Portage Sentinel

PAUPERISM THE RESULT OF THE SUBJECTION OF LABOR TO CAPITAL, OR CLASS LEGISLATION, AND MONOPOLY. The legislation of England has for centuries favored what was at first termed the yeomanry, now the land owner and the landed aristocracy, produced the corn laws and the unequal taxation of real estate, and afterwards favoring the manufacturers as that class became wealthy and influential; while corporate privileges to associated companies followed in the order of special privilege "to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer."

The income of the independent laborer was oppressed with heavy taxation, while the land owner was favored with the corn and navigation laws, and the manufacturer by the want of fair competition against his incorporated and the protected capital. Between the corn and navigation laws, the unequal tariff or indirect taxation and the enormous national debt, the laborer gradually sunk from independence to pauperism as the consequence of the dependence of labor upon capital. The great employers of labor, by their combination of capital, could readily fix the price of labor at a standard on the verge of starvation for the laborer with a family.

The result has been that the paupers outnumber, not only the wealthy, but the men of moderate circumstances, or the yeomanry of olden time, and the condition of England resembles the villeinage of the Norman conqueror, changed in form rather than substance by the manners and civilization of the age.

The tables presented in Hunt's Merchants Magazine for June, show that the number of persons in Great Britain with incomes of $75, and upwards, is about 109,000 while the number of paupers is 1,500,000. --Louisville Democrat.