already beginning to learn that, as it
pays for everything, it must pay for the increase of wages and shorter hours now being demanded by labourers all over the Kingdom. The journeyman bakers, for instance, have obtained their request for sixty hours a week as their limit of labour ; but the master-bakers of South London have raised their prices one- halfpenny a quartern. That excites great indignation ; but as it takes time to put up bakeries, and the trade hardly pays large capitalists, the community have no redress. As far as we know, they never have any about bread, which declines down to a certain point with the price of corn, but refuses even in poor districts to follow the market any fur- ther. Similarly, the gas-stokers of Leeds recently demanded terms which involved an additional expenditure to the Gas Company of £10,000 a year. To recover that amount, the price of gas has been raised 4d. per 1,000 ft. There is no particular harm done, even by the increase on bread, as it is the unwritten law of London that up to 6d. the quartern bread is to be considered cheap—it would be, if it were nice bread, but it is not—and it is a good thing for the people to learn by experience that there is no bottomless bag out of which labourers may extract money, except the people's pockets. Mr. Burns is an able man, but he can no more raise wages without raising prices, than he can get more hay out of a field than there is grass in it.
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