The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Condition of the Working-Class in England
in 1844, by Frederick Engels, Translated by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844
with a Preface written in 1892
Author: Frederick Engels
Release Date: December 13, 2005 [eBook #17306]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING-CLASS
IN ENGLAND IN 1844***
Transcribed from the January 1943 George Allen & Unwin reprint of the
March 1892 edition by David Price, email [email protected]
The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844
With a Preface written in 1892
by
FREDERICK ENGELS
_Translated by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky_
_London_
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
_Museum Street_
PREFACE
The book, an English translation of which is here republished, was first
issued in Germany in 1845. The author, at that time, was young, twenty-
four years of age, and his production bears the stamp of his youth with
its good and its faulty features, of neither of which he feels ashamed.
It was translated into English, in 1885, by an American lady, Mrs. F.
Kelley Wischnewetzky, and published in the following year in New York.
The American edition being as good as exhausted, and having never been
extensively circulated on this side of the Atlantic, the present English
copyright edition is brought out with the full consent of all parties
interested.
For the American edition, a new Preface and an Appendix were written in
English by the author. The first had little to do with the book itself;
it discussed the American Working-Class Movement of the day, and is,
therefore, here omitted as irrelevant, the second--the original
preface--is largely made use of in the present introductory remarks.
The state of things described in this book belongs to-day, in many
respects, to the past, as far as England is concerned. Though not
expressly stated in our recognised treatises, it is still a law of modern
Political Economy that the larger the scale on which Capitalistic
Production is carried on, the less can it support the petty devices of
swindling and pilfering which characterise its early stages. The
pettifogging business tricks of the Polish Jew, the representative in
Europe of commerce in its lowest stage, those tricks that serve him so
well in his own country, and are generally practised there, he finds to
be out of date and out of place when he comes to Hamburg or Berlin; and,
again, the commission agent, who hails from Berlin or Hamburg, Jew or
Christian, after frequenting the Manchester Exchange for a few months,
finds out that, in order to buy cotton yarn or cloth cheap, he, too, had
better drop those slightly more refined but still miserable wiles and
subterfuges which are considered the acme of cleverness in his native
country. The fact is, those tricks do not pay any longer in a large
market, where time is money, and where a certain standard of commercial
morality is unavoidably developed, purely as a means of saving time and
trouble. And it is the same with the relation between the manufacturer
and his "hands."
The revival of trade, after the crisis of 1847, was the dawn of a new
industrial epoch. The repeal of the Corn Laws and the financial reforms
subsequent thereon gave to English industry and commerce all the elbow-
room they had asked for. The discovery of the Californian and Australian
gold-fields followed in rapid succession. The Colonial markets developed
at an increasing rate their capacity for absorbing English manufactured
goods. In India millions of hand-weavers were finally crushed out by the
Lancashire power-loom. China was more and more being opened up. Above
all, the United States--then, commercially speaking, a mere colonial
market, but by far the biggest of them all--underwent an economic
development astounding even for that rapidly progressive country. And,
finally, the new means of communication introduced at the close of the
preceding period--railways and ocean steamers--were now worked out on an
international scale; they realised actually, what had hitherto existed
only potentially, a world-market. This world-market, at first, was
composed of a number of chiefly or entirely agricultural countries
grouped around one manufacturing centre--England--which consumed the
greater part of their surplus raw produce, and supplied them in return
with the greater part of their requirements in manufactured articles. No
wonder England's industrial progress was colossal and unparalleled, and
such that the status of 1844 now appears to us as comparatively primitive
and insignificant. And in proportion as this increase took place, in the
same proportion did manufacturing industry become apparently moralised.
The competition of manufacturer against manufacturer by means of petty
thefts upon the workpeople did no longer pay. Trade had outgrown such
low means of making money; they were not worth while practising for the
manufacturing millionaire, and served merely to keep alive the
competition of smaller traders, thankful to pick up a penny wherever they
could. Thus the truck system was suppressed, the Ten Hours' Bill was
enacted, and a number of other secondary reforms introduced--much against
the spirit of Free Trade and unbridled competition, but quite as much in
favour of the giant-capitalist in his competition with his less favoured
brother. Moreover, the larger the concern, and with it the number of
hands, the greater the loss and inconvenience caused by every conflict
between master and men; and thus a new spirit came over the masters,
especially the large ones, which taught them to avoid unnecessary
squabbles, to acquiesce in the existence and power of Trades' Unions, and
finally even to discover in strikes--at opportune times--a powerful means
to serve their own ends. The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders
of the war against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach
peace and harmony. And for a very good reason. The fact is, that all
these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means
to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for
whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all
importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker
and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends
meet without such perquisites. Thus the development of production on the
basis of the capitalistic system has of itself sufficed--at least in the
leading industries, for in the more unimportant branches this is far from
being the case--to do away with all those minor grievances which
aggravated the workman's fate during its earlier stages. And thus it
renders more and more evident the great central fact, that the cause of
the miserable condition of the working-class is to be sought, not in
these minor grievances, but _in the Capitalistic System itself_. The
wage-worker sells to the capitalist his labour-force for a certain daily
sum. After a few hours' work he has reproduced the value of that sum;
but the substance of his contract is, that he has to work another series
of hours to complete his working-day; and the value he produces during
these additional hours of surplus labour is surplus value, which cost the
capitalist nothing, but yet goes into his pocket. That is the basis of
the system which tends more and more to split up civilised society into a
few Rothschilds and Vanderbilts, the owners of all the means of
production and subsistence, on the one hand, and an immense number of
wage-workers, the owners of nothing but their labour-force, on the other.
And that this result is caused, not by this or that secondary grievance,
but by the system itself--this fact has been brought out in bold relief
by the development of Capitalism in England since 1847.
Again, the repeated visitations of cholera, typhus, smallpox, and other
epidemics have shown the British bourgeois the urgent necessity of
sanitation in his towns and cities, if he wishes to save himself and
family from falling victims to such diseases. Accordingly, the most
crying abuses described in this book have either disappeared or have been
made less conspicuous. Drainage has been introduced or improved, wide
avenues have been opened out athwart many of the worst "slums" I had to
describe. "Little Ireland" has disappeared, and the "Seven Dials" are
next on the list for sweeping away. But what of that? Whole districts
which in 1844 I could describe as almost idyllic, have now, with the
growth of the towns, fallen into the same state of dilapidation,
discomfort, and misery. Only the pigs and the heaps of refuse are no
longer tolerated. The bourgeoisie have made further progress in the art
of hiding the distress of the working-class. But that, in regard to
their dwellings, no substantial improvement has taken place, is amply
proved by the Report of the Royal Commission "on the Housing of the
Poor," 1885. And this is the case, too, in other respects. Police
regulations have been plentiful as blackberries; but they can only hedge
in the distress of the workers, they cannot remove it.
But while England has thus outgrown the juvenile state of capitalist
exploitation described by me, other countries have only just attained it.
France, Germany, and especially America, are the formidable competitors
who, at this moment--as foreseen by me in 1844--are more and more
breaking up England's industrial monopoly. Their manufactures are young
as compared with those of England, but increasing at a far more rapid
rate than the latter; and, curious enough, they have at this moment
arrived at about the same phase of development as English manufacture in
1844. With regard to America, the parallel is indeed most striking.
True, the external surroundings in which the working-class is placed in
America are very different, but the same economical laws are at work, and
the results, if not identical in every respect, must still be of the same
order. Hence we find in America the same struggles for a shorter working-
day, for a legal limitation of the working-time, especially of women and
children in factories; we find the truck-system in full blossom, and the
cottage-system, in rural districts, made use of by the "bosses" as a
means of domination over the workers. When I received, in 1886, the
American papers with accounts of the great strike of 12,000 Pennsylvanian
coal-miners in the Connellsville district, I seemed but to read my own
description of the North of England colliers' strike of 1844. The same
cheating of the workpeople by false measure; the same truck-system; the
same attempt to break the miners' resistance by the capitalists' last,
but crushing, resource,--the eviction of the men out of their dwellings,
the cottages owned by the companies.
I have not attempted, in this translation, to bring the book up to date,
or to point out in detail all the changes that have taken place since
1844. And for two reasons: Firstly, to do this properly, the size of the
book must be about doubled; and, secondly, the first volume of "Das
Kapital," by Karl Marx, an English translation of which is before the
public, contains a very ample description of the state of the British
working-class, as it was about 1865, that is to say, at the time when
British industrial prosperity reached its culminating point. I should,
then, have been obliged again to go over the ground already covered by
Marx's celebrated work.
It will be hardly necessary to point out that the general theoretical
standpoint of this book--philosophical, economical, political--does not
exactly coincide with my standpoint of to-day. Modern international
Socialism, since fully developed as a science, chiefly and almost
exclusively through the efforts of Marx, did not as yet exist in 1844. My
book represents one of the phases of its embryonic development; and as
the human embryo, in its early stages, still reproduces the gill-arches
of our fish-ancestors, so this book exhibits everywhere the traces of the
descent of modern Socialism from one of its ancestors,--German
philosophy. Thus great stress is laid on the dictum that Communism is
not a mere party doctrine of the working-class, but a theory compassing
the emancipation of society at large, including the capitalist class,
from its present narrow conditions. This is true enough in the abstract,
but absolutely useless, and sometimes worse, in practice. So long as the
wealthy classes not only do not feel the want of any emancipation, but
strenuously oppose the self-emancipation of the working-class, so long
the social revolution will have to be prepared and fought out by the
working-class alone. The French bourgeois of 1789, too, declared the
emancipation of the bourgeoisie to be the emancipation of the whole human
race; but the nobility and clergy would not see it; the
proposition--though for the time being, with respect to feudalism, an
abstract historical truth--soon became a mere sentimentalism, and
disappeared from view altogether in the fire of the revolutionary
struggle. And to-day, the very people who, from the "impartiality" of
their superior standpoint, preach to the workers a Socialism soaring high
above their class interests and class struggles, and tending to reconcile
in a higher humanity the interests of both the contending classes--these
people are either neophytes, who have still to learn a great deal, or
they are the worst enemies of the workers,--wolves in sheeps' clothing.
The recurring period of the great industrial crisis is stated in the text
as five years. This was the period apparently indicated by the course of
events from 1825 to 1842. But the industrial history from 1842 to 1868
has shown that the real period is one of ten years; that the intermediate
revulsions were secondary, and tended more and more to disappear. Since
1868 the state of things has changed again, of which more anon.
I have taken care not to strike out of the text the many prophecies,
amongst others that of an imminent social revolution in England, which my
youthful ardour induced me to venture upon. The wonder is, not that a
good many of them proved wrong, but that so many of them have proved
right, and that the critical state of English trade, to be brought on by
Continental and especially American competition, which I then
foresaw--though in too short a period--has now actually come to pass. In
this respect I can, and am bound to, bring the book up to date, by
placing here an article which I published in the _London Commonweal_ of
March 1, 1885, under the heading: "England in 1845 and in 1885." It
gives at the same time a short outline of the history of the English
working-class during these forty years, and is as follows:
"Forty years ago England stood face to face with a crisis, solvable to
all appearances by force only. The immense and rapid development of
manufactures had outstripped the extension of foreign markets and the
increase of demand. Every ten years the march of industry was
violently interrupted by a general commercial crash, followed, after a
long period of chronic depression, by a few short years of prosperity,
and always ending in feverish over-production and consequent renewed
collapse. The capitalist class clamoured for Free Trade in corn, and
threatened to enforce it by sending the starving population of the
towns back to the country districts whence they came, to invade them,
as John Bright said, not as paupers begging for bread, but as an army
quartered upon the enemy. The working masses of the towns demanded
their share of political power--the People's Charter; they were
supported by the majority of the small trading class, and the only
difference between the two was whether the Charter should be carried
by physical or by moral force. Then came the commercial crash of 1847
and the Irish famine, and with both the prospect of revolution
"The French Revolution of 1848 saved the English middle-class. The
Socialistic pronunciamentos of the victorious French workmen
frightened the small middle-class of England and disorganised the
narrower, but more matter-of-fact movement of the English
working-class. At the very moment when Chartism was bound to assert
itself in its full strength, it collapsed internally, before even it
collapsed externally on the 10th of April, 1848. The action of the
working-class was thrust into the background. The capitalist class
triumphed along the whole line.
"The Reform Bill of 1831 had been the victory of the whole capitalist
class over the landed aristocracy. The repeal of the Corn Laws was
the victory of the manufacturing capitalist not only over the landed
aristocracy, but over those sections of capitalists, too, whose
interests were more or less bound up with the landed
interest,--bankers, stock-jobbers, fund-holders, etc. Free Trade
meant the re-adjustment of the whole home and foreign, commercial and
financial policy of England in accordance with the interests of the
manufacturing capitalists--the class which now represented the nation.
And they set about this task with a will. Every obstacle to
industrial production was mercilessly removed. The tariff and the
whole system of taxation were revolutionised. Everything was made
subordinate to one end, but that end of the utmost importance to the
manufacturing capitalist: the cheapening of all raw produce, and
especially of the means of living of the working-class; the reduction
of the cost of raw material, and the keeping down--if not as yet the
_bringing down_--of wages. England was to become the 'workshop of the
world;' all other countries were to become for England what Ireland
already was,--markets for her manufactured goods, supplying her in
return with raw materials and food. England the great manufacturing
centre of an agricultural world, with an ever-increasing number of
corn and cotton-growing Irelands revolving around her, the industrial
sun. What a glorious prospect!
"The manufacturing capitalists set about the realisation of this their
great object with that strong common sense and that contempt for
traditional principles which has ever distinguished them from their
more narrow-minded compeers on the Continent. Chartism was dying out.
The revival of commercial prosperity, natural after the revulsion of
1847 had spent itself, was put down altogether to the credit of Free
Trade. Both these circumstances had turned the English working-class,
politically, into the tail of the 'great Liberal party,' the party led
by the manufacturers. This advantage, once gained, had to be
perpetuated. And the manufacturing capitalists, from the Chartist
opposition, not to Free Trade, but to the transformation of Free Trade
into the one vital national question, had learnt, and were learning
more and more, that the middle-class can never obtain full social and
political power over the nation except by the help of the
working-class. Thus a gradual change came over the relations between
both classes. The Factory Acts, once the bugbear of all
manufacturers, were not only willingly submitted to, but their
expansion into acts regulating almost all trades, was tolerated.
Trades' Unions, hitherto considered inventions of the devil himself,
were now petted and patronised as perfectly legitimate institutions,
and as useful means of spreading sound economical doctrines amongst
the workers. Even strikes, than which nothing had been more nefarious
up to 1848, were now gradually found out to be occasionally very
useful, especially when provoked by the masters themselves, at their
own time. Of the legal enactments, placing the workman at a lower
level or at a disadvantage with regard to the master, at least the
most revolting were repealed. And, practically, that horrid 'People's
Charter' actually became the political programme of the very
manufacturers who had opposed it to the last. 'The Abolition of the
Property Qualification' and 'Vote by Ballot' are now the law of the
land. The Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 make a near approach to
'universal suffrage,' at least such as it now exists in Germany; the
Redistribution Bill now before Parliament creates 'equal electoral
districts'--on the whole not more unequal than those of Germany;
'payment of members,' and shorter, if not actually 'annual
Parliaments,' are visibly looming in the distance--and yet there are
people who say that Chartism is dead.
"The Revolution of 1848, not less than many of its predecessors, has
had strange bedfellows and successors. The very people who put it
down have become, as Karl Marx used to say, its testamentary
executors. Louis Napoleon had to create an independent and united
Italy, Bismarck had to revolutionise Germany and to restore Hungarian
independence, and the English manufacturers had to enact the People's
Charter.
"For England, the effects of this domination of the manufacturing
capitalists were at first startling. Trade revived and extended to a
degree unheard of even in this cradle of modern industry; the previous
astounding creations of steam and machinery dwindled into nothing
compared with the immense mass of productions of the twenty years from
1850 to 1870, with the overwhelming figures of exports and imports, of
wealth accumulated in the hands of capitalists and of human working
power concentrated in the large towns. The progress was indeed
interrupted, as before, by a crisis every ten years, in 1857 as well
as in 1866; but these revulsions were now considered as natural,
inevitable events, which must be fatalistically submitted to, and
which always set themselves right in the end.
"And the condition of the working-class during this period? There was
temporary improvement even for the great mass. But this improvement
always was reduced to the old level by the influx of the great body of
the unemployed reserve, by the constant superseding of bands by new
machinery, by the immigration of the agricultural population, now,
too, more and more superseded by machines.
"A permanent improvement can be recognised for two 'protected'
sections only of the working-class. Firstly, the factory hands. The
fixing by Act of Parliament of their working-day within relatively
rational limits has restored their physical constitution and endowed
them with a moral superiority, enhanced by their local concentration.
They are undoubtedly better off than before 1848. The best proof is
that, out of ten strikes they make, nine are provoked by the
manufacturers in their own interests, as the only means of securing a
reduced production. You can never get the masters to agree to work
'short time,' let manufactured goods be ever so unsaleable; but get
the workpeople to strike, and the masters shut their factories to a
man.
"Secondly, the great Trades' Unions. They are the organisations of
those trades in which the labour of _grown-up men_ predominates, or is
alone applicable. Here the competition neither of women and children
nor of machinery has so far weakened their organised strength. The
engineers, the carpenters, and joiners, the bricklayers, are each of
them a power, to that extent that, as in the case of the bricklayers
and bricklayers' labourers, they can even successfully resist the
introduction of machinery. That their condition has remarkably
improved since 1848 there can be no doubt, and the best proof of this
is in the fact, that for more than fifteen years not only have their
employers been with them, but they with their employers, upon
exceedingly good terms. They form an aristocracy among the working-
class; they have succeeded in enforcing for themselves a relatively
comfortable position, and they accept it as final. They are the model
working-men of Messrs. Leone Levi & Giffen, and they are very nice
people indeed nowadays to deal with, for any sensible capitalist in
particular and for the whole capitalist class in general.
"But as to the great mass of working-people, the state of misery and
insecurity in which they live now is as low as ever, if not lower. The
East End of London is an everspreading pool of stagnant misery and
desolation, of starvation when out of work, and degradation, physical
and moral, when in work. And so in all other large towns--abstraction
made of the privileged minority of the workers; and so in the smaller
towns and in the agricultural districts. The law which reduces the
_value_ of labour-power to the value of the necessary means of
subsistence, and the other law which reduces its _average price_, as a
rule, to the minimum of those means of subsistence, these laws act
upon them with the irresistible force of an automatic engine, which
crushes them between its wheels.
"This, then, was the position created by the Free Trade policy of
1847, and by twenty years of the rule of the manufacturing
capitalists. But, then, a change came. The crash of 1866 was,
indeed, followed by a slight and short revival about 1873; but that
did not last. We did not, indeed, pass through the full crisis at the
time it was due, in 1877 or 1878; but we have had, ever since 1876, a
chronic state of stagnation in all dominant branches of industry.
Neither will the full crash come; nor will the period of longed-for
prosperity to which we used to be entitled before and after it. A
dull depression, a chronic glut of all markets for all trades, that is
what we have been living in for nearly ten years. How is this?
"The Free Trade theory was based upon one assumption: that England was
to be the one great manufacturing centre of an agricultural world. And
the actual fact is that this assumption has turned out to be a pure
delusion. The conditions of modern industry, steam-power and
machinery, can be established wherever there is fuel, especially
coals. And other countries beside England,--France, Belgium, Germany,
America, even Russia,--have coals. And the people over there did not
see the advantage of being turned into Irish pauper farmers merely for
the greater wealth and glory of English capitalists. They set
resolutely about manufacturing, not only for themselves, but for the
rest of the world; and the consequence is, that the manufacturing
monopoly enjoyed by England for nearly a century is irretrievably
broken up.
"But the manufacturing monopoly of England is the pivot of the present
social system of England. Even while that monopoly lasted, the
markets could not keep pace with the increasing productivity of
English manufacturers; the decennial crises were the consequence. And
new markets are getting scarcer every day, so much so that even the
negroes of the Congo are now to be forced into the civilisation
attendant upon Manchester calicos, Staffordshire pottery, and
Birmingham hardware. How will it be when Continental, and especially
American, goods flow in in ever-increasing quantities--when the
predominating share, still held by British manufacturers, will become
reduced from year to year? Answer, Free Trade, thou universal
panacea.
"I am not the first to point this out. Already, in 1883, at the
Southport meeting of the British Association, Mr. Inglis Palgrave, the
President of the Economic section, stated plainly that 'the days of
great trade profits in England were over, and there was a pause in the
progress of several great branches of industrial labour. _The country
might almost be said to be entering the non-progressive state_.'
"But what is to be the consequence? Capitalist production _cannot_
stop. It must go on increasing and expanding, or it must die. Even
now, the mere reduction of England's lion's share in the supply of the
world's markets means stagnation, distress, excess of capital here,
excess of unemployed workpeople there. What will it be when the
increase of yearly production is brought to a complete stop?
"Here is the vulnerable place, the heel of Achilles, for capitalistic
production. Its very basis is the necessity of constant expansion,
and this constant expansion now becomes impossible. It ends in a
deadlock. Every year England is brought nearer face to face with the
question: either the country must go to pieces, or capitalist
production must. Which is it to be?
"And the working-class? If even under the unparalleled commercial and
industrial expansion, from 1848 to 1866, they have had to undergo such
misery; if even then the great bulk of them experienced at best but a
temporary improvement of their condition, while only a small,
privileged, 'protected' minority was permanently benefited, what will
it be when this dazzling period is brought finally to a close; when
the present dreary stagnation shall not only become intensified, but
this, its intensified condition, shall become the permanent and normal
state of English trade?
"The truth is this: during the period of England's industrial monopoly
the English working-class have, to a certain extent, shared in the
benefits of the monopoly. These benefits were very unequally
parcelled out amongst them; the privileged minority pocketed most, but
even the great mass had, at least, a temporary share now and then. And
that is the reason why, since the dying-out of Owenism, there has been
no Socialism in England. With the breakdown of that monopoly, the
English working-class will lose that privileged position; it will find
itself generally--the privileged and leading minority not excepted--on
a level with its fellow-workers abroad. And that is the reason why
there will be Socialism again in England."
To this statement of the case, as that case appeared to me in 1885, I
have but little to add. Needless to say that to-day there is indeed
"Socialism again in England," and plenty of it--Socialism of all shades:
Socialism conscious and unconscious, Socialism prosaic and poetic,
Socialism of the working-class and of the middle-class, for, verily, that
abomination of abominations, Socialism, has not only become respectable,
but has actually donned evening dress and lounges lazily on drawing-room
_causeuses_. That shows the incurable fickleness of that terrible despot
of "society," middle-class public opinion, and once more justifies the
contempt in which we Socialists of a past generation always held that
public opinion. At the same time, we have no reason to grumble at the
symptom itself.
What I consider far more important than this momentary fashion among
bourgeois circles of affecting a mild dilution of Socialism, and even
more than the actual progress Socialism has made in England generally,
that is the revival of the East End of London. That immense haunt of
misery is no longer the stagnant pool it was six years ago. It has
shaken off its torpid despair, has returned to life, and has become the
home of what is called the "New Unionism;" that is to say, of the
organisation of the great mass of "unskilled" workers. This organisation
may to a great extent adopt the form of the old Unions of "skilled"
workers, but it is essentially different in character. The old Unions
preserve the traditions of the time when they were founded, and look upon
the wages system as a once for all established, final fact, which they at
best can modify in the interest of their members. The new Unions were
founded at a time when the faith in the eternity of the wages system was
severely shaken; their founders and promoters were Socialists either
consciously or by feeling; the masses, whose adhesion gave them strength,
were rough, neglected, looked down upon by the working-class aristocracy;
but they had this immense advantage, that _their minds were virgin soil_,
entirely free from the inherited "respectable" bourgeois prejudices which
hampered the brains of the better situated "old" Unionists. And thus we
see now these new Unions taking the lead of the working-class movement
generally, and more and more taking in tow the rich and proud "old"
Unions.
Undoubtedly, the East Enders have committed colossal blunders; so have
their predecessors, and so do the doctrinaire Socialists who pooh-pooh
them. A large class, like a great nation, never learns better or quicker
than by undergoing the consequences of its own mistakes. And for all the
faults committed in past, present, and future, the revival of the East
End of London remains one of the greatest and most fruitful facts of this
_fin de siecle_, and glad and proud I am to have lived to see it.
F. ENGELS.
_January_ 11_th_, 1892.
INTRODUCTION
The history of the proletariat in England begins with the second half of
the last century, with the invention of the steam-engine and of machinery
for working cotton. These inventions gave rise, as is well known, to an
industrial revolution, a revolution which altered the whole civil
society; one, the historical importance of which is only now beginning to
be recognised. England is the classic soil of this transformation, which
was all the mightier, the more silently it proceeded; and England is,
therefore, the classic land of its chief product also, the proletariat.
Only in England can the proletariat be studied in all its relations and
from all sides.
We have not, here and now, to deal with the history of this revolution,
nor with its vast importance for the present and the future. Such a
delineation must be reserved for a future, more comprehensive work. For
the moment, we must limit ourselves to the little that is necessary for
understanding the facts that follow, for comprehending the present state
of the English proletariat.
Before the introduction of machinery, the spinning and weaving of raw
materials was carried on in the working-man's home. Wife and daughter
spun the yarn that the father wove or that they sold, if he did not work
it up himself. These weaver families lived in the country in the
neighbourhood of the towns, and could get on fairly well with their
wages, because the home market was almost the only one, and the crushing
power of competition that came later, with the conquest of foreign
markets and the extension of trade, did not yet press upon wages. There
was, further, a constant increase in the demand for the home market,
keeping pace with the slow increase in population and employing all the
workers; and there was also the impossibility of vigorous competition of
the workers among themselves, consequent upon the rural dispersion of
their homes. So it was that the weaver was usually in a position to lay
by something, and rent a little piece of land, that he cultivated in his
leisure hours, of which he had as many as he chose to take, since he
could weave whenever and as long as he pleased. True, he was a bad
farmer and managed his land inefficiently, often obtaining but poor
crops; nevertheless, he was no proletarian, he had a stake in the
country, he was permanently settled, and stood one step higher in society
than the English workman of to-day.
So the workers vegetated throughout a passably comfortable existence,
leading a righteous and peaceful life in all piety and probity; and their
material position was far better than that of their successors. They did
not need to overwork; they did no more than they chose to do, and yet
earned what they needed. They had leisure for healthful work in garden
or field, work which, in itself, was recreation for them, and they could
take part besides in the recreations and games of their neighbours, and
all these games--bowling, cricket, football, etc., contributed to their
physical health and vigour. They were, for the most part, strong, well-
built people, in whose physique little or no difference from that of
their peasant neighbours was discoverable. Their children grew up in the
fresh country air, and, if they could help their parents at work, it was
only occasionally; while of eight or twelve hours work for them there was
no question.
What the moral and intellectual character of this class was may be
guessed. Shut off from the towns, which they never entered, their yarn
and woven stuff being delivered to travelling agents for payment of
wages--so shut off that old people who lived quite in the neighbourhood
of the town never went thither until they were robbed of their trade by
the introduction of machinery and obliged to look about them in the towns
for work--the weavers stood upon the moral and intellectual plane of the
yeomen with whom they were usually immediately connected through their
little holdings. They regarded their squire, the greatest landholder of
the region, as their natural superior; they asked advice of him, laid
their small disputes before him for settlement, and gave him all honour,
as this patriarchal relation involved. They were "respectable" people,
good husbands and fathers, led moral lives because they had no temptation
to be immoral, there being no groggeries or low houses in their vicinity,
and because the host, at whose inn they now and then quenched their
thirst, was also a respectable man, usually a large tenant farmer who
took pride in his good order, good beer, and early hours. They had their
children the whole day at home, and brought them up in obedience and the
fear of God; the patriarchal relationship remained undisturbed so long as
the children were unmarried. The young people grew up in idyllic
simplicity and intimacy with their playmates until they married; and even
though sexual intercourse before marriage almost unfailingly took place,
this happened only when the moral obligation of marriage was recognised
on both sides, and a subsequent wedding made everything good. In short,
the English industrial workers of those days lived and thought after the
fashion still to be found here and there in Germany, in retirement and
seclusion, without mental activity and without violent fluctuations in
their position in life. They could rarely read and far more rarely
write; went regularly to church, never talked politics, never conspired,
never thought, delighted in physical exercises, listened with inherited
reverence when the Bible was read, and were, in their unquestioning
humility, exceedingly well-disposed towards the "superior" classes. But
intellectually, they were dead; lived only for their petty, private
interest, for their looms and gardens, and knew nothing of the mighty
movement which, beyond their horizon, was sweeping through mankind. They
were comfortable in their silent vegetation, and but for the industrial
revolution they would never have emerged from this existence, which,
cosily romantic as it was, was nevertheless not worthy of human beings.
In truth, they were not human beings; they were merely toiling machines
in the service of the few aristocrats who had guided history down to that
time. The industrial revolution has simply carried this out to its
logical end by making the workers machines pure and simple, taking from
them the last trace of independent activity, and so forcing them to think
and demand a position worthy of men. As in France politics, so in
England manufacture, and the movement of civil society in general drew
into the whirl of history the last classes which had remained sunk in
apathetic indifference to the universal interests of mankind.
The first invention which gave rise to a radical change in the state of
the English workers was the jenny, invented in the year 1764 by a weaver,
James Hargreaves, of Standhill, near Blackburn, in North Lancashire. This
machine was the rough beginning of the later invented mule, and was moved
by hand. Instead of one spindle like the ordinary spinning-wheel, it
carried sixteen or eighteen manipulated by a single workman. This
invention made it possible to deliver more yarn than heretofore. Whereas,
though one weaver had employed three spinners, there had never been
enough yarn, and the weaver had often been obliged to wait for it, there
was now more yarn to be had than could be woven by the available workers.
The demand for woven goods, already increasing, rose yet more in
consequence of the cheapness of these goods, which cheapness, in turn,
was the outcome of the diminished cost of producing the yarn. More
weavers were needed, and weavers' wages rose. Now that the weaver could
earn more at his loom, he gradually abandoned his farming, and gave his
whole time to weaving. At that time a family of four grown persons and
two children (who were set to spooling) could earn, with eight hours'
daily work, four pounds sterling in a week, and often more if trade was
good and work pressed. It happened often enough that a single weaver
earned two pounds a week at his loom. By degrees the class of farming
weavers wholly disappeared, and was merged in the newly arising class of
weavers who lived wholly upon wages, had no property whatever, not even
the pretended property of a holding, and so became working-men,
proletarians. Moreover, the old relation between spinner and weaver was
destroyed. Hitherto, so far as this had been possible, yarn had been
spun and woven under one roof. Now that the jenny as well as the loom
required a strong hand, men began to spin, and whole families lived by
spinning, while others laid the antiquated, superseded spinning-wheel
aside; and, if they had not means of purchasing a jenny, were forced to
live upon the wages of the father alone. Thus began with spinning and
weaving that division of labour which has since been so infinitely
perfected.
While the industrial proletariat was thus developing with the first still
very imperfect machine, the same machine gave rise to the agricultural
proletariat. There had, hitherto, been a vast number of small
landowners, yeomen, who had vegetated in the same unthinking quiet as
their neighbours, the farming weavers. They cultivated their scraps of
land quite after the ancient and inefficient fashion of their ancestors,
and opposed every change with the obstinacy peculiar to such creatures of
habit, after remaining stationary from generation to generation. Among
them were many small holders also, not tenants in the present sense of
the word, but people who had their land handed down from their fathers,
either by hereditary lease, or by force of ancient custom, and had
hitherto held it as securely as if it had actually been their own
property. When the industrial workers withdrew from agriculture, a great
number of small holdings fell idle, and upon these the new class of large
tenants established themselves, tenants-at-will, holding fifty, one
hundred, two hundred or more acres, liable to be turned out at the end of
the year, but able by improved tillage and larger farming to increase the
yield of the land. They could sell their produce more cheaply than the
yeomen, for whom nothing remained when his farm no longer supported him
but to sell it, procure a jenny or a loom, or take service as an
agricultural labourer in the employ of a large farmer. His inherited
slowness and the inefficient methods of cultivation bequeathed by his
ancestors, and above which he could not rise, left him no alternative
when forced to compete with men who managed their holdings on sounder
principles and with all the advantages bestowed by farming on a large
scale and the investment of capital for the improvement of the soil.
Meanwhile, the industrial movement did not stop here. Single capitalists
began to set up spinning jennies in great buildings and to use
water-power for driving them, so placing themselves in a position to
diminish the number of workers, and sell their yarn more cheaply than
single spinners could do who moved their own machines by hand. There
were constant improvements in the jenny, so that machines continually
became antiquated, and must be altered or even laid aside; and though the
capitalists could hold out by the application of water-power even with
the old machinery, for the single spinner this was impossible. And the
factory system, the beginning of which was thus made, received a fresh
extension in 1767, through the spinning throstle invented by Richard
Arkwright, a barber, in Preston, in North Lancashire. After the steam-
engine, this is the most important mechanical invention of the 18th
century. It was calculated from the beginning for mechanical motive
power, and was based upon wholly new principles. By the combination of
the peculiarities of the jenny and throstle, Samuel Crompton, of Firwood,
Lancashire, contrived the mule in 1785, and as Arkwright invented the
carding engine, and preparatory ("slubbing and roving") frames about the
same time, the factory system became the prevailing one for the spinning
of cotton. By means of trifling modifications these machines were
gradually adapted to the spinning of flax, and so to the superseding of
hand-work here, too. But even then, the end was not yet. In the closing
years of the last century, Dr. Cartwright, a country parson, had invented
the power-loom, and about 1804 had so far perfected it, that it could
successfully compete with the hand-weaver; and all this machinery was
made doubly important by James Watt's steam-engine, invented in 1764, and
used for supplying motive power for spinning since 1785.
With these inventions, since improved from year to year, the victory of
machine-work over hand-work in the chief branches of English industry was
won; and the history of the latter from that time forward simply relates
how the hand-workers have been driven by machinery from one position
after another. The consequences of this were, on the one hand, a rapid
fall in price of all manufactured commodities, prosperity of commerce and
manufacture, the conquest of nearly all the unprotected foreign markets,
the sudden multiplication of capital and national wealth; on the other
hand, a still more rapid multiplication of the proletariat, the
destruction of all property-holding and of all security of employment for
the working-class, demoralisation, political excitement, and all those
facts so highly repugnant to Englishmen in comfortable circumstances,
which we shall have to consider in the following pages. Having already
seen what a transformation in the social condition of the lower classes a
single such clumsy machine as the jenny had wrought, there is no cause
for surprise as to that which a complete and interdependent system of
finely adjusted machinery has brought about, machinery which receives raw
material and turns out woven goods.
Meanwhile, let us trace the development of English manufacture {7}
somewhat more minutely, beginning with the cotton industry. In the years
1771-1775, there were annually imported into England rather less than
5,000,000 pounds of raw cotton; in the year 1841 there were imported
528,000,000 pounds, and the import for 1844 will reach at least
600,000,000 pounds. In 1834 England exported 556,000,000 yards of woven
cotton goods, 76,500,000 pounds of cotton yarn, and cotton hosiery of the
value of 1,200,000 pounds. In the same year over 8,000,000 mule spindles
were at work, 110,000 power and 250,000 hand-looms, throstle spindles not
included, in the service of the cotton industry; and, according to
MacCulloch's reckoning, nearly a million and a half human beings were
supported by this branch, of whom but 220,000 worked in the mills; the
power used in these mills was steam, equivalent to 33,000 horse-power,
and water, equivalent to 11,000 horse-power. At present these figures
are far from adequate, and it may be safely assumed that, in the year
1845, the power and number of the machines and the number of the workers
is greater by one-half than it was in 1834. The chief centre of this
industry is Lancashire, where it originated; it has thoroughly
revolutionised this county, converting it from an obscure, ill-cultivated
swamp into a busy, lively region, multiplying its population tenfold in
eighty years, and causing giant cities such as Liverpool and Manchester,
containing together 700,000 inhabitants, and their neighbouring towns,
Bolton with 60,000, Rochdale with 75,000, Oldham with 50,000, Preston
with 60,000, Ashton and Stalybridge with 40,000, and a whole list of
other manufacturing towns to spring up as if by a magic touch. The
history of South Lancashire contains some of the greatest marvels of
modern times, yet no one ever mentions them, and all these miracles are
the product of the cotton industry. Glasgow, too, the centre for the
cotton district of Scotland, for Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, has
increased in population from 30,000 to 300,000 since the introduction of
the industry. The hosiery manufacture of Nottingham and Derby also
received one fresh impulse from the lower price of yarn, and a second one
from an improvement of the stocking loom, by means of which two stockings
could be woven at once. The manufacture of lace, too, became an
important branch of industry after the invention of the lace machine in
1777; soon after that date Lindley invented the point-net machine, and in
1809 Heathcote invented the bobbin-net machine, in consequence of which
the production of lace was greatly simplified, and the demand increased
proportionately in consequence of the diminished cost, so that now, at
least 200,000 persons are supported by this industry. Its chief centres
are Nottingham, Leicester, and the West of England, Wiltshire,
Devonshire, etc. A corresponding extension has taken place in the
branches dependent upon the cotton industry, in dyeing, bleaching, and
printing. Bleaching by the application of chlorine in place of the
oxygen of the atmosphere; dyeing and printing by the rapid development of
chemistry, and printing by a series of most brilliant mechanical
inventions, a yet greater advance which, with the extension of these
branches caused by the growth of the cotton industry, raised them to a
previously unknown degree of prosperity.
The same activity manifested itself in the manufacture of wool. This had
hitherto been the leading department of English industry, but the
quantities formerly produced are as nothing in comparison with that which
is now manufactured. In 1782 the whole wool crop of the preceding three
years lay unused for want of workers, and would have continued so to lie
if the newly invented machinery had not come to its assistance and spun
it. The adaptation of this machinery to the spinning of wool was most
successfully accomplished. Then began the same sudden development in the
wool district, which we have already seen in the cotton districts. In
1738 there were 75,000 pieces of woollen cloth produced in the West
Riding of Yorkshire; in 1817 there were 490,000 pieces, and so rapid was
the extension of the industry that in 1834, 450,000 more pieces were
produced than in 1825. In 1801, 101,000,000 pounds of wool (7,000,000
pounds of it imported) were worked up; in 1835, 180,000,000 pounds were
worked up; of which 42,000,000 pounds were imported. The principal
centre of this industry is the West Riding of Yorkshire, where,
especially at Bradford, long English wool is converted into worsted
yarns, etc.; while in the other cities, Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield,
etc., short wool is converted into hard-spun yarn and cloth. Then come
the adjacent part of Lancashire, the region of Rochdale, where in
addition to the cotton industry much flannel is produced, and the West of
England which supplies the finest cloths. Here also the growth of
population is worthy of observation:
Bradford contained in 1801 29,000, and in 1831 77,000 inhabitants.
Halifax ,, ,, 68,000, ,, ,, 110,000 ,,
Huddersfield ,, ,, 15,000, ,, ,, 34,000 ,,
Leeds,, ,, 53,000, ,, ,, 123,000 ,,
And the whole West Riding 564,000, ,, ,, 980,000 ,,
A population which, since 1831, must have increased at least 20 to 25 per
cent. further. In 1835 the spinning of wool employed in the United
Kingdom 1,313 mills, with 71,300 workers, these last being but a small
portion of the multitude who are supported directly or indirectly by the
manufacture of wool, and excluding nearly all weavers.
Progress in the linen trade developed later, because the nature of the
raw material made the application of spinning machinery very difficult.
Attempts had been made in the last years of the last century in Scotland,
but the Frenchman, Girard, who introduced flax spinning in 1810, was the
first who succeeded practically, and even Girard's machines first
attained on British soil the importance they deserved by means of
improvements which they underwent in England, and of their universal
application in Leeds, Dundee, and Belfast. From this time the British
linen trade rapidly extended. In 1814, 3,000 tons of flax were imported;
in 1833, nearly 19,000 tons of flax and 3,400 tons of hemp. The export
of Irish linen to Great Britain rose from 32,000,000 yards in 1800 to
53,000,000 in 1825, of which a large part was re-exported. The export of
English and Scotch woven linen goods rose from 24,000,000 yards in 1820
to 51,000,000 yards in 1833. The number of flax spinning establishments
in 1835 was 347, employing 33,000 workers, of which one-half were in the
South of Scotland, more than 60 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Leeds,
and its environs, 25 in Belfast, Ireland, and the rest in Dorset and
Lancashire. Weaving is carried on in the South of Scotland, here and
there in England, but principally in Ireland.
With like success did the English turn their attention to the manufacture
of silk. Raw material was imported from Southern Europe and Asia ready
spun, and the chief labour lay in the twisting of fine threads. Until
1824 the heavy import duty, four shillings per pound on raw material,
greatly retarded the development of the English silk industry, while only
the markets of England and the Colonies were protected for it. In that
year the duty was reduced to one penny, and the number of mills at once
largely increased. In a single year the number of throwing spindles rose
from 780,000 to 1,180,000; and, although the commercial crisis of 1825
crippled this branch of industry for the moment, yet in 1827 more was
produced than ever, the mechanical skill and experience of the English
having secured their twisting machinery the supremacy over the awkward
devices of their competitors. In 1835 the British Empire possessed 263
twisting mills, employing 30,000 workers, located chiefly in Cheshire, in
Macclesfield, Congleton, and the surrounding districts, and in Manchester
and Somersetshire. Besides these, there are numerous mills for working
up waste, from which a peculiar article known as spun silk is
manufactured, with which the English supply even the Paris and Lyons
weavers. The weaving of the silk so twisted and spun is carried on in
Paisley and elsewhere in Scotland, and in Spitalfields, London, but also
in Manchester and elsewhere. Nor is the gigantic advance achieved in
English manufacture since 1760 restricted to the production of clothing
materials. The impulse, once given, was communicated to all branches of
industrial activity, and a multitude of inventions wholly unrelated to
those here cited, received double importance from the fact that they were
made in the midst of the universal movement. But as soon as the
immeasurable importance of mechanical power was practically demonstrated,
every energy was concentrated in the effort to exploit this power in all
directions, and to exploit it in the interest of individual inventors and
manufacturers; and the demand for machinery, fuel, and materials called a
mass of workers and a number of trades into redoubled activity. The
steam-engine first gave importance to the broad coal-fields of England;
the production of machinery began now for the first time, and with it
arose a new interest in the iron mines which supplied raw material for
it. The increased consumption of wool stimulated English sheep breeding,
and the growing importation of wool, flax, and silk called forth an
extension of the British ocean carrying trade. Greatest of all was the
growth of production of iron. The rich iron deposits of the English
hills had hitherto been little developed; iron had always been smelted by
means of charcoal, which became gradually more expensive as agriculture
improved and forests were cut away. The beginning of the use of coke in
iron smelting had been made in the last century, and in 1780 a new method
was invented of converting into available wrought-iron coke-smelted iron,
which up to that time had been convertible into cast-iron only. This
process, known as "puddling," consists in withdrawing the carbon which
had mixed with the iron during the process of smelting, and opened a
wholly new field for the production of English iron. Smelting furnaces
were built fifty times larger than before, the process of smelting was
simplified by the introduction of hot blasts, and iron could thus be
produced so cheaply that a multitude of objects which had before been
made of stone or wood were now made of iron.
In 1788, Thomas Paine, the famous democrat, built in Yorkshire the first
iron bridge, which was followed by a great number of others, so that now
nearly all bridges, especially for railroad traffic, are built of cast-
iron, while in London itself a bridge across the Thames, the Southwark
bridge, has been built of this material. Iron pillars, supports for
machinery, etc., are universally used, and since the introduction of gas-
lighting and railroads, new outlets for English iron products are opened.
Nails and screws gradually came to be made by machinery. Huntsman, a
Sheffielder, discovered in 1790 a method for casting steel, by which much
labour was saved, and the production of wholly new cheap goods rendered
practicable; and through the greater purity of the material placed at its
disposal, and the more perfect tools, new machinery and minute division
of labour, the metal trade of England now first attained importance. The
population of Birmingham grew from 73,000 in 1801 to 200,000 in 1844;
that of Sheffield from 46,000 in 1801 to 110,000 in 1844, and the
consumption of coal in the latter city alone reached in 1836, 515,000
tons. In 1805 there were exported 4,300 tons of iron products and 4,600
tons of pig-iron; in 1834, 16,200 tons of iron products and 107,000 tons
of pig-iron, while the whole iron product reaching in 1740 but 17,000
tons, had risen in 1834 to nearly 700,000 tons. The smelting of pig-iron
alone consumes yearly more than 3,000,000 tons of coal, and the
importance which coal mining has attained in the course of the last 60
years can scarcely be conceived. All the English and Scotch deposits are
now worked, and the mines of Northumberland and Durham alone yield
annually more than 5,000,000 tons for shipping, and employ from 40 to
50,000 men. According to the Durham _Chronicle_, there were worked in
these two counties: In 1753, 14 mines; in 1800, 40 mines; in 1836, 76
mines; in 1843, 130 mines. Moreover, all mines are now much more
energetically worked than formerly. A similarly increased activity was
applied to the working of tin, copper, and lead, and alongside of the
extension of glass manufacture arose a new branch of industry in the
production of pottery, rendered important by the efforts of Josiah
Wedgewood, about 1763. This inventor placed the whole manufacture of
stoneware on a scientific basis, introduced better taste, and founded the
potteries of North Staffordshire, a district of eight English miles
square, which, formerly a desert waste, is now sown with works and
dwellings, and supports more than 60,000 people.
Into this universal whirl of activity everything was drawn. Agriculture
made a corresponding advance. Not only did landed property pass, as we
have already seen, into the hands of new owners and cultivators,
agriculture was affected in still another way. The great holders applied
capital to the improvement of the soil, tore down needless fences,
drained, manured, employed better tools, and applied a rotation of crops.
The progress of science came to their assistance also; Sir Humphrey Davy
applied chemistry to agriculture with success, and the development of
mechanical science bestowed a multitude of advantages upon the large
farmer. Further, in consequence of the increase of population, the
demand for agricultural products increased in such measure that from 1760
to 1834, 6,840,540 acres of waste land were reclaimed; and, in spite of
this, England was transformed from a grain exporting to a grain importing
country.
The same activity was developed in the establishment of communication.
From 1818 to 1829, there were built in England and Wales, 1,000 English
miles of roadway of the width prescribed by law, 60 feet, and nearly all
the old roads were reconstructed on the new system of M'Adam. In
Scotland, the Department of Public Works built since 1803 nearly 900
miles of roadway and more than 1,000 bridges, by which the population of
the Highlands was suddenly placed within reach of civilisation. The
Highlanders had hitherto been chiefly poachers and smugglers; they now
became farmers and hand-workers. And, though Gaelic schools were
organised for the purpose of maintaining the Gaelic language, yet Gaelic-
Celtic customs and speech are rapidly vanishing before the approach of
English civilisation. So, too, in Ireland; between the counties of Cork,
Limerick, and Kerry, lay hitherto a wilderness wholly without passable
roads, and serving, by reason of its inaccessibility, as the refuge of
all criminals and the chief protection of the Celtic Irish nationality in
the South of Ireland. It has now been cut through by public roads, and
civilisation has thus gained admission even to this savage region. The
whole British Empire, and especially England, which, sixty years ago, had
as bad roads as Germany or France then had, is now covered by a network
of the finest roadways; and these, too, like almost everything else in
England, are the work of private enterprise, the State having done very
little in this direction.
Before 1755 England possessed almost no canals. In that year a canal was
built in Lancashire from Sankey Brook to St Helen's; and in 1759, James
Brindley built the first important one, the Duke of Bridgewater's canal
from Manchester, and the coal mines of the district to the mouth of the
Mersey passing, near Barton, by aqueduct, over the river Irwell. From
this achievement dates the canal building of England, to which Brindley
first gave importance. Canals were now built, and rivers made navigable
in all directions. In England alone, there are 2,200 miles of canals and
1,800 miles of navigable river. In Scotland, the Caledonian Canal was
cut directly across the country, and in Ireland several canals were
built. These improvements, too, like the railroads and roadways, are
nearly all the work of private individuals and companies.
The railroads have been only recently built. The first great one was
opened from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830, since which all the great
cities have been connected by rail. London with Southampton, Brighton,
Dover, Colchester, Exeter, and Birmingham; Birmingham with Gloucester,
Liverpool, Lancaster (via Newton and Wigan, and via Manchester and
Bolton); also with Leeds (via Manchester and Halifax, and via Leicester,
Derby, and Sheffield); Leeds with Hull and Newcastle (via York). There
are also many minor lines building or projected, which will soon make it
possible to travel from Edinburgh to London in one day.
As it had transformed the means of communication by land, so did the
introduction of steam revolutionise travel by sea. The first steamboat
was launched in 1807, in the Hudson, in North America; the first in the
British empire, in 1811, on the Clyde. Since then, more than 600 have
been built in England; and in 1836 more than 500 were plying to and from
British ports.
Such, in brief, is the history of English industrial development in the
past sixty years, a history which has no counterpart in the annals of
humanity. Sixty, eighty years ago, England was a country like every
other, with small towns, few and simple industries, and a thin but
_proportionally_ large agricultural population. To-day it is a country
like _no_ other, with a capital of two and a half million inhabitants;
with vast manufacturing cities; with an industry that supplies the world,
and produces almost everything by means of the most complex machinery;
with an industrious, intelligent, dense population, of which two-thirds
are employed in trade and commerce, and composed of classes wholly
different; forming, in fact, with other customs and other needs, a
different nation from the England of those days. The industrial
revolution is of the same importance for England as the political
revolution for France, and the philosophical revolution for Germany; and
the difference between England in 1760 and in 1844 is at least as great
as that between France, under the _ancien regime_ and during the
revolution of July. But the mightiest result of this industrial
transformation is the English proletariat.
We have already seen how the proletariat was called into existence by the
introduction of machinery. The rapid extension of manufacture demanded
hands, wages rose, and troops of workmen migrated from the agricultural
districts to the towns. Population multiplied enormously, and nearly all
the increase took place in the proletariat. Further, Ireland had entered
upon an orderly development only since the beginning of the eighteenth
century. There, too, the population, more than decimated by English
cruelty in earlier disturbances, now rapidly multiplied, especially after
the advance in manufacture began to draw masses of Irishmen towards
England. Thus arose the great manufacturing and commercial cities of the
British Empire, in which at least three-fourths of the population belong
to the working-class, while the lower middle-class consists only of small
shopkeepers, and very very few handicraftsmen. For, though the rising
manufacture first attained importance by transforming tools into
machines, workrooms into factories, and consequently, the toiling lower
middle-class into the toiling proletariat, and the former large merchants
into manufacturers, though the lower middle-class was thus early crushed
out, and the population reduced to the two opposing elements, workers and
capitalists, this happened outside of the domain of manufacture proper,
in the province of handicraft and retail trade as well. In the place of
the former masters and apprentices, came great capitalists and working-
men who had no prospect of rising above their class. Hand-work was
carried on after the fashion of factory work, the division of labour was
strictly applied, and small employers who could not compete with great
establishments were forced down into the proletariat. At the same time
the destruction of the former organisation of hand-work, and the
disappearance of the lower middle-class deprived the working-man of all
possibility of rising into the middle-class himself. Hitherto he had
always had the prospect of establishing himself somewhere as master
artificer, perhaps employing journeymen and apprentices; but now, when
master artificers were crowded out by manufacturers, when large capital
had become necessary for carrying on work independently, the
working-class became, for the first time, an integral, permanent class of
the population, whereas it had formerly often been merely a transition
leading to the bourgeoisie. Now, he who was born to toil had no other
prospect than that of remaining a toiler all his life. Now, for the
first time, therefore, the proletariat was in a position to undertake an
independent movement.
