LAST WEEK.
RAG FAIR.
Rag Fair is a power in the State just now. Never mind the people who go about clothed in purple and fine linen. Rags are your only wear. The beggars throughout the British Islands had best look to themselves, for the eyes of the paper-makers are upon them. They believe that unless they can procure rags in plenty they must throw their mill machinery out of gear, and try their luck in some other kind of trade. Now, we should not smile at the sorrows of rich men when they employ their riches in a gainful way to the country and to themselves. If a manufacturer in any branch of industry can make money breed by setting a thousand pairs of arms to work, so much the better for himself, and for all. The big paper-makers have killed the small paper-makers, because, as the trade advanced, it was found that the machine helped man, more than man helped the machine. And yet there are more hands employed in the making of paper now—even relatively to supply—than in the days of the small-mill men. It is just the old story of the spinning-jenny and the threshing-machine told over again with other names. Skill and capital were brought to bear upon the trade. The small men were thrust off the path, and the capitalist and the engineer came in; and had it all their own way. There is no use in whining over this. The human race can’t afford to make a bad debt here; and to pay a double price for an article there for the profit of a few. We have put ofl our mourning for the small paper mill owners, and we shall not spend another farthing upon crape, even though the owners of large mills are in a scrape, which. after all, perhaps, is more one in appearance than in reality.
We all remember how it was said, in 1845-46, that the British farmer was ruined because he was exposed to the rivalry of the corn-grower in the United States and the vast plains of southern Russia. It was proved to us, as plain as figures could prove it, by Lord George Bentinck and others, that the English soil must fall out of cultivation when the British farmer was involved in this unequal contest. Is not the British farmer a more thriving man than ever, now that fifteen years have flown by, and he has tried conclusions fairly with his foreign rivals? The corn-growers of Tamboff have not answered Lord Derby’s expectations. The same dismal prophecy was uttered by the workers in glass, and their friends, when the late Sir Robert Peel set the glass-trade free. Who would not be glad, at the present moment, to have an interest in a glass-factory of good repute? Now the turn of the paper-makers has come. They say that if they are exposed to the competition of the foreign paper-maker, under equal fiscal conditions,—that is to say, when there is equilibrium between the excise and custom duties—they must infallibly be ruined. This terrible result, as they say, depends upon the fact that the foreign paper-maker has access to a larger rag-market than themselves, and although he is perfectly willing to supply us with the manufactured article, he altogether declines to let us have his rags, save they be weighted with an export duty which will place them beyond the reach of the British paper-makers altogether. In other words, there is cheaper paper to be had on the continent of Europe than here. If so—why are we, the public, not to have the benefit of this cheapness? As long as it was a question of revenue, there was not a word to be said. Mr. Gladstone was scarcely justified in throwing away 1,500,000l. of revenue at a time when there is such a heavy gunpowder bill falling due. However much the consumers of paper might desire to have the article at the cheapest possible rate, they felt that the time was not well chosen for tampering with the public finances, even though any change proposed might in the end work for good. This, however, was not the view of our patriotic paper-makers. So the Chancellor of the Exchequer had given them a penny protective duty to keep out the foreign article, they would have been quite content to see the excise duty leviable upon home-made paper knocked on the head. We should not in that case have heard much of the sweet minstrelsy of that Dying Swan, Mr. Thomas Wrigley, nor of the unsuccessful experiments of the Taverham Mills. The simple fact is this, the manufacture of paper is one of the few monopolies left in the country. It is in the hands of a few capitalists who have destroyed or bought up their smaller rivals. At considerable expense, but with enormous advantage to themselves, they have erected machinery which is admirably adapted for tearing rags into pieces and reducing them into pulp, but which could not be brought to deal with any other materials. Of course they don’t like a change—why should they? The udders of the milch cow were in their own hands; why should they let in the foreign milkmaid to share their easy profits? Can any one say what argument can in fairness be urged in favour of the British paper-maker which has not been urged a hundred times over in favour of the British farmer, the British ship-owner, the British glass-blower, or the British monopolist of any denomination? We are just dealing over again with the ghosts of the old fallacies which, as we all supposed, were laid for ever in 1845-46, and were consigned to the Limbo of nonsense for ever.
This is sad stuff they are talking about the raw material. Is a rag raw material? Sow it in the earth, and see if other rags will spring up. Or is it raw material in the sense that iron and wool are raw materials? It is nothing of the kind, but the mere refuse of manufactured articles past service. There is such an abundance of this refuse even in our own country, that it is largely exported to the United States. The price of rags, no doubt, is thus raised in England. So much the better for the rag merchant; so much the worse for the paper-maker; above all, in the long run, so much the worse for the consumer. Are we therefore, out of regard to those gentlemen, who are no doubt making a good thing of it, to be compelled to purchase our paper of the maker who only has access to the dearest rag-market? We cannot compel foreign nations to take the duty off rags. But if this Treaty with France had never been heard of,