THE LAST APPLICATION OF THE BALLOT. T HE result of the
latest application of the Ballot is so very curious, that it deserves more than a passing mention. On the occurrence of the riots in Blackburn, Alderman Pickop, of that town, tried to mediate between the workmen and the masters, and suggested that the men should submit to the 10-per- cent. reduction, if the masters, on their side, pledged themselves, in the event of a revival of trade, to restore the old rates after three months. The masters,who saw in the proposal only a decorous formula for the submission of the workmen, of course assented, and Alderman Pickop then suggested that the vote should be taken by " Yes " and " No," and through the ballot. The suggestion was, in principle, perhaps indefensible, as the majority of operatives have no right to bind the minority on a question of wages, nor has one town any claim to coerce another. So deeply, however, has the idea of the legislative character of a mass vote begun to penetrate Englishmen, that in Blackburn itself, and several other towns, the proposal was accepted, and very careful arrangements made for taking an orderly and general vote. It was resolved, moreover, as women and children work, to let them vote, a proviso curiously opposed to trade customs, which throughout England deprive women, very unfairly, of any direct voice in the control of a strike. We do not know why the workmen accepted this arrangement, but it seems pretty clear why it was suggested. The women suffer much more than the men from the consequences of a strike. They have to spend the wages in procuring household supplies, they feed the families, and they have to do the onerous and dis- agreeable work of extracting credit from shopkeepers to whom cash is nearly as indispensable as wages to the workmen. It was supposed, therefore, with some confidence that the women would be on the side of peace, and would be supported by a large proportion of the men, whom the ballot would shield from the influence of the Union leaders, who, it should never be forgotten, are in Lancashire supposed to terrorise a large proportion of the operatives. A victory for peace was confidently expected, and it was believed that in presence of such an unmistakable manifestation of opinion, the managers of the strike would be daunted, and give way.
The ballot was taken on Thursday, and every expectation was disappointed. The Alderman clearly did not under- stand the Lancashire people. Of the 40,000 persons entitled to vote, scarcely a third voted, and among this third in every district a crushing majority voted " War." In Blackburn, where the feeling had been strongest, the figures were 4,536 to 292. In Darwen, where the riots began and excitement has always been great, they were 2,100 to 96. In Burnley, where the riots showed extreme exasperation, they were 4,999 to 392, and in the whole district, Preston and Accrington, which did not vote, being excluded, the numbers were 13,935 to 882—or very nearly 16 to 1. The secret opinion of the men, as well as their public one, was dead against submission. Moreover, it was perceived by those who watched the booths that the women were not on the side of peace at all, but were quite as angry and determined as the men, completely jus- tifying the old belief that in all contests in large com- munities the women, as a body, go with the men, and are in sentiment a little beyond them. That has been found true in almost every war, was markedly true in the American Civil War, in the French War, and in the Communist struggles in Paris and Carthagena, and will be found true, we believe, where- ever religion does not directly and visibly enter into the question. Then the men and women sometimes part company, though not always, the priests in Ireland having, we believe, in the Fenian struggle, and in their own conflict with Ribandism, failed to divide the sexes.
The total result is not a pleasant one to contemplate. It seems, like many other incidents in this struggle, to indicate that the bitterness of temper between classes is greater than was imagined ; that we have all, to a certain extent, overrated the softening influences of education, freedom, and prosperity. After thirty years of comparative peace, the men when moved by temporary suffering still turn savagely on the masters, treat them as enemies, and consider that the application of terror to them is, if not justifiable, at least pardonable. They are, moreover,
at least as determined as of old. They know very well they cannot win. They see on every side men half-fed, and women asking
charity, and children receiving it ; they read, at all events, of incidents which sound to Londoners as if taken from the Book of Chronicles ; how the mob " came to Eli Heyworth's
mill, but they burned not that mill, forasmuch as Eli had fed the people that day ;" and they know their own leaders have no hope, yet believing their solution of the question to be the right one, they will not yield, but suffer everything, or break into aimless fury and destructiveness. Their children -e-the big lads of eighteen—are not only not softened by education, but are foremost in the attacks on property and persons ; while their women, hardly knowing how to keep their shawls from the pawnbrokers, wrap them round them for the last time to vote down peace. There is character in all this, and strong character, but it is not the temperate strength we all hoped to see produced by modern life. It looks as if education had only deepened the perception of suffering, without developing the readiness to avoid it by compromise, and had increased the perception of harshness, without in- greasing the perception of the claims of others. The men see lass than ever that the master is a buyer of labour and the workman a seller, and that each is free to fix his own terms, subject to the right of his customer or dealer to reject them ; while both sides are more ready, in- stead of less ready, to express irritation by violence. The readiness to resort to the rifle and the torch is most alarming, but not more alarming than the almost total absence, -e-we may say, after this ballot, the total absence—of any section of operatives who are upon the masters' side. Progress in the North, we fear, is not so rapid as had been hoped, at least if progress is to be defined as we should define it,—as an advance of large communities in sweetness, and light, and righteous- ness. We do not expect any more violence, because we think the workmen apprehend the terrible new power which the use of weapons of precision has placed in the hands of Governments, as against popular disorder—no mob, however brave or numerous, can stand for ten minutes against the breechloader—but we do apprehend that the division between masters and men, which seemed to be closing, has been re- opened, and will be kept open for a generation. There is no Utopia visible in the result of that ballot.
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