In this way were brought together those vast masses of working-men who
now fill the whole British Empire, whose social condition forces itself
every day more and more upon the attention of the civilised world. The
condition of the working-class is the condition of the vast majority of
the English people. The question: What is to become of those destitute
millions, who consume to-day what they earned yesterday; who have created
the greatness of England by their inventions and their toil; who become
with every passing day more conscious of their might, and demand, with
daily increasing urgency, their share of the advantages of society?--This,
since the Reform Bill, has become the national question. All
Parliamentary debates, of any importance, may be reduced to this; and,
though the English middle-class will not as yet admit it, though they try
to evade this great question, and to represent their own particular
interests as the truly national ones, their action is utterly useless.
With every session of Parliament the working-class gains ground, the
interests of the middle-class diminish in importance; and, in spite of
the fact that the middle-class is the chief, in fact, the only power in
Parliament, the last session of 1844 was a continuous debate upon
subjects affecting the working-class, the Poor Relief Bill, the Factory
Act, the Masters' and Servants' Act; and Thomas Duncombe, the
representative of the working-men in the House of Commons, was the great
man of the session; while the Liberal middle-class with its motion for
repealing the Corn Laws, and the Radical middle-class with its resolution
for refusing the taxes, played pitiable roles. Even the debates about
Ireland were at bottom debates about the Irish proletariat, and the means
of coming to its assistance. It is high time, too, for the English
middle-class to make some concessions to the working-men who no longer
plead but threaten; for in a short time it may be too late.
In spite of all this, the English middle-class, especially the
manufacturing class, which is enriched directly by means of the poverty
of the workers, persists in ignoring this poverty. This class, feeling
itself the mighty representative class of the nation, is ashamed to lay
the sore spot of England bare before the eyes of the world; will not
confess, even to itself, that the workers are in distress, because it,
the property-holding, manufacturing class, must bear the moral
responsibility for this distress. Hence the scornful smile which
intelligent Englishmen (and they, the middle-class, alone are known on
the Continent) assume when any one begins to speak of the condition of
the working-class; hence the utter ignorance on the part of the whole
middle-class of everything which concerns the workers; hence the
ridiculous blunders which men of this class, in and out of Parliament,
make when the position of the proletariat comes under discussion; hence
the absurd freedom from anxiety, with which the middle-class dwells upon
a soil that is honeycombed, and may any day collapse, the speedy collapse
of which is as certain as a mathematical or mechanical demonstration;
hence the miracle that the English have as yet no single book upon the
condition of their workers, although they have been examining and mending
the old state of things no one knows how many years. Hence also the deep
wrath of the whole working-class, from Glasgow to London, against the
rich, by whom they are systematically plundered and mercilessly left to
their fate, a wrath which before too long a time goes by, a time almost
within the power of man to predict, must break out into a Revolution in
comparison with which the French Revolution, and the year 1794, will
prove to have been child's play.
THE INDUSTRIAL PROLETARIAT.
The order of our investigation of the different sections of the
proletariat follows naturally from the foregoing history of its rise. The
first proletarians were connected with manufacture, were engendered by
it, and accordingly, those employed in manufacture, in the working up of
raw materials, will first claim our attention. The production of raw
materials and of fuel for manufacture attained importance only in
consequence of the industrial change, and engendered a new proletariat,
the coal and metal miners. Then, in the third place, manufacture
influenced agriculture, and in the fourth, the condition of Ireland; and
the fractions of the proletariat belonging to each, will find their place
accordingly. We shall find, too, that with the possible exception of the
Irish, the degree of intelligence of the various workers is in direct
proportion to their relation to manufacture; and that the factory hands
are most enlightened as to their own interests, the miners somewhat less
so, the agricultural labourers scarcely at all. We shall find the same
order again among the industrial workers, and shall see how the factory
hands, eldest children of the industrial revolution, have from the
beginning to the present day formed the nucleus of the Labour Movement,
and how the others have joined this movement just in proportion as their
handicraft has been invaded by the progress of machinery. We shall thus
learn from the example which England offers, from the equal pace which
the Labour Movement has kept with the movement of industrial development,
the historical significance of manufacture.
Since, however, at the present moment, pretty much the whole industrial
proletariat is involved in the movement, and the condition of the
separate sections has much in common, because they all are industrial, we
shall have first to examine the condition of the industrial proletariat
as a whole, in order later to notice more particularly each separate
division with its own peculiarities.
It has been already suggested that manufacture centralises property in
the hands of the few. It requires large capital with which to erect the
colossal establishments that ruin the petty trading bourgeoisie and with
which to press into its service the forces of Nature, so driving the hand
labour of the independent workman out of the market. The division of
labour, the application of water and especially steam, and the
application of machinery, are the three great levers with which
manufacture, since the middle of the last century, has been busy putting
the world out of joint. Manufacture, on a small scale, created the
middle-class; on a large scale, it created the working-class, and raised
the elect of the middle-class to the throne, but only to overthrow them
the more surely when the time comes. Meanwhile, it is an undenied and
easily explained fact that the numerous, petty middle-class of the "good
old times" has been annihilated by manufacture, and resolved into rich
capitalists on the one hand and poor workers on the other. {20}
The centralising tendency of manufacture does not, however, stop here.
Population becomes centralised just as capital does; and, very naturally,
since the human being, the worker, is regarded in manufacture simply as a
piece of capital for the use of which the manufacturer pays interest
under the name of wages. A manufacturing establishment requires many
workers employed together in a single building, living near each other
and forming a village of themselves in the case of a good-sized factory.
They have needs for satisfying which other people are necessary;
handicraftsmen, shoemakers, tailors, bakers, carpenters, stonemasons,
settle at hand. The inhabitants of the village, especially the younger
generation, accustom themselves to factory work, grow skilful in it, and
when the first mill can no longer employ them all, wages fall, and the
immigration of fresh manufacturers is the consequence. So the village
grows into a small town, and the small town into a large one. The
greater the town, the greater its advantages. It offers roads,
railroads, canals; the choice of skilled labour increases constantly, new
establishments can be built more cheaply because of the competition among
builders and machinists who are at hand, than in remote country
districts, whither timber, machinery, builders, and operatives must be
brought; it offers a market to which buyers crowd, and direct
communication with the markets supplying raw material or demanding
finished goods. Hence the marvellously rapid growth of the great
manufacturing towns. The country, on the other hand, has the advantage
that wages are usually lower than in town, and so town and country are in
constant competition; and, if the advantage is on the side of the town to-
day, wages sink so low in the country to-morrow, that new investments are
most profitably made there. But the centralising tendency of manufacture
continues in full force, and every new factory built in the country bears
in it the germ of a manufacturing town. If it were possible for this mad
rush of manufacture to go on at this rate for another century, every
manufacturing district of England would be one great manufacturing town,
and Manchester and Liverpool would meet at Warrington or Newton; for in
commerce, too, this centralisation of the population works in precisely
the same way, and hence it is that one or two great harbours, such as
Hull and Liverpool, Bristol, and London, monopolise almost the whole
maritime commerce of Great Britain.
Since commerce and manufacture attain their most complete development in
these great towns, their influence upon the proletariat is also most
clearly observable here. Here the centralisation of property has reached
the highest point; here the morals and customs of the good old times are
most completely obliterated; here it has gone so far that the name Merry
Old England conveys no meaning, for Old England itself is unknown to
memory and to the tales of our grandfathers. Hence, too, there exist
here only a rich and a poor class, for the lower middle-class vanishes
more completely with every passing day. Thus the class formerly most
stable has become the most restless one. It consists to-day of a few
remnants of a past time, and a number of people eager to make fortunes,
industrial Micawbers and speculators of whom one may amass a fortune,
while ninety-nine become insolvent, and more than half of the ninety-nine
live by perpetually repeated failure.
But in these towns the proletarians are the infinite majority, and how
they fare, what influence the great town exercises upon them, we have now
to investigate.
THE GREAT TOWNS.
A town, such as London, where a man may wander for hours together without
reaching the beginning of the end, without meeting the slightest hint
which could lead to the inference that there is open country within
reach, is a strange thing. This colossal centralisation, this heaping
together of two and a half millions of human beings at one point, has
multiplied the power of this two and a half millions a hundredfold; has
raised London to the commercial capital of the world, created the giant
docks and assembled the thousand vessels that continually cover the
Thames. I know nothing more imposing than the view which the Thames
offers during the ascent from the sea to London Bridge. The masses of
buildings, the wharves on both sides, especially from Woolwich upwards,
the countless ships along both shores, crowding ever closer and closer
together, until, at last, only a narrow passage remains in the middle of
the river, a passage through which hundreds of steamers shoot by one
another; all this is so vast, so impressive, that a man cannot collect
himself, but is lost in the marvel of England's greatness before he sets
foot upon English soil. {23}
But the sacrifices which all this has cost become apparent later. After
roaming the streets of the capital a day or two, making headway with
difficulty through the human turmoil and the endless lines of vehicles,
after visiting the slums of the metropolis, one realises for the first
time that these Londoners have been forced to sacrifice the best
qualities of their human nature, to bring to pass all the marvels of
civilisation which crowd their city; that a hundred powers which
slumbered within them have remained inactive, have been suppressed in
order that a few might be developed more fully and multiply through union
with those of others. The very turmoil of the streets has something
repulsive, something against which human nature rebels. The hundreds of
thousands of all classes and ranks crowding past each other, are they not
all human beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same
interest in being happy? And have they not, in the end, to seek
happiness in the same way, by the same means? And still they crowd by
one another as though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one
another, and their only agreement is the tacit one, that each keep to his
own side of the pavement, so as not to delay the opposing streams of the
crowd, while it occurs to no man to honour another with so much as a
glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his
private interest becomes the more repellant and offensive, the more these
individuals are crowded together, within a limited space. And, however
much one may be aware that this isolation of the individual, this narrow
self-seeking is the fundamental principle of our society everywhere, it
is nowhere so shamelessly barefaced, so self-conscious as just here in
the crowding of the great city. The dissolution of mankind into monads,
of which each one has a separate principle, the world of atoms, is here
carried out to its utmost extreme.
Hence it comes, too, that the social war, the war of each against all, is
here openly declared. Just as in Stirner's recent book, people regard
each other only as useful objects; each exploits the other, and the end
of it all is, that the stronger treads the weaker under foot, and that
the powerful few, the capitalists, seize everything for themselves, while
to the weak many, the poor, scarcely a bare existence remains.
What is true of London, is true of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, is true
of all great towns. Everywhere barbarous indifference, hard egotism on
one hand, and nameless misery on the other, everywhere social warfare,
every man's house in a state of siege, everywhere reciprocal plundering
under the protection of the law, and all so shameless, so openly avowed
that one shrinks before the consequences of our social state as they
manifest themselves here undisguised, and can only wonder that the whole
crazy fabric still hangs together.
Since capital, the direct or indirect control of the means of subsistence
and production, is the weapon with which this social warfare is carried
on, it is clear that all the disadvantages of such a state must fall upon
the poor. For him no man has the slightest concern. Cast into the
whirlpool, he must struggle through as well as he can. If he is so happy
as to find work, _i.e_., if the bourgeoisie does him the favour to enrich
itself by means of him, wages await him which scarcely suffice to keep
body and soul together; if he can get no work he may steal, if he is not
afraid of the police, or starve, in which case the police will take care
that he does so in a quiet and inoffensive manner. During my residence
in England, at least twenty or thirty persons have died of simple
starvation under the most revolting circumstances, and a jury has rarely
been found possessed of the courage to speak the plain truth in the
matter. Let the testimony of the witnesses be never so clear and
unequivocal, the bourgeoisie, from which the jury is selected, always
finds some backdoor through which to escape the frightful verdict, death
from starvation. The bourgeoisie dare not speak the truth in these
cases, for it would speak its own condemnation. But indirectly, far more
than directly, many have died of starvation, where long continued want of
proper nourishment has called forth fatal illness, when it has produced
such debility that causes which might otherwise have remained
inoperative, brought on severe illness and death. The English working-
men call this "social murder," and accuse our whole society of
perpetrating this crime perpetually. Are they wrong?
True, it is only individuals who starve, but what security has the
working-man that it may not be his turn to-morrow? Who assures him
employment, who vouches for it that, if for any reason or no reason his
lord and master discharges him to-morrow, he can struggle along with
those dependent upon him, until he may find some one else "to give him
bread?" Who guarantees that willingness to work shall suffice to obtain
work, that uprightness, industry, thrift, and the rest of the virtues
recommended by the bourgeoisie, are really his road to happiness? No
one. He knows that he has something to-day, and that it does not depend
upon himself whether he shall have something to-morrow. He knows that
every breeze that blows, every whim of his employer, every bad turn of
trade may hurl him back into the fierce whirlpool from which he has
temporarily saved himself, and in which it is hard and often impossible
to keep his head above water. He knows that, though he may have the
means of living to-day, it is very uncertain whether he shall to-morrow.
Meanwhile, let us proceed to a more detailed investigation of the
position, in which the social war has placed the non-possessing class.
Let us see what pay for his work society does give the working-man in the
form of dwelling, clothing, food, what sort of subsistence it grants
those who contribute most to the maintenance of society; and, first, let
us consider the dwellings.
Every great city has one or more slums, where the working-class is
crowded together. True, poverty often dwells in hidden alleys close to
the palaces of the rich; but, in general, a separate territory has been
assigned to it, where, removed from the sight of the happier classes, it
may struggle along as it can. These slums are pretty equally arranged in
all the great towns of England, the worst houses in the worst quarters of
the towns; usually one or two-storied cottages in long rows, perhaps with
cellars used as dwellings, almost always irregularly built. These houses
of three or four rooms and a kitchen form, throughout England, some parts
of London excepted, the general dwellings of the working-class. The
streets are generally unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with vegetable and
animal refuse, without sewers or gutters, but supplied with foul,
stagnant pools instead. Moreover, ventilation is impeded by the bad,
confused method of building of the whole quarter, and since many human
beings here live crowded into a small space, the atmosphere that prevails
in these working-men's quarters may readily be imagined. Further, the
streets serve as drying grounds in fine weather; lines are stretched
across from house to house, and hung with wet clothing.
Let us investigate some of the slums in their order. London comes first,
and in London the famous rookery of St. Giles which is now, at last,
about to be penetrated by a couple of broad streets. St. Giles is in the
midst of the most populous part of the town, surrounded by broad,
splendid avenues in which the gay world of London idles about, in the
immediate neighbourhood of Oxford Street, Regent Street, of Trafalgar
Square and the Strand. It is a disorderly collection of tall, three or
four-storied houses, with narrow, crooked, filthy streets, in which there
is quite as much life as in the great thoroughfares of the town, except
that, here, people of the working-class only are to be seen. A vegetable
market is held in the street, baskets with vegetables and fruits,
naturally all bad and hardly fit to use, obstruct the sidewalk still
further, and from these, as well as from the fish-dealers' stalls, arises
a horrible smell. The houses are occupied from cellar to garret, filthy
within and without, and their appearance is such that no human being
could possibly wish to live in them. But all this is nothing in
comparison with the dwellings in the narrow courts and alleys between the
streets, entered by covered passages between the houses, in which the
filth and tottering ruin surpass all description. Scarcely a whole
window-pane can be found, the walls are crumbling, door-posts and window-
frames loose and broken, doors of old boards nailed together, or
altogether wanting in this thieves' quarter, where no doors are needed,
there being nothing to steal. Heaps of garbage and ashes lie in all
directions, and the foul liquids emptied before the doors gather in
stinking pools. Here live the poorest of the poor, the worst paid
workers with thieves and the victims of prostitution indiscriminately
huddled together, the majority Irish, or of Irish extraction, and those
who have not yet sunk in the whirlpool of moral ruin which surrounds
them, sinking daily deeper, losing daily more and more of their power to
resist the demoralising influence of want, filth, and evil surroundings.
Nor is St. Giles the only London slum. In the immense tangle of streets,
there are hundreds and thousands of alleys and courts lined with houses
too bad for anyone to live in, who can still spend anything whatsoever
upon a dwelling fit for human beings. Close to the splendid houses of
the rich such a lurking-place of the bitterest poverty may often be
found. So, a short time ago, on the occasion of a coroner's inquest, a
region close to Portman Square, one of the very respectable squares, was
characterised as an abode "of a multitude of Irish demoralised by poverty
and filth." So, too, may be found in streets, such as Long Acre and
others, which, though not fashionable, are yet "respectable," a great
number of cellar dwellings out of which puny children and half-starved,
ragged women emerge into the light of day. In the immediate
neighbourhood of Drury Lane Theatre, the second in London, are some of
the worst streets of the whole metropolis, Charles, King, and Park
Streets, in which the houses are inhabited from cellar to garret
exclusively by poor families. In the parishes of St. John and St.
Margaret there lived in 1840, according to the _Journal of the
Statistical Society_, 5,366 working-men's families in 5,294 "dwellings"
(if they deserve the name!), men, women, and children thrown together
without distinction of age or sex, 26,830 persons all told; and of these
families three-fourths possessed but one room. In the aristocratic
parish of St. George, Hanover Square, there lived, according to the same
authority, 1,465 working-men's families, nearly 6,000 persons, under
similar conditions, and here, too, more than two-thirds of the whole
number crowded together at the rate of one family in one room. And how
the poverty of these unfortunates, among whom even thieves find nothing
to steal, is exploited by the property-holding class in lawful ways! The
abominable dwellings in Drury Lane, just mentioned, bring in the
following rents: two cellar dwellings, 3s.; one room, ground-floor, 4s.;
second-storey, 4s. 6d.; third-floor, 4s.; garret-room, 3s. weekly, so
that the starving occupants of Charles Street alone, pay the house-owners
a yearly tribute of 2,000 pounds, and the 5,336 families above mentioned
in Westminster, a yearly rent of 40,000 pounds.
The most extensive working-people's district lies east of the Tower in
Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, where the greatest masses of London
working-people live. Let us hear Mr. G. Alston, preacher of St.
Philip's, Bethnal Green, on the condition of his parish. He says:
"It contains 1,400 houses, inhabited by 2,795 families, or about
12,000 persons. The space upon which this large population dwells, is
less than 400 yards (1,200 feet) square, and in this overcrowding it
is nothing unusual to find a man, his wife, four or five children,
and, sometimes, both grandparents, all in one single room, where they
eat, sleep, and work. I believe that before the Bishop of London
called attention to this most poverty-stricken parish, people at the
West End knew as little of it as of the savages of Australia or the
South Sea Isles. And if we make ourselves acquainted with these
unfortunates, through personal observation, if we watch them at their
scanty meal and see them bowed by illness and want of work, we shall
find such a mass of helplessness and misery, that a nation like ours
must blush that these things can be possible. I was rector near
Huddersfield during the three years in which the mills were at their
worst, but I have never seen such complete helplessness of the poor as
since then in Bethnal Green. Not one father of a family in ten in the
whole neighbourhood has other clothing than his working suit, and that
is as bad and tattered as possible; many, indeed, have no other
covering for the night than these rags, and no bed, save a sack of
straw and shavings."
The foregoing description furnishes an idea of the aspect of the interior
of the dwellings. But let us follow the English officials, who
occasionally stray thither, into one or two of these working-men's homes.
On the occasion of an inquest held Nov. 14th, 1843, by Mr. Carter,
coroner for Surrey, upon the body of Ann Galway, aged 45 years, the
newspapers related the following particulars concerning the deceased: She
had lived at No. 3 White Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London, with her
husband and a nineteen-year-old son in a little room, in which neither a
bedstead nor any other furniture was to be seen. She lay dead beside her
son upon a heap of feathers which were scattered over her almost naked
body, there being neither sheet nor coverlet. The feathers stuck so fast
over the whole body that the physician could not examine the corpse until
it was cleansed, and then found it starved and scarred from the bites of
vermin. Part of the floor of the room was torn up, and the hole used by
the family as a privy.
On Monday, Jan. 15th, 1844, two boys were brought before the police
magistrate because, being in a starving condition, they had stolen and
immediately devoured a half-cooked calf's foot from a shop. The
magistrate felt called upon to investigate the case further, and received
the following details from the policeman: The mother of the two boys was
the widow of an ex-soldier, afterwards policeman, and had had a very hard
time since the death of her husband, to provide for her nine children.
She lived at No. 2 Pool's Place, Quaker Court, Spitalfields, in the
utmost poverty. When the policeman came to her, he found her with six of
her children literally huddled together in a little back room, with no
furniture but two old rush-bottomed chairs with the seats gone, a small
table with two legs broken, a broken cup, and a small dish. On the
hearth was scarcely a spark of fire, and in one corner lay as many old
rags as would fill a woman's apron, which served the whole family as a
bed. For bed clothing they had only their scanty day clothing. The poor
woman told him that she had been forced to sell her bedstead the year
before to buy food. Her bedding she had pawned with the victualler for
food. In short, everything had gone for food. The magistrate ordered
the woman a considerable provision from the poor-box.
In February, 1844, Theresa Bishop, a widow 60 years old, was recommended,
with her sick daughter, aged 26, to the compassion of the police
magistrate in Marlborough Street. She lived at No. 5 Brown Street,
Grosvenor Square, in a small back room no larger than a closet, in which
there was not one single piece of furniture. In one corner lay some rags
upon which both slept; a chest served as table and chair. The mother
earned a little by charring. The owner of the house said that they had
lived in this way since May, 1843, had gradually sold or pawned
everything that they had, and had still never paid any rent. The
magistrate assigned them 1 pound from the poor-box.
I am far from asserting that _all_ London working-people live in such
want as the foregoing three families. I know very well that ten are
somewhat better off, where one is so totally trodden under foot by
society; but I assert that thousands of industrious and worthy people--far
worthier and more to be respected than all the rich of London--do find
themselves in a condition unworthy of human beings; and that every
proletarian, everyone, without exception, is exposed to a similar fate
without any fault of his own and in spite of every possible effort.
But in spite of all this, they who have some kind of a shelter are
fortunate, fortunate in comparison with the utterly homeless. In London
fifty thousand human beings get up every morning, not knowing where they
are to lay their heads at night. The luckiest of this multitude, those
who succeed in keeping a penny or two until evening, enter a
lodging-house, such as abound in every great city, where they find a bed.
But what a bed! These houses are filled with beds from cellar to garret,
four, five, six beds in a room; as many as can be crowded in. Into every
bed four, five, or six human beings are piled, as many as can be packed
in, sick and well, young and old, drunk and sober, men and women, just as
they come, indiscriminately. Then come strife, blows, wounds, or, if
these bedfellows agree, so much the worse; thefts are arranged and things
done which our language, grown more humane than our deeds, refuses to
record. And those who cannot pay for such a refuge? They sleep where
they find a place, in passages, arcades, in corners where the police and
the owners leave them undisturbed. A few individuals find their way to
the refuges which are managed, here and there, by private charity, others
sleep on the benches in the parks close under the windows of Queen
Victoria. Let us hear the London _Times_:
"It appears from the report of the proceedings at Marlborough Street
Police Court in our columns of yesterday, that there is an average
number of 50 human beings of all ages, who huddle together in the
parks every night, having no other shelter than what is supplied by
the trees and a few hollows of the embankment. Of these, the majority
are young girls who have been seduced from the country by the soldiers
and turned loose on the world in all the destitution of friendless
penury, and all the recklessness of early vice.
"This is truly horrible! Poor there must be everywhere. Indigence
will find its way and set up its hideous state in the heart of a great
and luxurious city. Amid the thousand narrow lanes and by-streets of
a populous metropolis there must always, we fear, be much
suffering--much that offends the eye--much that lurks unseen.
"But that within the precincts of wealth, gaiety, and fashion, nigh
the regal grandeur of St. James, close on the palatial splendour of
Bayswater, on the confines of the old and new aristocratic quarters,
in a district where the cautious refinement of modern design has
refrained from creating one single tenement for poverty; which seems,
as it were, dedicated to the exclusive enjoyment of wealth, that
_there_ want, and famine, and disease, and vice should stalk in all
their kindred horrors, consuming body by body, soul, by soul!
"It is indeed a monstrous state of things! Enjoyment the most
absolute, that bodily ease, intellectual excitement, or the more
innocent pleasures of sense can supply to man's craving, brought in
close contact with the most unmitigated misery! Wealth, from its
bright saloons, laughing--an insolently heedless laugh--at the unknown
wounds of want! Pleasure, cruelly but unconsciously mocking the pain
that moans below! All contrary things mocking one another--all
contrary, save the vice which tempts and the vice which is tempted!
"But let all men remember this--that within the most courtly precincts
of the richest city of God's earth, there may be found, night after
night, winter after winter, women--young in years--old in sin and
suffering--outcasts from society--ROTTING FROM FAMINE, FILTH, AND
DISEASE. Let them remember this, and learn not to theorise but to
act. God knows, there is much room for action nowadays." {32}
I have referred to the refuges for the homeless. How greatly overcrowded
these are, two examples may show. A newly erected Refuge for the
Houseless in Upper Ogle Street, that can shelter three hundred persons
every night, has received since its opening, January 27th to March 17th,
1844, 2,740 persons for one or more nights; and, although the season was
growing more favourable, the number of applicants in this, as well as in
the asylums of Whitecross Street and Wapping, was strongly on the
increase, and a crowd of the homeless had to be sent away every night for
want of room. In another refuge, the Central Asylum in Playhouse Yard,
there were supplied on an average 460 beds nightly, during the first
three months of the year 1844, 6,681 persons being sheltered, and 96,141
portions of bread were distributed. Yet the committee of directors
declare this institution began to meet the pressure of the needy to a
limited extent only when the Eastern Asylum also was opened.
Let us leave London and examine the other great cities of the three
kingdoms in their order. Let us take Dublin first, a city the approach
to which from the sea is as charming as that of London is imposing. The
Bay of Dublin is the most beautiful of the whole British Island Kingdom,
and is even compared by the Irish with the Bay of Naples. The city, too,
possesses great attractions, and its aristocratic districts are better
and more tastefully laid out than those of any other British city. By
way of compensation, however, the poorer districts of Dublin are among
the most hideous and repulsive to be seen in the world. True, the Irish
character, which, under some circumstances, is comfortable only in the
dirt, has some share in this; but as we find thousands of Irish in every
great city in England and Scotland, and as every poor population must
gradually sink into the same uncleanliness, the wretchedness of Dublin is
nothing specific, nothing peculiar to Dublin, but something common to all
great towns. The poor quarters of Dublin are extremely extensive, and
the filth, the uninhabitableness of the houses and the neglect of the
streets, surpass all description. Some idea of the manner in which the
poor are here crowded together may be formed from the fact that, in 1817,
according to the report of the Inspector of Workhouses, {33} 1,318
persons lived in 52 houses with 390 rooms in Barral Street, and 1,997
persons in 71 houses with 393 rooms in and near Church Street; that:
"In this and the adjoining district there exists a multitude of foul
courts and alleys; many cellars receive all their light through the
door, while in not a few the inhabitants sleep upon the bare floor,
though most of them possess bedsteads at least; Nicholson's Court, for
example, contains twenty-eight wretched little rooms with 151 human
beings in the greatest want, there being but two bedsteads and two
blankets to be found in the whole court."
The poverty is so great in Dublin, that a single benevolent institution,
the Mendicity Association, gives relief to 2,500 persons or one per cent.
of the population daily, receiving and feeding them for the day and
dismissing them at night.
Dr. Alison describes a similar state of things in Edinburgh, whose superb
situation, which has won it the title of the Modern Athens, and whose
brilliant aristocratic quarter in the New Town, contrast strongly with
the foul wretchedness of the poor in the Old Town. Alison asserts that
this extensive quarter is as filthy and horrible as the worst district of
Dublin, while the Mendicity Association would have as great a proportion
of needy persons to assist in Edinburgh as in the Irish capital. He
asserts, indeed, that the poor in Scotland, especially in Edinburgh and
Glasgow, are worse off than in any other region of the three kingdoms,
and that the poorest are not Irish, but Scotch. The preacher of the Old
Church of Edinburgh, Dr. Lee, testified in 1836, before the Commission of
Religious Instruction, that:
"He had never before seen such misery as in his parish, where the
people were without furniture, without everything, two married couples
often sharing one room. In a single day he had visited seven houses
in which there was not a bed, in some of them not even a heap of
straw. Old people of eighty years sleep on the board floor, nearly
all slept in their day-clothes. In one cellar room he found two
families from a Scotch country district; soon after their removal to
the city two of the children had died, and a third was dying at the
time of his visit. Each family had a filthy pile of straw lying in a
corner; the cellar sheltered besides the two families a donkey, and
was, moreover, so dark that it was impossible to distinguish one
person from another by day. Dr. Lee declared that it was enough to
make a heart of adamant bleed to see such misery in a country like
Scotland."
In the Edinburgh _Medical and Surgical Journal_, Dr. Hennan reports a
similar state of things. From a Parliamentary Report, {35a} it is
evident that in the dwellings of the poor of Edinburgh a want of
cleanliness reigns, such as must be expected under these conditions. On
the bed-posts chickens roost at night, dogs and horses share the
dwellings of human beings, and the natural consequence is a shocking
stench, with filth and swarms of vermin. The prevailing construction of
Edinburgh favours these atrocious conditions as far as possible. The Old
Town is built upon both slopes of a hill, along the crest of which runs
the High Street. Out of the High Street there open downwards multitudes
of narrow, crooked alleys, called wynds from their many turnings, and
these wynds form the proletarian district of the city. The houses of the
Scotch cities, in general, are five or six-storied buildings, like those
of Paris, and in contrast with England where, so far as possible, each
family has a separate house. The crowding of human beings upon a limited
area is thus intensified. {35b}
"These streets," says an English journal in an article upon the
sanitary condition of the working-people in cities, "are often so
narrow that a person can step from the window of one house into that
of its opposite neighbour, while the houses are piled so high, storey
upon storey, that the light can scarcely penetrate into the court or
alley that lies between. In this part of the city there are neither
sewers nor other drains, nor even privies belonging to the houses. In
consequence, all refuse, garbage, and excrements of at least 50,000
persons are thrown into the gutters every night, so that, in spite of
all street sweeping, a mass of dried filth and foul vapours are
created, which not only offend the sight and smell, but endanger the
health of the inhabitants in the highest degree. Is it to be wondered
at, that in such localities all considerations of health, morals, and
even the most ordinary decency are utterly neglected? On the
contrary, all who are more intimately acquainted with the condition of
the inhabitants will testify to the high degree which disease,
wretchedness, and demoralisation have here reached. Society in such
districts has sunk to a level indescribably low and hopeless. The
houses of the poor are generally filthy, and are evidently never
cleansed. They consist in most cases of a single room which, while
subject to the worst ventilation, is yet usually kept cold by the
broken and badly fitting windows, and is sometimes damp and partly
below ground level, always badly furnished and thoroughly
uncomfortable, a straw-heap often serving the whole family for a bed,
upon which men and women, young and old, sleep in revolting confusion.
Water can be had only from the public pumps, and the difficulty of
obtaining it naturally fosters all possible filth."
In the other great seaport towns the prospect is no better. Liverpool,
with all its commerce, wealth, and grandeur yet treats its workers with
the same barbarity. A full fifth of the population, more than 45,000
human beings, live in narrow, dark, damp, badly-ventilated cellar
dwellings, of which there are 7,862 in the city. Besides these cellar
dwellings there are 2,270 courts, small spaces built up on all four sides
and having but one entrance, a narrow, covered passage-way, the whole
ordinarily very dirty and inhabited exclusively by proletarians. Of such
courts we shall have more to say when we come to Manchester. In Bristol,
on one occasion, 2,800 families were visited, of whom 46 per cent.
occupied but one room each.
Precisely the same state of things prevails in the factory towns. In
Nottingham there are in all 11,000 houses, of which between 7,000 and
8,000 are built back to back with a rear parti-wall so that no through
ventilation is possible, while a single privy usually serves for several
houses. During an investigation made a short time since, many rows of
houses were found to have been built over shallow drains covered only by
the boards of the ground floor. In Leicester, Derby, and Sheffield, it
is no better. Of Birmingham, the article above cited from the _Artisan_
states:
"In the older quarters of the city there are many bad districts,
filthy and neglected, full of stagnant pools and heaps of refuse.
Courts are very numerous in Birmingham, reaching two thousand, and
containing the greater number of the working-people of the city. These
courts are usually narrow, muddy, badly ventilated, ill-drained, and
lined with eight to twenty houses, which, by reason of having their
rear walls in common, can usually be ventilated from one side only. In
the background, within the court, there is usually an ash heap or
something of the kind, the filth of which cannot be described. It
must, however, be observed that the newer courts are more sensibly
built and more decently kept, and that even in the old ones, the
cottages are much less crowded than in Manchester and Liverpool,
wherefore Birmingham shows even during the reign of an epidemic a far
smaller mortality than, for instance, Wolverhampton, Dudley, and
Bilston, only a few miles distant. Cellar dwellings are unknown, too,
in Birmingham, though a few cellars are misused as workrooms. The
lodging-houses for proletarians are rather numerous (over four
hundred), chiefly in courts in the heart of the town. They are nearly
all disgustingly filthy and ill-smelling, the refuge of beggars,
thieves, tramps, and prostitutes, who eat, drink, smoke, and sleep
here without the slightest regard to comfort or decency in an
atmosphere endurable to these degraded beings only."
Glasgow is in many respects similar to Edinburgh, possessing the same
wynds, the same tall houses. Of this city the _Artisan_ observes:
"The working-class forms here some 78% of the whole population (about
300,000), and lives in parts of the city which exceed in wretchedness
and squalor the lowest nooks of St. Giles and Whitechapel, the
Liberties of Dublin, the Wynds of Edinburgh. There are numbers of
such localities in the heart of the city, south of the Trongate,
westward from the Saltmarket, in Calton and off the High Street,
endless labyrinths of lanes or wynds into which open at almost every
step, courts or blind alleys, formed by ill-ventilated, high-piled,
waterless, and dilapidated houses. These are literally swarming with
inhabitants. They contain three or four families upon each floor,
perhaps twenty persons. In some cases each storey is let out in
sleeping places, so that fifteen to twenty persons are packed, one on
top of the other, I cannot say accommodated, in a single room. These
districts shelter the poorest, most depraved, and worthless members of
the community, and may be regarded as the sources of those frightful
epidemics which, beginning here, spread desolation over Glasgow."
Let us hear how J. C. Symonds, Government Commissioner for the
investigation of the condition of the hand-weavers, describes these
portions of the city: {38}
"I have seen wretchedness in some of its worse phases both here and
upon the Continent, but until I visited the wynds of Glasgow I did not
believe that so much crime, misery, and disease could exist in any
civilised country. In the lower lodging-houses ten, twelve, sometimes
twenty persons of both sexes, all ages and various degrees of
nakedness, sleep indiscriminately huddled together upon the floor.
These dwellings are usually so damp, filthy, and ruinous, that no one
could wish to keep his horse in one of them."
And in another place:
"The wynds of Glasgow contain a fluctuating population of fifteen to
thirty thousand human beings. This quarter consists wholly of narrow
alleys and square courts, in the middle of every one of which there
lies a dung heap. Revolting as was the outward appearance of these
courts, I was yet not prepared for the filth and wretchedness within.
In some of the sleeping-places which we visited at night (the
Superintendent of Police, Captain Miller, and Symonds) we found a
complete layer of human beings stretched upon the floor, often fifteen
to twenty, some clad, others naked, men and women indiscriminately.
Their bed was a litter of mouldy straw, mixed with rags. There was
little or no furniture, and the only thing which gave these dens any
shimmer of habitableness was a fire upon the hearth. Theft and
prostitution form the chief means of subsistence of this population.
No one seemed to take the trouble to cleanse this Augean stable, this
Pandemonium, this tangle of crime, filth, and pestilence in the centre
of the second city of the kingdom. An extended examination of the
lowest districts of other cities never revealed anything half so bad,
either in intensity of moral and physical infection, nor in
comparative density of population. In this quarter most of the houses
have been declared by the Court of Guild ruinous and unfit for
habitation, but precisely these are the most densely populated,
because, according to the law, no rent can be demanded for them."
The great manufacturing district in the centre of the British Islands,
the thickly peopled stretch of West Yorkshire and South Lancashire, with
its numerous factory towns, yields nothing to the other great
manufacturing centres. The woollen district of the West Riding of
Yorkshire is a charming region, a beautiful green hill country, whose
elevations grow more rugged towards the West until they reach their
highest point in the bold ridge of Blackstone Edge, the watershed between
the Irish Sea and the German Ocean. The valleys of the Aire, along which
stretches Leeds, and of the Calder, through which the Manchester-Leeds
railway runs, are among the most attractive in England, and are strewn in
all directions with the factories, villages, and towns. The houses of
rough grey stone look so neat and clean in comparison with the blackened
brick buildings of Lancashire, that it is a pleasure to look at them. But
on coming into the towns themselves, one finds little to rejoice over.
Leeds lies as the _Artisan_ describes it, and as I found confirmed upon
examination: "on a gentle slope that descends into the valley of the
Aire. This stream flows through the city for about a mile-and-a-half and
is exposed to violent floods during thaws or heavy rain. The higher
western portions of the city are clean, for such a large town. But the
low-lying districts along the river and its tributary becks are narrow,
dirty, and enough in themselves to shorten the lives of the inhabitants,
especially of little children. Added to this, the disgusting state of
the working-men's districts about Kirkgate, Marsh Lane, Cross Street and
Richmond Road, which is chiefly attributable to their unpaved, drainless
streets, irregular architecture, numerous courts and alleys, and total
lack of the most ordinary means of cleanliness, all this taken together
is explanation enough of the excessive mortality in these unhappy abodes
of filthy misery. In consequence of the overflows of the Aire" (which,
it must be added, like all other rivers in the service of manufacture,
flows into the city at one end clear and transparent, and flows out at
the other end thick, black, and foul, smelling of all possible refuse),
"the houses and cellars are often so full of water that they have to be
pumped out. And at such times the water rises, even where there are
sewers, out of them into cellars, {40a} engenders miasmatic vapours
strongly impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, and leaves a disgusting
residuum highly injurious to health. During the spring-floods of 1839
the action of such a choking of the sewers was so injurious, that,
according to the report of the Registrar of Births and Deaths for this
part of the town, there were three deaths to two births, whereas in the
same three months, in every other part of the town, there were three
births to two deaths. Other thickly populated districts are without any
sewers whatsoever, or so badly provided as to derive no benefit from
them. In some rows of houses the cellars are seldom dry; in certain
districts there are several streets covered with soft mud a foot deep.
The inhabitants have made vain attempts from time to time to repair these
streets with shovelfuls of cinders, but in spite of all such attempts,
dung-heaps, and pools of dirty water emptied from the houses, fill all
the holes until wind and sun dry them up. {40b} An ordinary cottage in
Leeds occupies not more than five yards square of land, and usually
consists of a cellar, a living room, and one sleeping-room. These
contracted dwellings, filled day and night with human beings, are another
point dangerous alike to the morals and the health of the inhabitants."
And how greatly these cottages are crowded, the Report on the Health of
the Working-Classes, quoted above, bears testimony: "In Leeds we found
brothers and sisters, and lodgers of both sexes, sharing the parents'
sleeping-room, whence arise consequences at the contemplation of which
human feeling shudders."
So, too, Bradford, which, but seven miles from Leeds at the junction of
several valleys, lies upon the banks of a small, coal-black,
foul-smelling stream. On week-days the town is enveloped in a grey cloud
of coal smoke, but on a fine Sunday it offers a superb picture, when
viewed from the surrounding heights. Yet within reigns the same filth
and discomfort as in Leeds. The older portions of the town are built
upon steep hillsides, and are narrow and irregular. In the lanes,
alleys, and courts lie filth and _debris_ in heaps; the houses are
ruinous, dirty, and miserable, and in the immediate vicinity of the river
and the valley bottom I found many a one, whose ground-floor, half-buried
in the hillside, was totally abandoned. In general, the portions of the
valley bottom in which working-men's cottages have crowded between the
tall factories, are among the worst built and dirtiest districts of the
whole town. In the newer portions of this, as of every other factory
town, the cottages are more regular, being built in rows, but they share
here, too, all the evils incident to the customary method of providing
working-men's dwellings, evils of which we shall have occasions to speak
more particularly in discussing Manchester. The same is true of the
remaining towns of the West Riding, especially of Barnsley, Halifax and
Huddersfield. The last named, the handsomest by far of all the factory
towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire, by reason of its charming situation
and modern architecture, has yet its bad quarter; for a committee
appointed by a meeting of citizens to survey the town, reported August
5th, 1844: "It is notorious that in Huddersfield whole streets and many
lanes and courts are neither paved nor supplied with sewers nor other
drains; that in them refuse, _debris_, and filth of every sort lies
accumulating, festers and rots, and that, nearly everywhere, stagnant
water accumulates in pools, in consequence of which the adjoining
dwellings must inevitably be bad and filthy, so that in such places
diseases arise and threaten the health of the whole town."
If we cross Blackstone Edge or penetrate it with the railroad, we enter
upon that classic soil on which English manufacture has achieved its
masterwork and from which all labour movements emanate, namely, South
Lancashire with its central city Manchester. Again we have beautiful
hill country, sloping gently from the watershed westwards towards the
Irish Sea, with the charming green valleys of the Ribble, the Irwell, the
Mersey, and their tributaries, a country which, a hundred years ago
chiefly swamp land, thinly populated, is now sown with towns and
villages, and is the most densely populated strip of country in England.
In Lancashire, and especially in Manchester, English manufacture finds at
once its starting point and its centre. The Manchester Exchange is the
thermometer for all the fluctuations of trade. The modern art of
manufacture has reached its perfection in Manchester. In the cotton
industry of South Lancashire, the application of the forces of Nature,
the superseding of hand labour by machinery (especially by the power-loom
and the self-acting mule), and the division of labour, are seen at the
highest point; and, if we recognise in these three elements that which is
characteristic of modern manufacture, we must confess that the cotton
industry has remained in advance of all other branches of industry from
the beginning down to the present day. The effects of modern manufacture
upon the working-class must necessarily develop here most freely and
perfectly, and the manufacturing proletariat present itself in its
fullest classic perfection. The degradation to which the application of
steam-power, machinery and the division of labour reduce the working-man,
and the attempts of the proletariat to rise above this abasement, must
likewise be carried to the highest point and with the fullest
consciousness. Hence because Manchester is the classic type of a modern
manufacturing town, and because I know it as intimately as my own native
town, more intimately than most of its residents know it, we shall make a
longer stay here.
The towns surrounding Manchester vary little from the central city, so
far as the working-people's quarters are concerned, except that the
working-class forms, if possible, a larger proportion of their
population. These towns are purely industrial and conduct all their
business through Manchester upon which they are in every respect
dependent, whence they are inhabited only by working-men and petty
tradesmen, while Manchester has a very considerable commercial
population, especially of commission and "respectable" retail dealers.
Hence Bolton, Preston, Wigan, Bury, Rochdale, Middleton, Heywood, Oldham,
Ashton, Stalybridge, Stockport, etc., though nearly all towns of thirty,
fifty, seventy to ninety thousand inhabitants, are almost wholly working-
people's districts, interspersed only with factories, a few thoroughfares
lined with shops, and a few lanes along which the gardens and houses of
the manufacturers are scattered like villas. The towns themselves are
badly and irregularly built with foul courts, lanes, and back alleys,
reeking of coal smoke, and especially dingy from the originally bright
red brick, turned black with time, which is here the universal building
material. Cellar dwellings are general here; wherever it is in any way
possible, these subterranean dens are constructed, and a very
considerable portion of the population dwells in them.
Among the worst of these towns after Preston and Oldham is Bolton, eleven
miles north-west of Manchester. It has, so far as I have been able to
observe in my repeated visits, but one main street, a very dirty one,
Deansgate, which serves as a market, and is even in the finest weather a
dark, unattractive hole in spite of the fact that, except for the
factories, its sides are formed by low one and two-storied houses. Here,
as everywhere, the older part of the town is especially ruinous and
miserable. A dark-coloured body of water, which leaves the beholder in
doubt whether it is a brook or a long string of stagnant puddles, flows
through the town and contributes its share to the total pollution of the
air, by no means pure without it.
There is Stockport, too, which lies on the Cheshire side of the Mersey,
but belongs nevertheless to the manufacturing district of Manchester. It
lies in a narrow valley along the Mersey, so that the streets slope down
a steep hill on one side and up an equally steep one on the other, while
the railway from Manchester to Birmingham passes over a high viaduct
above the city and the whole valley. Stockport is renowned throughout
the entire district as one of the duskiest, smokiest holes, and looks,
indeed, especially when viewed from the viaduct, excessively repellent.
But far more repulsive are the cottages and cellar dwellings of the
working-class, which stretch in long rows through all parts of the town
from the valley bottom to the crest of the hill. I do not remember to
have seen so many cellars used as dwellings in any other town of this
district.
A few miles north-east of Stockport is Ashton-under-Lyne, one of the
newest factory towns of this region. It stands on the slope of a hill at
the foot of which are the canal and the river Tame, and is, in general,
built on the newer, more regular plan. Five or six parallel streets
stretch along the hill intersected at right angles by others leading down
into the valley. By this method, the factories would be excluded from
the town proper, even if the proximity of the river and the canal-way did
not draw them all into the valley where they stand thickly crowded,
belching forth black smoke from their chimneys. To this arrangement
Ashton owes a much more attractive appearance than that of most factory
towns; the streets are broad and cleaner, the cottages look new, bright
red, and comfortable. But the modern system of building cottages for
working-men has its own disadvantages; every street has its concealed
back lane to which a narrow paved path leads, and which is all the
dirtier. And, although I saw no buildings, except a few on entering,
which could have been more than fifty years old, there are even in Ashton
streets in which the cottages are getting bad, where the bricks in the
house-corners are no longer firm but shift about, in which the walls have
cracks and will not hold the chalk whitewash inside; streets, whose
dirty, smoke-begrimed aspect is nowise different from that of the other
towns of the district, except that in Ashton, this is the exception, not
the rule.
A mile eastward lies Stalybridge, also on the Tame. In coming over the
hill from Ashton, the traveller has, at the top, both right and left,
fine large gardens with superb villa-like houses in their midst, built
usually in the Elizabethan style, which is to the Gothic precisely what
the Anglican Church is to the Apostolic Roman Catholic. A hundred paces
farther and Stalybridge shows itself in the valley, in sharp contrast
with the beautiful country seats, in sharp contrast even with the modest
cottages of Ashton! Stalybridge lies in a narrow, crooked ravine, much
narrower even than the valley at Stockport, and both sides of this ravine
are occupied by an irregular group of cottages, houses, and mills. On
entering, the very first cottages are narrow, smoke-begrimed, old and
ruinous; and as the first houses, so the whole town. A few streets lie
in the narrow valley bottom, most of them run criss-cross, pell-mell, up
hill and down, and in nearly all the houses, by reason of this sloping
situation, the ground floor is half-buried in the earth; and what
multitudes of courts, back lanes, and remote nooks arise out of this
confused way of building may be seen from the hills, whence one has the
town, here and there, in a bird's-eye view almost at one's feet. Add to
this the shocking filth, and the repulsive effect of Stalybridge, in
spite of its pretty surroundings, may be readily imagined.
But enough of these little towns. Each has its own peculiarities, but in
general, the working-people live in them just as in Manchester. Hence I
have especially sketched only their peculiar construction, and would
observe, that all more general observations as to the condition of the
labouring population in Manchester are fully applicable to these
surrounding towns as well.
Manchester lies at the foot of the southern slope of a range of hills,
which stretch hither from Oldham, their last peak, Kersallmoor, being at
once the racecourse and the Mons Sacer of Manchester. Manchester proper
lies on the left bank of the Irwell, between that stream and the two
smaller ones, the Irk and the Medlock, which here empty into the Irwell.
On the left bank of the Irwell, bounded by a sharp curve of the river,
lies Salford, and farther westward Pendleton; northward from the Irwell
lie Upper and Lower Broughton; northward of the Irk, Cheetham Hill; south
of the Medlock lies Hulme; farther east Chorlton on Medlock; still
farther, pretty well to the east of Manchester, Ardwick. The whole
assemblage of buildings is commonly called Manchester, and contains about
four hundred thousand inhabitants, rather more than less. The town
itself is peculiarly built, so that a person may live in it for years,
and go in and out daily without coming into contact with a
working-people's quarter or even with workers, that is, so long as he
confines himself to his business or to pleasure walks. This arises
chiefly from the fact, that by unconscious tacit agreement, as well as
with outspoken conscious determination, the working-people's quarters are
sharply separated from the sections of the city reserved for the middle-
class; or, if this does not succeed, they are concealed with the cloak of
charity. Manchester contains, at its heart, a rather extended commercial
district, perhaps half a mile long and about as broad, and consisting
almost wholly of offices and warehouses. Nearly the whole district is
abandoned by dwellers, and is lonely and deserted at night; only watchmen
and policemen traverse its narrow lanes with their dark lanterns. This
district is cut through by certain main thoroughfares upon which the vast
traffic concentrates, and in which the ground level is lined with
brilliant shops. In these streets the upper floors are occupied, here
and there, and there is a good deal of life upon them until late at
night. With the exception of this commercial district, all Manchester
proper, all Salford and Hulme, a great part of Pendleton and Chorlton,
two-thirds of Ardwick, and single stretches of Cheetham Hill and
Broughton are all unmixed working-people's quarters, stretching like a
girdle, averaging a mile and a half in breadth, around the commercial
district. Outside, beyond this girdle, lives the upper and middle
bourgeoisie, the middle bourgeoisie in regularly laid out streets in the
vicinity of the working quarters, especially in Chorlton and the lower
lying portions of Cheetham Hill; the upper bourgeoisie in remoter villas
with gardens in Chorlton and Ardwick, or on the breezy heights of
Cheetham Hill, Broughton, and Pendleton, in free, wholesome country air,
in fine, comfortable homes, passed once every half or quarter hour by
omnibuses going into the city. And the finest part of the arrangement is
this, that the members of this money aristocracy can take the shortest
road through the middle of all the labouring districts to their places of
business, without ever seeing that they are in the midst of the grimy
misery that lurks to the right and the left. For the thoroughfares
leading from the Exchange in all directions out of the city are lined, on
both sides, with an almost unbroken series of shops, and are so kept in
the hands of the middle and lower bourgeoisie, which, out of
self-interest, cares for a decent and cleanly external appearance and
_can_ care for it. True, these shops bear some relation to the districts
which lie behind them, and are more elegant in the commercial and
residential quarters than when they hide grimy working-men's dwellings;
but they suffice to conceal from the eyes of the wealthy men and women of
strong stomachs and weak nerves the misery and grime which form the
complement of their wealth. So, for instance, Deansgate, which leads
from the Old Church directly southward, is lined first with mills and
warehouses, then with second-rate shops and alehouses; farther south,
when it leaves the commercial district, with less inviting shops, which
grow dirtier and more interrupted by beerhouses and gin palaces the
farther one goes, until at the southern end the appearance of the shops
leaves no doubt that workers and workers only are their customers. So
Market Street running south-east from the Exchange; at first brilliant
shops of the best sort, with counting-houses or warehouses above; in the
continuation, Piccadilly, immense hotels and warehouses; in the farther
continuation, London Road, in the neighbourhood of the Medlock,
factories, beerhouses, shops for the humbler bourgeoisie and the working
population; and from this point onward, large gardens and villas of the
wealthier merchants and manufacturers. In this way any one who knows
Manchester can infer the adjoining districts, from the appearance of the
thoroughfare, but one is seldom in a position to catch from the street a
glimpse of the real labouring districts. I know very well that this
hypocritical plan is more or less common to all great cities; I know,
too, that the retail dealers are forced by the nature of their business
to take possession of the great highways; I know that there are more good
buildings than bad ones upon such streets everywhere, and that the value
of land is greater near them than in remoter districts; but at the same
time I have never seen so systematic a shutting out of the working-class
from the thoroughfares, so tender a concealment of everything which might
affront the eye and the nerves of the bourgeoisie, as in Manchester. And
yet, in other respects, Manchester is less built according to a plan,
after official regulations, is more an outgrowth of accident, than any
other city; and when I consider in this connection the eager assurances
of the middle-class, that the working-class is doing famously, I cannot
help feeling that the liberal manufacturers, the "Big Wigs" of
Manchester, are not so innocent after all, in the matter of this
sensitive method of construction.
