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Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 593, 11 April 1891, Page 2

Mr Fitzgerald, who has just returned from England, where he has been on a mission to represent the trade unions of Australia, does not (writes the Melbourne Leader) give a very encouraging account of the condition of the working classes in the mother country. The mass of misery, especially in the East End of London, is so great, the Melbourne Trades Hall people were told, that it cannot be relieved by anything short of a social revolution. Of course the condition of the semi-pauperised classes at the East End is not that of the working classes generally. The English artisan, when in work, is fairly well oft, and through the instrumentality of his trades unions has been able to keep up wages and to shorten the hours of toil. The East End, on the other hand, is the home of the sweater. It is to that locality that all the poor Jews from Poland and other indigent foreign immigrants naturally go. For the most part they are not skilled workers, and in those branches of industry where skill is not indispensable they compete on terms which squeeze out the original English laborers. Mr Fitzgerald has a good deal to say about the prospects of the eight hours system in the mother country, but evidently no diminution in the hours of woxk could have much influence on people who work at home and are satisfied with the merest pittance that will keep body and soul together. What the Imperial Government should do as the first step towards the regeneration of the extremely poor is to stop the additions which are being constantly made to their numbers by the inroad of foreign paupers, It is idle to subscribe funds for sending the " deserving poor ” of England to the colonies when their places are sure to be at once taken by people who have no claims on the consideration of the British nation. There is, the labor delegate tells us, a strong desire being manifested in England to have the eight hour’s system imposed by legal enactment, but the very fact that the trades’ unions have been unable to introduce it shows that there are difficulties in the way of legal compulsion. Mr Fitzgerald recommends an agitation for having such a law passed so as to secure the institution in the colonies from attack. If it has not been found possible to limit the day’s work to eight hours in all classes of labor in a colony like this, it may easily be understood how difficult It would be even with the assistance of a penal law to make it Hnlvenal in England.