Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition by H. C. (Henry Charles) Carey
page 57 of 115 (49%)
page 57 of 115 (49%)
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in the American market against the effects of the system they so generally
advocate. [Footnote 1: _North British Review_, November, 1852.] The more the people of Scotland can be driven from the land to take refuge in Glasgow and Paisley, the cheaper must be labor. The more those of Ireland can be driven to England, the greater must be the competition in the latter for employment, and the lower must be the price of labor. The more the land of England can be centralized, the greater must be the mass of people seeking employment in London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, and the cheaper must labor be. Low-priced laborers cannot exercise self-government. All they earn is required for supplying themselves with indifferent food, clothing, and lodging, and they cannot control the expenditure of their wages to such extent as to enable them to educate their children, and hence it is that the condition of the people of England is as here described:-- "About one half of our poor can neither read nor write. The test of signing the name at marriage is a very imperfect absolute test of education, but it is a very good relative one: taking that test, how stands Leeds itself in the Registrar-General's returns? In Leeds, which is the centre of the movement for letting education remain as it is, left entirely to chance and charity to supply its deficiencies, how do we find the fact? This, that in 1846, the last year to which these returns are brought down, of 1,850 marriages celebrated in Leeds and Hunslet, 508 of the men and 1,020 of the women, or considerably more than one half of the latter, signed their names with marks. 'I have also a personal knowledge of this fact--that of 47 men employed upon a railway in this immediate |
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