I may mention just here that the mills almost all adjoin the rivers or
the different canals that ramify throughout the city, before I proceed at
once to describe the labouring quarters. First of all, there is the old
town of Manchester, which lies between the northern boundary of the
commercial district and the Irk. Here the streets, even the better ones,
are narrow and winding, as Todd Street, Long Millgate, Withy Grove, and
Shude Hill, the houses dirty, old, and tumble-down, and the construction
of the side streets utterly horrible. Going from the Old Church to Long
Millgate, the stroller has at once a row of old-fashioned houses at the
right, of which not one has kept its original level; these are remnants
of the old pre-manufacturing Manchester, whose former inhabitants have
removed with their descendants into better-built districts, and have left
the houses, which were not good enough for them, to a population strongly
mixed with Irish blood. Here one is in an almost undisguised working-
men's quarter, for even the shops and beerhouses hardly take the trouble
to exhibit a trifling degree of cleanliness. But all this is nothing in
comparison with the courts and lanes which lie behind, to which access
can be gained only through covered passages, in which no two human beings
can pass at the same time. Of the irregular cramming together of
dwellings in ways which defy all rational plan, of the tangle in which
they are crowded literally one upon the other, it is impossible to convey
an idea. And it is not the buildings surviving from the old times of
Manchester which are to blame for this; the confusion has only recently
reached its height when every scrap of space left by the old way of
building has been filled up and patched over until not a foot of land is
left to be further occupied.
The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and between fifteen and
thirty feet high. On this declivitous hillside there are planted three
rows of houses, of which the lowest rise directly out of the river, while
the front walls of the highest stand on the crest of the hill in Long
Millgate. Among them are mills on the river, in short, the method of
construction is as crowded and disorderly here as in the lower part of
Long Millgate. Right and left a multitude of covered passages lead from
the main street into numerous courts, and he who turns in thither gets
into a filth and disgusting grime, the equal of which is not to be
found--especially in the courts which lead down to the Irk, and which
contain unqualifiedly the most horrible dwellings which I have yet
beheld. In one of these courts there stands directly at the entrance, at
the end of the covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the
inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through
foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement. This is the first court on
the Irk above Ducie Bridge--in case any one should care to look into it.
Below it on the river there are several tanneries which fill the whole
neighbourhood with the stench of animal putrefaction. Below Ducie Bridge
the only entrance to most of the houses is by means of narrow, dirty
stairs and over heaps of refuse and filth. The first court below Ducie
Bridge, known as Allen's Court, was in such a state at the time of the
cholera that the sanitary police ordered it evacuated, swept, and
disinfected with chloride of lime. Dr. Kay gives a terrible description
of the state of this court at that time. {49} Since then, it seems to
have been partially torn away and rebuilt; at least looking down from
Ducie Bridge, the passer-by sees several ruined walls and heaps of debris
with some newer houses. The view from this bridge, mercifully concealed
from mortals of small stature by a parapet as high as a man, is
characteristic for the whole district. At the bottom flows, or rather
stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, full of
debris and refuse, which it deposits on the shallower right bank. In dry
weather, a long string of the most disgusting, blackish-green, slime
pools are left standing on this bank, from the depths of which bubbles of
miasmatic gas constantly arise and give forth a stench unendurable even
on the bridge forty or fifty feet above the surface of the stream. But
besides this, the stream itself is checked every few paces by high weirs,
behind which slime and refuse accumulate and rot in thick masses. Above
the bridge are tanneries, bonemills, and gasworks, from which all drains
and refuse find their way into the Irk, which receives further the
contents of all the neighbouring sewers and privies. It may be easily
imagined, therefore, what sort of residue the stream deposits. Below the
bridge you look upon the piles of debris, the refuse, filth, and offal
from the courts on the steep left bank; here each house is packed close
behind its neighbour and a piece of each is visible, all black, smoky,
crumbling, ancient, with broken panes and window frames. The background
is furnished by old barrack-like factory buildings. On the lower right
bank stands a long row of houses and mills; the second house being a ruin
without a roof, piled with debris; the third stands so low that the
lowest floor is uninhabitable, and therefore without windows or doors.
Here the background embraces the pauper burial-ground, the station of the
Liverpool and Leeds railway, and, in the rear of this, the Workhouse, the
"Poor-Law Bastille" of Manchester, which, like a citadel, looks
threateningly down from behind its high walls and parapets on the
hilltop, upon the working-people's quarter below.
Above Ducie Bridge, the left bank grows more flat and the right bank
steeper, but the condition of the dwellings on both banks grows worse
rather than better. He who turns to the left here from the main street,
Long Millgate, is lost; he wanders from one court to another, turns
countless corners, passes nothing but narrow, filthy nooks and alleys,
until after a few minutes he has lost all clue, and knows not whither to
turn. Everywhere half or wholly ruined buildings, some of them actually
uninhabited, which means a great deal here; rarely a wooden or stone
floor to be seen in the houses, almost uniformly broken, ill-fitting
windows and doors, and a state of filth! Everywhere heaps of debris,
refuse, and offal; standing pools for gutters, and a stench which alone
would make it impossible for a human being in any degree civilised to
live in such a district. The newly-built extension of the Leeds railway,
which crosses the Irk here, has swept away some of these courts and
lanes, laying others completely open to view. Immediately under the
railway bridge there stands a court, the filth and horrors of which
surpass all the others by far, just because it was hitherto so shut off,
so secluded that the way to it could not be found without a good deal of
trouble. I should never have discovered it myself, without the breaks
made by the railway, though I thought I knew this whole region
thoroughly. Passing along a rough bank, among stakes and washing-lines,
one penetrates into this chaos of small one-storied, one-roomed huts, in
most of which there is no artificial floor; kitchen, living and sleeping-
room all in one. In such a hole, scarcely five feet long by six broad, I
found two beds--and such bedsteads and beds!--which, with a staircase and
chimney-place, exactly filled the room. In several others I found
absolutely nothing, while the door stood open, and the inhabitants leaned
against it. Everywhere before the doors refuse and offal; that any sort
of pavement lay underneath could not be seen but only felt, here and
there, with the feet. This whole collection of cattle-sheds for human
beings was surrounded on two sides by houses and a factory, and on the
third by the river, and besides the narrow stair up the bank, a narrow
doorway alone led out into another almost equally ill-built, ill-kept
labyrinth of dwellings.
Enough! The whole side of the Irk is built in this way, a planless,
knotted chaos of houses, more or less on the verge of uninhabitableness,
whose unclean interiors fully correspond with their filthy external
surroundings. And how could the people be clean with no proper
opportunity for satisfying the most natural and ordinary wants? Privies
are so rare here that they are either filled up every day, or are too
remote for most of the inhabitants to use. How can people wash when they
have only the dirty Irk water at hand, while pumps and water pipes can be
found in decent parts of the city alone? In truth, it cannot be charged
to the account of these helots of modern society if their dwellings are
not more cleanly than the pig-sties which are here and there to be seen
among them. The landlords are not ashamed to let dwellings like the six
or seven cellars on the quay directly below Scotland Bridge, the floors
of which stand at least two feet below the low-water level of the Irk
that flows not six feet away from them; or like the upper floor of the
corner-house on the opposite shore directly above the bridge, where the
ground floor, utterly uninhabitable, stands deprived of all fittings for
doors and windows, a case by no means rare in this region, when this open
ground floor is used as a privy by the whole neighbourhood for want of
other facilities!
If we leave the Irk and penetrate once more on the opposite side from
Long Millgate into the midst of the working-men's dwellings, we shall
come into a somewhat newer quarter, which stretches from St. Michael's
Church to Withy Grove and Shude Hill. Here there is somewhat better
order. In place of the chaos of buildings, we find at least long
straight lanes and alleys or courts, built according to a plan and
usually square. But if, in the former case, every house was built
according to caprice, here each lane and court is so built, without
reference to the situation of the adjoining ones. The lanes run now in
this direction, now in that, while every two minutes the wanderer gets
into a blind alley, or, on turning a corner, finds himself back where he
started from; certainly no one who has not lived a considerable time in
this labyrinth can find his way through it.
If I may use the word at all in speaking of this district, the
ventilation of these streets and courts is, in consequence of this
confusion, quite as imperfect as in the Irk region; and if this quarter
may, nevertheless, be said to have some advantage over that of the Irk,
the houses being newer and the streets occasionally having gutters,
nearly every house has, on the other hand, a cellar dwelling, which is
rarely found in the Irk district, by reason of the greater age and more
careless construction of the houses. As for the rest, the filth, debris,
and offal heaps, and the pools in the streets are common to both
quarters, and in the district now under discussion, another feature most
injurious to the cleanliness of the inhabitants, is the multitude of pigs
walking about in all the alleys, rooting into the offal heaps, or kept
imprisoned in small pens. Here, as in most of the working-men's quarters
of Manchester, the pork-raisers rent the courts and build pig-pens in
them. In almost every court one or even several such pens may be found,
into which the inhabitants of the court throw all refuse and offal,
whence the swine grow fat; and the atmosphere, confined on all four
sides, is utterly corrupted by putrefying animal and vegetable
substances. Through this quarter, a broad and measurably decent street
has been cut, Millers Street, and the background has been pretty
successfully concealed. But if any one should be led by curiosity to
pass through one of the numerous passages which lead into the courts, he
will find this piggery repeated at every twenty paces.
Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I
am forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from
black enough to convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and
uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness,
ventilation, and health which characterise the construction of this
single district, containing at least twenty to thirty thousand
inhabitants. And such a district exists in the heart of the second city
of England, the first manufacturing city of the world. If any one wishes
to see in how little space a human being can move, how little air--and
_such_ air!--he can breathe, how little of civilisation he may share and
yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither. True, this is the _Old_
Town, and the people of Manchester emphasise the fact whenever any one
mentions to them the frightful condition of this Hell upon Earth; but
what does that prove? Everything which here arouses horror and
indignation is of recent origin, belongs to the _industrial epoch_. The
couple of hundred houses, which belong to old Manchester, have been long
since abandoned by their original inhabitants; the industrial epoch alone
has crammed into them the swarms of workers whom they now shelter; the
industrial epoch alone has built up every spot between these old houses
to win a covering for the masses whom it has conjured hither from the
agricultural districts and from Ireland; the industrial epoch alone
enables the owners of these cattle-sheds to rent them for high prices to
human beings, to plunder the poverty of the workers, to undermine the
health of thousands, in order that they _alone_, the owners, may grow
rich. In the industrial epoch alone has it become possible that the
worker scarcely freed from feudal servitude could be used as mere
material, a mere chattel; that he must let himself be crowded into a
dwelling too bad for every other, which he for his hard-earned wages buys
the right to let go utterly to ruin. This manufacture has achieved,
which, without these workers, this poverty, this slavery could not have
lived. True, the original construction of this quarter was bad, little
good could have been made out of it; but, have the landowners, has the
municipality done anything to improve it when rebuilding? On the
contrary, wherever a nook or corner was free, a house has been run up;
where a superfluous passage remained, it has been built up; the value of
land rose with the blossoming out of manufacture, and the more it rose,
the more madly was the work of building up carried on, without reference
to the health or comfort of the inhabitants, with sole reference to the
highest possible profit on the principle that _no hole is so bad but that
some poor creature must take it who can pay for nothing better_. However,
it is the Old Town, and with this reflection the bourgeoisie is
comforted. Let us see, therefore, how much better it is in the New Town.
The New Town, known also as Irish Town, stretches up a hill of clay,
beyond the Old Town, between the Irk and St. George's Road. Here all the
features of a city are lost. Single rows of houses or groups of streets
stand, here and there, like little villages on the naked, not even grass-
grown clay soil; the houses, or rather cottages, are in bad order, never
repaired, filthy, with damp, unclean, cellar dwellings; the lanes are
neither paved nor supplied with sewers, but harbour numerous colonies of
swine penned in small sties or yards, or wandering unrestrained through
the neighbourhood. The mud in the streets is so deep that there is never
a chance, except in the dryest weather, of walking without sinking into
it ankle deep at every step. In the vicinity of St. George's Road, the
separate groups of buildings approach each other more closely, ending in
a continuation of lanes, blind alleys, back lanes and courts, which grow
more and more crowded and irregular the nearer they approach the heart of
the town. True, they are here oftener paved or supplied with paved
sidewalks and gutters; but the filth, the bad order of the houses, and
especially of the cellars, remains the same.
It may not be out of place to make some general observations just here as
to the customary construction of working-men's quarters in Manchester. We
have seen how in the Old Town pure accident determined the grouping of
the houses in general. Every house is built without reference to any
other, and the scraps of space between them are called courts for want of
another name. In the somewhat newer portions of the same quarter, and in
other working-men's quarters, dating from the early days of industrial
activity, a somewhat more orderly arrangement may be found. The space
between two streets is divided into more regular, usually square courts.
These courts were built in this way from the beginning, and communicate
with the streets by means of covered passages. If the totally planless
construction is injurious to the health of the workers by preventing
ventilation, this method of shutting them up in courts surrounded on all
sides by buildings is far more so. The air simply cannot escape; the
chimneys of the houses are the sole drains for the imprisoned atmosphere
of the courts, and they serve the purpose only so long as fire is kept
burning. {55} Moreover, the houses surrounding such courts are usually
built back to back, having the rear wall in common; and this alone
suffices to prevent any sufficient through ventilation. And, as the
police charged with care of the streets, does not trouble itself about
the condition of these courts, as everything quietly lies where it is
thrown, there is no cause for wonder at the filth and heaps of ashes and
offal to be found here. I have been in courts, in Millers Street, at
least half a foot below the level of the thoroughfares, and without the
slightest drainage for the water that accumulates in them in rainy
weather! More recently another different method of building was adopted,
and has now become general. Working-men's cottages are almost never
built singly, but always by the dozen or score; a single contractor
building up one or two streets at a time. These are then arranged as
follows: One front is formed of cottages of the best class, so fortunate
as to possess a back door and small court, and these command the highest
rent. In the rear of these cottages runs a narrow alley, the back
street, built up at both ends, into which either a narrow roadway or a
covered passage leads from one side. The cottages which face this back
street command least rent, and are most neglected. These have their rear
walls in common with the third row of cottages which face a second
street, and command less rent than the first row and more than the
second.
By this method of construction, comparatively good ventilation can be
obtained for the first row of cottages, and the third row is no worse off
than in the former method. The middle row, on the other hand, is at
least as badly ventilated as the houses in the courts, and the back
street is always in the same filthy, disgusting condition as they. The
contractors prefer this method because it saves them space, and furnishes
the means of fleecing better paid workers through the higher rents of the
cottages in the first and third rows. These three different forms of
cottage building are found all over Manchester and throughout Lancashire
and Yorkshire, often mixed up together, but usually separate enough to
indicate the relative age of parts of towns. The third system, that of
the back alleys, prevails largely in the great working-men's district
east of St. George's Road and Ancoats Street, and is the one most often
found in the other working-men's quarters of Manchester and its suburbs.
In the last-mentioned broad district included under the name Ancoats,
stand the largest mills of Manchester lining the canals, colossal six and
seven-storied buildings towering with their slender chimneys far above
the low cottages of the workers. The population of the district
consists, therefore, chiefly of mill hands, and in the worst streets, of
hand-weavers. The streets nearest the heart of the town are the oldest,
and consequently the worst; they are, however, paved, and supplied with
drains. Among them I include those nearest to and parallel with Oldham
Road and Great Ancoats Street. Farther to the north-east lie many newly-
built-up streets; here the cottages look neat and cleanly, doors and
windows are new and freshly painted, the rooms within newly whitewashed;
the streets themselves are better aired, the vacant building lots between
them larger and more numerous. But this can be said of a minority of the
houses only, while cellar dwellings are to be found under almost every
cottage; many streets are unpaved and without sewers; and, worse than
all, this neat appearance is all pretence, a pretence which vanishes
within the first ten years. For the construction of the cottages
individually is no less to be condemned than the plan of the streets. All
such cottages look neat and substantial at first; their massive brick
walls deceive the eye, and, on passing through a _newly-built_ working-
men's street, without remembering the back alleys and the construction of
the houses themselves, one is inclined to agree with the assertion of the
Liberal manufacturers that the working population is nowhere so well
housed as in England. But on closer examination, it becomes evident that
the walls of these cottages are as thin as it is possible to make them.
The outer walls, those of the cellar, which bear the weight of the ground
floor and roof, are one whole brick thick at most, the bricks lying with
their long sides touching; but I have seen many a cottage of the same
height, some in process of building, whose outer walls were but one-half
brick thick, the bricks lying not sidewise but lengthwise, their narrow
ends touching. The object of this is to spare material, but there is
also another reason for it; namely, the fact that the contractors never
own the land but lease it, according to the English custom, for twenty,
thirty, forty, fifty, or ninety-nine years, at the expiration of which
time it falls, with everything upon it, back into the possession of the
original holder, who pays nothing in return for improvements upon it. The
improvements are therefore so calculated by the lessee as to be worth as
little as possible at the expiration of the stipulated term. And as such
cottages are often built but twenty or thirty years before the expiration
of the term, it may easily be imagined that the contractors make no
unnecessary expenditures upon them. Moreover, these contractors, usually
carpenters and builders, or manufacturers, spend little or nothing in
repairs, partly to avoid diminishing their rent receipts, and partly in
view of the approaching surrender of the improvement to the landowner;
while in consequence of commercial crises and the loss of work that
follows them, whole streets often stand empty, the cottages falling
rapidly into ruin and uninhabitableness. It is calculated in general
that working-men's cottages last only forty years on the average. This
sounds strangely enough when one sees the beautiful, massive walls of
newly-built ones, which seem to give promise of lasting a couple of
centuries; but the fact remains that the niggardliness of the original
expenditure, the neglect of all repairs, the frequent periods of
emptiness, the constant change of inhabitants, and the destruction
carried on by the dwellers during the final ten years, usually Irish
families, who do not hesitate to use the wooden portions for
fire-wood--all this, taken together, accomplishes the complete ruin of
the cottages by the end of forty years. Hence it comes that Ancoats,
built chiefly since the sudden growth of manufacture, chiefly indeed
within the present century, contains a vast number of ruinous houses,
most of them being, in fact, in the last stages of inhabitableness. I
will not dwell upon the amount of capital thus wasted, the small
additional expenditure upon the original improvement and upon repairs
which would suffice to keep this whole district clean, decent, and
inhabitable for years together. I have to deal here with the state of
the houses and their inhabitants, and it must be admitted that no more
injurious and demoralising method of housing the workers has yet been
discovered than precisely this. The working-man is constrained to occupy
such ruinous dwellings because he cannot pay for others, and because
there are no others in the vicinity of his mill; perhaps, too, because
they belong to the employer, who engages him only on condition of his
taking such a cottage. The calculation with reference to the forty
years' duration of the cottage is, of course, not always perfectly
strict; for, if the dwellings are in a thickly-built-up portion of the
town, and there is a good prospect of finding steady occupants for them,
while the ground rent is high, the contractors do a little something to
keep the cottages inhabitable after the expiration of the forty years.
They never do anything more, however, than is absolutely unavoidable, and
the dwellings so repaired are the worst of all. Occasionally when an
epidemic threatens, the otherwise sleepy conscience of the sanitary
police is a little stirred, raids are made into the working-men's
districts, whole rows of cellars and cottages are closed, as happened in
the case of several lanes near Oldham Road; but this does not last long:
the condemned cottages soon find occupants again, the owners are much
better off by letting them, and the sanitary police won't come again so
soon. These east and north-east sides of Manchester are the only ones on
which the bourgeoisie has not built, because ten or eleven months of the
year the west and south-west wind drives the smoke of all the factories
hither, and that the working-people alone may breathe.
Southward from Great Ancoats Street, lies a great, straggling, working-
men's quarter, a hilly, barren stretch of land, occupied by detached,
irregularly built rows of houses or squares, between these, empty
building lots, uneven, clayey, without grass and scarcely passable in wet
weather. The cottages are all filthy and old, and recall the New Town to
mind. The stretch cut through by the Birmingham railway is the most
thickly built-up and the worst. Here flows the Medlock with countless
windings through a valley, which is, in places, on a level with the
valley of the Irk. Along both sides of the stream, which is coal black,
stagnant and foul, stretches a broad belt of factories and working-men's
dwellings, the latter all in the worst condition. The bank is chiefly
declivitous and is built over to the water's edge, just as we saw along
the Irk; while the houses are equally bad, whether built on the
Manchester side or in Ardwick, Chorlton, or Hulme. But the most horrible
spot (if I should describe all the separate spots in detail I should
never come to the end) lies on the Manchester side, immediately south-
west of Oxford Road, and is known as Little Ireland. In a rather deep
hole, in a curve of the Medlock and surrounded on all four sides by tall
factories and high embankments, covered with buildings, stand two groups
of about two hundred cottages, built chiefly back to back, in which live
about four thousand human beings, most of them Irish. The cottages are
old, dirty, and of the smallest sort, the streets uneven, fallen into
ruts and in part without drains or pavement; masses of refuse, offal and
sickening filth lie among standing pools in all directions; the
atmosphere is poisoned by the effluvia from these, and laden and darkened
by the smoke of a dozen tall factory chimneys. A horde of ragged women
and children swarm about here, as filthy as the swine that thrive upon
the garbage heaps and in the puddles. In short, the whole rookery
furnishes such a hateful and repulsive spectacle as can hardly be
equalled in the worst court on the Irk. The race that lives in these
ruinous cottages, behind broken windows, mended with oilskin, sprung
doors, and rotten door-posts, or in dark, wet cellars, in measureless
filth and stench, in this atmosphere penned in as if with a purpose, this
race must really have reached the lowest stage of humanity. This is the
impression and the line of thought which the exterior of this district
forces upon the beholder. But what must one think when he hears that in
each of these pens, containing at most two rooms, a garret and perhaps a
cellar, on the average twenty human beings live; that in the whole
region, for each one hundred and twenty persons, one usually inaccessible
privy is provided; and that in spite of all the preachings of the
physicians, in spite of the excitement into which the cholera epidemic
plunged the sanitary police by reason of the condition of Little Ireland,
in spite of everything, in this year of grace 1844, it is in almost the
same state as in 1831! Dr. Kay asserts that not only the cellars but the
first floors of all the houses in this district are damp; that a number
of cellars once filled up with earth have now been emptied and are
occupied once more by Irish people; that in one cellar the water
constantly wells up through a hole stopped with clay, the cellar lying
below the river level, so that its occupant, a hand-loom weaver, had to
bale out the water from his dwelling every morning and pour it into the
street!
Farther down, on the left side of the Medlock, lies Hulme, which,
properly speaking, is one great working-people's district, the condition
of which coincides almost exactly with that of Ancoats; the more thickly
built-up regions chiefly bad and approaching ruin, the less populous of
more modern structure, but generally sunk in filth. On the other side of
the Medlock, in Manchester proper, lies a second great working-men's
district which stretches on both sides of Deansgate as far as the
business quarter, and in certain parts rivals the Old Town. Especially
in the immediate vicinity of the business quarter, between Bridge and
Quay Streets, Princess and Peter Streets, the crowded construction
exceeds in places the narrowest courts of the Old Town. Here are long,
narrow lanes between which run contracted, crooked courts and passages,
the entrances to which are so irregular that the explorer is caught in a
blind alley at every few steps, or comes out where he least expects to,
unless he knows every court and every alley exactly and separately.
According to Dr. Kay, the most demoralised class of all Manchester lived
in these ruinous and filthy districts, people whose occupations are
thieving and prostitution; and, to all appearance, his assertion is still
true at the present moment. When the sanitary police made its expedition
hither in 1831, it found the uncleanness as great as in Little Ireland or
along the Irk (that it is not much better to-day, I can testify); and
among other items, they found in Parliament Street for three hundred and
eighty persons, and in Parliament Passage for thirty thickly populated
houses, but a single privy.
If we cross the Irwell to Salford, we find on a peninsula formed by the
river, a town of eighty thousand inhabitants, which, properly speaking,
is one large working-men's quarter, penetrated by a single wide avenue.
Salford, once more important than Manchester, was then the leading town
of the surrounding district to which it still gives its name, Salford
Hundred. Hence it is that an old and therefore very unwholesome, dirty,
and ruinous locality is to be found here, lying opposite the Old Church
of Manchester, and in as bad a condition as the Old Town on the other
side of the Irwell. Farther away from the river lies the newer portion,
which is, however, already beyond the limit of its forty years of cottage
life, and therefore ruinous enough. All Salford is built in courts or
narrow lanes, so narrow, that they remind me of the narrowest I have ever
seen, the little lanes of Genoa. The average construction of Salford is
in this respect much worse than that of Manchester, and so, too, in
respect to cleanliness. If, in Manchester, the police, from time to
time, every six or ten years, makes a raid upon the working-people's
districts, closes the worst dwellings, and causes the filthiest spots in
these Augean stables to be cleansed, in Salford it seems to have done
absolutely nothing. The narrow side lanes and courts of Chapel Street,
Greengate, and Gravel Lane have certainly never been cleansed since they
were built. Of late, the Liverpool railway has been carried through the
middle of them, over a high viaduct, and has abolished many of the
filthiest nooks; but what does that avail? Whoever passes over this
viaduct and looks down, sees filth and wretchedness enough; and, if any
one takes the trouble to pass through these lanes, and glance through the
open doors and windows into the houses and cellars, he can convince
himself afresh with every step that the workers of Salford live in
dwellings in which cleanliness and comfort are impossible. Exactly the
same state of affairs is found in the more distant regions of Salford, in
Islington, along Regent Road, and back of the Bolton railway. The
working-men's dwellings between Oldfield Road and Cross Lane, where a
mass of courts and alleys are to be found in the worst possible state,
vie with the dwellings of the Old Town in filth and overcrowding. In
this district I found a man, apparently about sixty years old, living in
a cow stable. He had constructed a sort of chimney for his square pen,
which had neither windows, floor, nor ceiling, had obtained a bedstead
and lived there, though the rain dripped through his rotten roof. This
man was too old and weak for regular work, and supported himself by
removing manure with a hand-cart; the dung-heaps lay next door to his
palace!
Such are the various working-people's quarters of Manchester as I had
occasion to observe them personally during twenty months. If we briefly
formulate the result of our wanderings, we must admit that 350,000
working-people of Manchester and its environs live, almost all of them,
in wretched, damp, filthy cottages, that the streets which surround them
are usually in the most miserable and filthy condition, laid out without
the slightest reference to ventilation, with reference solely to the
profit secured by the contractor. In a word, we must confess that in the
working-men's dwellings of Manchester, no cleanliness, no convenience,
and consequently no comfortable family life is possible; that in such
dwellings only a physically degenerate race, robbed of all humanity,
degraded, reduced morally and physically to bestiality, could feel
comfortable and at home. And I am not alone in making this assertion. We
have seen that Dr. Kay gives precisely the same description; and, though
it is superfluous, I quote further the words of a Liberal, {63}
recognised and highly valued as an authority by the manufacturers, and a
fanatical opponent of all independent movements of the workers:
"As I passed through the dwellings of the mill hands in Irish Town,
Ancoats, and Little Ireland, I was only amazed that it is possible to
maintain a reasonable state of health in such homes. These towns, for in
extent and number of inhabitants they are towns, have been erected with
the utmost disregard of everything except the immediate advantage of the
speculating builder. A carpenter and builder unite to buy a series of
building sites (_i.e_., they lease them for a number of years), and cover
them with so-called houses. In one place we found a whole street
following the course of a ditch, because in this way deeper cellars could
be secured without the cost of digging, cellars not for storing wares or
rubbish, but for dwellings for human beings. _Not one house of this
street escaped the cholera_. In general, the streets of these suburbs
are unpaved, with a dung-heap or ditch in the middle; the houses are
built back to back, without ventilation or drainage, and whole families
are limited to a corner of a cellar or a garret." I have already
referred to the unusual activity which the sanitary police manifested
during the cholera visitation. When the epidemic was approaching, a
universal terror seized the bourgeoisie of the city. People remembered
the unwholesome dwellings of the poor, and trembled before the certainty
that each of these slums would become a centre for the plague, whence it
would spread desolation in all directions through the houses of the
propertied class. A Health Commission was appointed at once to
investigate these districts, and report upon their condition to the Town
Council. Dr. Kay, himself a member of this Commission, who visited in
person every separate police district except one, the eleventh, quotes
extracts from their reports: There were inspected, in all, 6,951
houses--naturally in Manchester proper alone, Salford and the other
suburbs being excluded. Of these, 6,565 urgently needed whitewashing
within; 960 were out of repair; 939 had insufficient drains; 1,435 were
damp; 452 were badly ventilated; 2,221 were without privies. Of the 687
streets inspected, 248 were unpaved, 53 but partially paved, 112
ill-ventilated, 352 containing standing pools, heaps of debris, refuse,
etc. To cleanse such an Augean stable before the arrival of the cholera
was, of course, out of the question. A few of the worst nooks were
therefore cleansed, and everything else left as before. In the cleansed
spots, as Little Ireland proves, the old filthy condition was naturally
restored in a couple of months. As to the internal condition of these
houses, the same Commission reports a state of things similar to that
which we have already met with in London, Edinburgh, and other cities.
{64}
It often happens that a whole Irish family is crowded into one bed; often
a heap of filthy straw or quilts of old sacking cover all in an
indiscriminate heap, where all alike are degraded by want, stolidity, and
wretchedness. Often the inspectors found, in a single house, two
families in two rooms. All slept in one, and used the other as a kitchen
and dining-room in common. Often more than one family lived in a single
damp cellar, in whose pestilent atmosphere twelve to sixteen persons were
crowded together. To these and other sources of disease must be added
that pigs were kept, and other disgusting things of the most revolting
kind were found.
We must add that many families, who had but one room for themselves,
receive boarders and lodgers in it, that such lodgers of both sexes by no
means rarely sleep in the same bed with the married couple; and that the
single case of a man and his wife and his adult sister-in-law sleeping in
one bed was found, according to the "Report concerning the sanitary
condition of the working-class," six times repeated in Manchester. Common
lodging-houses, too, are very numerous; Dr. Kay gives their number in
1831 at 267 in Manchester proper, and they must have increased greatly
since then. Each of these receives from twenty to thirty guests, so that
they shelter all told, nightly, from five to seven thousand human beings.
The character of the houses and their guests is the same as in other
cities. Five to seven beds in each room lie on the floor--without
bedsteads, and on these sleep, mixed indiscriminately, as many persons as
apply. What physical and moral atmosphere reigns in these holes I need
not state. Each of these houses is a focus of crime, the scene of deeds
against which human nature revolts, which would perhaps never have been
executed but for this forced centralisation of vice. {65} Gaskell gives
the number of persons living in cellars in Manchester proper as 20,000.
The _Weekly Dispatch_ gives the number, "according to official reports,"
as twelve per cent. of the working-class, which agrees with Gaskell's
number; the workers being estimated at 175,000, 21,000 would form twelve
per cent. of it. The cellar dwellings in the suburbs are at least as
numerous, so that the number of persons living in cellars in
Manchester--using its name in the broader sense--is not less than forty
to fifty thousand. So much for the dwellings of the workers in the
largest cities and towns. The manner in which the need of a shelter is
satisfied furnishes a standard for the manner in which all other
necessities are supplied. That in these filthy holes a ragged, ill-fed
population alone can dwell is a safe conclusion, and such is the fact.
The clothing of the working-people, in the majority of cases, is in a
very bad condition. The material used for it is not of the best adapted.
Wool and linen have almost vanished from the wardrobe of both sexes, and
cotton has taken their place. Shirts are made of bleached or coloured
cotton goods; the dresses of the women are chiefly of cotton print goods,
and woollen petticoats are rarely to be seen on the washline. The men
wear chiefly trousers of fustian or other heavy cotton goods, and jackets
or coats of the same. Fustian has become the proverbial costume of the
working-men, who are called "fustian jackets," and call themselves so in
contrast to the gentlemen who wear broadcloth, which latter words are
used as characteristic for the middle-class. When Feargus O'Connor, the
Chartist leader, came to Manchester during the insurrection of 1842, he
appeared, amidst the deafening applause of the working-men, in a fustian
suit of clothing. Hats are the universal head-covering in England, even
for working-men, hats of the most diverse forms, round, high,
broad-brimmed, narrow-brimmed, or without brims--only the younger men in
factory towns wearing caps. Any one who does not own a hat folds himself
a low, square paper cap.
The whole clothing of the working-class, even assuming it to be in good
condition, is little adapted to the climate. The damp air of England,
with its sudden changes of temperature, more calculated than any other to
give rise to colds, obliges almost the whole middle-class to wear flannel
next the skin, about the body, and flannel scarfs and shirts are in
almost universal use. Not only is the working-class deprived of this
precaution, it is scarcely ever in a position to use a thread of woollen
clothing; and the heavy cotton goods, though thicker, stiffer, and
heavier than woollen clothes, afford much less protection against cold
and wet, remain damp much longer because of their thickness and the
nature of the stuff, and have nothing of the compact density of fulled
woollen cloths. And, if a working-man once buys himself a woollen coat
for Sunday, he must get it from one of the cheap shops where he finds
bad, so-called "Devil's-dust" cloth, manufactured for sale and not for
use, and liable to tear or grow threadbare in a fortnight, or he must buy
of an old clothes'-dealer a half-worn coat which has seen its best days,
and lasts but a few weeks. Moreover, the working-man's clothing is, in
most cases, in bad condition, and there is the oft-recurring necessity
for placing the best pieces in the pawnbroker's shop. But among very
large numbers, especially among the Irish, the prevailing clothing
consists of perfect rags often beyond all mending, or so patched that the
original colour can no longer be detected. Yet the English and Anglo-
Irish go on patching, and have carried this art to a remarkable pitch,
putting wool or bagging on fustian, or the reverse--it's all the same to
them. But the true, transplanted Irish hardly ever patch except in the
extremest necessity, when the garment would otherwise fall apart.
Ordinarily the rags of the shirt protrude through the rents in the coat
or trousers. They wear, as Thomas Carlyle says,--{67}
"A suit of tatters, the getting on or off which is said to be a
difficult operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides
of the calendar."
The Irish have introduced, too, the custom previously unknown in England,
of going barefoot. In every manufacturing town there is now to be seen a
multitude of people, especially women and children, going about barefoot,
and their example is gradually being adopted by the poorer English.
As with clothing, so with food. The workers get what is too bad for the
property-holding class. In the great towns of England everything may be
had of the best, but it costs money; and the workman, who must keep house
on a couple of pence, cannot afford much expense. Moreover, he usually
receives his wages on Saturday evening, for, although a beginning has
been made in the payment of wages on Friday, this excellent arrangement
is by no means universal; and so he comes to market at five or even seven
o'clock, while the buyers of the middle-class have had the first choice
during the morning, when the market teems with the best of everything.
But when the workers reach it, the best has vanished, and, if it was
still there, they would probably not be able to buy it. The potatoes
which the workers buy are usually poor, the vegetables wilted, the cheese
old and of poor quality, the bacon rancid, the meat lean, tough, taken
from old, often diseased, cattle, or such as have died a natural death,
and not fresh even then, often half decayed. The sellers are usually
small hucksters who buy up inferior goods, and can sell them cheaply by
reason of their badness. The poorest workers are forced to use still
another device to get together the things they need with their few pence.
As nothing can be sold on Sunday, and all shops must be closed at twelve
o'clock on Saturday night, such things as would not keep until Monday are
sold at any price between ten o'clock and midnight. But nine-tenths of
what is sold at ten o'clock is past using by Sunday morning, yet these
are precisely the provisions which make up the Sunday dinner of the
poorest class. The meat which the workers buy is very often past using;
but having bought it, they must eat it. On the 6th of January, 1844 (if
I am not greatly mistaken), a court leet was held in Manchester, when
eleven meat-sellers were fined for having sold tainted meat. Each of
them had a whole ox or pig, or several sheep, or from fifty to sixty
pounds of meat, which were all confiscated in a tainted condition. In
one case, sixty-four stuffed Christmas geese were seized which had proved
unsaleable in Liverpool, and had been forwarded to Manchester, where they
were brought to market foul and rotten. All the particulars, with names
and fines, were published at the time in the _Manchester Guardian_. In
the six weeks, from July 1st to August 14th, the same sheet reported
three similar cases. According to the _Guardian_ for August 3rd, a pig,
weighing 200 pounds, which had been found dead and decayed, was cut up
and exposed for sale by a butcher at Heywood, and was then seized.
According to the number for July 31st, two butchers at Wigan, of whom one
had previously been convicted of the same offence, were fined 2 and 4
pounds respectively, for exposing tainted meat for sale; and, according
to the number for August 10th, twenty-six tainted hams seized at a
dealer's in Bolton, were publicly burnt, and the dealer fined twenty
shillings. But these are by no means all the cases; they do not even
form a fair average for a period of six weeks, according to which to form
an average for the year. There are often seasons in which every number
of the semi-weekly _Guardian_ mentions a similar case found in Manchester
or its vicinity. And when one reflects upon the many cases which must
escape detection in the extensive markets that stretch along the front of
every main street, under the slender supervision of the market
inspectors--and how else can one explain the boldness with which whole
animals are exposed for sale?--when one considers how great the
temptation must be, in view of the incomprehensibly small fines mentioned
in the foregoing cases; when one reflects what condition a piece of meat
must have reached to be seized by the inspectors, it is impossible to
believe that the workers obtain good and nourishing meat as a usual
thing. But they are victimised in yet another way by the money-greed of
the middle-class. Dealers and manufacturers adulterate all kinds of
provisions in an atrocious manner, and without the slightest regard to
the health of the consumers. We have heard the _Manchester Guardian_
upon this subject, let us hear another organ of the middle-class--I
delight in the testimony of my opponents--let us hear the _Liverpool
Mercury_: "Salted butter is sold for fresh, the lumps being covered with
a coating of fresh butter, or a pound of fresh being laid on top to
taste, while the salted article is sold after this test, or the whole
mass is washed and then sold as fresh. With sugar, pounded rice and
other cheap adulterating materials are mixed, and the whole sold at full
price. The refuse of soap-boiling establishments also is mixed with
other things and sold as sugar. Chicory and other cheap stuff is mixed
with ground coffee, and artificial coffee beans with the unground
article. Cocoa is often adulterated with fine brown earth, treated with
fat to render it more easily mistakable for real cocoa. Tea is mixed
with the leaves of the sloe and with other refuse, or dry tea-leaves are
roasted on hot copper plates, so returning to the proper colour and being
sold as fresh. Pepper is mixed with pounded nutshells; port wine is
manufactured outright (out of alcohol, dye-stuffs, etc.), while it is
notorious that more of it is consumed in England alone than is grown in
Portugal; and tobacco is mixed with disgusting substances of all sorts
and in all possible forms in which the article is produced." I can add
that several of the most respected tobacco dealers in Manchester
announced publicly last summer, that, by reason of the universal
adulteration of tobacco, no firm could carry on business without
adulteration, and that no cigar costing less than threepence is made
wholly from tobacco. These frauds are naturally not restricted to
articles of food, though I could mention a dozen more, the villainy of
mixing gypsum or chalk with flour among them. Fraud is practiced in the
sale of articles of every sort: flannel, stockings, etc., are stretched,
and shrink after the first washing; narrow cloth is sold as being from
one and a half to three inches broader than it actually is; stoneware is
so thinly glazed that the glazing is good for nothing, and cracks at
once, and a hundred other rascalities, _tout comme chez nous_. But the
lion's share of the evil results of these frauds falls to the workers.
The rich are less deceived, because they can pay the high prices of the
large shops which have a reputation to lose, and would injure themselves
more than their customers if they kept poor or adulterated wares; the
rich are spoiled, too, by habitual good eating, and detect adulteration
more easily with their sensitive palates. But the poor, the
working-people, to whom a couple of farthings are important, who must buy
many things with little money, who cannot afford to inquire too closely
into the quality of their purchases, and cannot do so in any case because
they have had no opportunity of cultivating their taste--to their share
fall all the adulterated, poisoned provisions. They must deal with the
small retailers, must buy perhaps on credit, and these small retail
dealers who cannot sell even the same quality of goods so cheaply as the
largest retailers, because of their small capital and the large
proportional expenses of their business, must knowingly or unknowingly
buy adulterated goods in order to sell at the lower prices required, and
to meet the competition of the others. Further, a large retail dealer
who has extensive capital invested in his business is ruined with his
ruined credit if detected in a fraudulent practice; but what harm does it
do a small grocer, who has customers in a single street only, if frauds
are proved against him? If no one trusts him in Ancoats, he moves to
Chorlton or Hulme, where no one knows him, and where he continues to
defraud as before; while legal penalties attach to very few adulterations
unless they involve revenue frauds. Not in the quality alone, but in the
quantity of his goods as well, is the English working-man defrauded. The
small dealers usually have false weights and measures, and an incredible
number of convictions for such offences may be read in the police
reports. How universal this form of fraud is in the manufacturing
districts, a couple of extracts from the _Manchester Guardian_ may serve
to show. They cover only a short period, and, even here, I have not all
the numbers at hand:
_Guardian_, June 16, 1844, Rochdale Sessions.--Four dealers fined five to
ten shillings for using light weights. Stockport Sessions.--Two dealers
fined one shilling, one of them having seven light weights and a false
scale, and both having been warned.
_Guardian_, June 19, Rochdale Sessions.--One dealer fined five, and two
farmers ten shillings.
_Guardian_, June 22, Manchester Justices of the Peace.--Nineteen dealers
fined two shillings and sixpence to two pounds.
_Guardian_, June 26, Ashton Sessions.--Fourteen dealers and farmers fined
two shillings and sixpence to one pound. Hyde Petty Sessions.--Nine
farmers and dealers condemned to pay costs and five shillings fines.
_Guardian_, July 9, Manchester--Sixteen dealers condemned to pay costs
and fines not exceeding ten shillings.
_Guardian_, July 13, Manchester.--Nine dealers fined from two shillings
and sixpence to twenty shillings.
_Guardian_, July 24, Rochdale.--Four dealers fined ten to twenty
shillings.
_Guardian_, July 27, Bolton.--Twelve dealers and innkeepers condemned to
pay costs.
_Guardian_, August 3, Bolton.--Three dealers fined two shillings and
sixpence, and five shillings.
_Guardian_, August 10, Bolton.--One dealer fined five shillings.
And the same causes which make the working-class the chief sufferers from
frauds in the quality of goods make them the usual victims of frauds in
the question of quantity too.
The habitual food of the individual working-man naturally varies
according to his wages. The better paid workers, especially those in
whose families every member is able to earn something, have good food as
long as this state of things lasts; meat daily, and bacon and cheese for
supper. Where wages are less, meat is used only two or three times a
week, and the proportion of bread and potatoes increases. Descending
gradually, we find the animal food reduced to a small piece of bacon cut
up with the potatoes; lower still, even this disappears, and there remain
only bread, cheese, porridge, and potatoes, until on the lowest round of
the ladder, among the Irish, potatoes form the sole food. As an
accompaniment, weak tea, with perhaps a little sugar, milk, or spirits,
is universally drunk. Tea is regarded in England, and even in Ireland,
as quite as indispensable as coffee in Germany, and where no tea is used,
the bitterest poverty reigns. But all this pre-supposes that the workman
has work. When he has none, he is wholly at the mercy of accident, and
eats what is given him, what he can beg or steal. And, if he gets
nothing, he simply starves, as we have seen. The quantity of food
varies, of course, like its quality, according to the rate of wages, so
that among ill-paid workers, even if they have no large families, hunger
prevails in spite of full and regular work; and the number of the ill-
paid is very large. Especially in London, where the competition of the
workers rises with the increase of population, this class is very
numerous, but it is to be found in other towns as well. In these cases
all sorts of devices are used; potato parings, vegetable refuse, and
rotten vegetables are eaten for want of other food, and everything
greedily gathered up which may possibly contain an atom of nourishment.
And, if the week's wages are used up before the end of the week, it often
enough happens that in the closing days the family gets only as much
food, if any, as is barely sufficient to keep off starvation. Of course
such a way of living unavoidably engenders a multitude of diseases, and
when these appear, when the father from whose work the family is chiefly
supported, whose physical exertion most demands nourishment, and who
therefore first succumbs--when the father is utterly disabled, then
misery reaches its height, and then the brutality with which society
abandons its members, just when their need is greatest, comes out fully
into the light of day.
To sum up briefly the facts thus far cited. The great towns are chiefly
inhabited by working-people, since in the best case there is one
bourgeois for two workers, often for three, here and there for four;
these workers have no property whatsoever of their own, and live wholly
upon wages, which usually go from hand to mouth. Society, composed
wholly of atoms, does not trouble itself about them; leaves them to care
for themselves and their families, yet supplies them no means of doing
this in an efficient and permanent manner. Every working-man, even the
best, is therefore constantly exposed to loss of work and food, that is
to death by starvation, and many perish in this way. The dwellings of
the workers are everywhere badly planned, badly built, and kept in the
worst condition, badly ventilated, damp, and unwholesome. The
inhabitants are confined to the smallest possible space, and at least one
family usually sleeps in each room. The interior arrangement of the
dwellings is poverty-stricken in various degrees, down to the utter
absence of even the most necessary furniture. The clothing of the
workers, too, is generally scanty, and that of great multitudes is in
rags. The food is, in general, bad; often almost unfit for use, and in
many cases, at least at times, insufficient in quantity, so that, in
extreme cases, death by starvation results. Thus the working-class of
the great cities offers a graduated scale of conditions in life, in the
best cases a temporarily endurable existence for hard work and good
wages, good and endurable, that is, from the worker's standpoint; in the
worst cases, bitter want, reaching even homelessness and death by
starvation. The average is much nearer the worst case than the best. And
this series does not fall into fixed classes, so that one can say, this
fraction of the working-class is well off, has always been so, and
remains so. If that is the case here and there, if single branches of
work have in general an advantage over others, yet the condition of the
workers in each branch is subject to such great fluctuations that a
single working-man may be so placed as to pass through the whole range
from comparative comfort to the extremest need, even to death by
starvation, while almost every English working-man can tell a tale of
marked changes of fortune. Let us examine the causes of this somewhat
more closely.
COMPETITION.
We have seen in the introduction how competition created the proletariat
at the very beginning of the industrial movement, by increasing the wages
of weavers in consequence of the increased demand for woven goods, so
inducing the weaving peasants to abandon their farms and earn more money
by devoting themselves to their looms. We have seen how it crowded out
the small farmers by means of the large farm system, reduced them to the
rank of proletarians, and attracted them in part into the towns; how it
further ruined the small bourgeoisie in great measure and reduced its
members also to the ranks of the proletariat; how it centralised capital
in the hands of the few, and population in the great towns. Such are the
various ways and means by which competition, as it reached its full
manifestation and free development in modern industry, created and
extended the proletariat. We shall now have to observe its influence on
the working-class already created. And here we must begin by tracing the
results of competition of single workers with one another.
Competition is the completest expression of the battle of all against all
which rules in modern civil society. This battle, a battle for life, for
existence, for everything, in case of need a battle of life and death, is
fought not between the different classes of society only, but also
between the individual members of these classes. Each is in the way of
the other, and each seeks to crowd out all who are in his way, and to put
himself in their place. The workers are in constant competition among
themselves as the members of the bourgeoisie among themselves. The power-
loom weaver is in competition with the hand-loom weaver, the unemployed
or ill-paid hand-loom weaver with him who has work or is better paid,
each trying to supplant the other. But this competition of the workers
among themselves is the worst side of the present state of things in its
effect upon the worker, the sharpest weapon against the proletariat in
the hands of the bourgeoisie. Hence the effort of the workers to nullify
this competition by associations, hence the hatred of the bourgeoisie
towards these associations, and its triumph in every defeat which befalls
them.
The proletarian is helpless; left to himself, he cannot live a single
day. The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in
the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can
obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by
the power of the State. The proletarian is, therefore, in law and in
fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can decree his life or death.
It offers him the means of living, but only for an "equivalent" for his
work. It even lets him have the appearance of acting from a free choice,
of making a contract with free, unconstrained consent, as a responsible
agent who has attained his majority.
Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of
either accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of
starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the
forests! A fine "equivalent" valued at pleasure by the bourgeoisie! And
if one proletarian is such a fool as to starve rather than agree to the
equitable propositions of the bourgeoisie, his "natural superiors,"
another is easily found in his place; there are proletarians enough in
the world, and not all so insane as to prefer dying to living.
Here we have the competition of the workers among themselves. If _all_
the proletarians announced their determination to starve rather than work
for the bourgeoisie, the latter would have to surrender its monopoly. But
this is not the case--is, indeed, a rather impossible case--so that the
bourgeoisie still thrives. To this competition of the worker there is
but one limit; no worker will work for less than he needs to subsist. If
he must starve, he will prefer to starve in idleness rather than in toil.
True, this limit is relative; one needs more than another, one is
accustomed to more comfort than another; the Englishman who is still
somewhat civilised, needs more than the Irishman who goes in rags, eats
potatoes, and sleeps in a pig-sty. But that does not hinder the
Irishman's competing with the Englishman, and gradually forcing the rate
of wages, and with it the Englishman's level of civilisation, down to the
Irishman's level. Certain kinds of work require a certain grade of
civilisation, and to these belong almost all forms of industrial
occupation; hence the interest of the bourgeoisie requires in this case
that wages should be high enough to enable the workman to keep himself
upon the required plane.
The newly immigrated Irishman, encamped in the first stable that offers,
or turned out in the street after a week because he spends everything
upon drink and cannot pay rent, would be a poor mill-hand. The mill-hand
must, therefore, have wages enough to enable him to bring up his children
to regular work; but no more, lest he should be able to get on without
the wages of his children, and so make something else of them than mere
working-men. Here, too, the limit, the minimum wage, is relative. When
every member of the family works, the individual worker can get on with
proportionately less, and the bourgeoisie has made the most of the
opportunity of employing and making profitable the labour of women and
children afforded by machine-work. Of course it is not in every family
that every member can be set to work, and those in which the case is
otherwise would be in a bad way if obliged to exist upon the minimum wage
possible to a wholly employed family. Hence the usual wages form an
average according to which a fully employed family gets on pretty well,
and one which embraces few members able to work, pretty badly. But in
the worst case, every working-man prefers surrendering the trifling
luxury to which he was accustomed to not living at all; prefers a pig-pen
to no roof, wears rags in preference to going naked, confines himself to
a potato diet in preference to starvation. He contents himself with half-
pay and the hope of better times rather than be driven into the street to
perish before the eyes of the world, as so many have done who had no work
whatever. This trifle, therefore, this something more than nothing, is
the minimum of wages. And if there are more workers at hand than the
bourgeoisie thinks well to employ--if at the end of the battle of
competition there yet remain workers who find nothing to do, they must
simply starve; for the bourgeois will hardly give them work if he cannot
sell the produce of their labour at a profit.
From this it is evident what the minimum of wages is. The maximum is
determined by the competition of the bourgeoisie among themselves; for we
have seen how they, too, must compete with each other. The bourgeois can
increase his capital only in commerce and manufacture, and in both cases
he needs workers. Even if he invests his capital at interest, he needs
them indirectly; for without commerce and manufacture, no one would pay
him interest upon his capital, no one could use it. So the bourgeois
certainly needs workers, not indeed for his immediate living, for at need
he could consume his capital, but as we need an article of trade or a
beast of burden,--as a means of profit. The proletarian produces the
goods which the bourgeois sells with advantage. When, therefore, the
demand for these goods increases so that all the competing working-men
are employed, and a few more might perhaps be useful, the competition
among the workers falls away, and the bourgeoisie begin to compete among
themselves. The capitalist in search of workmen knows very well that his
profits increase as prices rise in consequence of the increased demand
for his goods, and pays a trifle higher wages rather than let the whole
profit escape him. He sends the butter to fetch the cheese, and getting
the latter, leaves the butter ungrudgingly to the workers. So one
capitalist after another goes in chase of workers, and wages rise; but
only as high as the increasing demand permits. If the capitalist, who
willingly sacrificed a part of his extraordinary profit, runs into danger
of sacrificing any part of his ordinary average profit, he takes very
good care not to pay more than average wages.
From this we can determine the average rate of wages. Under average
circumstances, when neither workers nor capitalists have reason to
compete, especially among themselves, when there are just as many workers
at hand as can be employed in producing precisely the goods that are
demanded, wages stand a little above the minimum. How far they rise
above the minimum will depend upon the average needs and the grade of
civilisation of the workers. If the workers are accustomed to eat meat
several times in the week, the capitalists must reconcile themselves to
paying wages enough to make this food attainable, not less, because the
workers are not competing among themselves and have no occasion to
content themselves with less; not more, because the capitalists, in the
absence of competition among themselves, have no occasion to attract
working-men by extraordinary favours. This standard of the average needs
and the average civilisation of the workers has become very complicated
by reason of the complications of English industry, and is different for
different sorts of workers, as has been pointed out. Most industrial
occupations demand a certain skill and regularity, and for these
qualities which involve a certain grade of civilisation, the rate of
wages must be such as to induce the worker to acquire such skill and
subject himself to such regularity. Hence it is that the average wages
of industrial workers are higher than those of mere porters, day
labourers, etc., higher especially than those of agricultural labourers,
a fact to which the additional cost of the necessities of life in cities
contributes somewhat. In other words, the worker is, in law and in fact,
the slave of the property-holding class, so effectually a slave that he
is sold like a piece of goods, rises and falls in value like a commodity.
If the demand for workers increases, the price of workers rises; if it
falls, their price falls. If it falls so greatly that a number of them
become unsaleable, if they are left in stock, they are simply left idle;
and as they cannot live upon that, they die of starvation. For, to speak
in the words of the economists, the expense incurred in maintaining them
would not be reproduced, would be money thrown away, and to this end no
man advances capital; and, so far, Malthus was perfectly right in his
theory of population. The only difference as compared with the old,
outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of to-day seems to be free
because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week,
the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced
to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular
person, but of the whole property-holding class. For him the matter is
unchanged at bottom, and if this semblance of liberty necessarily gives
him some real freedom on the one hand, it entails on the other the
disadvantage that no one guarantees him a subsistence, he is in danger of
being repudiated at any moment by his master, the bourgeoisie, and left
to die of starvation, if the bourgeoisie ceases to have an interest in
his employment, his existence. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, is
far better off under the present arrangement than under the old slave
system; it can dismiss its employees at discretion without sacrificing
invested capital, and gets its work done much more cheaply than is
possible with slave labour, as Adam Smith comfortingly pointed out. {80}
Hence it follows, too, that Adam Smith was perfectly right in making the
assertion: "That the demand for men, like that for any other commodity,
necessarily regulates the production of men, quickens it when it goes on
too slowly, and stops it when it advances too fast." _Just as in the
case of any other commodity_! If there are too few labourers at hand,
prices, _i.e_. wages, rise, the workers are more prosperous, marriages
multiply, more children are born and more live to grow up, until a
sufficient number of labourers has been secured. If there are too many
on hand, prices fall, want of work, poverty, and starvation, and
consequent diseases arise, and the "surplus population" is put out of the
way. And Malthus, who carried the foregoing proposition of Smith
farther, was also right, in his way, in asserting that there are always
more people on hand than can be maintained from the available means of
subsistence. Surplus population is engendered rather by the competition
of the workers among themselves, which forces each separate worker to
labour as much each day as his strength can possibly admit. If a
manufacturer can employ ten hands nine hours daily, he can employ nine if
each works ten hours, and the tenth goes hungry. And if a manufacturer
can force the nine hands to work an extra hour daily for the same wages
by threatening to discharge them at a time when the demand for hands is
not very great, he discharges the tenth and saves so much wages. This is
the process on a small scale, which goes on in a nation on a large one.
The productiveness of each hand raised to the highest pitch by the
competition of the workers among themselves, the division of labour, the
introduction of machinery, the subjugation of the forces of nature,
deprive a multitude of workers of bread. These starving workers are then
removed from the market, they can buy nothing, and the quantity of
articles of consumption previously required by them is no longer in
demand, need no longer be produced; the workers previously employed in
producing them are therefore driven out of work, and are also removed
from the market, and so it goes on, always the same old round, or rather,
so it would go if other circumstances did not intervene. The
introduction of the industrial forces already referred to for increasing
production leads, in the course of time, to a reduction of prices of the
articles produced and to consequent increased consumption, so that a
large part of the displaced workers finally, after long suffering, find
work again. If, in addition to this, the conquest of foreign markets
constantly and rapidly increases the demand for manufactured goods, as
has been the case in England during the past sixty years, the demand for
hands increases, and, in proportion to it, the population. Thus, instead
of diminishing, the population of the British Empire has increased with
extraordinary rapidity, and is still increasing. Yet, in spite of the
extension of industry, in spite of the demand for working-men which, in
general, has increased, there is, according to the confession of all the
official political parties (Tory, Whig, and Radical), permanent surplus,
superfluous population; the competition among the workers is constantly
greater than the competition to secure workers.
Whence comes this incongruity? It lies in the nature of industrial
competition and the commercial crises which arise from them. In the
present unregulated production and distribution of the means of
subsistence, which is carried on not directly for the sake of supplying
needs, but for profit, in the system under which every one works for
himself to enrich himself, disturbances inevitably arise at every moment.
For example, England supplies a number of countries with most diverse
goods. Now, although the manufacturer may know how much of each article
is consumed in each country annually, he cannot know how much is on hand
at every given moment, much less can he know how much his competitors
export thither. He can only draw most uncertain inferences from the
perpetual fluctuations in prices, as to the quantities on hand and the
needs of the moment. He must trust to luck in exporting his goods.
Everything is done blindly, as guess-work, more or less at the mercy of
accident. Upon the slightest favourable report, each one exports what he
can, and before long such a market is glutted, sales stop, capital
remains inactive, prices fall, and English manufacture has no further
employment for its hands. In the beginning of the development of
manufacture, these checks were limited to single branches and single
markets; but the centralising tendency of competition which drives the
hands thrown out of one branch into such other branches as are most
easily accessible, and transfers the goods which cannot be disposed of in
one market to other markets, has gradually brought the single minor
crises nearer together and united them into one periodically recurring
crisis. Such a crisis usually recurs once in five years after a brief
period of activity and general prosperity; the home market, like all
foreign ones, is glutted with English goods, which it can only slowly
absorb, the industrial movement comes to a standstill in almost every
branch, the small manufacturers and merchants who cannot survive a
prolonged inactivity of their invested capital fail, the larger ones
suspend business during the worst season, close their mills or work short
time, perhaps half the day; wages fall by reason of the competition of
the unemployed, the diminution of working-time and the lack of profitable
sales; want becomes universal among the workers, the small savings, which
individuals may have made, are rapidly consumed, the philanthropic
institutions are overburdened, the poor-rates are doubled, trebled, and
still insufficient, the number of the starving increases, and the whole
multitude of "surplus" population presses in terrific numbers into the
foreground. This continues for a time; the "surplus" exist as best they
may, or perish; philanthropy and the Poor Law help many of them to a
painful prolongation of their existence. Others find scant means of
subsistence here and there in such kinds of work as have been least open
to competition, are most remote from manufacture. And with how little
can a human being keep body and soul together for a time! Gradually the
state of things improve; the accumulations of goods are consumed, the
general depression among the men of commerce and manufacture prevents a
too hasty replenishing of the markets, and at last rising prices and
favourable reports from all directions restore activity. Most of the
markets are distant ones; demand increases and prices rise constantly
while the first exports are arriving; people struggle for the first
goods, the first sales enliven trade still more, the prospective ones
promise still higher prices; expecting a further rise, merchants begin to
buy upon speculation, and so to withdraw from consumption the articles
intended for it, just when they are most needed. Speculation forces
prices still higher, by inspiring others to purchase, and appropriating
new importations at once. All this is reported to England, manufacturers
begin to produce with a will, new mills are built, every means is
employed to make the most of the favourable moment. Speculation arises
here, too, exerting the same influence as upon foreign markets, raising
prices, withdrawing goods from consumption, spurring manufacture in both
ways to the highest pitch of effort. Then come the daring speculators
working with fictitious capital, living upon credit, ruined if they
cannot speedily sell; they hurl themselves into this universal,
disorderly race for profits, multiply the disorder and haste by their
unbridled passion, which drives prices and production to madness. It is
a frantic struggle, which carries away even the most experienced and
phlegmatic; goods are spun, woven, hammered, as if all mankind were to be
newly equipped, as though two thousand million new consumers had been
discovered in the moon. All at once the shaky speculators abroad, who
must have money, begin to sell, below market price, of course, for their
need is urgent; one sale is followed by others, prices fluctuate,
speculators throw their goods upon the market in terror, the market is
disordered, credit shaken, one house after another stops payments,
bankruptcy follows bankruptcy, and the discovery is made that three times
more goods are on hand or under way than can be consumed. The news
reaches England, where production has been going on at full speed
meanwhile, panic seizes all hands, failures abroad cause others in
England, the panic crushes a number of firms, all reserves are thrown
upon the market here, too, in the moment of anxiety, and the alarm is
still further exaggerated. This is the beginning of the crisis, which
then takes precisely the same course as its predecessor, and gives place
in turn to a season of prosperity. So it goes on
perpetually,--prosperity, crisis, prosperity, crisis, and this perennial
round in which English industry moves is, as has been before observed,
usually completed once in five or six years.
From this it is clear that English manufacture must have, at all times
save the brief periods of highest prosperity, an unemployed reserve army
of workers, in order to be able to produce the masses of goods required
by the market in the liveliest months. This reserve army is larger or
smaller, according as the state of the market occasions the employment of
a larger or smaller proportion of its members. And if at the moment of
highest activity of the market the agricultural districts and the
branches least affected by the general prosperity temporarily supply to
manufacture a number of workers, these are a mere minority, and these too
belong to the reserve army, with the single difference that the
prosperity of the moment was required to reveal their connection with it.
When they enter upon the more active branches of work, their former
employers draw in somewhat, in order to feel the loss less, work longer
hours, employ women and younger workers, and when the wanderers
discharged at the beginning of the crisis return, they find their places
filled and themselves superfluous--at least in the majority of cases.
This reserve army, which embraces an immense multitude during the crisis
and a large number during the period which may be regarded as the average
between the highest prosperity and the crisis, is the "surplus
population" of England, which keeps body and soul together by begging,
stealing, street-sweeping, collecting manure, pushing handcarts, driving
donkeys, peddling, or performing occasional small jobs. In every great
town a multitude of such people may be found. It is astonishing in what
devices this "surplus population" takes refuge. The London
crossing-sweepers are known all over the world; but hitherto the
principal streets in all the great cities, as well as the crossings, have
been swept by people out of other work, and employed by the Poor Law
guardians or the municipal authorities for the purpose. Now, however, a
machine has been invented which rattles through the streets daily, and
has spoiled this source of income for the unemployed. Along the great
highways leading into the cities, on which there is a great deal of
waggon traffic, a large number of people may be seen with small carts,
gathering fresh horse-dung at the risk of their lives among the passing
coaches and omnibuses, often paying a couple of shillings a week to the
authorities for the privilege. But this occupation is forbidden in many
places, because the ordinary street-sweepings thus impoverished cannot be
sold as manure. Happy are such of the "surplus" as can obtain a push-
cart and go about with it. Happier still those to whom it is vouchsafed
to possess an ass in addition to the cart. The ass must get his own food
or is given a little gathered refuse, and can yet bring in a trifle of
money. Most of the "surplus" betake themselves to huckstering. On
Saturday afternoons, especially, when the whole working population is on
the streets, the crowd who live from huckstering and peddling may be
seen. Shoe and corset laces, braces, twine, cakes, oranges, every kind
of small articles are offered by men, women, and children; and at other
times also, such peddlers are always to be seen standing at the street
corners, or going about with cakes and ginger-beer or nettle-beer.
Matches and such things, sealing-wax, and patent mixtures for lighting
fires are further resources of such venders. Others, so-called jobbers,
go about the streets seeking small jobs. Many of these succeed in
getting a day's work, many are not so fortunate.
"At the gates of all the London docks," says the Rev. W. Champney,
preacher of the East End, "hundreds of the poor appear every morning
in winter before daybreak, in the hope of getting a day's work. They
await the opening of the gates; and, when the youngest and strongest
and best known have been engaged, hundreds cast down by disappointed
hope, go back to their wretched homes."
When these people find no work and will not rebel against society, what
remains for them but to beg? And surely no one can wonder at the great
army of beggars, most of them able-bodied men, with whom the police
carries on perpetual war. But the beggary of these men has a peculiar
character. Such a man usually goes about with his family singing a
pleading song in the streets or appealing, in a speech, to the
benevolence of the passers-by. And it is a striking fact that these
beggars are seen almost exclusively in the working-people's districts,
that it is almost exclusively the gifts of the poor from which they live.
Or the family takes up its position in a busy street, and without
uttering a word, lets the mere sight of its helplessness plead for it. In
this case, too, they reckon upon the sympathy of the workers alone, who
know from experience how it feels to be hungry, and are liable to find
themselves in the same situation at any moment; for this dumb, yet most
moving appeal, is met with almost solely in such streets as are
frequented by working-men, and at such hours as working-men pass by; but
especially on summer evenings, when the "secrets" of the working-people's
quarters are generally revealed, and the middle-class withdraws as far as
possible from the district thus polluted. And he among the "surplus" who
has courage and passion enough openly to resist society, to reply with
declared war upon the bourgeoisie to the disguised war which the
bourgeoisie wages upon him, goes forth to rob, plunder, murder, and burn!
Of this surplus population there are, according to the reports of the
Poor Law commissioners, on an average, a million and a half in England
and Wales; in Scotland the number cannot be ascertained for want of Poor
Law regulations, and with Ireland we shall deal separately. Moreover,
this million and a half includes only those who actually apply to the
parish for relief; the great multitude who struggle on without recourse
to this most hated expedient, it does not embrace. On the other hand, a
good part of the number belongs to the agricultural districts, and does
not enter into the present discussion. During a crisis this number
naturally increases markedly, and want reaches its highest pitch. Take,
for instance, the crisis of 1842, which, being the latest, was the most
violent; for the intensity of the crisis increases with each repetition,
and the next, which may be expected not later than 1847, {87} will
probably be still more violent and lasting. During this crisis the poor-
rates rose in every town to a hitherto unknown height. In Stockport,
among other towns, for every pound paid in house-rent, eight shillings of
poor-rate had to be paid, so that the rate alone formed forty per cent.
of the house-rent. Moreover, whole streets stood vacant, so that there
were at least twenty thousand fewer inhabitants than usual, and on the
doors of the empty houses might be read: "Stockport to let." In Bolton,
where, in ordinary years, the rents from which rates are paid average
86,000 pounds, they sank to 36,000 pounds. The number of the poor to be
supported rose, on the other hand, to 14,000, or more than twenty per
cent. of the whole number of inhabitants. In Leeds, the Poor Law
guardians had a reserve fund of 10,000 pounds. This, with a contribution
of 7,000 pounds, was wholly exhausted before the crisis reached its
height. So it was everywhere. A report drawn up in January, 1843, by a
committee of the Anti-Corn Law League, on the condition of the industrial
districts in 1842, which was based upon detailed statements of the
manufacturers, asserts that the poor-rate was, taking the average, twice
as high as in 1839, and that the number of persons requiring relief has
trebled, even quintupled, since that time; that a multitude of applicants
belong to a class which had never before solicited relief; that the
working-class commands more than two-thirds less of the means of
subsistence than from 1834-1836; that the consumption of meat had been
decidedly less, in some places twenty per cent., in others reaching sixty
per cent. less; that even handicraftsmen, smiths, bricklayers, and
others, who usually have full employment in the most depressed periods,
now suffered greatly from want of work and reduction of wages; and that,
even now, in January, 1843, wages are still steadily falling. And these
are the reports of manufacturers! The starving workmen, whose mills were
idle, whose employers could give them no work, stood in the streets in
all directions, begged singly or in crowds, besieged the sidewalks in
armies, and appealed to the passers-by for help; they begged, not
cringing like ordinary beggars, but threatening by their numbers, their
gestures, and their words. Such was the state of things in all the
industrial districts, from Leicester to Leeds, and from Manchester to
Birmingham. Here and there disturbances arose, as in the Staffordshire
potteries, in July. The most frightful excitement prevailed among the
workers until the general insurrection broke out throughout the
manufacturing districts in August. When I came to Manchester in
November, 1842, there were crowds of unemployed working-men at every
street corner, and many mills were still standing idle. In the following
months these unwilling corner loafers gradually vanished, and the
factories came into activity once more.
To what extent want and suffering prevail among these unemployed during
such a crisis, I need not describe. The poor-rates are insufficient,
vastly insufficient; the philanthropy of the rich is a rain-drop in the
ocean, lost in the moment of falling, beggary can support but few among
the crowds. If the small dealers did not sell to the working-people on
credit at such times as long as possible--paying themselves liberally
afterwards, it must be confessed--and if the working-people did not help
each other, every crisis would remove a multitude of the surplus through
death by starvation. Since, however, the most depressed period is brief,
lasting, at worst, but one, two, or two and a half years, most of them
emerge from it with their lives after dire privations. But indirectly by
disease, etc., every crisis finds a multitude of victims, as we shall
see. First, however, let us turn to another cause of abasement to which
the English worker is exposed, a cause permanently active in forcing the
whole class downwards.
IRISH IMMIGRATION.
We have already referred several times in passing to the Irish who have
immigrated into England; and we shall now have to investigate more
closely the causes and results of this immigration. The rapid extension
of English industry could not have taken place if England had not
possessed in the numerous and impoverished population of Ireland a
reserve at command. The Irish had nothing to lose at home, and much to
gain in England; and from the time when it became known in Ireland that
the east side of St. George's Channel offered steady work and good pay
for strong arms, every year has brought armies of the Irish hither. It
has been calculated that more than a million have already immigrated, and
not far from fifty thousand still come every year, nearly all of whom
enter the industrial districts, especially the great cities, and there
form the lowest class of the population. Thus there are in London,
120,000; in Manchester, 40,000; in Liverpool, 34,000; Bristol, 24,000;
Glasgow, 40,000; Edinburgh, 29,000, poor Irish people. {90a} These
people having grown up almost without civilisation, accustomed from youth
to every sort of privation, rough, intemperate, and improvident, bring
all their brutal habits with them among a class of the English population
which has, in truth, little inducement to cultivate education and
morality. Let us hear Thomas Carlyle upon this subject: {90b}
"The wild Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, restlessness,
unreason, misery, and mockery, salute you on all highways and byways.
The English coachman, as he whirls past, lashes the Milesian with his
whip, curses him with his tongue; the Milesian is holding out his hat
to beg. He is the sorest evil this country has to strive with. In
his rags and laughing savagery, he is there to undertake all work that
can be done by mere strength of hand and back--for wages that will
purchase him potatoes. He needs only salt for condiment, he lodges to
his mind in any pig-hutch or dog-hutch, roosts in outhouses, and wears
a suit of tatters, the getting on and off of which is said to be a
difficult operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides
of the calendar. The Saxon-man, if he cannot work on these terms,
finds no work. The uncivilised Irishman, not by his strength, but by
the opposite of strength, drives the Saxon native out, takes
possession in his room. There abides he, in his squalor and unreason,
in his falsity and drunken violence, as the ready-made nucleus of
degradation and disorder. Whoever struggles, swimming with
difficulty, may now find an example how the human being can exist not
swimming, but sunk. That the condition of the lower multitude of
English labourers approximates more and more to that of the Irish,
competing with them in all the markets: that whatsoever labour, to
which mere strength with little skill will suffice, is to be done,
will be done not at the English price, but at an approximation to the
Irish price; at a price superior as yet to the Irish, that is,
superior to scarcity of potatoes for thirty weeks yearly; superior,
yet hourly, with the arrival of every new steamboat, sinking nearer to
an equality with that."
If we except his exaggerated and one-sided condemnation of the Irish
national character, Carlyle is perfectly right. These Irishmen who
migrate for fourpence to England, on the deck of a steamship on which
they are often packed like cattle, insinuate themselves everywhere. The
worst dwellings are good enough for them; their clothing causes them
little trouble, so long as it holds together by a single thread; shoes
they know not; their food consists of potatoes and potatoes only;
whatever they earn beyond these needs they spend upon drink. What does
such a race want with high wages? The worst quarters of all the large
towns are inhabited by Irishmen. Whenever a district is distinguished
for especial filth and especial ruinousness, the explorer may safely
count upon meeting chiefly those Celtic faces which one recognises at the
first glance as different from the Saxon physiognomy of the native, and
the singing, aspirate brogue which the true Irishman never loses. I have
occasionally heard the Irish-Celtic language spoken in the most thickly
populated parts of Manchester. The majority of the families who live in
cellars are almost everywhere of Irish origin. In short, the Irish have,
as Dr. Kay says, discovered the minimum of the necessities of life, and
are now making the English workers acquainted with it. Filth and
drunkenness, too, they have brought with them. The lack of cleanliness,
which is not so injurious in the country, where population is scattered,
and which is the Irishman's second nature, becomes terrifying and gravely
dangerous through its concentration here in the great cities. The
Milesian deposits all garbage and filth before his house door here, as he
was accustomed to do at home, and so accumulates the pools and dirt-heaps
which disfigure the working-people's quarters and poison the air. He
builds a pig-sty against the house wall as he did at home, and if he is
prevented from doing this, he lets the pig sleep in the room with
himself. This new and unnatural method of cattle-raising in cities is
wholly of Irish origin. The Irishman loves his pig as the Arab his
horse, with the difference that he sells it when it is fat enough to
kill. Otherwise, he eats and sleeps with it, his children play with it,
ride upon it, roll in the dirt with it, as any one may see a thousand
times repeated in all the great towns of England. The filth and
comfortlessness that prevail in the houses themselves it is impossible to
describe. The Irishman is unaccustomed to the presence of furniture; a
heap of straw, a few rags, utterly beyond use as clothing, suffice for
his nightly couch. A piece of wood, a broken chair, an old chest for a
table, more he needs not; a tea-kettle, a few pots and dishes, equip his
kitchen, which is also his sleeping and living room. When he is in want
of fuel, everything combustible within his reach, chairs, door-posts,
mouldings, flooring, finds its way up the chimney. Moreover, why should
he need much room? At home in his mud-cabin there was only one room for
all domestic purposes; more than one room his family does not need in
England. So the custom of crowding many persons into a single room, now
so universal, has been chiefly implanted by the Irish immigration. And
since the poor devil must have one enjoyment, and society has shut him
out of all others, he betakes himself to the drinking of spirits. Drink
is the only thing which makes the Irishman's life worth having, drink and
his cheery care-free temperament; so he revels in drink to the point of
the most bestial drunkenness. The southern facile character of the
Irishman, his crudity, which places him but little above the savage, his
contempt for all humane enjoyments, in which his very crudeness makes him
incapable of sharing, his filth and poverty, all favour drunkenness. The
temptation is great, he cannot resist it, and so when he has money he
gets rid of it down his throat. What else should he do? How can society
blame him when it places him in a position in which he almost of
necessity becomes a drunkard; when it leaves him to himself, to his
savagery?
With such a competitor the English working-man has to struggle with a
competitor upon the lowest plane possible in a civilised country, who for
this very reason requires less wages than any other. Nothing else is
therefore possible than that, as Carlyle says, the wages of English
working-men should be forced down further and further in every branch in
which the Irish compete with him. And these branches are many. All such
as demand little or no skill are open to the Irish. For work which
requires long training or regular, pertinacious application, the
dissolute, unsteady, drunken Irishman is on too low a plane. To become a
mechanic, a mill-hand, he would have to adopt the English civilisation,
the English customs, become, in the main, an Englishman. But for all
simple, less exact work, wherever it is a question more of strength than
skill, the Irishman is as good as the Englishman. Such occupations are
therefore especially overcrowded with Irishmen: hand-weavers,
bricklayers, porters, jobbers, and such workers, count hordes of Irishmen
among their number, and the pressure of this race has done much to
depress wages and lower the working-class. And even if the Irish, who
have forced their way into other occupations, should become more
civilised, enough of the old habits would cling to them to have a strong
degrading influence upon their English companions in toil, especially in
view of the general effect of being surrounded by the Irish. For when,
in almost every great city, a fifth or a quarter of the workers are
Irish, or children of Irish parents, who have grown up among Irish filth,
no one can wonder if the life, habits, intelligence, moral status--in
short, the whole character of the working-class assimilates a great part
of the Irish characteristics. On the contrary, it is easy to understand
how the degrading position of the English workers, engendered by our
modern history, and its immediate consequences, has been still more
degraded by the presence of Irish competition.
RESULTS.
Having now investigated, somewhat in detail, the conditions under which
the English working-class lives, it is time to draw some further
inferences from the facts presented, and then to compare our inferences
with the actual state of things. Let us see what the workers themselves
have become under the given circumstances, what sort of people they are,
what their physical, mental, and moral status.
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another, such injury that
death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in
advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But
when society {95} places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that
they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is
quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it
deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under
conditions in which they _cannot_ live--forces them, through the strong
arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues
which is the inevitable consequence--knows that these thousands of
victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed
is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised,
malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which
does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the
death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of
omission than of commission. But murder it remains. I have now to prove
that society in England daily and hourly commits what the working-men's
organs, with perfect correctness, characterise as social murder, that it
has placed the workers under conditions in which they can neither retain
health nor live long; that it undermines the vital force of these workers
gradually, little by little, and so hurries them to the grave before
their time. I have further to prove that society knows how injurious
such conditions are to the health and the life of the workers, and yet
does nothing to improve these conditions. That it _knows_ the
consequences of its deeds; that its act is, therefore, not mere
manslaughter, but murder, I shall have proved, when I cite official
documents, reports of Parliament and of the Government, in substantiation
of my charge.
That a class which lives under the conditions already sketched and is so
ill-provided with the most necessary means of subsistence, cannot be
healthy and can reach no advanced age, is self-evident. Let us review
the circumstances once more with especial reference to the health of the
workers. The centralisation of population in great cities exercises of
itself an unfavourable influence; the atmosphere of London can never be
so pure, so rich in oxygen, as the air of the country; two and a half
million pairs of lungs, two hundred and fifty thousand fires, crowded
upon an area three to four miles square, consume an enormous amount of
oxygen, which is replaced with difficulty, because the method of building
cities in itself impedes ventilation. The carbonic acid gas, engendered
by respiration and fire, remains in the streets by reason of its specific
gravity, and the chief air current passes over the roofs of the city. The
lungs of the inhabitants fail to receive the due supply of oxygen, and
the consequence is mental and physical lassitude and low vitality. For
this reason, the dwellers in cities are far less exposed to acute, and
especially to inflammatory, affections than rural populations, who live
in a free, normal atmosphere; but they suffer the more from chronic
affections. And if life in large cities is, in itself, injurious to
health, how great must be the harmful influence of an abnormal atmosphere
in the working-people's quarters, where, as we have seen, everything
combines to poison the air. In the country, it may, perhaps, be
comparatively innoxious to keep a dung-heap adjoining one's dwelling,
because the air has free ingress from all sides; but in the midst of a
large town, among closely built lanes and courts that shut out all
movement of the atmosphere, the case is different. All putrefying
vegetable and animal substances give off gases decidedly injurious to
health, and if these gases have no free way of escape, they inevitably
poison the atmosphere. The filth and stagnant pools of the
working-people's quarters in the great cities have, therefore, the worst
effect upon the public health, because they produce precisely those gases
which engender disease; so, too, the exhalations from contaminated
streams. But this is by no means all. The manner in which the great
multitude of the poor is treated by society to-day is revolting. They
are drawn into the large cities where they breathe a poorer atmosphere
than in the country; they are relegated to districts which, by reason of
the method of construction, are worse ventilated than any others; they
are deprived of all means of cleanliness, of water itself, since pipes
are laid only when paid for, and the rivers so polluted that they are
useless for such purposes; they are obliged to throw all offal and
garbage, all dirty water, often all disgusting drainage and excrement
into the streets, being without other means of disposing of them; they
are thus compelled to infect the region of their own dwellings. Nor is
this enough. All conceivable evils are heaped upon the heads of the
poor. If the population of great cities is too dense in general, it is
they in particular who are packed into the least space. As though the
vitiated atmosphere of the streets were not enough, they are penned in
dozens into single rooms, so that the air which they breathe at night is
enough in itself to stifle them. They are given damp dwellings, cellar
dens that are not waterproof from below, or garrets that leak from above.
Their houses are so built that the clammy air cannot escape. They are
supplied bad, tattered, or rotten clothing, adulterated and indigestible
food. They are exposed to the most exciting changes of mental condition,
the most violent vibrations between hope and fear; they are hunted like
game, and not permitted to attain peace of mind and quiet enjoyment of
life. They are deprived of all enjoyments except that of sexual
indulgence and drunkenness, are worked every day to the point of complete
exhaustion of their mental and physical energies, and are thus constantly
spurred on to the maddest excess in the only two enjoyments at their
command. And if they surmount all this, they fall victims to want of
work in a crisis when all the little is taken from them that had hitherto
been vouchsafed them.
How is it possible, under such conditions, for the lower class to be
healthy and long lived? What else can be expected than an excessive
mortality, an unbroken series of epidemics, a progressive deterioration
in the physique of the working population? Let us see how the facts
stand.
That the dwellings of the workers in the worst portions of the cities,
together with the other conditions of life of this class, engender
numerous diseases, is attested on all sides. The article already quoted
from the _Artisan_ asserts with perfect truth, that lung diseases must be
the inevitable consequence of such conditions, and that, indeed, cases of
this kind are disproportionately frequent in this class. That the bad
air of London, and especially of the working-people's districts, is in
the highest degree favourable to the development of consumption, the
hectic appearance of great numbers of persons sufficiently indicates. If
one roams the streets a little in the early morning, when the multitudes
are on their way to their work, one is amazed at the number of persons
who look wholly or half-consumptive. Even in Manchester the people have
not the same appearance; these pale, lank, narrow-chested, hollow-eyed
ghosts, whom one passes at every step, these languid, flabby faces,
incapable of the slightest energetic expression, I have seen in such
startling numbers only in London, though consumption carries off a horde
of victims annually in the factory towns of the North. In competition
with consumption stands typhus, to say nothing of scarlet fever, a
disease which brings most frightful devastation into the ranks of the
working-class. Typhus, that universally diffused affliction, is
attributed by the official report on the sanitary condition of the
working-class, directly to the bad state of the dwellings in the matters
of ventilation, drainage, and cleanliness. This report, compiled, it
must not be forgotten, by the leading physicians of England from the
testimony of other physicians, asserts that a single ill-ventilated
court, a single blind alley without drainage, is enough to engender
fever, and usually does engender it, especially if the inhabitants are
greatly crowded. This fever has the same character almost everywhere,
and develops in nearly every case into specific typhus. It is to be
found in the working-people's quarters of all great towns and cities, and
in single ill-built, ill-kept streets of smaller places, though it
naturally seeks out single victims in better districts also. In London
it has now prevailed for a considerable time; its extraordinary violence
in the year 1837 gave rise to the report already referred to. According
to the annual report of Dr. Southwood Smith on the London Fever Hospital,
the number of patients in 1843 was 1,462, or 418 more than in any
previous year. In the damp, dirty regions of the north, south, and east
districts of London, this disease raged with extraordinary violence. Many
of the patients were working-people from the country, who had endured the
severest privation while migrating, and, after their arrival, had slept
hungry and half-naked in the streets, and so fallen victims to the fever.
These people were brought into the hospital in such a state of weakness,
that unusual quantities of wine, cognac, and preparations of ammonia and
other stimulants were required for their treatment; 16.5 per cent. of all
patients died. This malignant fever is to be found in Manchester; in the
worst quarters of the Old Town, Ancoats, Little Ireland, etc., it is
rarely extinct; though here, as in the _English_ towns generally, it
prevails to a less extent than might be expected. In Scotland and
Ireland, on the other hand, it rages with a violence that surpasses all
conception. In Edinburgh and Glasgow it broke out in 1817, after the
famine, and in 1826 and 1837 with especial violence, after the commercial
crisis, subsiding somewhat each time after having raged about three
years. In Edinburgh about 6,000 persons were attacked by the fever
during the epidemic of 1817, and about 10,000 in that of 1837, and not
only the number of persons attacked but the violence of the disease
increased with each repetition. {100a}
But the fury of the epidemic in all former periods seems to have been
child's play in comparison with its ravages after the crisis of 1842. One-
sixth of the whole indigent population of Scotland was seized by the
fever, and the infection was carried by wandering beggars with fearful
rapidity from one locality to another. It did not reach the middle and
upper classes of the population, yet in two months there were more fever
cases than in twelve years before. In Glasgow, twelve per cent. of the
population were seized in the year 1843; 32,000 persons, of whom thirty-
two per cent. perished, while this mortality in Manchester and Liverpool
does not ordinarily exceed eight per cent. The illness reached a crisis
on the seventh and fifteenth days; on the latter, the patient usually
became yellow, which our authority {100b} regards as an indication that
the cause of the malady was to be sought in mental excitement and
anxiety. In Ireland, too, these fever epidemics have become
domesticated. During twenty-one months of the years 1817-1818, 39,000
fever patients passed through the Dublin hospital; and in a more recent
year, according to Sheriff Alison, {100c} 60,000. In Cork the fever
hospital received one-seventh of the population in 1817-1818, in Limerick
in the same time one-fourth, and in the bad quarter of Waterford,
nineteen-twentieths of the whole population were ill of the fever at one
time.
When one remembers under what conditions the working-people live, when
one thinks how crowded their dwellings are, how every nook and corner
swarms with human beings, how sick and well sleep in the same room, in
the same bed, the only wonder is that a contagious disease like this
fever does not spread yet farther. And when one reflects how little
medical assistance the sick have at command, how many are without any
medical advice whatsoever, and ignorant of the most ordinary
precautionary measures, the mortality seems actually small. Dr. Alison,
who has made a careful study of this disease, attributes it directly to
the want and the wretched condition of the poor, as in the report already
quoted. He asserts that privations and the insufficient satisfaction of
vital needs are what prepare the frame for contagion and make the
epidemic widespread and terrible. He proves that a period of privation,
a commercial crisis or a bad harvest, has each time produced the typhus
epidemic in Ireland as in Scotland, and that the fury of the plague has
fallen almost exclusively on the working-class. It is a noteworthy fact,
that according to his testimony, the majority of persons who perish by
typhus are fathers of families, precisely the persons who can least be
spared by those dependent upon them; and several Irish physicians whom he
quotes bear the same testimony.
Another category of diseases arises directly from the food rather than
the dwellings of the workers. The food of the labourer, indigestible
enough in itself, is utterly unfit for young children, and he has neither
means nor time to get his children more suitable food. Moreover, the
custom of giving children spirits, and even opium, is very general; and
these two influences, with the rest of the conditions of life prejudicial
to bodily development, give rise to the most diverse affections of the
digestive organs, leaving life-long traces behind them. Nearly all
workers have stomachs more or less weak, and are yet forced to adhere to
the diet which is the root of the evil. How should they know what is to
blame for it? And if they knew, how could they obtain a more suitable
regimen so long as they cannot adopt a different way of living and are
not better educated? But new disease arises during childhood from
impaired digestion. Scrofula is almost universal among the
working-class, and scrofulous parents have scrofulous children,
especially when the original influences continue in full force to operate
upon the inherited tendency of the children. A second consequence of
this insufficient bodily nourishment, during the years of growth and
development, is rachitis, which is extremely common among the children of
the working-class. The hardening of the bones is delayed, the
development of the skeleton in general is restricted, and deformities of
the legs and spinal column are frequent, in addition to the usual
rachitic affections. How greatly all these evils are increased by the
changes to which the workers are subject in consequence of fluctuations
in trade, want of work, and the scanty wages in time of crisis, it is not
necessary to dwell upon. Temporary want of sufficient food, to which
almost every working-man is exposed at least once in the course of his
life, only contributes to intensify the effects of his usual sufficient
but bad diet. Children who are half-starved, just when they most need
ample and nutritious food--and how many such there are during every
crisis and even when trade is at its best--must inevitably become weak,
scrofulous and rachitic in a high degree. And that they do become so,
their appearance amply shows. The neglect to which the great mass of
working-men's children are condemned leaves ineradicable traces and
brings the enfeeblement of the whole race of workers with it. Add to
this, the unsuitable clothing of this class, the impossibility of
precautions against colds, the necessity of toiling so long as health
permits, want made more dire when sickness appears, and the only too
common lack of all medical assistance; and we have a rough idea of the
sanitary condition of the English working-class. The injurious effects
peculiar to single employments as now conducted, I shall not deal with
here.
Besides these, there are other influences which enfeeble the health of a
great number of workers, intemperance most of all. All possible
temptations, all allurements combine to bring the workers to drunkenness.
Liquor is almost their only source of pleasure, and all things conspire
to make it accessible to them. The working-man comes from his work
tired, exhausted, finds his home comfortless, damp, dirty, repulsive; he
has urgent need of recreation, he _must_ have something to make work
worth his trouble, to make the prospect of the next day endurable. His
unnerved, uncomfortable, hypochondriac state of mind and body arising
from his unhealthy condition, and especially from indigestion, is
aggravated beyond endurance by the general conditions of his life, the
uncertainty of his existence, his dependence upon all possible accidents
and chances, and his inability to do anything towards gaining an assured
position. His enfeebled frame, weakened by bad air and bad food,
violently demands some external stimulus; his social need can be
gratified only in the public-house, he has absolutely no other place
where he can meet his friends. How can he be expected to resist the
temptation? It is morally and physically inevitable that, under such
circumstances, a very large number of working-men should fall into
intemperance. And apart from the chiefly physical influences which drive
the working-man into drunkenness, there is the example of the great mass,
the neglected education, the impossibility of protecting the young from
temptation, in many cases the direct influence of intemperate parents,
who give their own children liquor, the certainty of forgetting for an
hour or two the wretchedness and burden of life, and a hundred other
circumstances so mighty that the workers can, in truth, hardly be blamed
for yielding to such overwhelming pressure. Drunkenness has here ceased
to be a vice, for which the vicious can be held responsible; it becomes a
phenomenon, the necessary, inevitable effect of certain conditions upon
an object possessed of no volition in relation to those conditions. They
who have degraded the working-man to a mere object have the
responsibility to bear. But as inevitably as a great number of working-
men fall a prey to drink, just so inevitably does it manifest its ruinous
influence upon the body and mind of its victims. All the tendencies to
disease arising from the conditions of life of the workers are promoted
by it, it stimulates in the highest degree the development of lung and
digestive troubles, the rise and spread of typhus epidemics.
Another source of physical mischief to the working-class lies in the
impossibility of employing skilled physicians in cases of illness. It is
true that a number of charitable institutions strive to supply this want,
that the infirmary in Manchester, for instance, receives or gives advice
and medicine to 2,200 patients annually. But what is that in a city in
which, according to Gaskell's calculation, {104} three-fourths of the
population need medical aid every year? English doctors charge high
fees, and working-men are not in a position to pay them. They can
therefore do nothing, or are compelled to call in cheap charlatans, and
use quack remedies, which do more harm than good. An immense number of
such quacks thrive in every English town, securing their _clientele_
among the poor by means of advertisements, posters, and other such
devices. Besides these, vast quantities of patent medicines are sold,
for all conceivable ailments: Morrison's Pills, Parr's Life Pills, Dr.
Mainwaring's Pills, and a thousand other pills, essences, and balsams,
all of which have the property of curing all the ills that flesh is heir
to. These medicines rarely contain actually injurious substances, but,
when taken freely and often, they affect the system prejudicially; and as
the unwary purchasers are always recommended to take as much as possible,
it is not to be wondered at that they swallow them wholesale whether
wanted or not.
It is by no means unusual for the manufacturer of Parr's Life Pills to
sell twenty to twenty-five thousand boxes of these salutary pills in a
week, and they are taken for constipation by this one, for diarrhoea by
that one, for fever, weakness, and all possible ailments. As our German
peasants are cupped or bled at certain seasons, so do the English working-
people now consume patent medicines to their own injury and the great
profit of the manufacturer. One of the most injurious of these patent
medicines is a drink prepared with opiates, chiefly laudanum, under the
name Godfrey's Cordial. Women who work at home, and have their own and
other people's children to take care of, give them this drink to keep
them quiet, and, as many believe, to strengthen them. They often begin
to give this medicine to newly-born children, and continue, without
knowing the effects of this "heartsease," until the children die. The
less susceptible the child's system to the action of the opium, the
greater the quantities administered. When the cordial ceases to act,
laudanum alone is given, often to the extent of fifteen to twenty drops
at a dose. The Coroner of Nottingham testified before a Parliamentary
Commission {105a} that one apothecary had, according to his own
statement, used thirteen hundredweight of laudanum in one year in the
preparation of Godfrey's Cordial. The effects upon the children so
treated may be readily imagined. They are pale, feeble, wilted, and
usually die before completing the second year. The use of this cordial
is very extensive in all great towns and industrial districts in the
kingdom.
The result of all these influences is a general enfeeblement of the frame
in the working-class. There are few vigorous, well-built, healthy
persons among the workers, _i.e_., among the factory operatives, who are
employed in confined rooms, and we are here discussing these only. They
are almost all weakly, of angular but not powerful build, lean, pale, and
of relaxed fibre, with the exception of the muscles especially exercised
in their work. Nearly all suffer from indigestion, and consequently from
a more or less hypochondriac, melancholy, irritable, nervous condition.
Their enfeebled constitutions are unable to resist disease, and are
therefore seized by it on every occasion. Hence they age prematurely,
and die early. On this point the mortality statistics supply
unquestionable testimony.
According to the Report of Registrar-General Graham, the annual death-
rate of all England and Wales is something less than 2.25 per cent. That
is to say, out of forty-five persons, one dies every year. {105b} This
was the average for the year 1839-40. In 1840-41 the mortality
diminished somewhat, and the death-rate was but one in forty-six. But in
the great cities the proportion is wholly different. I have before me
official tables of mortality (_Manchester Guardian_, July 31st, 1844),
according to which the death-rate of several large towns is as
follows:--In Manchester, including Chorlton and Salford, one in 32.72;
and excluding Chorlton and Salford, one in 30.75. In Liverpool,
including West Derby (suburb), 31.90, and excluding West Derby, 29.90;
while the average of all the districts of Cheshire, Lancashire, and
Yorkshire cited, including a number of wholly or partially rural
districts and many small towns, with a total population of 2,172,506 for
the whole, is one death in 39.80 persons. How unfavourably the workers
are placed in the great cities, the mortality for Prescott in Lancashire
shows: a district inhabited by miners, and showing a lower sanitary
condition than that of the agricultural districts, mining being by no
means a healthful occupation. But these miners live in the country, and
the death-rate among them is but one in 47.54, or nearly two-and-a-half
per cent. better than that for all England. All these statements are
based upon the mortality tables for 1843. Still higher is the death-rate
in the Scotch cities; in Edinburgh, in 1838-39, one in 29; in 1831, in
the Old Town alone, one in 22. In Glasgow, according to Dr. Cowen, {106}
the average has been, since 1830, one in 30; and in single years, one in
22 to 24. That this enormous shortening of life falls chiefly upon the
working-class, that the general average is improved by the smaller
mortality of the upper and middle-classes, is attested upon all sides.
One of the most recent depositions is that of a physician, Dr. P. H.
Holland, in Manchester, who investigated Chorlton-on-Medlock, a suburb of
Manchester, under official commission. He divided the houses and streets
into three classes each, and ascertained the following variations in the
death-rate:
First class of Streets. Houses I. class. Mortality one in 51
,, ,, ,, II. ,, ,, ,, 45
,, ,, ,, III. ,, ,, ,, 36
Second ,, ,, I. ,, ,, ,, 55
,, ,, ,, II. ,, ,, ,, 38
,, ,, ,, III. ,, ,, ,, 35
Third ,, ,, I. ,, Wanting --- ----
,, ,, ,, II. ,, Mortality ,, 35
,, ,, ,, III. ,, ,, ,, 25
It is clear from other tables given by Holland that the mortality in the
_streets_ of the second class is 18 per cent. greater, and in the streets
of the third class 68 per cent. greater than in those of the first class;
that the mortality in the _houses_ of the second class is 31 per cent
greater, and in the third class 78 per cent. greater than in those of the
first class; that the mortality is those bad streets which were improved,
decreased 25 per cent. He closes with the remark, very frank for an
English bourgeois: {107}
"When we find the rate of mortality four times as high in some streets
as in others, and twice as high in whole classes of streets as in
other classes, and further find that it is all but invariably high in
those streets which are in bad condition, and almost invariably low in
those whose condition is good, we cannot resist the conclusion that
multitudes of our fellow-creatures, _hundreds of our immediate
neighbours_, are annually destroyed for want of the most evident
precautions."
The Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Working-Class contains
information which attests the same fact. In Liverpool, in 1840, the
average longevity of the upper-classes, gentry, professional men, etc.,
was thirty-five years; that of the business men and better-placed
handicraftsmen, twenty-two years; and that of the operatives,
day-labourers, and serviceable class in general, but fifteen years. The
Parliamentary reports contain a mass of similar facts.
The death-rate is kept so high chiefly by the heavy mortality among young
children in the working-class. The tender frame of a child is least able
to withstand the unfavourable influences of an inferior lot in life; the
neglect to which they are often subjected, when both parents work or one
is dead, avenges itself promptly, and no one need wonder that in
Manchester, according to the report last quoted, more than fifty-seven
per cent. of the children of the working-class perish before the fifth
year, while but twenty per cent. of the children of the higher classes,
and not quite thirty-two per cent. of the children of all classes in the
country die under five years of age. {108a} The article of the
_Artisan_, already several times referred to, furnishes exacter
information on this point, by comparing the city death-rate in single
diseases of children with the country death-rate, thus demonstrating
that, in general, epidemics in Manchester and Liverpool are three times
more fatal than in country districts; that affections of the nervous
system are quintupled, and stomach troubles trebled, while deaths from
affections of the lungs in cities are to those in the country as 2.5 to
1. Fatal cases of smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, and whooping cough,
among small children, are four times more frequent; those of water on the
brain are trebled, and convulsions ten times more frequent. To quote
another acknowledged authority, I append the following table. Out of
10,000 persons, there die--{108b}
Under 5-19 20-39 40-59 60-69 70-79 80-89 90-99 100 x
5 years
In Rutlandshire, a
healthy agricultural
district 2,865 891 1,275 1,299 1,189 1,428 938 112 3
Essex, marshy
agricultural
district 3,159 1,110 1,526 1,413 963 1,019 630 177 3
Town of Carlisle,
1779-1787, before
introduction of
mills 4,408 921 1,006 1,201 940 826 633 153 22
Town of Carlisle,
after introduction
of mills 4,738 930 l,201 1,134 677 727 452 80 1
Preston, factory
town 4,947 1,136 1,379 1,114 553 532 298 38 3
Leeds, factory
town 5,286 927 1,228 1,198 593 512 225 29 2
Apart from the divers diseases which are the necessary consequence of the
present neglect and oppression of the poorer classes, there are other
influences which contribute to increase the mortality among small
children. In many families the wife, like the husband, has to work away
from home, and the consequence is the total neglect of the children, who
are either locked up or given out to be taken care of. It is, therefore,
not to be wondered at if hundreds of them perish through all manner of
accidents. Nowhere are so many children run over, nowhere are so many
killed by falling, drowning, or burning, as in the great cities and towns
of England. Deaths from burns and scalds are especially frequent, such a
case occurring nearly every week during the winter months in Manchester,
and very frequently in London, though little mention is made of them in
the papers. I have at hand a copy of the _Weekly Despatch_ of December
15th, 1844, according to which, in the week from December 1st to December
7th inclusive, _six_ such cases occurred. These unhappy children,
perishing in this terrible way, are victims of our social disorder, and
of the property-holding classes interested in maintaining and prolonging
this disorder. Yet one is left in doubt whether even this terribly
torturing death is not a blessing for the children in rescuing them from
a long life of toil and wretchedness, rich in suffering and poor in
enjoyment. So far has it gone in England; and the bourgeoisie reads
these things every day in the newspapers and takes no further trouble in
the matter. But it cannot complain if, after the official and
non-official testimony here cited which must be known to it, I broadly
accuse it of social murder. Let the ruling class see to it that these
frightful conditions are ameliorated, or let it surrender the
administration of the common interests to the labouring-class. To the
latter course it is by no means inclined; for the former task, so long as
it remains the bourgeoisie crippled by bourgeois prejudice, it has not
the needed power. For if, at last, after hundreds of thousands of
victims have perished, it manifests some little anxiety for the future,
passing a "Metropolitan Buildings Act," under which the most unscrupulous
overcrowding of dwellings is to be, at least in some slight degree,
restricted; if it points with pride to measures which, far from attacking
the root of the evil, do not by any means meet the demands of the
commonest sanitary policy, it cannot thus vindicate itself from the
accusation. The English bourgeoisie has but one choice, either to
continue its rule under the unanswerable charge of murder and in spite of
this charge, or to abdicate in favour of the labouring-class. Hitherto
it has chosen the former course.
Let us turn from the physical to the mental state of the workers. Since
the bourgeoisie vouchsafes them only so much of life as is absolutely
necessary, we need not wonder that it bestows upon them only so much
education as lies in the interest of the bourgeoisie; and that, in truth,
is not much. The means of education in England are restricted out of all
proportion to the population. The few day schools at the command of the
working-class are available only for the smallest minority, and are bad
besides. The teachers, worn-out workers, and other unsuitable persons
who only turn to teaching in order to live, are usually without the
indispensable elementary knowledge, without the moral discipline so
needful for the teacher, and relieved of all public supervision. Here,
too, free competition rules, and, as usual, the rich profit by it, and
the poor, for whom competition is _not_ free, who have not the knowledge
needed to enable them to form a correct judgment, have the evil
consequences to bear. Compulsory school attendance does not exist. In
the mills it is, as we shall see, purely nominal; and when in the session
of 1843 the Ministry was disposed to make this nominal compulsion
effective, the manufacturing bourgeoisie opposed the measure with all its
might, though the working-class was outspokenly in favour of compulsory
school attendance. Moreover, a mass of children work the whole week
through in the mills or at home, and therefore cannot attend school. The
evening schools, supposed to be attended by children who are employed
during the day, are almost abandoned or attended without benefit. It is
asking too much, that young workers who have been using themselves up
twelve hours in the day, should go to school from eight to ten at night.
And those who try it usually fall asleep, as is testified by hundreds of
witnesses in the Children's Employment Commission's Report. Sunday
schools have been founded, it is true, but they, too, are most scantily
supplied with teachers, and can be of use to those only who have already
learnt something in the day schools. The interval from one Sunday to the
next is too long for an ignorant child to remember in the second sitting
what it learned in the first, a week before. The Children's Employment
Commission's Report furnishes a hundred proofs, and the Commission itself
most emphatically expresses the opinion, that neither the week-day nor
the Sunday schools, in the least degree, meet the needs of the nation.
This report gives evidence of ignorance in the working-class of England,
such as could hardly be expected in Spain or Italy. It cannot be
otherwise; the bourgeoisie has little to hope, and much to fear, from the
education of the working-class. The Ministry, in its whole enormous
budget of 55,000,000 pounds, has only the single trifling item of 40,000
pounds for public education, and, but for the fanaticism of the religious
sects which does at least as much harm as good, the means of education
would be yet more scanty. As it is, the State Church manages its
national schools and the various sects their sectarian schools for the
sole purpose of keeping the children of the brethren of the faith within
the congregation, and of winning away a poor childish soul here and there
from some other sect. The consequence is that religion, and precisely
the most unprofitable side of religion, polemical discussion, is made the
principal subject of instruction, and the memory of the children
overburdened with incomprehensible dogmas and theological distinctions;
that sectarian hatred and bigotry are awakened as early as possible, and
all rational mental and moral training shamefully neglected. The working
class has repeatedly demanded of Parliament a system of strictly secular
public education, leaving religion to the ministers of the sects; but,
thus far, no Ministry has been induced to grant it. The Minister is the
obedient servant of the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie is divided into
countless sects; but each would gladly grant the workers the otherwise
dangerous education on the sole condition of their accepting, as an
antidote, the dogmas peculiar to the especial sect in question. And as
these sects are still quarrelling among themselves for supremacy, the
workers remain for the present without education. It is true that the
manufacturers boast of having enabled the majority to read, but the
quality of the reading is appropriate to the source of the instruction,
as the Children's Employment Commission proves. According to this
report, he who knows his letters can read enough to satisfy the
conscience of the manufacturers. And when one reflects upon the confused
orthography of the English language which makes reading one of the arts,
learned only under long instruction, this ignorance is readily
understood. Very few working-people write readily; and writing
orthographically is beyond the powers even of many "educated" persons.
The Sunday schools of the State Church, of the Quakers, and, I think, of
several other sects, do not teach writing, "because it is too worldly an
employment for Sunday." The quality of the instruction offered the
workers in other directions may be judged from a specimen or two, taken
from the Children's Employment Commission's Report, which unfortunately
does not embrace mill-work proper:
"In Birmingham," says Commissioner Grainger, "the children examined by
me are, as a whole, utterly wanting in all that could be in the
remotest degree called a useful education. Although in almost all the
schools religious instruction alone is furnished, the profoundest
ignorance even upon that subject prevailed."--"In Wolverhampton," says
Commissioner Horne, "I found, among others, the following example: A
girl of eleven years had attended both day and Sunday school, 'had
never heard of another world, of Heaven, or another life.' A boy,
seventeen years old, did not know that twice two are four, nor how
many farthings in two pence even when the money was placed in his
hand. Several boys had never heard of London nor of Willenhall,
though the latter was but an hour's walk from their homes, and in the
closest relations with Wolverhampton. Several had never heard the
name of the Queen nor other names, such as Nelson, Wellington,
Bonaparte; but it was noteworthy that those who had never heard even
of St. Paul, Moses, or Solomon, were very well instructed as to the
life, deeds, and character of Dick Turpin, and especially of Jack
Sheppard. A youth of sixteen did not know how many twice two are, nor
how much four farthings make. A youth of seventeen asserted that four
farthings are four half pence; a third, seventeen years old, answered
several very simple questions with the brief statement, that he 'was
ne jedge o' nothin'.'" {112a} These children who are crammed with
religious doctrines four or five years at a stretch, know as little at
the end as at the beginning. One child "went to Sunday school
regularly for five years; does not know who Jesus Christ is, but had
heard the name; had never heard of the twelve Apostles, Samson, Moses,
Aaron, etc." {112b} Another "attended Sunday school regularly six
years; knows who Jesus Christ was; he died on the Cross to save our
Saviour; had never heard of St. Peter or St. Paul." {113a} A third,
"attended different Sunday schools seven years; can read only the
thin, easy books with simple words of one syllable; has heard of the
Apostles, but does not know whether St. Peter was one or St. John; the
latter must have been St. John Wesley." {113b} To the question who
Christ was, Horne received the following answers among others: "He was
Adam," "He was an Apostle," "He was the Saviour's Lord's Son," and
from a youth of sixteen: "He was a king of London long ago." In
Sheffield, Commissioner Symonds let the children from the Sunday
school read aloud; they could not tell what they had read, or what
sort of people the Apostles were, of whom they had just been reading.
After he had asked them all one after the other about the Apostles
without securing a single correct answer, one sly-looking little
fellow, with great glee, called out: "I know, mister; they were the
lepers!" {113c} From the pottery districts and from Lancashire the
reports are similar.
This is what the bourgeoisie and the State are doing for the education
and improvement of the working-class. Fortunately the conditions under
which this class lives are such as give it a sort of practical training,
which not only replaces school cramming, but renders harmless the
confused religious notions connected with it, and even places the workers
in the vanguard of the national movement of England. Necessity is the
mother of invention, and what is still more important, of thought and
action. The English working-man who can scarcely read and still less
write, nevertheless knows very well where his own interest and that of
the nation lies. He knows, too, what the especial interest of the
bourgeoisie is, and what he has to expect of that bourgeoisie. If he
cannot write he can speak, and speak in public; if he has no arithmetic,
he can, nevertheless, reckon with the Political Economists enough to see
through a Corn-Law-repealing bourgeois, and to get the better of him in
argument; if celestial matters remain very mixed for him in spite of all
the effort of the preachers, he sees all the more clearly into
terrestrial, political, and social questions. We shall have occasion to
refer again to this point; and pass now to the moral characteristics of
our workers.
It is sufficiently clear that the instruction in morals can have no
better effect than the religious teaching, with which in all English
schools it is mixed up. The simple principles which, for plain human
beings, regulate the relations of man to man, brought into the direst
confusion by our social state, our war of each against all, necessarily
remain confused and foreign to the working-man when mixed with
incomprehensible dogmas, and preached in the religious form of an
arbitrary and dogmatic commandment. The schools contribute, according to
the confession of all authorities, and especially of the Children's
Employment Commission, almost nothing to the morality of the
working-class. So short-sighted, so stupidly narrow-minded is the
English bourgeoisie in its egotism, that it does not even take the
trouble to impress upon the workers the morality of the day, which the
bourgeoisie has patched together in its own interest for its own
protection! Even this precautionary measure is too great an effort for
the enfeebled and sluggish bourgeoisie. A time must come when it will
repent its neglect, too late. But it has no right to complain that the
workers know nothing of its system of morals, and do not act in
accordance with it.
Thus are the workers cast out and ignored by the class in power, morally
as well as physically and mentally. The only provision made for them is
the law, which fastens upon them when they become obnoxious to the
bourgeoisie. Like the dullest of the brutes, they are treated to but one
form of education, the whip, in the shape of force, not convincing but
intimidating. There is, therefore, no cause for surprise if the workers,
treated as brutes, actually become such; or if they can maintain their
consciousness of manhood only by cherishing the most glowing hatred, the
most unbroken inward rebellion against the bourgeoisie in power. They
are men so long only as they burn with wrath against the reigning class.
They become brutes the moment they bend in patience under the yoke, and
merely strive to make life endurable while abandoning the effort to break
the yoke.
This, then, is all that the bourgeoisie has done for the education of the
proletariat--and when we take into consideration all the circumstances in
which this class lives, we shall not think the worse of it for the
resentment which it cherishes against the ruling class. The moral
training which is not given to the worker in school is not supplied by
the other conditions of his life; that moral training, at least, which
alone has worth in the eyes of the bourgeoisie; his whole position and
environment involves the strongest temptation to immorality. He is poor,
life offers him no charm, almost every enjoyment is denied him, the
penalties of the law have no further terrors for him; why should he
restrain his desires, why leave to the rich the enjoyment of his
birthright, why not seize a part of it for himself? What inducement has
the proletarian not to steal! It is all very pretty and very agreeable
to the ear of the bourgeois to hear the "sacredness of property"
asserted; but for him who has none, the sacredness of property dies out
of itself. Money is the god of this world; the bourgeois takes the
proletarian's money from him and so makes a practical atheist of him. No
wonder, then, if the proletarian retains his atheism and no longer
respects the sacredness and power of the earthly God. And when the
poverty of the proletarian is intensified to the point of actual lack of
the barest necessaries of life, to want and hunger, the temptation to
disregard all social order does but gain power. This the bourgeoisie for
the most part recognises. Symonds {115a} observes that poverty exercises
the same ruinous influence upon the mind which drunkenness exercises upon
the body; and Dr. Alison explains to property-holding readers, with the
greatest exactness, what the consequences of social oppression must be
for the working-class. {115b} Want leaves the working-man the choice
between starving slowly, killing himself speedily, or taking what he
needs where he finds it--in plain English, stealing. And there is no
cause for surprise that most of them prefer stealing to starvation and
suicide.
True, there are, within the working-class, numbers too moral to steal
even when reduced to the utmost extremity, and these starve or commit
suicide. For suicide, formerly the enviable privilege of the upper
classes, has become fashionable among the English workers, and numbers of
the poor kill themselves to avoid the misery from which they see no other
means of escape.
But far more demoralising than his poverty in its influence upon the
English working-man is the insecurity of his position, the necessity of
living upon wages from hand to mouth, that in short which makes a
proletarian of him. The smaller peasants in Germany are usually poor,
and often suffer want, but they are less at the mercy of accident, they
have at least something secure. The proletarian, who has nothing but his
two hands, who consumes to-day what he earned yesterday, who is subject
to every possible chance, and has not the slightest guarantee for being
able to earn the barest necessities of life, whom every crisis, every
whim of his employer may deprive of bread, this proletarian is placed in
the most revolting, inhuman position conceivable for a human being. The
slave is assured of a bare livelihood by the self-interest of his master,
the serf has at least a scrap of land on which to live; each has at worst
a guarantee for life itself. But the proletarian must depend upon
himself alone, and is yet prevented from so applying his abilities as to
be able to rely upon them. Everything that the proletarian can do to
improve his position is but a drop in the ocean compared with the floods
of varying chances to which he is exposed, over which he has not the
slightest control. He is the passive subject of all possible
combinations of circumstances, and must count himself fortunate when he
has saved his life even for a short time; and his character and way of
living are naturally shaped by these conditions. Either he seeks to keep
his head above water in this whirlpool, to rescue his manhood, and this
he can do solely in rebellion {116} against the class which plunders him
so mercilessly and then abandons him to his fate, which strives to hold
him in this position so demoralising to a human being; or he gives up the
struggle against his fate as hopeless, and strives to profit, so far as
he can, by the most favourable moment. To save is unavailing, for at the
utmost he cannot save more than suffices to sustain life for a short
time, while if he falls out of work, it is for no brief period. To
accumulate lasting property for himself is impossible; and if it were
not, he would only cease to be a working-man and another would take his
place. What better thing can he do, then, when he gets high wages, than
live well upon them? The English bourgeoisie is violently scandalised at
the extravagant living of the workers when wages are high; yet it is not
only very natural but very sensible of them to enjoy life when they can,
instead of laying up treasures which are of no lasting use to them, and
which in the end moth and rust (_i.e_., the bourgeoisie) get possession
of. Yet such a life is demoralising beyond all others. What Carlyle
says of the cotton spinners is true of all English industrial workers:
{117a}
"Their trade, now in plethoric prosperity, anon extenuated into
inanition and 'short time,' is of the nature of gambling; they live by
it like gamblers, now in luxurious superfluity, now in starvation.
Black, mutinous discontent devours them; simply the miserablest
feeling that can inhabit the heart of man. English commerce, with its
world-wide, convulsive fluctuations, with its immeasurable Proteus
Steam demon, makes all paths uncertain for them, all life a
bewilderment; society, steadfastness, peaceable continuance, the first
blessings of man are not theirs.--This world is for them no home, but
a dingy prison-house, of reckless unthrift, rebellion, rancour,
indignation against themselves and against all men. Is it a green,
flowery world, with azure everlasting sky stretched over it, the work
and government of a God; or a murky, simmering Tophet, of copperas
fumes, cotton fuz, gin riot, wrath and toil, created by a Demon,
governed by a Demon?"
And elsewhere: {117b}
"Injustice, infidelity to truth and fact and Nature's order, being
properly the one evil under the sun, and the feeling of injustice the
one intolerable pain under the sun, our grand question as to the
condition of these working-men would be: Is it just? And, first of
all, what belief have they themselves formed about the justice of it?
The words they promulgate are notable by way of answer; their actions
are still more notable. Revolt, sullen, revengeful humour of revolt
against the upper classes, decreasing respect for what their temporal
superiors command, decreasing faith for what their spiritual superiors
teach, is more and more the universal spirit of the lower classes.
Such spirit may be blamed, may be vindicated, but all men must
recognise it as extant there, all may know that it is mournful, that
unless altered it will be fatal."
Carlyle is perfectly right as to the facts and wrong only in censuring
the wild rage of the workers against the higher classes. This rage, this
passion, is rather the proof that the workers feel the inhumanity of
their position, that they refuse to be degraded to the level of brutes,
and that they will one day free themselves from servitude to the
bourgeoisie. This may be seen in the case of those who do not share this
wrath; they either bow humbly before the fate that overtakes them, live a
respectful private life as well as they can, do not concern themselves as
to the course of public affairs, help the bourgeoisie to forge the chains
of the workers yet more securely, and stand upon the plane of
intellectual nullity that prevailed before the industrial period began;
or they are tossed about by fate, lose their moral hold upon themselves
as they have already lost their economic hold, live along from day to
day, drink and fall into licentiousness; and in both cases they are
brutes. The last-named class contributes chiefly to the "rapid increase
of vice," at which the bourgeoisie is so horrified after itself setting
in motion the causes which give rise to it.
Another source of demoralisation among the workers is their being
condemned to work. As voluntary, productive activity is the highest
enjoyment known to us, so is compulsory toil the most cruel, degrading
punishment. Nothing is more terrible than being constrained to do some
one thing every day from morning until night against one's will. And the
more a man the worker feels himself, the more hateful must his work be to
him, because he feels the constraint, the aimlessness of it for himself.
Why does he work? For love of work? From a natural impulse? Not at
all! He works for money, for a thing which has nothing whatsoever to do
with the work itself; and he works so long, moreover, and in such
unbroken monotony, that this alone must make his work a torture in the
first weeks if he has the least human feeling left. The division of
labour has multiplied the brutalising influences of forced work. In most
branches the worker's activity is reduced to some paltry, purely
mechanical manipulation, repeated minute after minute, unchanged year
after year. {119} How much human feeling, what abilities can a man
retain in his thirtieth year, who has made needle points or filed toothed
wheels twelve hours every day from his early childhood, living all the
time under the conditions forced upon the English proletarian? It is
still the same thing since the introduction of steam. The worker's
activity is made easy, muscular effort is saved, but the work itself
becomes unmeaning and monotonous to the last degree. It offers no field
for mental activity, and claims just enough of his attention to keep him
from thinking of anything else. And a sentence to such work, to work
which takes his whole time for itself, leaving him scarcely time to eat
and sleep, none for physical exercise in the open air, or the enjoyment
of Nature, much less for mental activity, how can such a sentence help
degrading a human being to the level of a brute? Once more the worker
must choose, must either surrender himself to his fate, become a "good"
workman, heed "faithfully" the interest of the bourgeoisie, in which case
he most certainly becomes a brute, or else he must rebel, fight for his
manhood to the last, and this he can only do in the fight against the
bourgeoisie.
And when all these conditions have engendered vast demoralisation among
the workers, a new influence is added to the old, to spread this
degradation more widely and carry it to the extremest point. This
influence is the centralisation of the population. The writers of the
English bourgeoisie are crying murder at the demoralising tendency of the
great cities, like perverted Jeremiahs, they sing dirges, not over the
destruction, but the growth of the cities. Sheriff Alison attributes
almost everything, and Dr. Vaughan, author of "The Age of Great Cities,"
still more to this influence. And this is natural, for the propertied
class has too direct an interest in the other conditions which tend to
destroy the worker body and soul. If they should admit that "poverty,
insecurity, overwork, forced work, are the chief ruinous influences,"
they would have to draw the conclusion, "then let us give the poor
property, guarantee their subsistence, make laws against overwork," and
this the bourgeoisie dare not formulate. But the great cities have grown
up so spontaneously, the population has moved into them so wholly of its
own motion, and the inference that manufacture and the middle-class which
profits from it alone have created the cities is so remote, that it is
extremely convenient for the ruling class to ascribe all the evil to this
apparently unavoidable source; whereas the great cities really only
secure a more rapid and certain development for evils already existing in
the germ. Alison is humane enough to admit this; he is no thoroughbred
Liberal manufacturer, but only a half developed Tory bourgeois, and he
has, therefore, an open eye, now and then, where the full-fledged
bourgeois is still stone blind. Let us hear him: {120}
"It is in the great cities that vice has spread her temptations, and
pleasure her seductions, and folly her allurements; that guilt is
encouraged by the hope of impunity, and idleness fostered by the
frequency of example. It is to these great marts of human corruption
that the base and the profligate resort from the simplicity of country
life; it is here that they find victims whereon to practise their
iniquity, and gains to reward the dangers that attend them. Virtue is
here depressed from the obscurity in which it is involved. Guilt is
matured from the difficulty of its detection; licentiousness is
rewarded by the immediate enjoyment which it promises. If any person
will walk through St. Giles's, the crowded alleys of Dublin, or the
poorer quarters of Glasgow by night, he will meet with ample proof of
these observations; he will no longer wonder at the disorderly habits
and profligate enjoyments of the lower orders; his astonishment will
be, not that there is so much, but that there is so little crime in
the world. The great cause of human corruption in these crowded
situations is the contagious nature of bad example and the extreme
difficulty of avoiding the seductions of vice when they are brought
into close and daily proximity with the younger part of the people.
Whatever we may think of the strength of virtue, experience proves
that the higher orders are indebted for their exemption from atrocious
crime or disorderly habits chiefly to their fortunate removal from the
scene of temptation; and that where they are exposed to the seductions
which assail their inferiors, they are noways behind them in yielding
to their influence. It is the peculiar misfortune of the poor in
great cities that they cannot fly from these irresistible temptations,
but that, turn where they will, they are met by the alluring forms of
vice, or the seductions of guilty enjoyment. It is the experienced
impossibility of concealing the attractions of vice from the younger
part of the poor in great cities which exposes them to so many causes
of demoralisation. All this proceeds not from any unwonted or
extraordinary depravity in the character of these victims of
licentiousness, but from the almost irresistible nature of the
temptations to which the poor are exposed. The rich, who censure
their conduct, would in all probability yield as rapidly as they have
done to the influence of similar causes. There is a certain degree of
misery, a certain proximity to sin, which virtue is rarely able to
withstand, and which the young, in particular, are generally unable to
resist. The progress of vice in such circumstances is almost as
certain and often nearly as rapid as that of physical contagion."
And elsewhere:
"When the higher orders for their own profit have drawn the labouring-
classes in great numbers into a small space, the contagion of guilt
becomes rapid and unavoidable. The lower orders, situated as they are
in so far as regards moral or religious instruction, are frequently
hardly more to be blamed for yielding to the temptations which
surround them than for falling victims to the typhus fever."
Enough! The half-bourgeois Alison betrays to us, however narrow his
manner of expressing himself, the evil effect of the great cities upon
the moral development of the workers. Another, a bourgeois _pur sang_, a
man after the heart of the Anti-Corn Law League, Dr. Andrew Ure, {122}
betrays the other side. He tells us that life in great cities
facilitates cabals among the workers and confers power on the Plebs. If
here the workers are not educated (_i.e_., to obedience to the
bourgeoisie), they may view matters one-sidedly, from the standpoint of a
sinister selfishness, and may readily permit themselves to be hoodwinked
by sly demagogues; nay, they might even be capable of viewing their
greatest benefactors, the frugal and enterprising capitalists, with a
jealous and hostile eye. Here proper training alone can avail, or
national bankruptcy and other horrors must follow, since a revolution of
the workers could hardly fail to occur. And our bourgeois is perfectly
justified in his fears. If the centralisation of population stimulates
and develops the property-holding class, it forces the development of the
workers yet more rapidly. The workers begin to feel as a class, as a
whole; they begin to perceive that, though feeble as individuals, they
form a power united; their separation from the bourgeoisie, the
development of views peculiar to the workers and corresponding to their
position in life, is fostered, the consciousness of oppression awakens,
and the workers attain social and political importance. The great cities
are the birthplaces of labour movements; in them the workers first began
to reflect upon their own condition, and to struggle against it; in them
the opposition between proletariat and bourgeoisie first made itself
manifest; from them proceeded the Trades-Unions, Chartism, and Socialism.
The great cities have transformed the disease of the social body, which
appears in chronic form in the country, into an acute one, and so made
manifest its real nature and the means of curing it. Without the great
cities and their forcing influence upon the popular intelligence, the
working-class would be far less advanced than it is. Moreover, they have
destroyed the last remnant of the patriarchal relation between working-
men and employers, a result to which manufacture on a large scale has
contributed by multiplying the employes dependent upon a single employer.
The bourgeoisie deplores all this, it is true, and has good reason to do
so; for, under the old conditions, the bourgeois was comparatively secure
against a revolt on the part of his hands. He could tyrannise over them
and plunder them to his heart's content, and yet receive obedience,
gratitude, and assent from these stupid people by bestowing a trifle of
patronising friendliness which cost him nothing, and perhaps some paltry
present, all apparently out of pure, self-sacrificing, uncalled-for
goodness of heart, but really not one-tenth part of his duty. As an
individual bourgeois, placed under conditions which he had not himself
created, he might do his duty at least in part; but, as a member of the
ruling class, which, by the mere fact of its ruling, is responsible for
the condition of the whole nation, he did nothing of what his position
involved. On the contrary, he plundered the whole nation for his own
individual advantage. In the patriarchal relation that hypocritically
concealed the slavery of the worker, the latter must have remained an
intellectual zero, totally ignorant of his own interest, a mere private
individual. Only when estranged from his employer, when convinced that
the sole bond between employer and employe is the bond of pecuniary
profit, when the sentimental bond between them, which stood not the
slightest test, had wholly fallen away, then only did the worker begin to
recognise his own interests and develop independently; then only did he
cease to be the slave of the bourgeoisie in his thoughts, feelings, and
the expression of his will. And to this end manufacture on a grand scale
and in great cities has most largely contributed.
Another influence of great moment in forming the character of the English
workers is the Irish immigration already referred to. On the one hand it
has, as we have seen, degraded the English workers, removed them from
civilisation, and aggravated the hardship of their lot; but, on the other
hand, it has thereby deepened the chasm between workers and bourgeoisie,
and hastened the approaching crisis. For the course of the social
disease from which England is suffering is the same as the course of a
physical disease; it develops, according to certain laws, has its own
crisis, the last and most violent of which determines the fate of the
patient. And as the English nation cannot succumb under the final
crises, but must go forth from it, born again, rejuvenated, we can but
rejoice over everything which accelerates the course of the disease. And
to this the Irish immigration further contributes by reason of the
passionate, mercurial Irish temperament, which it imports into England
and into the English working-class. The Irish and English are to each
other much as the French and the Germans; and the mixing of the more
facile, excitable, fiery Irish temperament with the stable, reasoning,
persevering English must, in the long run, be productive only of good for
both. The rough egotism of the English bourgeoisie would have kept its
hold upon the working-class much more firmly if the Irish nature,
generous to a fault, and ruled primarily by sentiment, had not
intervened, and softened the cold, rational English character in part by
a mixture of the races, and in part by the ordinary contact of life.
In view of all this, it is not surprising that the working-class has
gradually become a race wholly apart from the English bourgeoisie. The
bourgeoisie has more in common with every other nation of the earth than
with the workers in whose midst it lives. The workers speak other
dialects, have other thoughts and ideals, other customs and moral
principles, a different religion and other politics than those of the
bourgeoisie. Thus they are two radically dissimilar nations, as unlike
as difference of race could make them, of whom we on the Continent have
known but one, the bourgeoisie. Yet it is precisely the other, the
people, the proletariat, which is by far the more important for the
future of England.
Of the public character of the English working-man, as it finds
expression in associations and political principles, we shall have
occasion to speak later; let us here consider the results of the
influences cited above, as they affect the private character of the
worker. The workman is far more humane in ordinary life than the
bourgeois. I have already mentioned the fact that the beggars are
accustomed to turn almost exclusively to the workers, and that, in
general, more is done by the workers than by the bourgeoisie for the
maintenance of the poor. This fact, which any one may prove for himself
any day, is confirmed, among others, by Dr. Parkinson, Canon of
Manchester, who says: {125}
"The poor give one another more than the rich give the poor. I can
confirm my statement by the testimony of one of our eldest, most
skilful, most observant, and humane physicians, Dr. Bardsley, who has
often declared that the total sum which the poor yearly bestow upon
one another, surpasses that which the rich contribute in the same
time."
In other ways, too, the humanity of the workers is constantly manifesting
itself pleasantly. They have experienced hard times themselves, and can
therefore feel for those in trouble, whence they are more approachable,
friendlier, and less greedy for money, though they need it far more, than
the property-holding class. For them money is worth only what it will
buy, whereas for the bourgeois it has an especial inherent value, the
value of a god, and makes the bourgeois the mean, low money-grabber that
he is. The working-man who knows nothing of this feeling of reverence
for money is therefore less grasping than the bourgeois, whose whole
activity is for the purpose of gain, who sees in the accumulations of his
money-bags the end and aim of life. Hence the workman is much less
prejudiced, has a clearer eye for facts as they are than the bourgeois,
and does not look at everything through the spectacles of personal
selfishness. His faulty education saves him from religious
prepossessions, he does not understand religious questions, does not
trouble himself about them, knows nothing of the fanaticism that holds
the bourgeoisie bound; and if he chances to have any religion, he has it
only in name, not even in theory. Practically he lives for this world,
and strives to make himself at home in it. All the writers of the
bourgeoisie are unanimous on this point, that the workers are not
religious, and do not attend church. From the general statement are to
be excepted the Irish, a few elderly people, and the half-bourgeois, the
overlookers, foremen, and the like. But among the masses there prevails
almost universally a total indifference to religion, or at the utmost,
some trace of Deism too undeveloped to amount to more than mere words, or
a vague dread of the words infidel, atheist, etc. The clergy of all
sects is in very bad odour with the working-men, though the loss of its
influence is recent. At present, however, the mere cry: "He's a parson!"
is often enough to drive one of the clergy from the platform of a public
meeting. And like the rest of the conditions under which he lives, his
want of religious and other culture contributes to keep the working-man
more unconstrained, freer from inherited stable tenets and cut-and-dried
opinions, than the bourgeois who is saturated with the class prejudices
poured into him from his earliest youth. There is nothing to be done
with the bourgeois; he is essentially conservative in however liberal a
guise, his interest is bound up with that of the property-holding class,
he is dead to all active movement; he is losing his position in the
forefront of England's historical development. The workers are taking
his place, in rightful claim first, then in fact.
All this, together with the correspondent public action of the workers,
with which we shall deal later, forms the favourable side of the
character of this class; the unfavourable one may be quite as briefly
summed up, and follows quite as naturally out of the given causes.
Drunkenness, sexual irregularities, brutality, and disregard for the
rights of property are the chief points with which the bourgeois charges
them. That they drink heavily is to be expected. Sheriff Alison asserts
that in Glasgow some thirty thousand working-men get drunk every Saturday
night, and the estimate is certainly not exaggerated; and that in that
city in 1830, one house in twelve, and in 1840, one house in ten, was a
public-house; that in Scotland, in 1823, excise was paid upon 2,300,000
gallons; in 1837, upon 6,620,000 gallons; in England, in 1823, upon
1,976,000 gallons, and in 1837, upon 7,875,000 gallons of spirits. The
Beer Act of 1830, which facilitated the opening of beerhouses (jerry
shops), whose keepers are licensed to sell beer to be drunk on the
premises, facilitated the spread of intemperance by bringing a beerhouse,
so to say, to everybody's door. In nearly every street there are several
such beerhouses, and among two or three neighbouring houses in the
country one is sure to be a jerry shop. Besides these, there are hush-
shops in multitudes, _i.e_., secret drinking-places which are not
licensed, and quite as many secret distilleries which produce great
quantities of spirits in retired spots, rarely visited by the police, in
the great cities. Gaskell estimates these secret distilleries in
Manchester alone at more than a hundred, and their product at 156,000
gallons at the least. In Manchester there are, besides, more than a
thousand public-houses selling all sorts of alcoholic drinks, or quite as
many in proportion to the number of inhabitants as in Glasgow. In all
other great towns, the state of things is the same. And when one
considers, apart from the usual consequences of intemperance, that men
and women, even children, often mothers with babies in their arms, come
into contact in these places with the most degraded victims of the
bourgeois regime, with thieves, swindlers, and prostitutes; when one
reflects that many a mother gives the baby on her arm gin to drink, the
demoralising effects of frequenting such places cannot be denied.
On Saturday evenings, especially when wages are paid and work stops
somewhat earlier than usual, when the whole working-class pours from its
own poor quarters into the main thoroughfares, intemperance may be seen
in all its brutality. I have rarely come out of Manchester on such an
evening without meeting numbers of people staggering and seeing others
lying in the gutter. On Sunday evening the same scene is usually
repeated, only less noisily. And when their money is spent, the
drunkards go to the nearest pawnshop, of which there are plenty in every
city--over sixty in Manchester, and ten or twelve in a single street of
Salford, Chapel Street--and pawn whatever they possess. Furniture,
Sunday clothes where such exist, kitchen utensils in masses are fetched
from the pawnbrokers on Saturday night only to wander back, almost
without fail, before the next Wednesday, until at last some accident
makes the final redemption impossible, and one article after another
falls into the clutches of the usurer, or until he refuses to give a
single farthing more upon the battered, used-up pledge. When one has
seen the extent of intemperance among the workers in England, one readily
believes Lord Ashley's statement that this class annually expends
something like twenty-five million pounds sterling upon intoxicating
liquor: and the deterioration in external conditions, the frightful
shattering of mental and physical health, the ruin of all domestic
relations which follow may readily be imagined. True, the temperance
societies have done much, but what are a few thousand teetotallers among
the millions of workers? When Father Matthew, the Irish apostle of
temperance, passes through the English cities, from thirty to sixty
thousand workers take the pledge; but most of them break it again within
a month. If one counts up the immense numbers who have taken the pledge
in the last three or four years in Manchester, the total is greater than
the whole population of the town--and still it is by no means evident
that intemperance is diminishing.
Next to intemperance in the enjoyment of intoxicating liquors, one of the
principal faults of English working-men is sexual licence. But this,
too, follows with relentless logic, with inevitable necessity out of the
position of a class left to itself, with no means of making fitting use
of its freedom. The bourgeoisie has left the working-class only these
two pleasures, while imposing upon it a multitude of labours and
hardships, and the consequence is that the working-men, in order to get
something from life, concentrate their whole energy upon these two
enjoyments, carry them to excess, surrender to them in the most unbridled
manner. When people are placed under conditions which appeal to the
brute only, what remains to them but to rebel or to succumb to utter
brutality? And when, moreover, the bourgeoisie does its full share in
maintaining prostitution--and how many of the 40,000 prostitutes who fill
the streets of London every evening live upon the virtuous bourgeoisie!
How many of them owe it to the seduction of a bourgeois, that they must
offer their bodies to the passers-by in order to live?--surely it has
least of all a right to reproach the workers with their sexual brutality.
The failings of the workers in general may be traced to an unbridled
thirst for pleasure, to want of providence, and of flexibility in fitting
into the social order, to the general inability to sacrifice the pleasure
of the moment to a remoter advantage. But is that to be wondered at?
When a class can purchase few and only the most sensual pleasures by its
wearying toil, must it not give itself over blindly and madly to those
pleasures? A class about whose education no one troubles himself, which
is a playball to a thousand chances, knows no security in life--what
incentives has such a class to providence, to "respectability," to
sacrifice the pleasure of the moment for a remoter enjoyment, most
uncertain precisely by reason of the perpetually varying, shifting
conditions under which the proletariat lives? A class which bears all
the disadvantages of the social order without enjoying its advantages,
one to which the social system appears in purely hostile aspects--who can
demand that such a class respect this social order? Verily that is
asking much! But the working-man cannot escape the present arrangement
of society so long as it exists, and when the individual worker resists
it, the greatest injury falls upon himself.
Thus the social order makes family life almost impossible for the worker.
In a comfortless, filthy house, hardly good enough for mere nightly
shelter, ill-furnished, often neither rain-tight nor warm, a foul
atmosphere filling rooms overcrowded with human beings, no domestic
comfort is possible. The husband works the whole day through, perhaps
the wife also and the elder children, all in different places; they meet
night and morning only, all under perpetual temptation to drink; what
family life is possible under such conditions? Yet the working-man
cannot escape from the family, must live in the family, and the
consequence is a perpetual succession of family troubles, domestic
quarrels, most demoralising for parents and children alike. Neglect of
all domestic duties, neglect of the children, especially, is only too
common among the English working-people, and only too vigorously fostered
by the existing institutions of society. And children growing up in this
savage way, amidst these demoralising influences, are expected to turn
out goody-goody and moral in the end! Verily the requirements are naive,
which the self-satisfied bourgeois makes upon the working-man!
The contempt for the existing social order is most conspicuous in its
extreme form--that of offences against the law. If the influences
demoralising to the working-man act more powerfully, more concentratedly
than usual, he becomes an offender as certainly as water abandons the
fluid for the vaporous state at 80 degrees, Reaumur. Under the brutal
and brutalising treatment of the bourgeoisie, the working-man becomes
precisely as much a thing without volition as water, and is subject to
the laws of nature with precisely the same necessity; at a certain point
all freedom ceases. Hence with the extension of the proletariat, crime
has increased in England, and the British nation has become the most
criminal in the world. From the annual criminal tables of the Home
Secretary, it is evident that the increase of crime in England has
proceeded with incomprehensible rapidity. The numbers of arrests for
_criminal_ offences reached in the years: 1805, 4,605; 1810, 5,146; 1815,
7,898; 1820, 13,710; 1825, 14,437; 1830,18,107; 1835, 20,731; 1840,
27,187; 1841, 27,760; 1842, 31,309 in England and Wales alone. That is
to say, they increased sevenfold in thirty-seven years. Of these
arrests, in 1842, 4,497 were made in Lancashire alone, or more than 14
per cent. of the whole; and 4,094 in Middlesex, including London, or more
than 13 per cent. So that two districts which include great cities with
large proletarian populations, produced one-fourth of the total amount of
crime, though their population is far from forming one-fourth of the
whole. Moreover, the criminal tables prove directly that nearly all
crime arises within the proletariat; for, in 1842, taking the average,
out of 100 criminals, 32.35 could neither read nor write; 58.32 read and
wrote imperfectly; 6.77 could read and write well; 0.22 had enjoyed a
higher education, while the degree of education of 2.34 could not be
ascertained. In Scotland, crime has increased yet more rapidly. There
were but 89 arrests for criminal offences in 1819, and as early as 1837
the number had risen to 3,176, and in 1842 to 4,189. In Lanarkshire,
where Sheriff Alison himself made out the official report, population has
doubled once in thirty years, and crime once in five and a half, or six
times more rapidly than the population. The offences, as in all
civilised countries, are, in the great majority of cases, against
property, and have, therefore, arisen from want in some form; for what a
man has, he does not steal. The proportion of offences against property
to the population, which in the Netherlands is as 1: 7,140, and in
France, as 1: 1,804, was in England, when Gaskell wrote, as 1: 799. The
proportion of offences against persons to the population is, in the
Netherlands, 1: 28,904; in France, 1: 17,573; in England, 1: 23,395; that
of crimes in general to the population in the agricultural districts, as
1: 1,043; in the manufacturing districts as 1: 840. {131a} In the whole
of England to-day the proportion is 1: 660; {131b} though it is scarcely
ten years since Gaskell's book appeared!
These facts are certainly more than sufficient to bring any one, even a
bourgeois, to pause and reflect upon the consequences of such a state of
things. If demoralisation and crime multiply twenty years longer in this
proportion (and if English manufacture in these twenty years should be
less prosperous than heretofore, the progressive multiplication of crime
can only continue the more rapidly), what will the result be? Society is
already in a state of visible dissolution; it is impossible to pick up a
newspaper without seeing the most striking evidence of the giving way of
all social ties. I look at random into a heap of English journals lying
before me; there is the _Manchester Guardian_ for October 30, 1844, which
reports for three days. It no longer takes the trouble to give exact
details as to Manchester, and merely relates the most interesting cases:
that the workers in a mill have struck for higher wages without giving
notice, and been condemned by a Justice of the Peace to resume work; that
in Salford a couple of boys had been caught stealing, and a bankrupt
tradesman tried to cheat his creditors. From the neighbouring towns the
reports are more detailed: in Ashton, two thefts, one burglary, one
suicide; in Bury, one theft; in Bolton, two thefts, one revenue fraud; in
Leigh, one theft; in Oldham, one strike for wages, one theft, one fight
between Irish women, one non-Union hatter assaulted by Union men, one
mother beaten by her son, one attack upon the police, one robbery of a
church; in Stockport, discontent of working-men with wages, one theft,
one fraud, one fight, one wife beaten by her husband; in Warrington, one
theft, one fight; in Wigan, one theft, and one robbery of a church. The
reports of the London papers are much worse; frauds, thefts, assaults,
family quarrels crowd one another. A _Times_ of September 12, 1844,
falls into my hand, which gives a report of a single day, including a
theft, an attack upon the police, a sentence upon a father requiring him
to support his illegitimate son, the abandonment of a child by its
parents, and the poisoning of a man by his wife. Similar reports are to
be found in all the English papers. In this country, social war is under
full headway, every one stands for himself, and fights for himself
against all comers, and whether or not he shall injure all the others who
are his declared foes, depends upon a cynical calculation as to what is
most advantageous for himself. It no longer occurs to any one to come to
a peaceful understanding with his fellow-man; all differences are settled
by threats, violence, or in a law-court. In short, every one sees in his
neighbour an enemy to be got out of the way, or, at best, a tool to be
used for his own advantage. And this war grows from year to year, as the
criminal tables show, more violent, passionate, irreconcilable. The
enemies are dividing gradually into two great camps--the bourgeoisie on
the one hand, the workers on the other. This war of each against all, of
the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, need cause us no surprise, for
it is only the logical sequel of the principle involved in free
competition. But it may very well surprise us that the bourgeoisie
remains so quiet and composed in the face of the rapidly gathering storm-
clouds, that it can read all these things daily in the papers without, we
will not say indignation at such a social condition, but fear of its
consequences, of a universal outburst of that which manifests itself
symptomatically from day to day in the form of crime. But then it is the
bourgeoisie, and from its standpoint cannot even see the facts, much less
perceive their consequences. One thing only is astounding, that class
prejudice and preconceived opinions can hold a whole class of human
beings in such perfect, I might almost say, such mad blindness.
Meanwhile, the development of the nation goes its way whether the
bourgeoisie has eyes for it or not, and will surprise the
property-holding class one day with things not dreamed of in its
philosophy.
SINGLE BRANCHES OF INDUSTRY. FACTORY HANDS.
In dealing now with the more important branches of the English
manufacturing proletariat, we shall begin, according to the principle
already laid down, with the factory-workers, _i.e_., those who are
comprised under the Factory Act. This law regulates the length of the
working-day in mills in which wool, silk, cotton, and flax are spun or
woven by means of water or steam-power, and embraces, therefore, the more
important branches of English manufacture. The class employed by them is
the most intelligent and energetic of all the English workers, and,
therefore, the most restless and most hated by the bourgeoisie. It
stands as a whole, and the cotton-workers pre-eminently stand, at the
head of the labour movement, as their masters the manufacturers,
especially those of Lancashire, take the lead of the bourgeois agitation.
We have already seen in the introduction how the population employed in
working up the textile materials were first torn from their former way of
life. It is, therefore, not surprising that the progress of mechanical
invention in later years also affected precisely these workers most
deeply and permanently. The history of cotton manufacture as related by
Ure, {134a} Baines, {134b} and others is the story of improvements in
every direction, most of which have become domesticated in the other
branches of industry as well. Hand-work is superseded by machine-work
almost universally, nearly all manipulations are conducted by the aid of
steam or water, and every year is bringing further improvements.
In a well-ordered state of society, such improvements could only be a
source of rejoicing; in a war of all against all, individuals seize the
benefit for themselves, and so deprive the majority of the means of
subsistence. Every improvement in machinery throws workers out of
employment, and the greater the advance, the more numerous the
unemployed; each great improvement produces, therefore, upon a number of
workers the effect of a commercial crisis, creates want, wretchedness,
and crime. Take a few examples. The very first invention, the jenny,
worked by one man, produced at least sixfold what the spinning-wheel had
yielded in the same time; thus every new jenny threw five spinners out of
employment. The throstle, which, in turn, produced much more than the
jenny, and like it, was worked by one man, threw still more people out of
employment. The mule, which required yet fewer hands in proportion to
the product, had the same effect, and every improvement in the mule,
every multiplication of its spindles, diminished still further the number
of workers employed. But this increase of the number of spindles in the
mule is so great that whole armies of workers have been thrown out of
employment by it. For, whereas one spinner, with a couple of children
for piecers, formerly set six hundred spindles in motion, he could now
manage fourteen hundred to two thousand spindles upon two mules, so that
two adult spinners and a part of the piecers whom they employed were
thrown out. And since self-acting mules have been introduced into a very
large number of spinning-mills, the spinners' work is wholly performed by
the machine. There lies before me a book from the pen of James Leach,
{135} one of the recognised leaders of the Chartists in Manchester. The
author has worked for years in various branches of industry, in mills and
coal mines, and is known to me personally as an honest, trustworthy, and
capable man. In consequence of his political position, he had at command
extensive detailed information as to the different factories, collected
by the workers themselves, and he publishes tables from which it is clear
that in 1841, in 35 factories, 1,060 fewer mule spinners were employed
than in 1829, though the number of spindles in these 35 factories had
increased by 99,239. He cites five factories in which no spinners
whatever are employed, self-actors only being used. While the number of
spindles increased by 10 per cent., the number of spinners diminished
more than 60 per cent. And Leach adds that since 1841, so many
improvements have been introduced by double-decking and other means, that
in some of the factories named, half the operatives have been discharged.
In one factory alone, where eighty spinners were employed a short time
ago, there are now but twenty left; the others having been discharged or
set at children's work for children's wages. Of Stockport Leach tells a
similar story, that in 1835, 800 spinners were employed, and in 1840 but
140, though the manufacture of Stockport has greatly increased during the
last eight or nine years. Similar improvements have now been made in
carding frames, by which one-half the operatives have been thrown out of
employment. In one factory improved frames have been set up, which have
thrown four hands out of eight out of work, besides which the employer
reduced the wages of the four retained from eight shillings to seven. The
same process has gone on in the weaving industry; the power-loom has
taken possession of one branch of hand-weaving after another, and since
it produces much more than the hand-loom, while one weaver can work two
looms, it has superseded a multitude of working-people. And in all sorts
of manufacture, in flax and wool-spinning, in silk-twisting, the case is
the same. The power-loom, too, is beginning to appropriate one branch
after another of wool and linen-weaving; in Rochdale alone, there are
more power than hand-looms in flannel and other wool-weaving branches.
The bourgeoisie usually replies to this, that improvements in machinery,
by decreasing the cost of production, supply finished goods at lower
prices, and that these reduced prices cause such an increase in
consumption that the unemployed operatives soon find full employment in
newly-founded factories. {136} The bourgeoisie is so far correct that
under certain conditions favourable for the general development of
manufacture, every reduction in price of goods _in which the raw material
is cheap_, greatly increases consumption, and gives rise to the building
of new factories; but every further word of the assertion is a lie. The
bourgeoisie ignores the fact that it takes years for these results of the
decrease in price to follow and for new factories to be built; it is
silent upon the point that every improvement in machinery throws the real
work, the expenditure of force, more and more upon the machine, and so
transforms the work of full-grown men into mere supervision, which a
feeble woman or even a child can do quite as well, and does for half or
two-thirds wages; that, therefore, grown men are constantly more and more
supplanted and _not re-employed_ by the increase in manufacture; it
conceals the fact that whole branches of industry fall away, or are so
changed that they must be learned afresh; and it takes good care not to
confess what it usually harps upon, whenever the question of forbidding
the work of children is broached, that factory-work must be learned in
earliest youth in order to be learned properly. It does not mention the
fact that the process of improvement goes steadily on, and that as soon
as the operative has succeeded in making himself at home in a new branch,
if he actually does succeed in so doing, this, too, is taken from him,
and with it the last remnant of security which remained to him for
winning his bread. But the bourgeoisie gets the benefit of the
improvements in machinery; it has a capital opportunity for piling up
money during the first years while many old machines are still in use,
and the improvement not yet universally introduced; and it would be too
much to ask that it should have an open eye for the disadvantages
inseparable from these improvements.
The fact that improved machinery reduces wages has also been as violently
disputed by the bourgeoisie, as it is constantly reiterated by the
working-men. The bourgeoisie insists that although the price of piece-
work has been reduced, yet the total of wages for the week's work has
rather risen than fallen, and the condition of the operatives rather
improved than deteriorated. It is hard to get to the bottom of the
matter, for the operatives usually dwell upon the price of piece-work.
But it is certain that the weekly wage, also, has, in many branches of
work, been reduced by the improvement of machinery. The so-called fine
spinners (who spin fine mule yarn), for instance, do receive high wages,
thirty to forty shillings a week, because they have a powerful
association for keeping wages up, and their craft requires long training;
but the coarse spinners who have to compete against self-actors (which
are not as yet adapted for fine spinning), and whose association was
broken down by the introduction of these machines, receive very low
wages. A mule spinner told me that he does not earn more than fourteen
shillings a week, and his statement agrees with that of Leach, that in
various factories the coarse spinners earn less than sixteen shillings
and sixpence a week, and that a spinner, who years ago earned thirty
shillings, can now hardly scrape up twelve and a half, and had not earned
more on an average in the past year. The wages of women and children may
perhaps have fallen less, but only because they were not high from the
beginning. I know several women, widows with children, who have trouble
enough to earn eight to nine shillings a week; and that they and their
families cannot live decently upon that sum, every one must admit who
knows the price of the barest necessaries of life in England. That wages
in general have been reduced by the improvement of machinery is the
unanimous testimony of the operatives. The bourgeois assertion that the
condition of the working-class has been improved by machinery is most
vigorously proclaimed a falsehood in every meeting of working-men in the
factory districts. And even if it were true that the relative wage, the
price of piece-work only, has fallen, while the absolute wage, the sum to
be earned in the week, remained unchanged, what would follow? That the
operatives have had quietly to look on while the manufacturers filled
their purses from every improvement without giving the hands the smallest
share in the gain. The bourgeois forgets, in fighting the working-man,
the most ordinary principles of his own Political Economy. He who at
other times swears by Malthus, cries out in his anxiety before the
workers: "Where could the millions by which the population of England has
increased find work, without the improvements in machinery?" {138} As
though the bourgeois did not know well enough that without machinery and
the expansion of industry which it produced, these "millions" would never
have been brought into the world and grown up! The service which
machinery has rendered the workers is simply this: that it has brought
home to their minds the necessity of a social reform by means of which
machinery shall no longer work against but for them. Let the wise
bourgeois ask the people who sweep the streets in Manchester and
elsewhere (though even this is past now, since machines for the purpose
have been invented and introduced), or sell salt, matches, oranges, and
shoe-strings on the streets, or even beg, what they were formerly, and he
will see how many will answer: "Mill-hands thrown out of work by
machinery." The consequences of improvement in machinery under our
present social conditions are, for the working-man, solely injurious, and
often in the highest degree oppressive. Every new advance brings with it
loss of employment, want, and suffering, and in a country like England
where, without that, there is usually a "surplus population," to be
discharged from work is the worst that can befall the operative. And
what a dispiriting, unnerving influence this uncertainty of his position
in life, consequent upon the unceasing progress of machinery, must
exercise upon the worker, whose lot is precarious enough without it! To
escape despair, there are but two ways open to him; either inward and
outward revolt against the bourgeoisie or drunkenness and general
demoralisation. And the English operatives are accustomed to take refuge
in both. The history of the English proletariat relates hundreds of
uprisings against machinery and the bourgeoisie; we have already spoken
of the moral dissolution which, in itself, is only another form of
despair.
The worst situation is that of those workers who have to compete against
a machine that is making its way. The price of the goods which they
produce adapts itself to the price of the kindred product of the machine,
and as the latter works more cheaply, its human competitor has but the
lowest wages. The same thing happens to every operative employed upon an
old machine in competition with later improvements. And who else is
there to bear the hardship? The manufacturer will not throw out his old
apparatus, nor will he sustain the loss upon it; out of the dead
mechanism he can make nothing, so he fastens upon the living worker, the
universal scapegoat of society. Of all the workers in competition with
machinery, the most ill-used are the hand-loom cotton weavers. They
receive the most trifling wages, and, with full work, are not in a
position to earn more than ten shillings a week. One class of woven
goods after another is annexed by the power-loom, and hand-weaving is the
last refuge of workers thrown out of employment in other branches, so
that the trade is always overcrowded. Hence it comes that, in average
seasons, the hand-weaver counts himself fortunate if he can earn six or
seven shillings a week, while to reach this sum he must sit at his loom
fourteen to eighteen hours a day. Most woven goods require moreover a
damp weaving-room, to keep the weft from snapping, and in part, for this
reason, in part because of their poverty, which prevents them from paying
for better dwellings, the workrooms of these weavers are usually without
wooden or paved floors. I have been in many dwellings of such weavers,
in remote, vile courts and alleys, usually in cellars. Often
half-a-dozen of these hand-loom weavers, several of them married, live
together in a cottage with one or two workrooms, and one large sleeping-
room. Their food consists almost exclusively of potatoes, with perhaps
oatmeal porridge, rarely milk, and scarcely ever meat. Great numbers of
them are Irish or of Irish descent. And these poor hand-loom weavers,
first to suffer from every crisis, and last to be relieved from it, must
serve the bourgeoisie as a handle in meeting attacks upon the factory
system. "See," cries the bourgeois, triumphantly, "see how these poor
creatures must famish, while the mill operatives are thriving, and _then_
judge the factory {140} system!" As though it were not precisely the
factory system and the machinery belonging to it which had so shamefully
crushed the hand-loom weavers, and as though the bourgeoisie did not know
this quite as well as ourselves! But the bourgeoisie has interests at
stake, and so a falsehood or two and a bit of hypocrisy won't matter
much.
Let us examine somewhat more closely the fact that machinery more and
more supersedes the work of men. The human labour, involved in both
spinning and weaving, consists chiefly in piecing broken threads, as the
machine does all the rest. This work requires no muscular strength, but
only flexibility of finger. Men are, therefore, not only not needed for
it, but actually, by reason of the greater muscular development of the
hand, less fit for it than women and children, and are, therefore,
naturally almost superseded by them. Hence, the more the use of the
arms, the expenditure of strength, can be transferred to steam or water-
power, the fewer men need be employed; and as women and children work
more cheaply, and in these branches better than men, they take their
places. In the spinning-mills women and girls are to be found in almost
exclusive possession of the throstles; among the mules one man, an adult
spinner (with self-actors, he, too, becomes superfluous), and several
piecers for tying the threads, usually children or women, sometimes young
men of from eighteen to twenty years, here and there an old spinner {141}
thrown out of other employment. At the power-looms women, from fifteen
to twenty years, are chiefly employed, and a few men; these, however,
rarely remain at this trade after their twenty-first year. Among the
preparatory machinery, too, women alone are to be found, with here and
there a man to clean and sharpen the carding-frames. Besides all these,
the factories employ numbers of children--doffers--for mounting and
taking down bobbins, and a few men as overlookers, a mechanic and an
engineer for the steam-engines, carpenters, porters, etc.; but the actual
work of the mills is done by women and children. This the manufacturers
deny.
They published last year elaborate tables to prove that machinery does
not supersede adult male operatives. According to these tables, rather
more than half of all the factory-workers employed, _viz_., 52 per cent.,
were females and 48 per cent. males, and of those operatives more than
half were over eighteen years old. So far, so good. But the
manufacturers are very careful not to tell us, how many of the adults
were men and how many women. And this is just the point. Besides this,
they have evidently counted the mechanics, engineers, carpenters, all the
men employed in any way in the factories, perhaps even the clerks, and
still they have not the courage to tell the whole truth. These
publications teem generally with falsehoods, perversions, crooked
statements, with calculations of averages, that prove a great deal for
the uninitiated reader and nothing for the initiated, and with
suppressions of facts bearing on the most important points; and they
prove only the selfish blindness and want of uprightness of the
manufacturers concerned. Let us take some of the statements of a speech
with which Lord Ashley introduced the Ten Hours' Bill, March 15th, 1844,
into the House of Commons. Here he gives some data as to the relations
of sex and age of the operatives, not yet refuted by the manufacturers,
whose statements, as quoted above, cover moreover only a part of the
manufacturing industry of England. Of 419,560 factory operatives of the
British Empire in 1839, 192,887, or nearly half, were under eighteen
years of age, and 242,296 of the female sex, of whom 112,192 were less
than eighteen years old. There remain, therefore, 80,695 male operatives
under eighteen years, and 96,569 adult male operatives, _or not one full
quarter_ of the whole number. In the cotton factories, 56.25 per cent.;
in the woollen mills, 69.5 per cent.; in the silk mills, 70.5 per cent.;
in the flax-spinning mills, 70.5 per cent. of all operatives are of the
female sex. These numbers suffice to prove the crowding out of adult
males. But you have only to go into the nearest mill to see the fact
confirmed. Hence follows of necessity that inversion of the existing
social order which, being forced upon them, has the most ruinous
consequences for the workers. The employment of women at once breaks up
the family; for when the wife spends twelve or thirteen hours every day
in the mill, and the husband works the same length of time there or
elsewhere, what becomes of the children? They grow up like wild weeds;
they are put out to nurse for a shilling or eighteenpence a week, and how
they are treated may be imagined. Hence the accidents to which little
children fall victims multiply in the factory districts to a terrible
extent. The lists of the Coroner of Manchester {143a} showed for nine
months: 69 deaths from burning, 56 from drowning, 23 from falling, 77
from other causes, or a total of 225 {143b} deaths from accidents, while
in non-manufacturing Liverpool during twelve months there were but 146
fatal accidents. The mining accidents are excluded in both cases; and
since the Coroner of Manchester has no authority in Salford, the
population of both places mentioned in the comparison is about the same.
The _Manchester Guardian_ reports one or more deaths by burning in almost
every number. That the general mortality among young children must be
increased by the employment of the mothers is self-evident, and is placed
beyond all doubt by notorious facts. Women often return to the mill
three or four days after confinement, leaving the baby, of course; in the
dinner hour they must hurry home to feed the child and eat something, and
what sort of suckling that can be is also evident. Lord Ashley repeats
the testimony of several workwomen: "M. H., twenty years old, has two
children, the youngest a baby, that is tended by the other, a little
older. The mother goes to the mill shortly after five o'clock in the
morning, and comes home at eight at night; all day the milk pours from
her breasts, so that her clothing drips with it." "H. W. has three
children, goes away Monday morning at five o'clock, and comes back
Saturday evening; has so much to do for the children then that she cannot
get to bed before three o'clock in the morning; often wet through to the
skin, and obliged to work in that state." She said: "My breasts have
given me the most frightful pain, and I have been dripping wet with
milk." The use of narcotics to keep the children still is fostered by
this infamous system, and has reached a great extent in the factory
districts. Dr. Johns, Registrar in Chief for Manchester, is of opinion
that this custom is the chief source of the many deaths from convulsions.
The employment of the wife dissolves the family utterly and of necessity,
and this dissolution, in our present society, which is based upon the
family, brings the most demoralising consequences for parents as well as
children. A mother who has no time to trouble herself about her child,
to perform the most ordinary loving services for it during its first
year, who scarcely indeed sees it, can be no real mother to the child,
must inevitably grow indifferent to it, treat it unlovingly like a
stranger. The children who grow up under such conditions are utterly
ruined for later family life, can never feel at home in the family which
they themselves found, because they have always been accustomed to
isolation, and they contribute therefore to the already general
undermining of the family in the working-class. A similar dissolution of
the family is brought about by the employment of the children. When they
get on far enough to earn more than they cost their parents from week to
week, they begin to pay the parents a fixed sum for board and lodging,
and keep the rest for themselves. This often happens from the fourteenth
or fifteenth year. {144} In a word, the children emancipate themselves,
and regard the paternal dwelling as a lodging-house, which they often
exchange for another, as suits them.
In many cases the family is not wholly dissolved by the employment of the
wife, but turned upside down. The wife supports the family, the husband
sits at home, tends the children, sweeps the room and cooks. This case
happens very frequently; in Manchester alone, many hundred such men could
be cited, condemned to domestic occupations. It is easy to imagine the
wrath aroused among the working-men by this reversal of all relations
within the family, while the other social conditions remain unchanged.
There lies before me a letter from an English working-man, Robert
Pounder, Baron's Buildings, Woodhouse, Moorside, in Leeds (the
bourgeoisie may hunt him up there; I give the exact address for the
purpose), written by him to Oastler: {145}
He relates how another working-man, being on tramp, came to St. Helens,
in Lancashire, and there looked up an old friend. He found him in a
miserable, damp cellar, scarcely furnished; and when my poor friend went
in, there sat poor Jack near the fire, and what did he, think you? why he
sat and mended his wife's stockings with the bodkin; and as soon as he
saw his old friend at the door-post, he tried to hide them. But Joe,
that is my friend's name, had seen it, and said: "Jack, what the devil
art thou doing? Where is the missus? Why, is that thy work?" and poor
Jack was ashamed, and said: "No, I know this is not my work, but my poor
missus is i' th' factory; she has to leave at half-past five and works
till eight at night, and then she is so knocked up that she cannot do
aught when she gets home, so I have to do everything for her what I can,
for I have no work, nor had any for more nor three years, and I shall
never have any more work while I live;" and then he wept a big tear. Jack
again said: "There is work enough for women folks and childer hereabouts,
but none for men; thou mayest sooner find a hundred pound on the road
than work for men--but I should never have believed that either thou or
any one else would have seen me mending my wife's stockings, for, it is
bad work. But she can hardly stand on her feet; I am afraid she will be
laid up, and then I don't know what is to become of us, for it's a good
bit that she has been the man in the house and I the woman; it is bad
work, Joe;" and he cried bitterly, and said, "It has not been always so."
"No," said Joe; "but when thou hadn't no work, how hast thou not
shifted?" "I'll tell thee, Joe, as well as I can, but it was bad enough;
thou knowest when I got married I had work plenty, and thou knows I was
not lazy." "No, that thou wert not." "And we had a good furnished
house, and Mary need not go to work. I could work for the two of us; but
now the world is upside down. Mary has to work and I have to stop at
home, mind the childer sweep and wash, bake and mend; and, when the poor
woman comes home at night, she is knocked up. Thou knows, Joe, it's hard
for one that was used different." "Yes, boy, it is hard." And then Jack
began to cry again, and he wished he had never married, and that he had
never been born; but he had never thought, when he wed Mary, that it
would come to this. "I have often cried over it," said Jack. Now when
Joe heard this, he told me that he had cursed and damned the factories,
and the masters, and the Government, with all the curses that he had
learned while he was in the factory from a child.
Can any one imagine a more insane state of things than that described in
this letter? And yet this condition, which unsexes the man and takes
from the woman all womanliness without being able to bestow upon the man
true womanliness, or the woman true manliness--this condition which
degrades, in the most shameful way, both sexes, and, through them,
Humanity, is the last result of our much-praised civilisation, the final
achievement of all the efforts and struggles of hundreds of generations
to improve their own situation and that of their posterity. We must
either despair of mankind, and its aims and efforts, when we see all our
labour and toil result in such a mockery, or we must admit that human
society has hitherto sought salvation in a false direction; we must admit
that so total a reversal of the position of the sexes can have come to
pass only because the sexes have been placed in a false position from the
beginning. If the reign of the wife over the husband, as inevitably
brought about by the factory system, is inhuman, the pristine rule of the
husband over the wife must have been inhuman too. If the wife can now
base her supremacy upon the fact that she supplies the greater part, nay,
the whole of the common possession, the necessary inference is that this
community of possession is no true and rational one, since one member of
the family boasts offensively of contributing the greater share. If the
family of our present society is being thus dissolved, this dissolution
merely shows that, at bottom, the binding tie of this family was not
family affection, but private interest lurking under the cloak of a
pretended community of possessions. The same relation exists on the part
of those children who support unemployed parents {147a} when they do not
directly pay board as already referred to. Dr. Hawkins testified in the
Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report that this relation is common
enough, and in Manchester it is notorious. In this case the children are
the masters in the house, as the wife was in the former case, and Lord
Ashley gives an example of this in his speech: {147b} A man berated his
two daughters for going to the public house, and they answered that they
were tired of being ordered about, saying, "Damn you, we have to keep
you!" Determined to keep the proceeds of their work for themselves, they
left the family dwelling, and abandoned their parents to their fate.
The unmarried women, who have grown up in mills, are no better off than
the married ones. It is self-evident that a girl who has worked in a
mill from her ninth year is in no position to understand domestic work,
whence it follows that female operatives prove wholly inexperienced and
unfit as housekeepers. They cannot knit or sew, cook or wash, are
unacquainted with the most ordinary duties of a housekeeper, and when
they have young children to take care of, have not the vaguest idea how
to set about it. The Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report gives dozens
of examples of this, and Dr. Hawkins, Commissioner for Lancashire,
expresses his opinion as follows: {147c}
"The girls marry early and recklessly; they have neither means, time,
nor opportunity to learn the ordinary duties of household life; but if
they had them all, they would find no time in married life for the
performance of these duties. The mother is more than twelve hours
away from her child daily; the baby is cared for by a young girl or an
old woman, to whom it is given to nurse. Besides this, the dwelling
of the mill-hands is too often no home but a cellar, which contains no
cooking or washing utensils, no sewing or mending materials, nothing
which makes life agreeable and civilised, or the domestic hearth
attractive. For these and other reasons, and especially for the sake
of the better chances of life for the little children, I can but wish
and hope that a time may come in which married women will be shut out
of the factories." {148a}
But that is the least of the evil. The moral consequences of the
employment of women in factories are even worse. The collecting of
persons of both sexes and all ages in a single workroom, the inevitable
contact, the crowding into a small space of people, to whom neither
mental nor moral education has been given, is not calculated for the
favourable development of the female character. The manufacturer, if he
pays any attention to the matter, can interfere only when something
scandalous actually happens; the permanent, less conspicuous influence of
persons of dissolute character, upon the more moral, and especially upon
the younger ones, he cannot ascertain, and consequently cannot prevent.
But precisely this influence is the most injurious. The language used in
the mills is characterised by many witnesses in the report of 1833, as
"indecent," "bad," "filthy," etc. {148b} It is the same process upon a
small scale which we have already witnessed upon a large one in the great
cities. The centralisation of population has the same influence upon the
same persons, whether it affects them in a great city or a small factory.
The smaller the mill the closer the packing, and the more unavoidable the
contact; and the consequences are not wanting. A witness in Leicester
said that he would rather let his daughter beg than go into a factory;
that they are perfect gates of hell; that most of the prostitutes of the
town had their employment in the mills to thank for their present
situation. {148c} Another, in Manchester, "did not hesitate to assert
that three-fourths of the young factory employees, from fourteen to
twenty years of age, were unchaste." {149a} Commissioner Cowell
expresses it as his opinion, that the morality of the factory operatives
is somewhat below the average of that of the working-class in general.
{149b} And Dr. Hawkins {149c} says:
"An estimate of sexual morality cannot readily be reduced to figures;
but if I may trust my own observations and the general opinion of
those with whom I have spoken, as well as the whole tenor of the
testimony furnished me, the aspect of the influence of factory life
upon the morality of the youthful female population is most
depressing."
It is, besides, a matter of course that factory servitude, like any
other, and to an even higher degree, confers the _jus primae noctis_ upon
the master. In this respect also the employer is sovereign over the
persons and charms of his employees. The threat of discharge suffices to
overcome all resistance in nine cases out of ten, if not in ninety-nine
out of a hundred, in girls who, in any case, have no strong inducements
to chastity. If the master is mean enough, and the official report
mentions several such cases, his mill is also his harem; and the fact
that not all manufacturers use their power, does not in the least change
the position of the girls. In the beginning of manufacturing industry,
when most of the employers were upstarts without education or
consideration for the hypocrisy of society, they let nothing interfere
with the exercise of their vested rights.
To form a correct judgment of the influence of factory-work upon the
health of the female sex, it is necessary first to consider the work of
children, and then the nature of the work itself. From the beginning of
manufacturing industry, children have been employed in mills, at first
almost exclusively by reason of the smallness of the machines, which were
later enlarged. Even children from the workhouses were employed in
multitudes, being rented out for a number of years to the manufacturers
as apprentices. They were lodged, fed, and clothed in common, and were,
of course, completely the slaves of their masters, by whom they were
treated with the utmost recklessness and barbarity. As early as 1796,
the public objection to this revolting system found such vigorous
expression through Dr. Percival and Sir Robert Peel (father of the
Cabinet Minister, and himself a cotton manufacturer), that in 1802
Parliament passed an Apprentices' Bill, by which the most crying evils
were removed. Gradually the increasing competition of free workpeople
crowded out the whole apprentice system; factories were built in cities,
machinery was constructed on a larger scale, and workrooms were made more
airy and wholesome; gradually, too, more work was found for adults and
young persons. The number of children in the mills diminished somewhat,
and the age at which they began to work rose a little; few children under
eight or nine years were now employed. Later, as we shall see, the power
of the State intervened several times to protect them from the
money-greed of the bourgeoisie.
The great mortality among children of the working-class, and especially
among those of the factory operatives, is proof enough of the unwholesome
conditions under which they pass their first year. These influences are
at work, of course, among the children who survive, but not quite so
powerfully as upon those who succumb. The result in the most favourable
case is a tendency to disease, or some check in development, and
consequent less than normal vigour of the constitution. A nine years old
child of a factory operative that has grown up in want, privation, and
changing conditions, in cold and damp, with insufficient clothing and
unwholesome dwellings, is far from having the working force of a child
brought up under healthier conditions. At nine years of age it is sent
into the mill to work 6.5 hours (formerly 8, earlier still, 12 to 14,
even 16 hours) daily, until the thirteenth year; then twelve hours until
the eighteenth year. The old enfeebling influences continue, while the
work is added to them. It is not to be denied that a child of nine
years, even an operative's child, can hold out through 6.5 hours' daily
work, without any one being able to trace visible bad results in its
development directly to this cause; but in no case can its presence in
the damp, heavy air of the factory, often at once warm and wet,
contribute to good health; and, in any case, it is unpardonable to
sacrifice to the greed of an unfeeling bourgeoisie the time of children
which should be devoted solely to their physical and mental development,
withdraw them from school and the fresh air, in order to wear them out
for the benefit of the manufacturers. The bourgeoisie says: "If we do
not employ the children in the mills, they only remain under conditions
unfavourable to their development;" and this is true, on the whole. But
what does this mean if it is not a confession that the bourgeoisie first
places the children of the working-class under unfavourable conditions,
and then exploits these bad conditions for its own benefit, appeals to
that which is as much its own fault as the factory system, excuses the
sin of to-day with the sin of yesterday? And if the Factory Act did not
in some measure fetter their hands, how this "humane," this "benevolent"
bourgeoisie, which has built its factories solely for the good of the
working-class, would take care of the interests of these workers! Let us
hear how they acted before the factory inspector was at their heels.
Their own admitted testimony shall convict them in the report of the
Factories' Inquiry Commission of 1833.
The report of the Central Commission relates that the manufacturers began
to employ children rarely of five years, often of six, very often of
seven, usually of eight to nine years; that the working-day often lasted
fourteen to sixteen hours, exclusive of meals and intervals; that the
manufacturers permitted overlookers to flog and maltreat children, and
often took an active part in so doing themselves. One case is related of
a Scotch manufacturer, who rode after a sixteen years old runaway, forced
him to return running after the employer as fast as the master's horse
trotted, and beat him the whole way with a long whip. {151} In the large
towns where the operatives resisted more vigorously, such things
naturally happened less often. But even this long working-day failed to
satisfy the greed of the capitalists. Their aim was to make the capital
invested in the building and machinery produce the highest return, by
every available means, to make it work as actively as possible. Hence
the manufacturers introduced the shameful system of night-work. Some of
them employed two sets of operatives, each numerous enough to fill the
whole mill, and let one set work the twelve hours of the day, and the
other twelve hours of the night. It is needless to picture the effect
upon the frames of young children, and even upon the health of young
persons and adults, produced by permanent loss of sleep at night, which
cannot be made good by any amount of sleep during the day. Irritation of
the whole nervous system, with general lassitude and enfeeblement of the
entire frame, were the inevitable results, with the fostering of
temptation to drunkenness and unbridled sexual indulgence. One
manufacturer testifies {152a} that during the two years in which night-
work was carried on in his factory, the number of illegitimate children
born was doubled, and such general demoralisation prevailed that he was
obliged to give up night-work. Other manufacturers were yet more
barbarous, requiring many hands to work thirty to forty hours at a
stretch, several times a week, letting them get a couple of hours sleep
only, because the night-shift was not complete, but calculated to replace
a part of the operatives only.
The reports of the Commission touching this barbarism surpass everything
that is known to me in this line. Such infamies, as are here related,
are nowhere else to be found--yet we shall see that the bourgeoisie
constantly appeals to the testimony of the Commission as being in its own
favour. The consequences of these cruelties became evident quickly
enough. The Commissioners mention a crowd of cripples who appeared
before them, who clearly owed their distortion to the long working-hours.
This distortion usually consists of a curving of the spinal column and
legs, and is described as follows by Francis Sharp, M.R.C.S., of Leeds:
{152b}
"I never saw the peculiar bending of the lower ends of the thigh bones
before I came to Leeds. At first I thought it was rachitis, but I was
soon led to change my opinion in consequence of the mass of patients
who presented themselves at the hospital, and the appearances of the
disease at an age (from the fourteenth to the eighteenth year) in
which children are usually not subject to rachitis, as well as by the
circumstance that the malady had first appeared after children began
to work in the mills. Thus far I have seen about a hundred such
cases, and can, most decidedly, express the opinion that they are the
consequences of overwork. So far as I know they were all mill
children, and themselves attributed the evil to this cause. The
number of cases of curvature of the spine which have fallen under my
observation, and which were evidently consequent upon too protracted
standing, was not less than three hundred."
Precisely similar is the testimony of Dr. Ray, for eighteen years
physician in the hospital in Leeds: {153a}
"Malformations of the spine are very frequent among mill-hands; some
of them consequent upon mere overwork, others the effect of long work
upon constitutions originally feeble, or weakened by bad food.
Deformities seem even more frequent than these diseases; the knees
were bent inward, the ligaments very often relaxed and enfeebled, and
the long bones of the legs bent. The thick ends of these long bones
were especially apt to be bent and disproportionately developed, and
these patients came from the factories in which long work-hours were
of frequent occurrence."
Surgeons Beaumont and Sharp, of Bradford, bear the same testimony. The
reports of Drinkwater, Power, and Dr. Loudon contain a multitude of
examples of such distortions, and those of Tufnell and Sir David Barry,
which are less directed to this point, give single examples. {153b} The
Commissioners for Lancashire, Cowell, Tufnell, and Hawkins, have almost
wholly neglected this aspect of the physiological results of the factory
system, though this district rivals Yorkshire in the number of cripples.
I have seldom traversed Manchester without meeting three or four of them,
suffering from precisely the same distortions of the spinal columns and
legs as that described, and I have often been able to observe them
closely. I know one personally who corresponds exactly with the
foregoing description of Dr. Ray, and who got into this condition in Mr.
Douglas' factory in Pendleton, an establishment which enjoys an
unenviable notoriety among the operatives by reason of the former long
working periods continued night after night. It is evident, at a glance,
whence the distortions of these cripples come; they all look exactly
alike. The knees are bent inward and backwards, the ankles deformed and
thick, and the spinal column often bent forwards or to one side. But the
crown belongs to the philanthropic manufacturers of the Macclesfield silk
district. They employed the youngest children of all, even from five to
six years of age. In the supplementary testimony of Commissioner
Tufnell, I find the statement of a certain factory manager Wright, both
of whose sisters were most shamefully crippled, and who had once counted
the cripples in several streets, some of them the cleanest and neatest
streets of Macclesfield. He found in Townley Street ten, George Street
five, Charlotte Street four, Watercots fifteen, Bank Top three, Lord
Street seven, Mill Lane twelve, Great George Street two, in the workhouse
two, Park Green one, Peckford Street two, whose families all unanimously
declared that the cripples had become such in consequence of overwork in
the silk-twisting mills. One boy is mentioned so crippled as not to be
able to go upstairs, and girls deformed in back and hips.
Other deformities also have proceeded from this overwork, especially
flattening of the foot, which Sir D. Barry {154a} frequently observed, as
did the physicians and surgeons in Leeds. {154b} In cases, in which a
stronger constitution, better food, and other more favourable
circumstances enabled the young operative to resist this effect of a
barbarous exploitation, we find, at least, pain in the back, hips, and
legs, swollen joints, varicose veins, and large, persistent ulcers in the
thighs and calves. These affections are almost universal among the
operatives. The reports of Stuart, Mackintosh, and Sir D. Barry contain
hundreds of examples; indeed, they know almost no operative who did not
suffer from some of these affections; and in the remaining reports, the
occurrence of the same phenomena is attested by many physicians. The
reports covering Scotland place it beyond all doubt, that a working-day
of thirteen hours, even for men and women from eighteen to twenty-two
years of age, produces at least these consequences, both in the
flax-spinning mills of Dundee and Dunfermline, and in the cotton mills of
Glasgow and Lanark.
All these affections are easily explained by the nature of factory-work,
which is, as the manufacturers say, very "light," and precisely by reason
of its lightness, more enervating than any other. The operatives have
little to do, but must stand the whole time. Any one who sits down, say
upon a window-ledge or a basket, is fined, and this perpetual upright
position, this constant mechanical pressure of the upper portions of the
body upon spinal column, hips, and legs, inevitably produces the results
mentioned. This standing is not required by the work itself, and at
Nottingham chairs have been introduced, with the result that these
affections disappeared, and the operatives ceased to object to the length
of the working-day. But in a factory where the operative works solely
for the bourgeois, and has small interest in doing his work well, he
would probably use the seats more than would be agreeable and profitable
to the manufacturer; and in order that somewhat less raw material may be
spoiled for the bourgeois, the operative must sacrifice health and
strength. {155} This long protracted upright position, with the bad
atmosphere prevalent in the mills, entails, besides the deformities
mentioned, a marked relaxation of all vital energies, and, in
consequence, all sorts of other affections general rather than local. The
atmosphere of the factories is, as a rule, at once damp and warm,
unusually warmer than is necessary, and, when the ventilation is not
_very_ good, impure, heavy, deficient in oxygen, filled with dust and the
smell of the machine oil, which almost everywhere smears the floor, sinks
into it, and becomes rancid. The operatives are lightly clad by reason
of the warmth, and would readily take cold in case of irregularity of the
temperature; a draught is distasteful to them, the general enervation
which gradually takes possession of all the physical functions diminishes
the animal warmth: this must be replaced from without, and nothing is
therefore more agreeable to the operative than to have all the doors and
windows closed, and to stay in his warm factory-air. Then comes the
sudden change of temperature on going out into the cold and wet or frosty
atmosphere, without the means of protection from the rain, or of changing
wet clothing for dry, a circumstance which perpetually produces colds.
And when one reflects that, with all this, not one single muscle of the
body is really exercised, really called into activity, except perhaps
those of the legs; that nothing whatsoever counteracts the enervating,
relaxing tendency of all these conditions; that every influence is
wanting which might give the muscles strength, the fibres elasticity and
consistency; that from youth up, the operative is deprived of all fresh
air recreation, it is impossible to wonder at the almost unanimous
testimony of the physicians in the Factories' Report, that they find a
great lack of ability to resist disease, a general depression in vital
activity, a constant relaxation of the mental and physical powers. Let
us hear Sir D. Barry first: {156}
"The unfavourable influences of mill-work upon the hands are the
following: (1) The inevitable necessity of forcing their mental and
bodily effort to keep pace with a machine moved by a uniform and
unceasing motive power. (2) Continuance in an upright position during
unnaturally long and quickly recurring periods. (3) Loss of sleep in
consequence of too long working-hours, pain in the legs, and general
physical derangement. To these are often added low, crowded, dusty,
or damp workrooms, impure air, a high temperature, and constant
perspiration. Hence the boys especially very soon and with but few
exceptions, lose the rosy freshness of childhood, and become paler and
thinner than other boys. Even the hand-weaver's bound boy, who sits
before his loom with his bare feet resting upon the clay-floor,
retains a fresher appearance, because he occasionally goes into the
fresh air for a time. But the mill child has not a moment free except
for meals, and never goes into the fresh air except on its way to
them. All adult male spinners are pale and thin, suffer from
capricious appetite and indigestion; and as they are all trained in
the mills from their youth up, and there are very few tall, athletic
men among them, the conclusion is justified that their occupation is
very unfavourable for the development of the male constitution;
females bear this work far better." (Very naturally. But we shall
see that they have their own diseases.)
So, too, Power: {157a}
"I can bear witness that the factory system in Bradford has engendered
a multitude of cripples, and that the effect of long continued labour
upon the physique is apparent, not alone in actual deformity, but
also, and much more generally, in stunted growth, relaxation of the
muscles, and delicacy of the whole frame."
So, too, F. Sharp, in Leeds, the surgeon {157b} already quoted:
"When I moved from Scarborough to Leeds, I was at once struck by the
fact that the general appearance of the children was much paler, and
their fibre less vigorous here than in Scarborough and its environs. I
saw, too, that many children were exceptionally small for their age. I
have met with numberless cases of scrofula, lung trouble, mesenteric
affections, and indigestion, concerning which I, as a medical man,
have no doubt that they arose from mill work. I believe that the
nervous energy of the body is weakened by the long hours, and the
foundation of many diseases laid. If people from the country were not
constantly coming in, the race of mill-hands would soon be wholly
degenerate."
So, too, Beaumont, surgeon in Bradford:
"To my thinking, the system, according to which work is done in the
mills here, produces a peculiar relaxation of the whole organism, and
thereby makes children in the highest degree susceptible to epidemic,
as well as to incidental illness. I regard the absence of all
appropriate regulations for ventilation and cleanliness in the mills
very decidedly as the chief cause of that peculiar tendency or
susceptibility to morbid affections which I have so frequently met in
my practice."
Similar testimony is borne by Dr. Ray:
(1) "I have had opportunity of observing the effects of the factory
system upon the health of children under the most favourable
circumstances (in Wood's mill, in Bradford, the best arranged of the
district, in which he was factory surgeon). (2) These effects are
decidedly, and to a very great extent, injurious, even under these
most favourable circumstances. (3) In the year 1842, three-fifths of
all the children employed in Wood's mill were treated by me. (4) The
worst effect is not the predominance of deformities, but of enfeebled
and morbid constitutions. (5) All this is greatly improved since the
working-hours of children have been reduced at Wood's to ten."
The Commissioner, Dr. Loudon himself, who cites these witnesses, says:
"In conclusion, I think it has been clearly proved that children have
been worked a most unreasonable and cruel length of time daily, and
that even adults have been expected to do a certain quantity of labour
which scarcely any human being is able to endure. The consequence is
that many have died prematurely, and others are afflicted for life
with defective constitutions, and the fear of a posterity enfeebled by
the shattered constitution of the survivors is but too well founded,
from a physiological point of view."
And, finally, Dr. Hawkins, in speaking of Manchester:
"I believe that most travellers are struck by the lowness of stature,
the leanness and the paleness which present themselves so commonly to
the eye at Manchester, and above all, among the factory classes. I
have never been in any town in Great Britain, nor in Europe, in which
degeneracy of form and colour from the national standard has been so
obvious. Among the married women all the characteristic peculiarities
of the English wife are conspicuously wanting. I must confess that
all the boys and girls brought before me from the Manchester mills had
a depressed appearance, and were very pale. In the expression of
their faces lay nothing of the usual mobility, liveliness, and
cheeriness of youth. Many of them told me that they felt not the
slightest inclination to play out of doors on Saturday and Sunday, but
preferred to be quiet at home."
I add, at once, another passage of Hawkins' report, which only half
belongs here, but may be quoted here as well as anywhere else:
"Intemperance, excess, and want of providence are the chief faults of
the factory population, and these evils may be readily traced to the
habits which are formed under the present system, and almost
inevitably arise from it. It is universally admitted that
indigestion, hypochondria, and general debility affect this class to a
very great extent. After twelve hours of monotonous toil, it is but
natural to look about for a stimulant of one sort or another; but when
the above-mentioned diseased conditions are added to the customary
weariness, people will quickly and repeatedly take refuge in
spirituous liquors."
For all this testimony of the physicians and commissioners, the report
itself offers hundreds of cases of proof. That the growth of young
operatives is stunted, by their work, hundreds of statements testify;
among others, Cowell gives the weight of 46 youths of 17 years of age,
from one Sunday school, of whom 26 employed in mills, averaged 104.5
pounds, and 20 not employed in mills, 117.7 pounds. One of the largest
manufacturers of Manchester, leader of the opposition against the working-
men, I think Robert Hyde Greg himself, said, on one occasion, that if
things went on as at present, the operatives of Lancashire would soon be
a race of pigmies. {159a} A recruiting officer {159b} testified that
operatives are little adapted for military service, looked thin and
nervous, and were frequently rejected by the surgeons as unfit. In
Manchester he could hardly get men of five feet eight inches; they were
usually only five feet six to seven, whereas in the agricultural
districts, most of the recruits were five feet eight.
The men wear out very early in consequence of the conditions under which
they live and work. Most of them are unfit for work at forty years, a
few hold out to forty-five, almost none to fifty years of age. This is
caused not only by the general enfeeblement of the frame, but also very
often by a failure of the sight, which is a result of mule-spinning, in
which the operative is obliged to fix his gaze upon a long row of fine,
parallel threads, and so greatly to strain the sight.
Of 1,600 operatives employed in several factories in Harpur and Lanark,
but 10 were over 45 years of age; of 22,094 operatives in diverse
factories in Stockport and Manchester, but 143 were over 45 years old. Of
these 143, 16 were retained as a special favour, and one was doing the
work of a child. A list of 131 spinners contained but seven over 45
years, and yet the whole 131 were rejected by the manufacturers, to whom
they applied for work, as "too old," and were without means of support by
reason of old age! Mr. Ashworth, a large manufacturer, admits in a
letter to Lord Ashley, that, towards the fortieth year, the spinners can
no longer prepare the required quantity of yarn, and are therefore
"sometimes" discharged; he calls operatives forty years of age "old
people!" Commissioner Mackintosh expresses himself in the same way in
the report of 1833:
"Although I was prepared for it from the way the children are
employed, I still found it difficult to believe the statements of the
older hands as to their ages; they age so very early."
Surgeon Smellie, of Glasgow, who treated operatives chiefly, says that
forty years is old age for them. {160a} And similar evidence may be
found elsewhere. {160b} In Manchester, this premature old age among the
operatives is so universal that almost every man of forty would be taken
for ten to fifteen years older, while the prosperous classes, men as well
as women, preserve their appearance exceedingly well if they do not drink
too heavily.
The influence of factory-work upon the female physique also is marked and
peculiar. The deformities entailed by long hours of work are much more
serious among women. Protracted work frequently causes deformities of
the pelvis, partly in the shape of abnormal position and development of
the hip bones, partly of malformation of the lower portion of the spinal
column.
"Although," says Dr. Loudon, in his report, "no example of
malformation of the pelvis and of some other affections came under my
notice, these things are nevertheless so common, that every physician
must regard them as probable consequences of such working-hours, and
as vouched for besides by men of the highest medical credibility."
That factory operatives undergo more difficult confinement than other
women is testified to by several midwives and accoucheurs, and also that
they are more liable to miscarriage. {161} Moreover, they suffer from
the general enfeeblement common to all operatives, and, when pregnant,
continue to work in the factory up to the hour of delivery, because
otherwise they lose their wages and are made to fear that they may be
replaced if they stop away too soon. It frequently happens that women
are at work one evening and delivered the next morning, and the case is
none too rare of their being delivered in the factory among the
machinery. And if the gentlemen of the bourgeoisie find nothing
particularly shocking in this, their wives will perhaps admit that it is
a piece of cruelty, an infamous act of barbarism, indirectly to force a
pregnant woman to work twelve or thirteen hours daily (formerly still
longer), up to the day of her delivery, in a standing position, with
frequent stoopings. But this is not all. If these women are not obliged
to resume work within two weeks, they are thankful, and count themselves
fortunate. Many come back to the factory after eight, and even after
three to four days, to resume full work. I once heard a manufacturer ask
an overlooker: "Is so and so not back yet?" "No." "How long since she
was confined?" "A week." "She might surely have been back long ago.
That one over there only stays three days." Naturally, fear of being
discharged, dread of starvation drives her to the factory in spite of her
weakness, in defiance of her pain. The interest of the manufacturer will
not brook that his employees stay at home by reason of illness; they must
not be ill, they must not venture to lie still through a long
confinement, or he must stop his machinery or trouble his supreme head
with a temporary change of arrangements, and rather than do this, he
discharges his people when they begin to be ill. Listen: {162a}
"A girl feels very ill, can scarcely do her work. Why does she not
ask permission to go home? Ah! the master is very particular, and if
we are away half a day, we risk being sent away altogether."
Or Sir D. Barry: {162b}
"Thomas McDurt, workman, has slight fever. Cannot stay at home longer
than four days, because he would fear of losing his place."
And so it goes on in almost all the factories. The employment of young
girls produces all sorts of irregularities during the period of
development. In some, especially those who are better fed, the heat of
the factories hastens this process, so that in single cases, girls of
thirteen and fourteen are wholly mature. Robertson, whom I have already
cited (mentioned in the Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report as the
"eminent" gynaecologist of Manchester), relates in the North of England
_Medical and Surgical Journal_, that he had seen a girl of eleven years
who was not only a wholly developed woman, but pregnant, and that it was
by no means rare in Manchester for women to be confined at fifteen years
of age. In such cases, the influence of the warmth of the factories is
the same as that of a tropical climate, and, as in such climates, the
abnormally early development revenges itself by correspondingly premature
age and debility. On the other hand, retarded development of the female
constitution occurs, the breasts mature late or not at all. {162c}
Menstruation first appears in the seventeenth or Eighteenth, sometimes in
the twentieth year, and is often wholly wanting. {163a} Irregular
menstruation, coupled with great pain and numerous affections, especially
with anaemia, is very frequent, as the medical reports unanimously state.
Children of such mothers, particularly of those who are obliged to work
during pregnancy, cannot be vigorous. They are, on the contrary,
described in the report, especially in Manchester, as very feeble; and
Barry alone asserts that they are healthy, but says further, that in
Scotland, where his inspection lay, almost no married women worked in
factories. Moreover, most of the factories there are in the country
(with the exception of Glasgow), a circumstance which contributes greatly
to the invigoration of the children. The operatives' children in the
neighbourhood of Manchester are nearly all thriving and rosy, while those
within the city look pale and scrofulous; but with the ninth year the
colour vanishes suddenly, because all are then sent into the factories,
when it soon becomes impossible to distinguish the country from the city
children.
But besides all this, there are some branches of factory-work which have
an especially injurious effect. In many rooms of the cotton and flax-
spinning mills, the air is filled with fibrous dust, which produces chest
affections, especially among workers in the carding and combing-rooms.
Some constitutions can bear it, some cannot; but the operative has no
choice. He must take the room in which he finds work, whether his chest
is sound or not. The most common effects of this breathing of dust are
blood-spitting, hard, noisy breathing, pains in the chest, coughs,
sleeplessness--in short, all the symptoms of asthma ending in the worst
cases in consumption. {163b} Especially unwholesome is the wet spinning
of linen-yarn which is carried on by young girls and boys. The water
spirts over them from the spindle, so that the front of their clothing is
constantly wet through to the skin; and there is always water standing on
the floor. This is the case to a less degree in the doubling-rooms of
the cotton mills, and the result is a constant succession of colds and
affections of the chest. A hoarse, rough voice is common to all
operatives, but especially to wet spinners and doublers. Stuart,
Mackintosh, and Sir D. Barry express themselves in the most vigorous
terms as to the unwholesomeness of this work, and the small consideration
shown by most of the manufacturers for the health of the girls who do it.
Another effect of flax-spinning is a peculiar deformity of the shoulder,
especially a projection of the right shoulder-blade, consequent upon the
nature of the work. This sort of spinning and the throstle-spinning of
cotton frequently produce diseases of the knee-pan, which is used to
check the spindle during the joining of broken threads. The frequent
stooping and the bending to the low machines common to both these
branches of work have, in general, a stunting effect upon the growth of
the operative. In the throstle-room of the cotton mill at Manchester, in
which I was employed, I do not remember to have seen one single tall,
well-built girl; they were all short, dumpy, and badly-formed, decidedly
ugly in the whole development of the figure. But apart from all these
diseases and malformations, the limbs of the operatives suffer in still
another way. The work between the machinery gives rise to multitudes of
accidents of more or less serious nature, which have for the operative
the secondary effect of unfitting him for his work more or less
completely. The most common accident is the squeezing off of a single
joint of a finger, somewhat less common the loss of the whole finger,
half or a whole hand, an arm, etc., in the machinery. Lockjaw very often
follows, even upon the lesser among these injuries, and brings death with
it. Besides the deformed persons, a great number of maimed ones may be
seen going about in Manchester; this one has lost an arm or a part of
one, that one a foot, the third half a leg; it is like living in the
midst of an army just returned from a campaign. But the most dangerous
portion of the machinery is the strapping which conveys motive power from
the shaft to the separate machines, especially if it contains buckles,
which, however, are rarely used now. Whoever is seized by the strap is
carried up with lightning speed, thrown against the ceiling above and
floor below with such force that there is rarely a whole bone left in the
body, and death follows instantly. Between June 12th and August 3rd,
1843, the _Manchester Guardian_ reported the following serious accidents
(the trifling ones it does not notice): June 12th, a boy died in
Manchester of lockjaw, caused by his hand being crushed between wheels.
June 16th, a youth in Saddleworth seized by a wheel and carried away with
it; died, utterly mangled. June 29th, a young man at Green Acres Moor,
near Manchester, at work in a machine shop, fell under the grindstone,
which broke two of his ribs and lacerated him terribly. July 24th, a
girl in Oldham died, carried around fifty times by a strap; no bone
unbroken. July 27th, a girl in Manchester seized by the blower (the
first machine that receives the raw cotton), and died of injuries
received. August 3rd, a bobbins turner died in Dukenfield, caught in a
strap, every rib broken. In the year 1843, the Manchester Infirmary
treated 962 cases of wounds and mutilations caused by machinery, while
the number of all other accidents within the district of the hospital was
2,426, so that for five accidents from all other causes, two were caused
by machinery. The accidents which happened in Salford are not included
here, nor those treated by surgeons in private practice. In such cases,
whether or not the accident unfits the victim for further work, the
employer, at best, pays the doctor, or, in very exceptional cases, he may
pay wages during treatment; what becomes of the operative afterwards, in
case he cannot work, is no concern of the employer.
The Factory Report says on this subject, that employers must be made
responsible for all cases, since children cannot take care, and adults
will take care in their own interest. But the gentlemen who write the
report are bourgeois, and so they must contradict themselves and bring up
later all sorts of bosh on the subject of the culpable temerity of the
operatives.
The state of the case is this: If children cannot take care, the
employment of children must be forbidden. If adults are reckless, they
must be mere over-grown children on a plane of intelligence which does
not enable them to appreciate the danger in its full scope; and who is to
blame for this but the bourgeoisie which keeps them in a condition in
which their intelligence cannot develop? Or the machinery is
ill-arranged, and must be surrounded with fencing, to supply which falls
to the share of the bourgeoisie. Or the operative is under inducements
which outweigh the threatened danger; he must work rapidly to earn his
wages, has no time to take care, and for this, too, the bourgeoisie is to
blame. Many accidents happen, for instance, while the operatives are
cleaning machinery in motion. Why? Because the bourgeois would
otherwise oblige the worker to clean the machinery during the free hours
while it is not going, and the worker naturally is not disposed to
sacrifice any part of his free time. Every free hour is so precious to
the worker that he often risks his life twice a week rather than
sacrifice one of them to the bourgeois. Let the employer take from
working-hours the time required for cleaning the machinery, and it will
never again occur to an operative to clean machinery in motion. In
short, from whatever point of view, the blame falls ultimately on the
manufacturer, and of him should be required, at the very least, life-long
support of the incapacitated operative, and support of the victim's
family in case death follows the accident. In the earliest period of
manufacture, the accidents were much more numerous in proportion than
now, for the machinery was inferior, smaller, more crowded, and almost
never fenced. But the number is still large enough, as the foregoing
cases prove, to arouse grave question as to a state of things which
permits so many deformities and mutilations for the benefit of a single
class, and plunges so many industrious working-people into want and
starvation by reason of injuries undergone in the service and through the
fault of the bourgeoisie.
A pretty list of diseases engendered purely by the hateful money greed of
the manufacturers! Women made unfit for childbearing, children deformed,
men enfeebled, limbs crushed, whole generations wrecked, afflicted with
disease and infirmity, purely to fill the purses of the bourgeoisie. And
when one reads of the barbarism of single cases, how children are seized
naked in bed by the overlookers, and driven with blows and kicks to the
factory, their clothing over their arms, {167a} how their sleepiness is
driven off with blows, how they fall asleep over their work nevertheless,
how one poor child sprang up, still asleep, at the call of the
overlooker, and mechanically went through the operations of its work
after its machine was stopped; when one reads how children, too tired to
go home, hide away in the wool in the drying-room to sleep there, and
could only be driven out of the factory with straps; how many hundreds
came home so tired every night, that they could eat no supper for
sleepiness and want of appetite, that their parents found them kneeling
by the bedside, where they had fallen asleep during their prayers; when
one reads all this and a hundred other villainies and infamies in this
one report, all testified to on oath, confirmed by several witnesses,
deposed by men whom the commissioners themselves declare trustworthy;
when one reflects that this is a Liberal report, a bourgeois report, made
for the purpose of reversing the previous Tory report, and rehabilitating
the pureness of heart of the manufacturers, that the commissioners
themselves are on the side of the bourgeoisie, and report all these
things against their own will, how can one be otherwise than filled with
wrath and resentment against a class which boasts of philanthropy and
self-sacrifice, while its one object is to fill its purse _a tout prix_?
Meanwhile, let us listen to the bourgeoisie speaking through the mouth of
its chosen apostle, Dr. Ure, who relates in his "Philosophy of
Manufactures" {167b} that the workers have been told that their wages
bore no proportion to their sacrifices, the good understanding between
masters and men being thus disturbed. Instead of this, the working-men
should have striven to recommend themselves by attention and industry,
and should have rejoiced in the prosperity of their masters. They would
then become overseers, superintendents, and finally partners, and would
thus--(Oh! Wisdom, thou speakest as the dove!)--"have increased at the
same time the demand for their companions' labour in the market!"
"Had it not been for the violent collisions and interruptions
resulting from erroneous views among the operatives, the factory
system would have been developed still more rapidly and beneficially."
{168a}
Hereupon follows a long Jeremiad upon the spirit of resistance of the
operatives, and on the occasion of a strike of the best paid workers, the
fine spinners, the following naive observation: {168b}
"In fact, it was their high wages which enabled them to maintain a
stipendiary committee in affluence, and to pamper themselves into
nervous ailments, by a diet too rich and exciting for their indoor
employments."
Let us hear how the bourgeois describes the work of children: {168c}
"I have visited many factories, both in Manchester and in the
surrounding districts, during a period of several months, entering the
spinning-rooms unexpectedly, and often alone, at different times of
the day, and I never saw a single instance of corporal chastisement
inflicted on a child; nor, indeed, did I ever see children in
ill-humour. They seemed to be always cheerful and alert; taking
pleasure in the light play of their muscles, enjoying the mobility
natural to their age. The scene of industry, so far from exciting sad
emotions, in my mind, was always exhilerating. It was delightful to
observe the nimbleness with which they pieced broken ends, as the mule
carriage began to recede from the fixed roller beam, and to see them
at leisure, after a few seconds' exercise of their tiny fingers, to
amuse themselves in any attitude they chose, till the stretch and
winding on were once more completed. The work of these lively elves
seemed to resemble a sport, in which habit gave them a pleasing
dexterity. Conscious of their skill, they were delighted to show it
off to any stranger. As to exhaustion by the day's work, they evinced
no trace of it on emerging from the mill in the evening; for they
immediately began to skip about any neighbouring playground, and to
commence their little games with the same alacrity as boys issuing
from a school."
Naturally! As though the immediate movement of every muscle were not an
urgent necessity for frames grown at once stiff and relaxed! But Ure
should have waited to see whether this momentary excitement had not
subsided after a couple of minutes. And besides, Ure could see this
whole performance only in the afternoon after five or six hours' work,
but not in the evening! As to the health of the operatives, the
bourgeois has the boundless impudence to cite the report of 1833 just
quoted in a thousand places, as testimony for the excellent health of
these people; to try to prove by detached and garbled quotations that no
trace of scrofula can be found among them, and, what is quite true, that
the factory system frees them from all acute diseases, (that they have
every variety of chronic affection instead he naturally conceals). To
explain the impudence with which our friend Ure palms off the grossest
falsehoods upon the English public, it must be known that the report
consists of three large folio volumes, which it never occurs to a well-
fed English bourgeois to study through. Let us hear further how he
expresses himself as to the Factory Act of 1834, passed by the Liberal
bourgeoisie, and imposing only the most meagre limitations upon the
manufacturers, as we shall see. This law, especially its compulsory
education clause, he calls an absurd and despotic measure directed
against the manufacturers, through which all children under twelve years
of age have been thrown out of employment; and with what results? The
children thus discharged from their light and useful occupation receive
no education whatsoever; cast out from the warm spinning-room into a cold
world, they subsist only by begging and stealing, a life in sad contrast
with their steadily improving condition in the factory and in Sunday
school. Under the mask of philanthropy, this law intensifies the
sufferings of the poor, and will greatly restrict the conscientious
manufacturer in his useful work, if, indeed, it does not wholly stop him.
{169}
The ruinous influence of the factory system began at an early day to
attract general attention. We have already alluded to the Apprentices'
Act of 1802. Later, towards 1817, Robert Owen, then a manufacturer in
New Lanark, in Scotland, afterwards founder of English Socialism, began
to call the attention of the Government, by memorials and petitions, to
the necessity of legislative guarantees for the health of the operatives,
and especially of children. The late Sir Robert Peel and other
philanthropists united with him, and gradually secured the Factory Acts
of 1818, 1825, and 1831, of which the first two were never enforced, and
the last only here and there. This law of 1831, based upon the motion of
Sir J. C. Hobhouse, provided that in cotton mills no one under twenty-one
should be employed between half-past seven at night and half-past five in
the morning; and that in all factories young persons under eighteen
should work no longer than twelve hours daily, and nine hours on
Saturday. But since operatives could not testify against their masters
without being discharged, this law helped matters very little. In the
great cities, where the operatives were more restive, the larger
manufacturers came to an agreement among themselves to obey the law; but
even there, there were many who, like the employers in the country, did
not trouble themselves about it. Meanwhile, the demand for a ten hours'
law had become lively among the operatives; that is, for a law which
should forbid all operatives under eighteen years of age to work longer
than ten hours daily; the Trades Unions, by their agitation, made this
demand general throughout the manufacturing population; the philanthropic
section of the Tory party, then led by Michael Sadler, seized upon the
plan, and brought it before Parliament. Sadler obtained a parliamentary
committee for the investigation of the factory system, and this committee
reported in 1832. Its report was emphatically partisan, composed by
strong enemies of the factory system, for party ends. Sadler permitted
himself to be betrayed by his noble enthusiasm into the most distorted
and erroneous statements, drew from his witnesses by the very form of his
questions, answers which contained the truth, but truth in a perverted
form. The manufacturers themselves, incensed at a report which
represented them as monsters, now demanded an official investigation;
they knew that an exact report must, in this case, be advantageous to
them; they knew that Whigs, genuine bourgeois, were at the helm, with
whom they were upon good terms, whose principles were opposed to any
restriction upon manufacture. They obtained a commission, in due order,
composed of Liberal bourgeois, whose report I have so often cited. This
comes somewhat nearer the truth than Sadler's, but its deviations
therefrom are in the opposite direction. On every page it betrays
sympathy with the manufacturers, distrust of the Sadler report,
repugnance to the working-men agitating independently and the supporters
of the Ten Hours' Bill. It nowhere recognises the right of the working-
man to a life worthy of a human being, to independent activity, and
opinions of his own. It reproaches the operatives that in sustaining the
Ten Hours' Bill they thought, not of the children only, but of themselves
as well; it calls the working-men engaged in the agitation demagogues,
ill-intentioned, malicious, etc., is written, in short, on the side of
the bourgeoisie; and still it cannot whitewash the manufacturers, and
still it leaves such a mass of infamies upon the shoulders of the
employers, that even after this report, the agitation for the Ten Hours'
Bill, the hatred against the manufacturers, and the committee's severest
epithets applied to them are all fully justified. But there was the one
difference, that whereas the Sadler report accuses the manufacturers of
open, undisguised brutality, it now became evident that this brutality
was chiefly carried on under the mask of civilisation and humanity. Yet
Dr. Hawkins, the medical commissioner for Lancashire, expresses himself
decidedly in favour of the Ten Hours' Bill in the opening lines of his
report, and Commissioner Mackintosh explains that his own report does not
contain the whole truth, because it is very difficult to induce the
operatives to testify against their employers, and because the
manufacturers, besides being forced into greater concessions towards
their operatives by the excitement among the latter, are often prepared
for the inspection of the factories, have them swept, the speed of the
machinery reduced, etc. In Lancashire especially they resorted to the
device of bringing the overlookers of workrooms before the commissioners,
and letting them testify as working-men to the humanity of the employers,
the wholesome effects of the work, and the indifference, if not the
hostility of the operatives, towards the Ten Hours' Bill. But these are
not genuine working-men; they are deserters from their class, who have
entered the service of the bourgeoisie for better pay, and fight in the
interests of the capitalists against the workers. Their interest is that
of the capitalists, and they are, therefore, almost more hated by the
workers than the manufacturers themselves.
And yet this report suffices wholly to exhibit the most shameful
recklessness of the manufacturing bourgeoisie towards its employees, the
whole infamy of the industrial exploiting system in its full inhumanity.
Nothing is more revolting than to compare the long register of diseases
and deformities engendered by overwork, in this report, with the cold,
calculating political economy of the manufacturers, by which they try to
prove that they, and with them all England, must go to ruin, if they
should be forbidden to cripple so and so many children every year. The
language of Dr. Ure alone, which I have quoted, would be yet more
revolting if it were not so preposterous.
The result of this report was the Factory Act of 1834, which forbade the
employment of children under nine years of age (except in silk mills),
limited the working-hours of children between 9-13 years to 48 per week,
or 9 hours in any one day at the utmost; that of young persons from 14-18
years of age to 69 per week, or 12 on any one day as the maximum,
provided for an hour and a half as the minimum interval for meals, and
repeated the total prohibition of night-work for persons under eighteen
years of age. Compulsory school attendance two hours daily was
prescribed for all children under fourteen years, and the manufacturer
declared punishable in case of employing children without a certificate
of age from the factory surgeon, and a certificate of school attendance
from the teacher. As recompense, the employer was permitted to withdraw
one penny from the child's weekly earnings to pay the teacher. Further,
surgeons and inspectors were appointed to visit the factories at all
times, take testimony of operatives on oath, and enforce the law by
prosecution before a Justice of the Peace. This is the law against which
Dr. Ure inveighs in such unmeasured terms!
The consequence of this law, and especially of the appointment of
inspectors, was the reduction of working-hours to an average of twelve to
thirteen, and the superseding of children as far as possible. Hereupon
some of the most crying evils disappeared almost wholly. Deformities
arose now only in cases of weak constitution, and the effects of overwork
became much less conspicuous. Nevertheless, enough testimony remains to
be found in the Factory Report, that the lesser evils, swelling of the
ankles, weakness and pain in the legs, hips, and back, varicose veins,
ulcers on the lower extremities, general weakness, especially of the
pelvic region, nausea, want of appetite alternating with unnatural
hunger, indigestion, hypochondria, affections of the chest in consequence
of the dust and foul atmosphere of the factories, etc. etc., all occur
among employees subject to the provisions of Sir J. C. Hobhouse's law (of
1831), which prescribes twelve to thirteen hours as the maximum. The
reports from Glasgow and Manchester are especially worthy of attention in
this respect. These evils remained too, after the law of 1834, and
continue to undermine the health of the working-class to this day. Care
has been taken to give the brutal profit-greed of the bourgeoisie a
hypocritical, civilised form, to restrain the manufacturers through the
arm of the law from too conspicuous villainies, and thus to give them a
pretext for self-complacently parading their sham philanthropy. That is
all. If a new commission were appointed to-day, it would find things
pretty much as before. As to the extemporised compulsory attendance at
school, it remained wholly a dead letter, since the Government failed to
provide good schools. The manufacturers employed as teachers worn-out
operatives, to whom they sent the children two hours daily, thus
complying with the letter of the law; but the children learned nothing.
And even the reports of the factory inspectors, which are limited to the
scope of the inspector's duties, _i.e_., the enforcement of the Factory
Act, give data enough to justify the conclusion that the old evils
inevitably remain. Inspectors Horner and Saunders, in their reports for
October and December, 1844, state that, in a number of branches in which
the employment of children can be dispensed with or superseded by that of
adults, the working-day is still fourteen to sixteen hours, or even
longer. Among the operatives in these branches they found numbers of
young people who had just outgrown the provisions of the law. Many
employers disregard the law, shorten the meal times, work children longer
than is permitted, and risk prosecution, knowing that the possible fines
are trifling in comparison with the certain profits derivable from the
offence. Just at present especially, while business is exceptionally
brisk, they are under great temptation in this respect.
Meanwhile the agitation for the Ten Hours' Bill by no means died out
among the operatives; in 1839 it was under full headway once more, and
Sadler's place, he having died, was filled in the House of Commons by
Lord Ashley {174} and Richard Oastler, both Tories. Oastler especially,
who carried on a constant agitation in the factory districts, and had
been active in the same way during Sadler's life, was the particular
favourite of the working-men. They called him their "good old king,"
"the king of the factory children," and there is not a child in the
factory districts that does not know and revere him, that does not join
the procession which moves to welcome him when he enters a town. Oastler
vigorously opposed the New Poor Law also, and was therefore imprisoned
for debt by a Mr. Thornley, on whose estate he was employed as agent, and
to whom he owed money. The Whigs offered repeatedly to pay his debt and
confer other favours upon him if he would only give up his agitation
against the Poor Law. But in vain; he remained in prison, whence he
published his Fleet Papers against the factory system and the Poor Law.
The Tory Government of 1841 turned its attention once more to the Factory
Acts. The Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, proposed, in 1843, a bill
restricting the working-hours of children to six and one-half, and making
the enactments for compulsory school attendance more effective; the
principal point in this connection being a provision for better schools.
This bill was, however, wrecked by the jealousy of the dissenters; for,
although compulsory religious instruction was not extended to the
children of dissenters, the schools provided for were to be placed under
the general supervision of the Established Church, and the Bible made the
general reading-book; religion being thus made the foundation of all
instruction, whence the dissenters felt themselves threatened. The
manufacturers and the Liberals generally united with them, the working-
men were divided by the Church question, and therefore inactive. The
opponents of the bill, though outweighed in the great manufacturing
towns, such as Salford and Stockport, and able in others, such as
Manchester, to attack certain of its points only, for fear of the working-
men, collected nevertheless nearly two million signatures for a petition
against it, and Graham allowed himself to be so far intimidated as to
withdraw the whole bill. The next year he omitted the school clauses,
and proposed that, instead of the previous provisions, children between
eight and thirteen years should be restricted to six and one-half hours,
and so employed as to have either the whole morning or the whole
afternoon free; that young people between thirteen and eighteen years,
and all females, should be limited to twelve hours; and that the hitherto
frequent evasions of the law should be prevented. Hardly had he proposed
this bill, when the ten hours' agitation was begun again more vigorously
than ever. Oastler had just then regained his liberty; a number of his
friends and a collection among the workers had paid his debt, and he
threw himself into the movement with all his might. The defenders of the
Ten Hours' Bill in the House of Commons had increased in numbers, the
masses of petitions supporting it which poured in from all sides brought
them allies, and on March 19th, 1844, Lord Ashley carried, with a
majority of 179 to 170, a resolution that the word "Night" in the Factory
Act should express the time from six at night to six in the morning,
whereby the prohibition of night-work came to mean the limitation of
working-hours to twelve, including free hours, or ten hours of actual
work a day. But the ministry did not agree to this. Sir James Graham
began to threaten resignation from the Cabinet, and at the next vote on
the bill the House rejected by a small majority both ten and twelve
hours! Graham and Peel now announced that they should introduce a new
bill, and that if this failed to pass they should resign. The new bill
was exactly the old Twelve Hours' Bill with some changes of form, and the
same House of Commons which had rejected the principal points of this
bill in March, now swallowed it whole. The reason of this was that most
of the supporters of the Ten Hours' Bill were Tories who let fall the
bill rather than the ministry; but be the motives what they may, the
House of Commons by its votes upon this subject, each vote reversing the
last, has brought itself into the greatest contempt among all the
workers, and proved most brilliantly the Chartists' assertion of the
necessity of its reform. Three members, who had formerly voted against
the ministry, afterwards voted for it and rescued it. In all the
divisions, the bulk of the opposition voted _for_ and the bulk of its own
party _against_ the ministry. {176} The foregoing propositions of Graham
touching the employment of children six and one-half and of all other
operatives twelve hours are now legislative provisions, and by them and
by the limitation of overwork for making up time lost through breakdown
of machinery or insufficient water-power by reason of frost or drought, a
working-day of more than twelve hours has been made well-nigh impossible.
There remains, however, no doubt that, in a very short time, the Ten
Hours' Bill will really be adopted. The manufacturers are naturally all
against it, there are perhaps not ten who are for it; they have used
every honourable and dishonourable means against this dreaded measure,
but with no other result than that of drawing down upon them the ever
deepening hatred of the working-men. The bill will pass. What the
working-men will do they can do, and that they will have this bill they
proved last spring. The economic arguments of the manufacturers that a
Ten Hours' Bill would increase the cost of production and incapacitate
the English producers for competition in foreign markets, and that wages
must fall, are all _half_ true; but they prove nothing except this, that
the industrial greatness of England can be maintained only through the
barbarous treatment of the operatives, the destruction of their health,
the social, physical, and mental decay of whole generations. Naturally,
if the Ten Hours' Bill were a final measure, it must ruin England; but
since it must inevitably bring with it other measures which must draw
England into a path wholly different from that hitherto followed, it can
only prove an advance.
Let us turn to another side of the factory system which cannot be
remedied by legislative provisions so easily as the diseases now
engendered by it. We have already alluded in a general way to the nature
of the employment, and enough in detail to be able to draw certain
inferences from the facts given. The supervision of machinery, the
joining of broken threads, is no activity which claims the operative's
thinking powers, yet it is of a sort which prevents him from occupying
his mind with other things. We have seen, too, that this work affords
the muscles no opportunity for physical activity. Thus it is, properly
speaking, not work, but tedium, the most deadening, wearing process
conceivable. The operative is condemned to let his physical and mental
powers decay in this utter monotony, it is his mission to be bored every
day and all day long from his eighth year. Moreover, he must not take a
moment's rest; the engine moves unceasingly; the wheels, the straps, the
spindles hum and rattle in his ears without a pause, and if he tries to
snatch one instant, there is the overlooker at his back with the book of
fines. This condemnation to be buried alive in the mill, to give
constant attention to the tireless machine is felt as the keenest torture
by the operatives, and its action upon mind and body is in the long run
stunting in the highest degree. There is no better means of inducing
stupefaction than a period of factory work, and if the operatives have,
nevertheless, not only rescued their intelligence, but cultivated and
sharpened it more than other working-men, they have found this possible
only in rebellion against their fate and against the bourgeoisie, the
sole subject on which under all circumstances they can think and feel
while at work. Or, if this indignation against the bourgeoisie does not
become the supreme passion of the working-man, the inevitable consequence
is drunkenness and all that is generally called demoralisation. The
physical enervation and the sickness, universal in consequence of the
factory system, were enough to induce Commissioner Hawkins to attribute
this demoralisation thereto as inevitable; how much more when mental
lassitude is added to them, and when the influences already mentioned
which tempt every working-man to demoralisation, make themselves felt
here too! There is no cause for surprise, therefore, that in the
manufacturing towns especially, drunkenness and sexual excesses have
reached the pitch which I have already described. {178}
Further, the slavery in which the bourgeoisie holds the proletariat
chained, is nowhere more conspicuous than in the factory system. Here
ends all freedom in law and in fact. The operative must be in the mill
at half-past five in the morning; if he comes a couple of minutes too
late, he is fined; if he comes ten minutes too late, he is not let in
until breakfast is over, and a quarter of the day's wages is withheld,
though he loses only two and one-half hours' work out of twelve. He must
eat, drink, and sleep at command. For satisfying the most imperative
needs, he is vouchsafed the least possible time absolutely required by
them. Whether his dwelling is a half-hour or a whole one removed from
the factory does not concern his employer. The despotic bell calls him
from his bed, his breakfast, his dinner.
What a time he has of it, too, inside the factory! Here the employer is
absolute law-giver; he makes regulations at will, changes and adds to his
codex at pleasure, and even, if he inserts the craziest stuff, the courts
say to the working-man: "You were your own master, no one forced you to
agree to such a contract if you did not wish to; but now, when you have
freely entered into it, you must be bound by it." And so the working-man
only gets into the bargain the mockery of the Justice of the Peace who is
a bourgeois himself, and of the law which is made by the bourgeoisie.
Such decisions have been given often enough. In October, 1844, the
operatives of Kennedy's mill, in Manchester struck. Kennedy prosecuted
them on the strength of a regulation placarded in the mill, that at no
time more than two operatives in one room may quit work at once. And the
court decided in his favour, giving the working-men the explanation cited
above. {179a} And such rules as these usually are! For instance: 1. The
doors are closed ten minutes after work begins, and thereafter no one is
admitted until the breakfast hour; whoever is absent during this time
forfeits 3d. per loom. 2. Every power-loom weaver detected absenting
himself at another time, while the machinery is in motion, forfeits for
each hour and each loom, 3d. Every person who leaves the room during
working-hours, without obtaining permission from the overlooker, forfeits
3d. 3. Weavers who fail to supply themselves with scissors forfeit, per
day, 1d. 4. All broken shuttles, brushes, oil-cans, wheels, window
panes, etc., must be paid for by the weaver. 5. No weaver to stop work
without giving a week's notice. The manufacturer may dismiss any
employee without notice for bad work or improper behaviour. 6. Every
operative detected speaking to another, singing or whistling, will be
fined 6d.; for leaving his place during working-hours, 6d. {179b} Another
copy of factory regulations lies before me, according to which every
operative who comes three minutes too late, forfeits the wages for a
quarter of an hour, and every one who comes twenty minutes too late, for
a quarter of a day. Every one who remains absent until breakfast
forfeits a shilling on Monday, and sixpence every other day of the week,
etc, etc. This last is the regulation of the Phoenix Works in Jersey
Street, Manchester. It may be said that such rules are necessary in a
great, complicated factory, in order to insure the harmonious working of
the different parts; it may be asserted that such a severe discipline is
as necessary here as in an army. This may be so, but what sort of a
social order is it which cannot be maintained without such shameful
tyranny? Either the end sanctifies the means, or the inference of the
badness of the end from the badness of the means is justified. Every one
who has served as a soldier knows what it is to be subjected even for a
short time to military discipline. But these operatives are condemned
from their ninth year to their death to live under the sword, physically
and mentally. They are worse slaves than the negroes in America, for
they are more sharply watched, and yet it is demanded of them that they
shall live like human beings, shall think and feel like men! Verily,
this they can do only under glowing hatred towards their oppressors, and
towards that order of things which place them in such a position, which
degrades them to machines. But it is far more shameful yet, that
according to the universal testimony of the operatives, numbers of
manufacturers collect the fines imposed upon the operatives with the most
heartless severity, and for the purpose of piling up extra profits out of
the farthings thus extorted from the impoverished proletarians. Leach
asserts, too, that the operatives often find the factory clock moved
forward a quarter of an hour and the doors shut, while the clerk moves
about with the fines-book inside, noting the many names of the absentees.
Leach claims to have counted ninety-five operatives thus shut out,
standing before a factory, whose clock was a quarter of an hour slower
than the town clocks at night, and a quarter of an hour faster in the
morning. The Factory Report relates similar facts. In one factory the
clock was set back during working-hours, so that the operatives worked
overtime without extra pay; in another, a whole quarter of an hour
overtime was worked; in a third, there were two clocks, an ordinary one
and a machine clock, which registered the revolutions of the main shaft;
if the machinery went slowly, working-hours were measured by the machine
clock until the number of revolutions due in twelve hours was reached; if
work went well, so that the number was reached before the usual working-
hours were ended, the operatives were forced to toil on to the end of the
twelfth hour. The witness adds that he had known girls who had good
work, and who had worked overtime, who, nevertheless, betook themselves
to a life of prostitution rather than submit to this tyranny. {181a} To
return to the fines, Leach relates having repeatedly seen women in the
last period of pregnancy fined 6d. for the offence of sitting down a
moment to rest. Fines for bad work are wholly arbitrary; the goods are
examined in the wareroom, and the supervisor charges the fines upon a
list without even summoning the operative, who only learns that he has
been fined when the overlooker pays his wages, and the goods have perhaps
been sold, or certainly been placed beyond his reach. Leach has in his
possession such a fines list, ten feet long, and amounting to 35 pounds
17s. 10d. He relates that in the factory where this list was made, a new
supervisor was dismissed for fining too little, and so bringing in five
pounds too little weekly. {181b} And I repeat that I know Leach to be a
thoroughly trustworthy man incapable of a falsehood.
But the operative is his employer's slave in still other respects. If
his wife or daughter finds favour in the eyes of the master, a command, a
hint suffices, and she must place herself at his disposal. When the
employer wishes to supply with signatures a petition in favour of
bourgeois interests, he need only send it to his mill. If he wishes to
decide a Parliamentary election, he sends his enfranchised operatives in
rank and file to the polls, and they vote for the bourgeois candidate
whether they will or no. If he desires a majority in a public meeting,
he dismisses them half-an-hour earlier than usual, and secures them
places close to the platform, where he can watch them to his
satisfaction.
Two further arrangements contribute especially to force the operative
under the dominion of the manufacturer; the Truck system and the Cottage
system. The truck system, the payment of the operatives in goods, was
formerly universal in England. The manufacturer opens a shop, "for the
convenience of the operatives, and to protect them from the high prices
of the petty dealers." Here goods of all sorts are sold to them on
credit; and to keep the operatives from going to the shops where they
could get their goods more cheaply--the "Tommy shops" usually charging
twenty-five to thirty per cent. more than others--wages are paid in
requisitions on the shop instead of money. The general indignation
against this infamous system led to the passage of the Truck Act in 1831,
by which, for most employees, payment in truck orders was declared void
and illegal, and was made punishable by fine; but, like most other
English laws, this has been enforced only here and there. In the towns
it is carried out comparatively efficiently; but in the country, the
truck system, disguised or undisguised, flourishes. In the town of
Leicester, too, it is very common. There lie before me nearly a dozen
convictions for this offence, dating from the period between November,
1843, and June, 1844, and reported, in part, in the _Manchester Guardian_
and, in part, in the _Northern Star_. The system is, of course, less
openly carried on at present; wages are usually paid in cash, but the
employer still has means enough at command to force him to purchase his
wares in the truck shop and nowhere else. Hence it is difficult to
combat the truck system, because it can now be carried on under cover of
the law, provided only that the operative receives his wages in money.
The _Northern Star_ of April 27th, 1843, publishes a letter from an
operative of Holmfirth, near Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, which refers to
a manufacturer of the name of Bowers, as follows (retranslated from the
German):
"It is very strange to think that the accursed truck system should
exist to such an extent as it does in Holmfirth, and nobody be found
who has the pluck to make the manufacturer stop it. There are here a
great many honest hand-weavers suffering through this damned system;
here is one sample from a good many out of the noble-hearted Free
Trade Clique. There is a manufacturer who has upon himself the curses
of the whole district on account of his infamous conduct towards his
poor weavers; if they have got a piece ready which comes to 34 or 36
shillings, he gives them 20s. in money and the rest in cloth or goods,
and 40 to 50 per cent. dearer than at the other shops, and often
enough the goods are rotten into the bargain. But, what says the
_Free Trade Mercury_, the _Leeds Mercury_? They are not bound to take
them; they can please themselves. Oh, yes, but they must take them or
else starve. If they ask for another 20s. in money, they must wait
eight or fourteen days for a warp; but if they take the 20s. and the
goods, then there is always a warp ready for them. And that is Free
Trade. Lord Brougham said we ought to put by something in our young
days, so that we need not go to the parish when we are old. Well, are
we to put by the rotten goods? If this did not come from a lord, one
would say his brains were as rotten as the goods that our work is paid
in. When the unstamped papers came out "illegally," there was a lot
of them to report it to the police in Holmfirth, the Blythes, the
Edwards, etc.; but where are they now? But this is different. Our
truck manufacturer belongs to the pious Free Trade lot; he goes to
church twice every Sunday, and repeats devotedly after the parson: 'We
have left undone the things we ought to have done, and we have done
the things we ought not to have done, and there is no good in us; but,
good Lord, deliver us.' Yes, deliver us till to-morrow, and we will
pay our weavers again in rotten goods."
The Cottage system looks much more innocent and arose in a much more
harmless way, though it has the same enslaving influence upon the
employee. In the neighbourhood of the mills in the country, there is
often a lack of dwelling accommodation for the operatives. The
manufacturer is frequently obliged to build such dwellings and does so
gladly, as they yield great advantages, besides the interest upon the
capital invested. If any owner of working-men's dwellings averages about
six per cent. on his invested capital, it is safe to calculate that the
manufacturer's cottages yield twice this rate; for so long as his factory
does not stand perfectly idle he is sure of occupants, and of occupants
who pay punctually. He is therefore spared the two chief disadvantages
under which other house-owners labour; his cottages never stand empty,
and he runs no risk. But the rent of the cottages is as high as though
these disadvantages were in full force, and by obtaining the same rent as
the ordinary house-owner, the manufacturer, at cost of the operatives,
makes a brilliant investment at twelve to fourteen per cent. For it is
clearly unjust that he should make twice as much profit as other
competing house-owners, who at the same time are excluded from competing
with him. But it implies a double wrong, when he draws his fixed profit
from the pockets of the non-possessing class, which must consider the
expenditure of every penny. He is used to that, however, he whose whole
wealth is gained at the cost of his employees. But this injustice
becomes an infamy when the manufacturer, as often happens, forces his
operatives, who must occupy his houses on pain of dismissal, to pay a
higher rent than the ordinary one, or even to pay rent for houses in
which they do not live! The _Halifax Guardian_, quoted by the Liberal
_Sun_, asserts that hundreds of operatives in Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham,
and Rochdale, etc., are forced by their employers to pay house-rent
whether they occupy the house or not. {184} The cottage system is
universal in the country districts; it has created whole villages, and
the manufacturer usually has little or no competition against his houses,
so that he can fix his price regardless of any market rate, indeed at his
pleasure. And what power does the cottage system give the employer over
his operatives in disagreements between master and men? If the latter
strike, he need only give them notice to quit his premises, and the
notice need only be a week; after that time the operative is not only
without bread but without a shelter, a vagabond at the mercy of the law
which sends him, without fail, to the treadmill.
Such is the factory system sketched as fully as my space permits, and
with as little partisan spirit as the heroic deeds of the bourgeoisie
against the defenceless workers permit--deeds to wards which it is
impossible to remain indifferent, towards which indifference were a
crime. Let us compare the condition of the free Englishman of 1845 with
the Saxon serf under the lash of the Norman barons of 1145. The serf was
_glebae adscriptus_, bound to the soil, so is the free working-man
through the cottage system. The serf owed his master the _jus primae
noctis_, the right of the first night--the free working-man must, on
demand, surrender to his master not only that, but the right of every
night. The serf could acquire no property; everything that he gained,
his master could take from him; the free working-man has no property, can
gain none by reason of the pressure of competition, and what even the
Norman baron did not do, the modern manufacturer does. Through the truck
system, he assumes every day the administration in detail of the things
which the worker requires for his immediate necessities. The relation of
the lord of the soil to the serf was regulated by the prevailing customs
and by-laws which were obeyed, because they corresponded to them. The
free working-man's relation to his master is regulated by laws which are
_not_ obeyed, because they correspond neither with the interests of the
employer nor with the prevailing customs. The lord of the soil could not
separate the serf from the land, nor sell him apart from it, and since
almost all the land was fief and there was no capital, practically could
not sell him at all. The modern bourgeois forces the working-man to sell
himself. The serf was the slave of the piece of land on which he was
born, the working-man is the slave of his own necessaries of life and of
the money with which he has to buy them--both are _slaves of a thing_.
The serf had a guarantee for the means of subsistence in the feudal order
of society in which every member had his own place. The free working-man
has no guarantee whatsoever, because he has a place in society only when
the bourgeoisie can make use of him; in all other cases he is ignored,
treated as non-existent. The serf sacrificed himself for his master in
war, the factory operative in peace. The lord of the serf was a
barbarian who regarded his villain as a head of cattle; the employer of
operatives is civilised and regards his "hand" as a machine. In short,
the position of the two is not far from equal, and if either is at a
disadvantage, it is the free working-man. Slaves they both are, with the
single difference that the slavery of the one is undissembled, open,
honest; that of the other cunning, sly, disguised, deceitfully concealed
from himself and every one else, a hypocritical servitude worse than the
old. The philanthropic Tories were right when they gave the operatives
the name white slaves. But the hypocritical disguised slavery recognises
the right to freedom, at least in outward form; bows before a freedom-
loving public opinion, and herein lies the historic progress as compared
with the old servitude, that the _principle_ of freedom is affirmed, and
the oppressed will one day see to it that this principle is carried out.
{186}
THE REMAINING BRANCHES OF INDUSTRY.
We were compelled to deal with the factory system somewhat at length, as
it is an entirely novel creation of the industrial period; we shall be
able to treat the other workers the more briefly, because what has been
said either of the industrial proletariat in general, or of the factory
system in particular, will wholly, or in part, apply to them. We shall,
therefore, merely have to record how far the factory system has succeeded
in forcing its way into each branch of industry, and what other
peculiarities these may reveal.
The four branches comprised under the Factory Act are engaged in the
production of clothing stuffs. We shall do best if we deal next with
those workers who receive their materials from these factories; and,
first of all, with the stocking weavers of Nottingham, Derby, and
Leicester. Touching these workers, the Children's Employment Commission
reports that the long working-hours, imposed by low wages, with a
sedentary life and the strain upon the eyes involved in the nature of the
employment, usually enfeeble the whole frame, and especially the eyes.
Work at night is impossible without a very powerful light produced by
concentrating the rays of the lamp, making them pass through glass
globes, which is most injurious to the sight. At forty years of age,
nearly all wear spectacles. The children employed at spooling and
hemming usually suffer grave injuries to the health and constitution.
They work from the sixth, seventh, or eighth year ten to twelve hours
daily in small, close rooms. It is not uncommon for them to faint at
their work, to become too feeble for the most ordinary household
occupation, and so near-sighted as to be obliged to wear glasses during
childhood. Many were found by the commissioners to exhibit all the
symptoms of a scrofulous constitution, and the manufacturers usually
refuse to employ girls who have worked in this way as being too weak. The
condition of these children is characterised as "a disgrace to a
Christian country," and the wish expressed for legislative interference.
The Factory Report {189} adds that the stocking weavers are the worst
paid workers in Leicester, earning six, or with great effort, seven
shillings a week, for sixteen to eighteen hours' daily work. Formerly
they earned twenty to twenty-one shillings, but the introduction of
enlarged frames has ruined their business; the great majority still work
with old, small, single frames, and compete with difficulty with the
progress of machinery. Here, too, every progress is a disadvantage for
the workers. Nevertheless, Commissioner Power speaks of the pride of the
stocking weavers that they are free, and had no factory bell to measure
out the time for their eating, sleeping, and working. Their position to-
day is no better than in 1833, when the Factory Commission made the
foregoing statements, the competition of the Saxon stocking weavers, who
have scarcely anything to eat, takes care of that. This competition is
too strong for the English in nearly all foreign markets, and for the
lower qualities of goods even in the English market. It must be a source
of rejoicing for the patriotic German stocking weaver that his starvation
wages force his English brother to starve too! And, verily, will he not
starve on, proud and happy, for the greater glory of German industry,
since the honour of the Fatherland demands that his table should be bare,
his dish half empty? Ah! it is a noble thing this competition, this
"race of the nations." In the _Morning Chronicle_, another Liberal
sheet, the organ of the bourgeoisie par excellence, there were published
some letters from a stocking weaver in Hinckley, describing the condition
of his fellow-workers. Among other things, he reports 50 families, 321
persons, who were supported by 109 frames; each frame yielded on an
average 5.5 shillings; each family earned an average of 11s. 4d. weekly.
Out of this there was required for house rent, frame rent, fuel, light,
soap, and needles, together 5s. 10d., so that there remained for food,
per head daily, 1.5d., and for clothing nothing. "No eye," says the
stocking weaver, "has seen, no ear heard, and no heart felt the half of
the sufferings that these poor people endure." Beds were wanting either
wholly or in part, the children ran about ragged and barefoot; the men
said, with tears in their eyes: "It's a long time since we had any meat;
we have almost forgotten how it tastes;" and, finally, some of them
worked on Sunday, though public opinion pardons anything else more
readily than this, and the rattling noise of the frame is audible
throughout the neighbourhood. "But," said one of them, "look at my
children and ask no questions. My poverty forces me to it; I can't and
won't hear my children forever crying for bread, without trying the last
means of winning it honestly. Last Monday I got up at two in the morning
and worked to near midnight; the other days from six in the morning to
between eleven and twelve at night. I have had enough of it; I sha'n't
kill myself; so now I go to bed at ten o'clock, and make up the lost time
on Sundays." Neither in Leicester, Nottingham, nor Derby have wages
risen since 1833; and the worst of it is that in Leicester the truck
system prevails to a great extent, as I have mentioned. It is therefore
not to be wondered at that the weavers of this region take a very active
part in all working-men's movements, the more active and effective
because the frames are worked chiefly by men.
In this stocking weavers' district the lace industry also has its
headquarters. In the three counties mentioned there are in all 2,760
lace frames in use, while in all the rest of England there are but 786.
The manufacture of lace is greatly complicated by a rigid division of
labour, and embraces a multitude of branches. The yarn is first spooled
by girls fourteen years of age and upwards, winders; then the spools are
set up on the frames by boys, eight years old and upwards, threaders, who
pass the thread through fine openings, of which each machine has an
average of 1,800, and bring it towards its destination; then the weaver
weaves the lace which comes out of the machine like a broad piece of
cloth and is taken apart by very little children who draw out the
connecting threads. This is called running or drawing lace, and the
children themselves lace-runners. The lace is then made ready for sale.
The winders, like the threaders, have no specified working-time, being
called upon whenever the spools on a frame are empty, and are liable,
since the weavers work at night, to be required at any time in the
factory or workroom. This irregularity, the frequent night-work, the
disorderly way of living consequent upon it, engender a multitude of
physical and moral ills, especially early and unbridled sexual licence,
upon which point all witnesses are unanimous. The work is very bad for
the eyes, and although a permanent injury in the case of the threaders is
not universally observable, inflammations of the eye, pain, tears, and
momentary uncertainty of vision during the act of threading are
engendered. For the winders, however, it is certain that their work
seriously affects the eye, and produces, besides the frequent
inflammations of the cornea, many cases of amaurosis and cataract. The
work of the weavers themselves is very difficult, as the frames have
constantly been made wider, until those now in use are almost all worked
by three men in turn, each working eight hours, and the frame being kept
in use the whole twenty-four. Hence it is that the winders and threaders
are so often called upon during the night, and must work to prevent the
frame from standing idle. The filling in of 1,800 openings with thread
occupies three children at least two hours. Many frames are moved by
steam-power, and the work of men thus superseded; and, as the Children's
Employment Commission's Report mentions only lace factories to which the
children are summoned, it seems to follow either that the work of the
weavers has been removed to great factory rooms of late, or that steam-
weaving has become pretty general; a forward movement of the factory
system in either case. Most unwholesome of all is the work of the
runners, who are usually children of seven, and even of five and four,
years old. Commissioner Grainger actually found one child of two years
old employed at this work. Following a thread which is to be withdrawn
by a needle from an intricate texture, is very bad for the eyes,
especially when, as is usually the case, the work is continued fourteen
to sixteen hours. In the least unfavourable case, aggravated
near-sightedness follows; in the worst case, which is frequent enough,
incurable blindness from amaurosis. But, apart from that, the children,
in consequence of sitting perpetually bent up, become feeble,
narrow-chested, and scrofulous from bad digestion. Disordered functions
of the uterus are almost universal among the girls, and curvature of the
spine also, so that "all the runners may be recognised from their gait."
The same consequences for the eyes and the whole constitution are
produced by the embroidery of lace. Medical witnesses are unanimously of
the opinion that the health of all children employed in the production of
lace suffers seriously, that they are pale, weak, delicate, undersized,
and much less able than other children to resist disease. The affections
from which they usually suffer are general debility, frequent fainting,
pains in the head, sides, back, and hips, palpitation of the heart,
nausea, vomiting and want of appetite, curvature of the spine, scrofula,
and consumption. The health of the female lacemakers especially, is
constantly and deeply undermined; complaints are universal of anaemia,
difficult childbirth, and miscarriage. {192a} The same subordinate
official of the Children's Employment Commission reports further that the
children are very often ill-clothed and ragged, and receive insufficient
food, usually only bread and tea, often no meat for months together. As
to their moral condition, he reports: {192b}
"All the inhabitants of Nottingham, the police, the clergy, the
manufacturers, the working-people, and the parents of the children are
all unanimously of opinion that the present system of labour is a most
fruitful source of immorality. The threaders, chiefly boys, and the
winders, usually girls, are called for in the factory at the same
time; and as their parents cannot know how long they are wanted there,
they have the finest opportunity to form improper connections and
remain together after the close of the work. This has contributed, in
no small degree, to the immorality which, according to general
opinion, exists to a terrible extent in Nottingham. Apart from this,
the quiet of home life, and the comfort of the family to which these
children and young people belong, is wholly sacrificed to this most
unnatural state of things."
Another branch of lace-making, bobbin-lacework, is carried on in the
agricultural shires of Northampton, Oxford, and Bedford, chiefly by
children and young persons, who complain universally of bad food, and
rarely taste meat. The employment itself is most unwholesome. The
children work in small, ill-ventilated, damp rooms, sitting always bent
over the lace cushion. To support the body in this wearying position,
the girls wear stays with a wooden busk, which, at the tender age of most
of them, when the bones are still very soft, wholly displace the ribs,
and make narrow chests universal. They usually die of consumption after
suffering the severest forms of digestive disorders, brought on by
sedentary work in a bad atmosphere. They are almost wholly without
education, least of all do they receive moral training. They love
finery, and in consequence of these two influences their moral condition
is most deplorable, and prostitution almost epidemic among them. {193}
This is the price at which society purchases for the fine ladies of the
bourgeoisie the pleasure of wearing lace; a reasonable price truly! Only
a few thousand blind working-men, some consumptive labourers' daughters,
a sickly generation of the vile multitude bequeathing its debility to its
equally "vile" children and children's children. But what does that come
to? Nothing, nothing whatsoever! Our English bourgeoisie will lay the
report of the Government Commission aside indifferently, and wives and
daughters will deck themselves with lace as before. It is a beautiful
thing, the composure of an English bourgeois.
A great number of operatives are employed in the cotton-printing
establishments of Lancashire, Derbyshire, and the West of Scotland. In
no branch of English industry has mechanical ingenuity produced such
brilliant results as here, but in no other has it so crushed the workers.
The application of engraved cylinders driven by steam-power, and the
discovery of a method of printing four to six colours at once with such
cylinders, has as completely superseded hand-work as did the application
of machinery to the spinning and weaving of cotton, and these new
arrangements in the printing-works have superseded the hand-workers much
more than was the case in the production of the fabrics. One man, with
the assistance of one child, now does with a machine the work done
formerly by 200 block printers; a single machine yields 28 yards of
printed cloth per minute. The calico printers are in a very bad way in
consequence; the shires of Lancaster, Derby, and Chester produced
(according to a petition of the printers to the House of Commons), in the
year 1842, 11,000,000 pieces of printed cotton goods: of these, 100,000
were printed by hand exclusively, 900,000 in part with machinery and in
part by hand, and 10,000,000 by machinery alone, with four to six
colours. As the machinery is chiefly new and undergoes constant
improvement, the number of hand-printers is far too great for the
available quantity of work, and many of them are therefore starving; the
petition puts the number at one-quarter of the whole, while the rest are
employed but one or two, in the best case three days in the week, and are
ill-paid. Leach {194} asserts of one print-work (Deeply Dale, near Bury,
in Lancashire), that the hand-printers did not earn on an average more
than five shillings, though he knows that the machine-printers were
pretty well paid. The print-works are thus wholly affiliated with the
factory system, but without being subject to the legislative restrictions
placed upon it. They produce an article subject to fashion, and have
therefore no regular work. If they have small orders, they work half
time; if they make a hit with a pattern, and business is brisk, they work
twelve hours, perhaps all night. In the neighbourhood of my home, near
Manchester, there was a print-work that was often lighted when I returned
late at night; and I have heard that the children were obliged at times
to work so long there, that they would try to catch a moment's rest and
sleep on the stone steps and in the corners of the lobby. I have no
legal proof of the truth of the statement, or I should name the firm. The
Report of the Children's Employment Commission is very cursory upon this
subject, stating merely that in England, at least, the children are
mostly pretty well clothed and fed (relatively, according to the wages of
the parents), that they receive no education whatsoever, and are morally
on a low plane. It is only necessary to remember that these children are
subject to the factory system, and then, referring the reader to what has
already been said of that, we can pass on.
Of the remaining workers employed in the manufacture of clothing stuffs
little remains to be said; the bleachers' work is very unwholesome,
obliging them to breathe chlorine, a gas injurious to the lungs. The
work of the dyers is in many cases very healthful, since it requires the
exertion of the whole body; how these workers are paid is little known,
and this is ground enough for the inference that they do not receive less
than the average wages, otherwise they would make complaint. The fustian
cutters, who, in consequence of the large consumption of cotton velvet,
are comparatively numerous, being estimated at from 3,000 to 4,000, have
suffered very severely, indirectly, from the influence of the factory
system. The goods formerly woven with hand-looms, were not perfectly
uniform, and required a practised hand in cutting the single rows of
threads. Since power-looms have been used, the rows run regularly; each
thread of the weft is exactly parallel with the preceding one, and
cutting is no longer an art. The workers thrown out of employment by the
introduction of machinery turn to fustian cutting, and force down wages
by their competition; the manufacturers discovered that they could employ
women and children, and the wages sank to the rate paid them, while
hundreds of men were thrown out of employment. The manufacturers found
that they could get the work done in the factory itself more cheaply than
in the cutters' workroom, for which they indirectly paid the rent. Since
this discovery, the low upper-storey cutters' rooms stand empty in many a
cottage, or are let for dwellings, while the cutter has lost his freedom
of choice of his working-hours, and is brought under the dominion of the
factory bell. A cutter of perhaps forty-five years of age told me that
he could remember a time when he had received 8d. a yard for work, for
which he now received 1d.; true, he can cut the more regular texture more
quickly than the old, but he can by no means do twice as much in an hour
as formerly, so that his wages have sunk to less than a quarter of what
they were. Leach {196} gives a list of wages paid in 1827 and in 1843
for various goods, from which it appears that articles paid in 1827 at
the rates of 4d., 2.25d., 2.75d., and 1d. per yard, were paid in 1843 at
the rate of 1.5d., 1d., .75d., and 0.375d. per yard, cutters' wages. The
average weekly wage, according to Leach, was as follows: 1827, 1 pounds
6s. 6d.; 1 pounds 2s. 6d.; 1 pounds; 1 pounds 6s. 6d.; and for the same
goods in 1843, 10s. 6d.; 7s. 6d.; 6s. 8d.; 10s.; while there are hundreds
of workers who cannot find employment even at these last named rates. Of
the hand-weavers of the cotton industry we have already spoken; the other
woven fabrics are almost exclusively produced on hand-looms. Here most
of the workers have suffered as the weavers have done from the crowding
in of competitors displaced by machinery, and are, moreover, subject like
the factory operatives to a severe fine system for bad work. Take, for
instance, the silk weavers. Mr. Brocklehurst, one of the largest silk
manufacturers in all England, laid before a committee of members of
Parliament lists taken from his books, from which it appears that for
goods for which he paid wages in 1821 at the rate of 30s., 14s., 3.5s.,
.75s., 1.5s., 10s., he paid in 1839 but 9s., 7.25s., 2.25s., 0.333s.,
0.5s., 6.25s., while in this case no improvement in the machinery has
taken place. But what Mr. Brocklehurst does may very well be taken as a
standard for all. From the same lists it appears that the average weekly
wage of his weavers, after all deductions, was, in 1821, 16.5s., and, in
1831, but 6s. Since that time wages have fallen still further. Goods
which brought in 4d. weavers' wages in 1831, bring in but 2.5d. in 1843
(single sarsnets), and a great number of weavers in the country can get
work only when they undertake these goods at 1.5d.-2d. Moreover, they
are subject to arbitrary deductions from their wages. Every weaver who
receives materials is given a card, on which is usually to be read that
the work is to be returned at a specified hour of the day; that a weaver
who cannot work by reason of illness must make the fact known at the
office within three days, or sickness will not be regarded as an excuse;
that it will not be regarded as a sufficient excuse if the weaver claims
to have been obliged to wait for yarn; that for certain faults in the
work (if, for example, more weft-threads are found within a given space
than are prescribed), not less than half the wages will be deducted; and
that if the goods should not be ready at the time specified, one penny
will be deducted for every yard returned. The deductions in accordance
with these cards are so considerable that, for instance, a man who comes
twice a week to Leigh, in Lancashire, to gather up woven goods, brings
his employer at least 15 pound fines every time. He asserts this
himself, and he is regarded as one of the most lenient. Such things were
formerly settled by arbitration; but as the workers were usually
dismissed if they insisted upon that, the custom has been almost wholly
abandoned, and the manufacturer acts arbitrarily as prosecutor, witness,
judge, law-giver, and executive in one person. And if the workman goes
to a Justice of the Peace, the answer is: "When you accepted your card
you entered upon a contract, and you must abide by it." The case is the
same as that of the factory operatives. Besides, the employer obliges
the workman to sign a document in which he declares that he agrees to the
deductions made. And if a workman rebels, all the manufacturers in the
town know at once that he is a man who, as Leach says, {197} "resists the
lawful order as established by weavers' cards, and, moreover, has the
impudence to doubt the wisdom of those who are, as he ought to know, his
superiors in society."
Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does not
force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them what
Leach translates into plain English with the words: "If you don't like to
be frizzled in my frying-pan, you can take a walk into the fire." The
silk weavers of London, and especially of Spitalfields, have lived in
periodic distress for a long time, and that they still have no cause to
be satisfied with their lot is proved by their taking a most active part
in English labour movements in general, and in London ones in particular.
The distress prevailing among them gave rise to the fever which broke out
in East London, and called forth the Commission for Investigating the
Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Class. But the last report of the
London Fever Hospital shows that this disease is still raging.
After the textile fabrics, by far the most important products of English
industry are the metal-wares. This trade has its headquarters at
Birmingham, where the finer metal goods of all sorts are produced, at
Sheffield for cutlery, and in Staffordshire, especially at Wolverhampton,
where the coarser articles, locks, nails, etc., are manufactured. In
describing the position of the workers employed in these trades, let us
begin with Birmingham. The disposition of the work has retained in
Birmingham, as in most places where metals are wrought, something of the
old handicraft character; the small employers are still to be found, who
work with their apprentices in the shop at home, or when they need steam-
power, in great factory buildings which are divided into little shops,
each rented to a small employer, and supplied with a shaft moved by the
engine, and furnishing motive power for the machinery. Leon Faucher,
author of a series of articles in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, which at
least betray study, and are better than what has hitherto been written
upon the subject by Englishmen or Germans, characterises this relation in
contrast with the manufacture of Lancashire as "Democratie industrielle,"
and observes that it produces no very favourable results for master or
men. This observation is perfectly correct, for the many small employers
cannot well subsist on the profit divided amongst them, determined by
competition, a profit under other circumstances absorbed by a single
manufacturer. The centralising tendency of capital holds them down. For
one who grows rich ten are ruined, and a hundred placed at a greater
disadvantage than ever, by the pressure of the one upstart who can afford
to sell more cheaply than they. And in the cases where they have to
compete from the beginning against great capitalists, it is self-evident
that they can only toil along with the greatest difficulty. The
apprentices are, as we shall see, quite as badly off under the small
employers as under the manufacturers, with the single difference that
they, in turn, may become small employers, and so attain a certain
independence--that is to say, they are at best less directly exploited by
the bourgeoisie than under the factory system. Thus these small
employers are neither genuine proletarians, since they live in part upon
the work of their apprentices, nor genuine bourgeois, since their
principal means of support is their own work. This peculiar midway
position of the Birmingham iron-workers is to blame for their having so
rarely joined wholly and unreservedly in the English labour movements.
Birmingham is a politically radical, but not a Chartist, town. There
are, however, numerous larger factories belonging to capitalists; and in
these the factory system reigns supreme. The division of labour, which
is here carried out to the last detail (in the needle industry, for
example), and the use of steam-power, admit of the employment of a great
multitude of women and children, and we find here {199} precisely the
same features reappearing which the Factories' Report presented,--the
work of women up to the hour of confinement, incapacity as housekeepers,
neglect of home and children, indifference, actual dislike to family
life, and demoralisation; further, the crowding out of men from
employment, the constant improvement of machinery, early emancipation of
children, husbands supported by their wives and children, etc. etc. The
children are described as half-starved and ragged, the half of them are
said not to know what it is to have enough to eat, many of them get
nothing to eat before the midday meal, or even live the whole day upon a
pennyworth of bread for a noonday meal--there were actually cases in
which children received no food from eight in the morning until seven at
night. Their clothing is very often scarcely sufficient to cover their
nakedness, many are barefoot even in winter. Hence they are all small
and weak for their age, and rarely develop with any degree of vigour. And
when we reflect that with these insufficient means of reproducing the
physical forces, hard and protracted work in close rooms is required of
them, we cannot wonder that there are few adults in Birmingham fit for
military service. "The working men," says a recruiting surgeon, "are
small, delicate, and of very slight physical power; many of them
deformed, too, in the chest or spinal column." According to the
assertion of a recruiting sergeant, the people of Birmingham are smaller
than those anywhere else, being usually 5 feet 4 to 5 inches tall; out of
613 recruits, but 238 were found fit for service. As to education, a
series of depositions and specimens taken from the metal districts have
already been given, {200a} to which the reader is referred. It appears
further, from the Children's Employment Commission's Report, that in
Birmingham more than half the children between five and fifteen years
attend no school whatsoever, that those who do are constantly changing,
so that it is impossible to give them any training of an enduring kind,
and that they are all withdrawn from school very early and set to work.
The report makes it clear what sort of teachers are employed. One
teacher, in answer to the question whether she gave moral instruction,
said, No, for threepence a week school fees that was too much to require,
but that she took a great deal of trouble to instil good principles into
the children. (And she made a decided slip in her English in saying it.)
In the schools the commissioner found constant noise and disorder. The
moral state of the children is in the highest degree deplorable. Half of
all the criminals are children under fifteen, and in a single year ninety
ten-years'-old offenders, among them forty-four serious criminal cases,
were sentenced. Unbridled sexual intercourse seems, according to the
opinion of the commissioner, almost universal, and that at a very early
age. {200b}
In the iron district of Staffordshire the state of things is still worse.
For the coarse wares made here neither much division of labour (with
certain exceptions) nor steam-power or machinery can be applied. In
Wolverhampton, Willenhall, Bilston, Sedgeley, Wednesfield, Darlaston,
Dudley, Walsall, Wednesbury, etc., there are, therefore, fewer factories,
but chiefly single forges, where the small masters work alone, or with
one or more apprentices, who serve them until reaching the twenty-first
year. The small employers are in about the same situation as those of
Birmingham; but the apprentices, as a rule, are much worse off. They get
almost exclusively meat from diseased animals or such as have died a
natural death, or tainted meat, or fish to eat, with veal from calves
killed too young, and pork from swine smothered during transportation,
and such food is furnished not by small employers only, but by large
manufacturers, who employ from thirty to forty apprentices. The custom
seems to be universal in Wolverhampton, and its natural consequence is
frequent bowel complaints and other diseases. Moreover, the children
usually do not get enough to eat, and have rarely other clothing than
their working rags, for which reason, if for no other, they cannot go to
Sunday school The dwellings are bad and filthy, often so much so that
they give rise to disease; and in spite of the not materially unhealthy
work, the children are puny, weak, and, in many cases, severely crippled.
In Willenhall, for instance, there are countless persons who have, from
perpetually filing at the lathe, crooked backs and one leg crooked, "hind-
leg" as they call it, so that the two legs have the form of a K; while it
is said that more than one-third of the working-men there are ruptured.
Here, as well as in Wolverhampton, numberless cases were found of
retarded puberty among girls, (for girls, too, work at the forges,) as
well as among boys, extending even to the nineteenth year. In Sedgeley
and its surrounding district, where nails form almost the sole product,
the nailers live and work in the most wretched stable-like huts, which
for filth can scarcely be equalled. Girls and boys work from the tenth
or twelfth year, and are accounted fully skilled only when they make a
thousand nails a day. For twelve hundred nails the pay is 5.75d. Every
nail receives twelve blows, and since the hammer weighs 1.25 pounds, the
nailer must lift 18,000 pounds to earn this miserable pay. With this
hard work and insufficient food, the children inevitably develop
ill-formed, undersized frames, and the commissioners depositions confirm
this. As to the state of education in this district, data have already
been furnished in the foregoing chapters. It is upon an incredibly low
plane; half the children do not even go to Sunday school, and the other
half go irregularly; very few, in comparison with the other districts,
can read, and in the matter of writing the case is much worse. Naturally,
for between the seventh and tenth years, just when they are beginning to
get some good out of going to school, they are set to work, and the
Sunday school teachers, smiths or miners, frequently cannot read, and
write their names with difficulty. The prevailing morals correspond with
these means of education. In Willenhall, Commissioner Horne asserts, and
supplies ample proofs of his assertion, that there exists absolutely no
moral sense among the workers. In general, he found that the children
neither recognised duties to their parents nor felt any affection for
them. They were so little capable of thinking of what they said, so
stolid, so hopelessly stupid, that they often asserted that they were
well treated, were coming on famously, when they were forced to work
twelve to fourteen hours, were clad in rags, did not get enough to eat,
and were beaten so that they felt it several days afterwards. They knew
nothing of a different kind of life than that in which they toil from
morning until they are allowed to stop at night, and did not even
understand the question never heard before, whether they were tired.
{202}
In Sheffield wages are better, and the external state of the workers
also. On the other hand, certain branches of work are to be noticed
here, because of their extraordinarily injurious influence upon health.
Certain operations require the constant pressure of tools against the
chest, and engender consumption in many cases; others, file-cutting among
them, retard the general development of the body and produce digestive
disorders; bone-cutting for knife handles brings with it headache,
biliousness, and among girls, of whom many are employed, anaemia. By far
the most unwholesome work is the grinding of knife-blades and forks,
which, especially when done with a dry stone, entails certain early
death. The unwholesomeness of this work lies in part in the bent
posture, in which chest and stomach are cramped; but especially in the
quantity of sharp-edged metal dust particles freed in the cutting, which
fill the atmosphere, and are necessarily inhaled. The dry grinders'
average life is hardly thirty-five years, the wet grinders' rarely
exceeds forty-five. Dr. Knight, in Sheffield, says: {203}
"I can convey some idea of the injuriousness of this occupation only
by asserting that the hardest drinkers among the grinders are the
longest lived among them, because they are longest and oftenest absent
from their work. There are, in all, some 2,500 grinders in Sheffield.
About 150 (80 men and 70 boys) are fork grinders; these die between
the twenty-eighth and thirty-second years of age. The razor grinders,
who grind wet as well as dry, die between forty and forty-five years,
and the table cutlery grinders, who grind wet, die between the
fortieth and fiftieth year."
The same physician gives the following description of the course of the
disease called grinders' asthma:
"They usually begin their work with the fourteenth year, and, if they
have good constitutions, rarely notice any symptoms before the
twentieth year. Then the symptoms of their peculiar disease appear.
They suffer from shortness of breath at the slightest effort in going
up hill or up stairs, they habitually raise the shoulders to relieve
the permanent and increasing want of breath; they bend forward, and
seem, in general, to feel most comfortable in the crouching position
in which they work. Their complexion becomes dirty yellow, their
features express anxiety, they complain of pressure upon the chest.
Their voices become rough and hoarse, they cough loudly, and the sound
is as if air were driven through a wooden tube. From time to time
they expectorate considerable quantities of dust, either mixed with
phlegm or in balls or cylindrical masses, with a thin coating of
mucus. Spitting blood, inability to lie down, night sweat,
colliquative diarrhoea, unusual loss of flesh, and all the usual
symptoms of consumption of the lungs finally carry them off, after
they have lingered months, or even years, unfit to support themselves
or those dependent upon them. I must add that all attempts which have
hitherto been made to prevent grinders' asthma, or to cure it, have
wholly failed."
All this Knight wrote ten years ago; since then the number of grinders
and the violence of the disease have increased, though attempts have been
made to prevent it by covered grindstones and carrying off the dust by
artificial draught. These methods have been at least partially
successful, but the grinders do not desire their adoption, and have even
destroyed the contrivance here and there, in the belief that more workers
may be attracted to the business and wages thus reduced; they are for a
short life and a merry one. Dr. Knight has often told grinders who came
to him with the first symptoms of asthma that a return to grinding means
certain death, but with no avail. He who is once a grinder falls into
despair, as though he had sold himself to the devil. Education in
Sheffield is upon a very low plane; a clergyman, who had occupied himself
largely with the statistics of education, was of the opinion that of
16,500 children of the working-class who are in a position to attend
school, scarcely 6,500 can read. This comes of the fact that the
children are taken from school in the seventh, and, at the very latest,
in the twelfth year, and that the teachers are good for nothing; one was
a convicted thief who found no other way of supporting himself after
being released from jail than teaching school! Immorality among young
people seems to be more prevalent in Sheffield than anywhere else. It is
hard to tell which town ought to have the prize, and in reading the
report one believes of each one that this certainly deserves it! The
younger generation spend the whole of Sunday lying in the street tossing
coins or fighting dogs, go regularly to the gin palace, where they sit
with their sweethearts until late at night, when they take walks in
solitary couples. In an ale-house which the commissioner visited, there
sat forty to fifty young people of both sexes, nearly all under seventeen
years of age, and each lad beside his lass. Here and there cards were
played, at other places dancing was going on, and everywhere drinking.
Among the company were openly avowed professional prostitutes. No
wonder, then, that, as all the witnesses testify, early, unbridled sexual
intercourse, youthful prostitution, beginning with persons of fourteen to
fifteen years, is extraordinarily frequent in Sheffield. Crimes of a
savage and desperate sort are of common occurrence; one year before the
commissioner's visit, a band, consisting chiefly of young persons, was
arrested when about to set fire to the town, being fully equipped with
lances and inflammable substances. We shall see later that the labour
movement in Sheffield has this same savage character. {205}
Besides these two main centres of the metal industry, there are needle
factories in Warrington, Lancashire, where great want, immorality, and
ignorance prevail among the workers, and especially among the children;
and a number of nail forges in the neighbourhood of Wigan, in Lancashire,
and in the east of Scotland. The reports from these latter districts
tell almost precisely the same story as those of Staffordshire. There is
one more branch of this industry carried on in the factory districts,
especially in Lancashire, the essential peculiarity of which is the
production of machinery by machinery, whereby the workers, crowded out
elsewhere, are deprived of their last refuge, the creation of the very
enemy which supersedes them. Machinery for planing and boring, cutting
screws, wheels, nuts, etc., with power lathes, has thrown out of
employment a multitude of men who formerly found regular work at good
wages; and whoever wishes to do so may see crowds of them in Manchester.
North of the iron district of Staffordshire lies an industrial region to
which we shall now turn our attention, the Potteries, whose headquarters
are in the borough of Stoke, embracing Henley, Burslem, Lane End, Lane
Delph, Etruria, Coleridge, Langport, Tunstall, and Golden Hill,
containing together 60,000 inhabitants. The Children's Employment
Commission reports upon this subject that in some branches of this
industry, in the production of stoneware, the children have light
employment in warm, airy rooms; in others, on the contrary, hard, wearing
labour is required, while they receive neither sufficient food nor good
clothing. Many children complain: "Don't get enough to eat, get mostly
potatoes with salt, never meat, never bread, don't go to school, haven't
got no clothes." "Haven't got nothin' to eat to-day for dinner, don't
never have dinner at home, get mostly potatoes and salt, sometimes
bread." "These is all the clothes I have, no Sunday suit at home." Among
the children whose work is especially injurious are the mould-runners,
who have to carry the moulded article with the form to the drying-room,
and afterwards bring back the empty form, when the article is properly
dried. Thus they must go to and fro the whole day, carrying burdens
heavy in proportion to their age, while the high temperature in which
they have to do this increases very considerably the exhaustiveness of
the work. These children, with scarcely a single exception, are lean,
pale, feeble, stunted; nearly all suffer from stomach troubles, nausea,
want of appetite, and many of them die of consumption. Almost as
delicate are the boys called "jiggers," from the "jigger" wheel which
they turn. But by far the most injurious is the work of those who dip
the finished article into a fluid containing great quantities of lead,
and often of arsenic, or have to take the freshly-dipped article up with
the hand. The hands and clothing of these workers, adults and children,
are always wet with this fluid, the skin softens and falls off under the
constant contact with rough objects, so that the fingers often bleed, and
are constantly in a state most favourable for the absorption of this
dangerous substance. The consequence is violent pain, and serious
disease of the stomach and intestines, obstinate constipation, colic,
sometimes consumption, and, most common of all, epilepsy among children.
Among men, partial paralysis of the hand muscles, colica pictorum, and
paralysis of whole limbs are ordinary phenomena. One witness relates
that two children who worked with him died of convulsions at their work;
another who had helped with the dipping two years while a boy, relates
that he had violent pains in the bowels at first, then convulsions, in
consequence of which he was confined to his bed two months, since when
the attacks of convulsions have increased in frequency, are now daily,
accompanied often by ten to twenty epileptic fits, his right arm is
paralysed, and the physicians tell him that he can never regain the use
of his limbs. In one factory were found in the dipping-house four men,
all epileptic and afflicted with severe colic, and eleven boys, several
of whom were already epileptic. In short, this frightful disease follows
this occupation universally: and that, too, to the greater pecuniary
profit of the bourgeoisie! In the rooms in which the stoneware is
scoured, the atmosphere is filled with pulverised flint, the breathing of
which is as injurious as that of the steel dust among the Sheffield
grinders. The workers lose breath, cannot lie down, suffer from sore
throat and violent coughing, and come to have so feeble a voice that they
can scarcely be heard. They, too, all die of consumption. In the
Potteries district, the schools are said to be comparatively numerous,
and to offer the children opportunities for instruction; but as the
latter are so early set to work for twelve hours and often more per day,
they are not in a position to avail themselves of the schools, so that
three-fourths of the children examined by the commissioner could neither
read nor write, while the whole district is plunged in the deepest
ignorance. Children who have attended Sunday school for years could not
tell one letter from another, and the moral and religious education, as
well as the intellectual, is on a very low plane. {207}
In the manufacture of glass, too, work occurs which seems little
injurious to men, but cannot be endured by children. The hard labour,
the irregularity of the hours, the frequent night-work, and especially
the great heat of the working place (100 to 130 Fahrenheit), engender in
children general debility and disease, stunted growth, and especially
affections of the eye, bowel complaint, and rheumatic and bronchial
affections. Many of the children are pale, have red eyes, often blind
for weeks at a time, suffer from violent nausea, vomiting, coughs, colds,
and rheumatism. When the glass is withdrawn from the fire, the children
must often go into such heat that the boards on which they stand catch
fire under their feet. The glassblowers usually die young of debility
and chest affections. {208}
As a whole, this report testifies to the gradual but sure introduction of
the factory system into all branches of industry, recognisable especially
by the employment of women and children. I have not thought it necessary
to trace in every case the progress of machinery and the superseding of
men as workers. Every one who is in any degree acquainted with the
nature of manufacture can fill this out for himself, while space fails me
to describe in detail an aspect of our present system of production, the
result of which I have already sketched in dealing with the factory
system. In all directions machinery is being introduced, and the last
trace of the working-man's independence thus destroyed. In all
directions the family is being dissolved by the labour of wife and
children, or inverted by the husband's being thrown out of employment and
made dependent upon them for bread; everywhere the inevitable machinery
bestows upon the great capitalist command of trade and of the workers
with it. The centralisation of capital strides forward without
interruption, the division of society into great capitalists and
non-possessing workers is sharper every day, the industrial development
of the nation advances with giant strides towards the inevitable crisis.
I have already stated that in the handicrafts the power of capital, and
in some cases the division of labour too, has produced the same results,
crushed the small tradesmen, and put great capitalists and non-possessing
workers in their place. As to these handicraftsmen there is little to be
said, since all that relates to them has already found its place where
the proletariat in general was under discussion. There has been but
little change here in the nature of the work and its influence upon
health since the beginning of the industrial movement. But the constant
contact with the factory operatives, the pressure of the great
capitalists, which is much more felt than that of the small employer to
whom the apprentice still stood in a more or less personal relation, the
influences of life in towns, and the fall of wages, have made nearly all
the handicraftsmen active participators in labour movements. We shall
soon have more to say on this point, and turn meanwhile to one section of
workers in London who deserve our attention by reason of the
extraordinary barbarity with which they are exploited by the money-greed
of the bourgeoisie. I mean the dressmakers and sewing-women.
It is a curious fact that the production of precisely those articles
which serve the personal adornment of the ladies of the bourgeoisie
involves the saddest consequences for the health of the workers. We have
already seen this in the case of the lacemakers, and come now to the
dressmaking establishments of London for further proof. They employ a
mass of young girls--there are said to be 15,000 of them in all--who
sleep and eat on the premises, come usually from the country, and are
therefore absolutely the slaves of their employers. During the
fashionable season, which lasts some four months, working-hours, even in
the best establishments, are fifteen, and, in very pressing cases,
eighteen a day; but in most shops work goes on at these times without any
set regulation, so that the girls never have more than six, often not
more than three or four, sometimes, indeed, not more than two hours in
the twenty-four, for rest and sleep, working nineteen to twenty hours, if
not the whole night through, as frequently happens! The only limit set
to their work is the absolute physical inability to hold the needle
another minute. Cases have occurred in which these helpless creatures
did not undress during nine consecutive days and nights, and could only
rest a moment or two here and there upon a mattress, where food was
served them ready cut up in order to require the least possible time for
swallowing. In short, these unfortunate girls are kept by means of the
moral whip of the modern slave-driver, the threat of discharge, to such
long and unbroken toil as no strong man, much less a delicate girl of
fourteen to twenty years, can endure. In addition to this, the foul air
of the workroom and sleeping places, the bent posture, the often bad and
indigestible food, all these causes, combined with almost total exclusion
from fresh air, entail the saddest consequences for the health of the
girls. Enervation, exhaustion, debility, loss of appetite, pains in the
shoulders, back, and hips, but especially headache, begin very soon; then
follow curvatures of the spine, high, deformed shoulders, leanness,
swelled, weeping, and smarting eyes, which soon become short-sighted;
coughs, narrow chests, and shortness of breath, and all manner of
disorders in the development of the female organism. In many cases the
eyes suffer, so severely that incurable blindness follows; but if the
sight remains strong enough to make continued work possible, consumption
usually soon ends the sad life of these milliners and dressmakers. Even
those who leave this work at an early age retain permanently injured
health, a broken constitution; and, when married, bring feeble and sickly
children into the world. All the medical men interrogated by the
commissioner agreed that no method of life could be invented better
calculated to destroy health and induce early death.
With the same cruelty, though somewhat more indirectly, the rest of the
needle-women of London are exploited. The girls employed in stay-making
have a hard, wearing occupation, trying to the eyes. And what wages do
they get? I do not know; but this I know, that the middle-man who has to
give security for the material delivered, and who distributes the work
among the needle-women, receives 1.5d. per piece. From this he deducts
his own pay, at least .5d., so that 1d. at most reaches the pocket of the
girl. The girls who sew neckties must bind themselves to work sixteen
hours a day, and receive 4.5s. a week. {210} But the shirtmakers' lot is
the worst. They receive for an ordinary shirt 1.5d., formerly 2d.-3d.;
but since the workhouse of St. Pancras, which is administered by a
Radical board of guardians, began to undertake work at 1.5d., the poor
women outside have been compelled to do the same. For fine, fancy
shirts, which can be made in one day of eighteen hours, 6d. is paid. The
weekly wage of these sewing-women according to this and according to
testimony from many sides, including both needle-women and employers, is
2s. 6d. to 3s. for most strained work continued far into the night. And
what crowns this shameful barbarism is the fact that the women must give
a money deposit for a part of the materials entrusted to them, which they
naturally cannot do unless they pawn a part of them (as the employers
very well know), redeeming them at a loss; or if they cannot redeem the
materials, they must appear before a Justice of the Peace, as happened a
sewing-woman in November, 1843. A poor girl who got into this strait and
did not know what to do next, drowned herself in a canal in 1844. These
women usually live in little garret rooms in the utmost distress, where
as many crowd together as the space can possibly admit, and where, in
winter, the animal warmth of the workers is the only heat obtainable.
Here they sit bent over their work, sewing from four or five in the
morning until midnight, destroying their health in a year or two and
ending in an early grave, without being able to obtain the poorest
necessities of life meanwhile. {211} And below them roll the brilliant
equipages of the upper bourgeoisie, and perhaps ten steps away some
pitiable dandy loses more money in one evening at faro than they can earn
in a year.
* * * * *
Such is the condition of the English manufacturing proletariat. In all
directions, whithersoever we may turn, we find want and disease permanent
or temporary, and demoralisation arising from the condition of the
workers; in all directions slow but sure undermining, and final
destruction of the human being physically as well as mentally. Is this a
state of things which can last? It cannot and will not last. The
workers, the great majority of the nation, will not endure it. Let us
see what they say of it.
LABOUR MOVEMENTS.
It must be admitted, even if I had not proved it so often in detail, that
the English workers cannot feel happy in this condition; that theirs is
not a state in which a man or a whole class of men can think, feel, and
live as human beings. The workers must therefore strive to escape from
this brutalizing condition, to secure for themselves a better, more human
position; and this they cannot do without attacking the interest of the
bourgeoisie which consists in exploiting them. But the bourgeoisie
defends its interests with all the power placed at its disposal by wealth
and the might of the State. In proportion as the working-man determines
to alter the present state of things, the bourgeois becomes his avowed
enemy.
Moreover, the working-man is made to feel at every moment that the
bourgeoisie treats him as a chattel, as its property, and for this
reason, if for no other, he must come forward as its enemy. I have shown
in a hundred ways in the foregoing pages, and could have shown in a
hundred others, that, in our present society, he can save his manhood
only in hatred and rebellion against the bourgeoisie. And he can protest
with most violent passion against the tyranny of the propertied class,
thanks to his education, or rather want of education, and to the
abundance of hot Irish blood that flows in the veins of the English
working-class. The English working-man is no Englishman nowadays; no
calculating money-grabber like his wealthy neighbour. He possesses more
fully developed feelings, his native northern coldness is overborne by
the unrestrained development of his passions and their control over him.
The cultivation of the understanding which so greatly strengthens the
selfish tendency of the English bourgeois, which has made selfishness his
predominant trait and concentrated all his emotional power upon the
single point of money-greed, is wanting in the working-man, whose
passions are therefore strong and mighty as those of the foreigner.
English nationality is annihilated in the working-man.
Since, as we have seen, no single field for the exercise of his manhood
is left him, save his opposition to the whole conditions of his life, it
is natural that exactly in this opposition he should be most manly,
noblest, most worthy of sympathy. We shall see that all the energy, all
the activity of the working-men is directed to this point, and that even
their attempts to attain general education all stand in direct connection
with this. True, we shall have single acts of violence and even of
brutality to report, but it must always be kept in mind that the social
war is avowedly raging in England; and that, whereas it is in the
interest of the bourgeoisie to conduct this war hypocritically, under the
disguise of peace and even of philanthropy, the only help for the working-
men consists in laying bare the true state of things and destroying this
hypocrisy; that the most violent attacks of the workers upon the
bourgeoisie and its servants are only the open, undisguised expression of
that which the bourgeoisie perpetrates secretly, treacherously against
the workers.
The revolt of the workers began soon after the first industrial
development, and has passed through several phases. The investigation of
their importance in the history of the English people I must reserve for
separate treatment, limiting myself meanwhile to such bare facts as serve
to characterise the condition of the English proletariat.
The earliest, crudest, and least fruitful form of this rebellion was that
of crime. The working-man lived in poverty and want, and saw that others
were better off than he. It was not clear to his mind why he, who did
more for society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under
these conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the
sacredness of property, and he stole. We have seen how crime increased
with the extension of manufacture; how the yearly number of arrests bore
a constant relation to the number of bales of cotton annually consumed.
The workers soon realised that crime did not help matters. The criminal
could protest against the existing order of society only singly, as one
individual; the whole might of society was brought to bear upon each
criminal, and crushed him with its immense superiority. Besides, theft
was the most primitive form of protest, and for this reason, if for no
other, it never became the universal expression of the public opinion of
the working-men, however much they might approve of it in silence. As a
class, they first manifested opposition to the bourgeoisie when they
resisted the introduction of machinery at the very beginning of the
industrial period. The first inventors, Arkwright and others, were
persecuted in this way and their machines destroyed. Later, there took
place a number of revolts against machinery, in which the occurrences
were almost precisely the same as those of the printers' disturbances in
Bohemia in 1844; factories were demolished and machinery destroyed.
This form of opposition also was isolated, restricted to certain
localities, and directed against one feature only of our present social
arrangements. When the momentary end was attained, the whole weight of
social power fell upon the unprotected evil-doers and punished them to
its heart's content, while the machinery was introduced none the less. A
new form of opposition had to be found.
At this point help came in the shape of a law enacted by the old,
unreformed, oligarchic-Tory parliament, a law which never could have
passed the House of Commons later, when the Reform Bill had legally
sanctioned the distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat, and made
the bourgeoisie the ruling class. This was enacted in 1824, and repealed
all laws by which coalitions between working-men for labour purposes had
hitherto been forbidden. The working-men obtained a right previously
restricted to the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, the right of free
association. Secret coalitions had, it is true, previously existed, but
could never achieve great results. In Glasgow, as Symonds {214} relates,
a general strike of weavers had taken place in 1812, which was brought
about by a secret association. It was repeated in 1822, and on this
occasion vitriol was thrown into the faces of the two working-men who
would not join the association, and were therefore regarded by the
members as traitors to their class. Both the assaulted lost the use of
their eyes in consequence of the injury. So, too, in 1818, the
association of Scottish miners was powerful enough to carry on a general
strike. These associations required their members to take an oath of
fidelity and secrecy, had regular lists, treasurers, bookkeepers, and
local branches. But the secrecy with which everything was conducted
crippled their growth. When, on the other hand, the working-man received
in 1824 the right of free association, these combinations were very soon
spread over all England and attained great power. In all branches of
industry Trades Unions were formed with the outspoken intention of
protecting the single working-man against the tyranny and neglect of the
bourgeoisie. Their objects were to deal, _en masse_, as a power, with
the employers; to regulate the rate of wages according to the profit of
the latter, to raise it when opportunity offered, and to keep it uniform
in each trade throughout the country. Hence they tried to settle with
the capitalists a scale of wages to be universally adhered to, and
ordered out on strike the employees of such individuals as refused to
accept the scale. They aimed further to keep up the demand for labour by
limiting the number of apprentices, and so to keep wages high; to
counteract, as far as possible, the indirect wages reductions which the
manufacturers brought about by means of new tools and machinery; and
finally, to assist unemployed working-men financially. This they do
either directly or by means of a card to legitimate the bearer as a
"society man," and with which the working-man wanders from place to
place, supported by his fellow-workers, and instructed as to the best
opportunity for finding employment. This is tramping, and the wanderer a
tramp. To attain these ends, a President and Secretary are engaged at a
salary (since it is to be expected that no manufacturer will employ such
persons), and a committee collects the weekly contributions and watches
over their expenditure for the purposes of the association. When it
proved possible and advantageous, the various trades of single districts
united in a federation and held delegate conventions at set times. The
attempt has been made in single cases to unite the workers of one branch
over all England in one great Union; and several times (in 1830 for the
first time) to form one universal trades association for the whole United
Kingdom, with a separate organisation for each trade. These
associations, however, never held together long, and were seldom realised
even for the moment, since an exceptionally universal excitement is
necessary to make such a federation possible and effective.
The means usually employed by these Unions for attaining their ends are
the following: If one or more employers refuse to pay the wage specified
by the Union, a deputation is sent or a petition forwarded (the working-
men, you see, know how to recognise the absolute power of the lord of the
factory in his little State); if this proves unavailing, the Union
commands the employees to stop work, and all hands go home. This strike
is either partial when one or several, or general when all employers in
the trade refuse to regulate wages according to the proposals of the
Union. So far go the lawful means of the Union, assuming the strike to
take effect after the expiration of the legal notice, which is not always
the case. But these lawful means are very weak when there are workers
outside the Union, or when members separate from it for the sake of the
momentary advantage offered by the bourgeoisie. Especially in the case
of partial strikes can the manufacturer readily secure recruits from
these black sheep (who are known as knobsticks), and render fruitless the
efforts of the united workers. Knobsticks are usually threatened,
insulted, beaten, or otherwise maltreated by the members of the Union;
intimidated, in short, in every way. Prosecution follows, and as the law-
abiding bourgeoisie has the power in its own hands, the force of the
Union is broken almost every time by the first unlawful act, the first
judicial procedure against its members.
The history of these Unions is a long series of defeats of the working-
men, interrupted by a few isolated victories. All these efforts
naturally cannot alter the economic law according to which wages are
determined by the relation between supply and demand in the labour
market. Hence the Unions remain powerless against all _great_ forces
which influence this relation. In a commercial crisis the Union itself
must reduce wages or dissolve wholly; and in a time of considerable
increase in the demand for labour, it cannot fix the rate of wages higher
than would be reached spontaneously by the competition of the capitalists
among themselves. But in dealing with minor, single influences they are
powerful. If the employer had no concentrated, collective opposition to
expect, he would in his own interest gradually reduce wages to a lower
and lower point; indeed, the battle of competition which he has to wage
against his fellow-manufacturers would force him to do so, and wages
would soon reach the minimum. But this competition of the manufacturers
among themselves is, _under average conditions_, somewhat restricted by
the opposition of the working-men.
Every manufacturer knows that the consequence of a reduction not
justified by conditions to which his competitors also are subjected,
would be a strike, which would most certainly injure him, because his
capital would be idle as long as the strike lasted, and his machinery
would be rusting, whereas it is very doubtful whether he could, in such a
case, enforce his reduction. Then he has the certainty that if he should
succeed, his competitors would follow him, reducing the price of the
goods so produced, and thus depriving him of the benefit of his policy.
Then, too, the Unions often bring about a more rapid increase of wages
after a crisis than would otherwise follow. For the manufacturer's
interest is to delay raising wages until forced by competition, but now
the working-men demand an increased wage as soon as the market improves,
and they can carry their point by reason of the smaller supply of workers
at his command under such circumstances. But, for resistance to more
considerable forces which influence the labour market, the Unions are
powerless. In such cases hunger gradually drives the strikers to resume
work on any terms, and when once a few have begun; the force of the Union
is broken, because these few knobsticks, with the reserve supplies of
goods in the market, enable the bourgeoisie to overcome the worst effects
of the interruption of business. The funds of the Union are soon
exhausted by the great numbers requiring relief, the credit which the
shopkeepers give at high interest is withdrawn after a time, and want
compels the working-man to place himself once more under the yoke of the
bourgeoisie. But strikes end disastrously for the workers mostly,
because the manufacturers, in their own interest (which has, be it said,
become their interest only through the resistance of the workers), are
obliged to avoid all useless reductions, while the workers feel in every
reduction imposed by the state of trade a deterioration of their
condition, against which they must defend themselves as far as in them
lies.
It will be asked, "Why, then, do the workers strike in such cases, when
the uselessness of such measures is so evident?" Simply because they
_must_ protest against every reduction, even if dictated by necessity;
because they feel bound to proclaim that they, as human beings, shall not
be made to bow to social circumstances, but social conditions ought to
yield to them as human beings; because silence on their part would be a
recognition of these social conditions, an admission of the right of the
bourgeoisie to exploit the workers in good times and let them starve in
bad ones. Against this the working-men must rebel so long as they have
not lost all human feeling, and that they protest in this way and no
other, comes of their being practical English people, who express
themselves in _action_, and do not, like German theorists, go to sleep as
soon as their protest is properly registered and placed _ad acta_, there
to sleep as quietly as the protesters themselves. The active resistance
of the English working-men has its effect in holding the money greed of
the bourgeoisie within certain limits, and keeping alive the opposition
of the workers to the social and political omnipotence of the
bourgeoisie, while it compels the admission that something more is needed
than Trades Unions and strikes to break the power of the ruling class.
But what gives these Unions and the strikes arising from them their real
importance is this, that they are the first attempt of the workers to
abolish competition. They imply the recognition of the fact that the
supremacy of the bourgeoisie is based wholly upon the competition of the
workers among themselves; _i.e_., upon their want of cohesion. And
precisely because the Unions direct themselves against the vital nerve of
the present social order, however one-sidedly, in however narrow a way,
are they so dangerous to this social order. The working-men cannot
attack the bourgeoisie, and with it the whole existing order of society,
at any sorer point than this. If the competition of the workers among
themselves is destroyed, if all determine not to be further exploited by
the bourgeoisie, the rule of property is at an end. Wages depend upon
the relation of demand to supply, upon the accidental state of the labour
market, simply because the workers have hitherto been content to be
treated as chattels, to be bought and sold. The moment the workers
resolve to be bought and sold no longer, when in the determination of the
value of labour, they take the part of men possessed of a will as well as
of working-power, at that moment the whole Political Economy of to-day is
at an end.
The laws determining the rate of wages would, indeed, come into force
again in the long run, if the working-men did not go beyond this step of
abolishing competition among themselves. But they must go beyond that
unless they are prepared to recede again and to allow competition among
themselves to reappear. Thus once advanced so far, necessity compels
them to go farther; to abolish not only one kind of competition, but
competition itself altogether, and that they will do.
The workers are coming to perceive more clearly with every day how
competition affects them; they see far more clearly than the bourgeois
that competition of the capitalists among themselves presses upon the
workers too, by bringing on commercial crises, and that this kind of
competition; too, must be abolished. They will soon learn _how_ they
have to go about it.
That these Unions contribute greatly to nourish the bitter hatred of the
workers against the property-holding class need hardly be said. From
them proceed, therefore, with or without the connivance of the leading
members, in times of unusual excitement, individual actions which can be
explained only by hatred wrought to the pitch of despair, by a wild
passion overwhelming all restraints. Of this sort are the attacks with
vitriol mentioned in the foregoing pages, and a series of others, of
which I shall cite several. In 1831, during a violent labour movement,
young Ashton, a manufacturer in Hyde, near Manchester, was shot one
evening when crossing a field, and no trace of the assassin discovered.
There is no doubt that this was a deed of vengeance of the working-men.
Incendiarisms and attempted explosions are very common. On Friday,
September 29th, 1843, an attempt was made to blow up the saw-works of
Padgin, in Howard Street, Sheffield. A closed iron tube filled with
powder was the means employed, and the damage was considerable. On the
following day, a similar attempt was made in Ibbetson's knife and file
works at Shales Moor, near Sheffield. Mr. Ibbetson had made himself
obnoxious by an active participation in bourgeois movements, by low
wages, the exclusive employment of knobsticks, and the exploitation of
the Poor Law for his own benefit. He had reported, during the crisis of
1842, such operatives as refused to accept reduced wages, as persons who
could find work but would not take it, and were, therefore, not deserving
of relief, so compelling the acceptance of a reduction. Considerable
damage was inflicted by the explosion, and all the working-men who came
to view it regretted only "that the whole concern was not blown into the
air." On Friday, October 6th, 1844, an attempt to set fire to the
factory of Ainsworth and Crompton, at Bolton, did no damage; it was the
third or fourth attempt in the same factory within a very short time. In
the meeting of the Town Council of Sheffield, on Wednesday, January 10th,
1844, the Commissioner of Police exhibited a cast-iron machine, made for
the express purpose of producing an explosion, and found filled with four
pounds of powder, and a fuse which had been lighted but had not taken
effect, in the works of Mr. Kitchen, Earl Street, Sheffield. On Sunday,
January 20th, 1844, an explosion caused by a package of powder took place
in the sawmill of Bently & White, at Bury, in Lancashire, and produced
considerable damage. On Thursday, February 1st, 1844, the Soho Wheel
Works, in Sheffield, were set on fire and burnt up.
Here are six such cases in four months, all of which have their sole
origin in the embitterment of the working-men against the employers. What
sort of a social state it must be in which such things are possible I
need hardly say. These facts are proof enough that in England, even in
good business years, such as 1843, the social war is avowed and openly
carried on, and still the English bourgeoisie does not stop to reflect!
But the case which speaks most loudly is that of the Glasgow Thugs,
{221a} which came up before the Assizes from the 3rd to the 11th of
January, 1838. It appears from the proceedings that the Cotton-Spinners'
Union, which existed here from the year 1816, possessed rare organisation
and power. The members were bound by an oath to adhere to the decision
of the majority, and had during every turnout a secret committee which
was unknown to the mass of the members, and controlled the funds of the
Union absolutely. This committee fixed a price upon the heads of
knobsticks and obnoxious manufacturers and upon incendiarisms in mills. A
mill was thus set on fire in which female knobsticks were employed in
spinning in the place of men; a Mrs. M'Pherson, mother of one of these
girls, was murdered, and both murderers sent to America at the expense of
the association. As early as 1820, a knobstick named M'Quarry was shot
at and wounded, for which deed the doer received twenty pounds from the
Union, but was discovered and transported for life. Finally, in 1837, in
May, disturbances occurred in consequence of a turnout in the Oatbank and
Mile End factories, in which perhaps a dozen knobsticks were maltreated.
In July, of the same year, the disturbances still continued, and a
certain Smith, a knobstick, was so maltreated that he died. The
committee was now arrested, an investigation begun, and the leading
members found guilty of participation in conspiracies, maltreatment of
knobsticks, and incendiarism in the mill of James and Francis Wood, and
they were transported for seven years. What do our good Germans say to
this story? {221b}
The property-holding class, and especially the manufacturing portion of
it which comes into direct contact with the working-men, declaims with
the greatest violence against these Unions, and is constantly trying to
prove their uselessness to the working-men upon grounds which are
economically perfectly correct, but for that very reason partially
mistaken, and for the working-man's understanding totally without effect.
The very zeal of the bourgeoisie shows that it is not disinterested in
the matter; and apart from the indirect loss involved in a turnout, the
state of the case is such that whatever goes into the pockets of the
manufacturers comes of necessity out of those of the worker. So that
even if the working-men did not know that the Unions hold the emulation
of their masters in the reduction of wages, at least in a measure, in
check, they would still stand by the Unions, simply to the injury of
their enemies, the manufacturers. In war the injury of one party is the
benefit of the other, and since the working-men are on a war-footing
towards their employers, they do merely what the great potentates do when
they get into a quarrel. Beyond all other bourgeois is our friend Dr.
Ure, the most furious enemy of the Unions. He foams with indignation at
the "secret tribunals" of the cotton-spinners, the most powerful section
of the workers, tribunals which boast their ability to paralyse every
disobedient manufacturer, {222a} "and so bring ruin on the man who had
given them profitable employment for many a year." He speaks of a time
{222b} "when the inventive head and the sustaining heart of trade were
held in bondage by the unruly lower members." A pity that the English
working-men will not let themselves be pacified so easily with thy fable
as the Roman Plebs, thou modern Menenius Agrippa! Finally, he relates
the following: At one time the coarse mule-spinners had misused their
power beyond all endurance. High wages, instead of awakening
thankfulness towards the manufacturers and leading to intellectual
improvement (in harmless study of sciences useful to the bourgeoisie, of
course), in many cases produced pride and supplied funds for supporting
rebellious spirits in strikes, with which a number of manufacturers were
visited one after the other in a purely arbitrary manner. During an
unhappy disturbance of this sort in Hyde, Dukinfield, and the surrounding
neighbourhood, the manufacturers of the district, anxious lest they
should be driven from the market by the French, Belgians, and Americans,
addressed themselves to the machine-works of Sharp, Roberts & Co., and
requested Mr. Sharp to turn his inventive mind to the construction of an
automatic mule in order "to emancipate the trade from galling slavery and
impending ruin." {223a}
"He produced in the course of a few months a machine apparently instinct
with the thought, feeling, and tact of the experienced workman--which
even in its infancy displayed a new principle of regulation, ready in its
mature state to fulfil the functions of a finished spinner. Thus the
Iron Man, as the operatives fitly call it, sprung out of the hands of our
modern Prometheus at the bidding of Minerva--a creation destined to
restore order among the industrious classes, and to confirm to Great
Britain the empire of art. The news of this Herculean prodigy spread
dismay through the Union, and even long before it left its cradle, so to
speak, it strangled the Hydra of misrule." {223b}
Ure proves further that the invention of the machine, with which four and
five colours are printed at once, was a result of the disturbances among
the calico printers; that the refractoriness of the yarn-dressers in the
power-loom weaving mills gave rise to a new and perfected machine for
warp-dressing, and mentions several other such cases. A few pages
earlier this same Ure gives himself a great deal of trouble to prove in
detail that machinery is beneficial to the workers! But Ure is not the
only one; in the Factory Report, Mr. Ashworth, the manufacturer, and many
another, lose no opportunity to express their wrath against the Unions.
These wise bourgeois, like certain governments, trace every movement
which they do not understand, to the influence of ill-intentioned
agitators, demagogues, traitors, spouting idiots, and ill-balanced youth.
They declare that the paid agents of the Unions are interested in the
agitation because they live upon it, as though the necessity for this
payment were not forced upon them by the bourgeois, who will give such
men no employment!
The incredible frequency of these strikes proves best of all to what
extent the social war has broken out all over England. No week passes,
scarcely a day, indeed, in which there is not a strike in some direction,
now against a reduction, then against a refusal to raise the rate of
wages, again by reason of the employment of knobsticks or the continuance
of abuses, sometimes against new machinery, or for a hundred other
reasons. These strikes, at first skirmishes, sometimes result in weighty
struggles; they decide nothing, it is true, but they are the strongest
proof that the decisive battle between bourgeoisie and proletariat is
approaching. They are the military school of the working-men in which
they prepare themselves for the great struggle which cannot be avoided;
they are the pronunciamentos of single branches of industry that these
too have joined the labour movement. And when one examines a year's file
of the _Northern Star_, the only sheet which reports all the movements of
the proletariat, one finds that all the proletarians of the towns and of
country manufacture have united in associations, and have protested from
time to time, by means of a general strike, against the supremacy of the
bourgeoisie. And as schools of war, the Unions are unexcelled. In them
is developed the peculiar courage of the English. It is said on the
Continent that the English, and especially the working-men, are cowardly,
that they cannot carry out a revolution because, unlike the French, they
do not riot at intervals, because they apparently accept the bourgeois
_regime_ so quietly. This is a complete mistake. The English working-
men are second to none in courage; they are quite as restless as the
French, but they fight differently. The French, who are by nature
political, struggle against social evils with political weapons; the
English, for whom politics exist only as a matter of interest, solely in
the interest of bourgeois society, fight, not against the Government, but
directly against the bourgeoisie; and for the time, this can be done only
in a peaceful manner. Stagnation in business, and the want consequent
upon it, engendered the revolt at Lyons, in 1834, in favour of the
Republic: in 1842, at Manchester, a similar cause gave rise to a
universal turnout for the Charter and higher wages. That courage is
required for a turnout, often indeed much loftier courage, much bolder,
firmer determination than for an insurrection, is self-evident. It is,
in truth, no trifle for a working-man who knows want from experience, to
face it with wife and children, to endure hunger and wretchedness for
months together, and stand firm and unshaken through it all. What is
death, what the galleys which await the French revolutionist, in
comparison with gradual starvation, with the daily sight of a starving
family, with the certainty of future revenge on the part of the
bourgeoisie, all of which the English working-man chooses in preference
to subjection under the yoke of the property-holding class? We shall
meet later an example of this obstinate, unconquerable courage of men who
surrender to force only when all resistance would be aimless and
unmeaning. And precisely in this quiet perseverance, in this lasting
determination which undergoes a hundred tests every day, the English
working-man develops that side of his character which commands most
respect. People who endure so much to bend one single bourgeois will be
able to break the power of the whole bourgeoisie.
But apart from that, the English working-man has proved his courage often
enough. That the turnout of 1842 had no further results came from the
fact that the men were in part forced into it by the bourgeoisie, in part
neither clear nor united as to its object. But aside from this, they
have shown their courage often enough when the matter in question was a
specific social one. Not to mention the Welsh insurrection of 1839, a
complete battle was waged in Manchester in May, 1843, during my residence
there. Pauling & Henfrey, a brick firm, had increased the size of the
bricks without raising wages, and sold the bricks, of course, at a higher
price. The workers, to whom higher wages were refused, struck work, and
the Brickmakers' Union declared war upon the firm. The firm, meanwhile,
succeeded with great difficulty in securing hands from the neighbourhood,
and among the knobsticks, against whom in the beginning intimidation was
used, the proprietors set twelve men to guard the yard, all ex-soldiers
and policemen, armed with guns. When intimidation proved unavailing, the
brick-yard, which lay scarcely a hundred paces from an infantry barracks,
was stormed at ten o'clock one night by a crowd of brickmakers, who
advanced in military order, the first ranks armed with guns. They forced
their way in, fired upon the watchmen as soon as they saw them, stamped
out the wet bricks spread out to dry, tore down the piled-up rows of
those already dry, demolished everything which came in their way, pressed
into a building, where they destroyed the furniture and maltreated the
wife of the overlooker who was living there. The watchmen, meanwhile,
had placed themselves behind a hedge, whence they could fire safely and
without interruption. The assailants stood before a burning brick-kiln,
which threw a bright light upon them, so that every ball of their enemies
struck home, while every one of their own shots missed its mark.
Nevertheless, the firing lasted half-an-hour, until the ammunition was
exhausted, and the object of the visit--the demolition of all the
destructible objects in the yard--was attained. Then the military
approached, and the brickmakers withdrew to Eccles, three miles from
Manchester. A short time before reaching Eccles they held roll-call, and
each man was called according to his number in the section when they
separated, only to fall the more certainly into the hands of the police,
who were approaching from all sides. The number of the wounded must have
been very considerable, but those only could be counted who were
arrested. One of these had received three bullets (in the thigh, the
calf, and the shoulder), and had travelled in spite of them more than
four miles on foot. These people have proved that they, too, possess
revolutionary courage, and do not shun a rain of bullets. And when an
unarmed multitude, without a precise aim common to them all, are held in
check in a shut-off market-place, whose outlets are guarded by a couple
of policemen and dragoons, as happened in 1842, this by no means proves a
want of courage. On the contrary, the multitude would have stirred quite
as little if the servants of public (_i.e_., of the bourgeois) order had
not been present. Where the working-people have a specific end in view,
they show courage enough; as, for instance, in the attack upon Birley's
mill, which had later to be protected by artillery.
In this connection, a word or two as to the respect for the law in
England. True, the law is sacred to the bourgeois, for it is his own
composition, enacted with his consent, and for his benefit and
protection. He knows that, even if an individual law should injure him,
the whole fabric protects his interests; and more than all, the sanctity
of the law, the sacredness of order as established by the active will of
one part of society, and the passive acceptance of the other, is the
strongest support of his social position. Because the English bourgeois
finds himself reproduced in his law, as he does in his God, the
policeman's truncheon which, in a certain measure, is his own club, has
for him a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working-man quite
otherwise! The working-man knows too well, has learned from too
oft-repeated experience, that the law is a rod which the bourgeois has
prepared for him; and when he is not compelled to do so, he never appeals
to the law. It is ridiculous to assert that the English working-man
fears the police, when every week in Manchester policemen are beaten, and
last year an attempt was made to storm a station-house secured by iron
doors and shutters. The power of the police in the turnout of 1842 lay,
as I have already said, in the want of a clearly defined object on the
part of the working-men themselves.
Since the working-men do not respect the law, but simply submit to its
power when they cannot change it, it is most natural that they should at
least propose alterations in it, that they should wish to put a
proletarian law in the place of the legal fabric of the bourgeoisie. This
proposed law is the People's Charter, which in form is purely political,
and demands a democratic basis for the House of Commons. Chartism is the
compact form of their opposition to the bourgeoisie. In the Unions and
turnouts opposition always remained isolated: it was single working-men
or sections who fought a single bourgeois. If the fight became general,
this was scarcely by the intention of the working-men; or, when it did
happen intentionally, Chartism was at the bottom of it. But in Chartism
it is the whole working class which arises against the bourgeoisie, and
attacks, first of all, the political power, the legislative rampart with
which the bourgeoisie has surrounded itself. Chartism has proceeded from
the Democratic party which arose between 1780 and 1790 with and in the
proletariat, gained strength during the French Revolution, and came forth
after the peace as the Radical party. It had its headquarters then in
Birmingham and Manchester, and later in London; extorted the Reform Bill
from the Oligarchs of the old Parliament by a union with the Liberal
bourgeoisie, and has steadily consolidated itself, since then, as a more
and more pronounced working-men's party in opposition to the bourgeoisie
In 1835 a committee of the General Working-men's Association of London,
with William Lovett at its head, drew up the People's Charter, whose six
points are as follows: (1) Universal suffrage for every man who is of
age, sane and unconvicted of crime; (2) Annual Parliaments; (3) Payment
of members of Parliament, to enable poor men to stand for election; (4)
Voting by ballot to prevent bribery and intimidation by the bourgeoisie;
(5) Equal electoral districts to secure equal representation; and (6)
Abolition of the even now merely nominal property qualification of 300
pounds in land for candidates in order to make every voter eligible.
These six points, which are all limited to the reconstitution of the
House of Commons, harmless as they seem, are sufficient to overthrow the
whole English Constitution, Queen and Lords included. The so-called
monarchical and aristocratic elements of the Constitution can maintain
themselves only because the bourgeoisie has an interest in the
continuance of their sham existence; and more than a sham existence
neither possesses to-day. But as soon as real public opinion in its
totality backs the House of Commons, as soon as the House of Commons
incorporates the will, not of the bourgeoisie alone, but of the whole
nation, it will absorb the whole power so completely that the last halo
must fall from the head of the monarch and the aristocracy. The English
working-man respects neither Lords nor Queen. The bourgeois, while in
reality allowing them but little influence, yet offers to them personally
a sham worship. The English Chartist is politically a republican, though
he rarely or never mentions the word, while he sympathises with the
republican parties of all countries, and calls himself in preference a
democrat. But he is more than a mere republican, his democracy is not
simply political.
Chartism was from the beginning in 1835 chiefly a movement among the
working-men, though not yet sharply separated from the bourgeoisie. The
Radicalism of the workers went hand in hand with the Radicalism of the
bourgeoisie; the Charter was the shibboleth of both. They held their
National Convention every year in common, seeming to be one party. The
lower middle-class was just then in a very bellicose and violent state of
mind in consequence of the disappointment over the Reform Bill and of the
bad business years of 1837-1839, and viewed the boisterous Chartist
agitation with a very favourable eye. Of the vehemence of this agitation
no one in Germany has any idea. The people were called upon to arm
themselves, were frequently urged to revolt; pikes were got ready, as in
the French Revolution, and in 1838, one Stephens, a Methodist parson,
said to the assembled working-people of Manchester:
"You have no need to fear the power of Government, the soldiers,
bayonets, and cannon that are at the disposal of your oppressors; you
have a weapon that is far mightier than all these, a weapon against
which bayonets and cannon are powerless, and a child of ten years can
wield it. You have only to take a couple of matches and a bundle of
straw dipped in pitch, and I will see what the Government and its
hundreds of thousands of soldiers will do against this one weapon if
it is used boldly."
As early as that year the peculiarly social character of the
working-men's Chartism manifested itself. The same Stephens said, in a
meeting of 200,000 men on Kersall Moor, the Mons Sacer of Manchester:
"Chartism, my friends, is no political movement, where the main point
is your getting the ballot. Chartism is a knife and fork question:
the Charter means a good house, good food and drink, prosperity, and
short working-hours."
The movements against the new Poor Law and for the Ten Hours' Bill were
already in the closest relation to Chartism. In all the meetings of that
time the Tory Oastler was active, and hundreds of petitions for
improvements of the social condition of the workers were circulated along
with the national petition for the People's Charter adopted in
Birmingham. In 1839 the agitation continued as vigorously as ever, and
when it began to relax somewhat at the end of the year, Bussey, Taylor,
and Frost hastened to call forth uprisings simultaneously in the North of
England, in Yorkshire, and Wales. Frost's plan being betrayed, he was
obliged to open hostilities prematurely. Those in the North heard of the
failure of his attempt in time to withdraw. Two months later, in
January, 1840, several so-called spy outbreaks took place in Sheffield
and Bradford, in Yorkshire, and the excitement gradually subsided.
Meanwhile the bourgeoisie turned its attention to more practical
projects, more profitable for itself, namely the Corn Laws. The Anti-
Corn Law Association was formed in Manchester, and the consequence was a
relaxation of the tie between the Radical bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. The working-men soon perceived that for them the abolition
of the Corn Laws could be of little use, while very advantageous to the
bourgeoisie; and they could therefore not be won for the project.
The crisis of 1842 came on. Agitation was once more as vigorous as in
1839. But this time the rich manufacturing bourgeoisie, which was
suffering severely under this particular crisis, took part in it. The
Anti-Corn Law League, as it was now called, assumed a decidedly
revolutionary tone. Its journals and agitators used undisguisedly
revolutionary language, one very good reason for which was the fact that
the Conservative party had been in power since 1841. As the Chartists
had previously done, these bourgeois leaders called upon the people to
rebel; and the working-men who had most to suffer from the crisis were
not inactive, as the year's national petition for the charter with its
three and a half million signatures proves. In short, if the two Radical
parties had been somewhat estranged, they allied themselves once more. At
a meeting of Liberals and Chartists held in Manchester, February 15th,
1842, a petition urging the repeal of the Corn Laws and the adoption of
the Charter was drawn up. The next day it was adopted by both parties.
The spring and summer passed amidst violent agitation and increasing
distress. The bourgeoisie was determined to carry the repeal of the Corn
Laws with the help of the crisis, the want which it entailed, and the
general excitement. At this time, the Conservatives being in power, the
Liberal bourgeoisie half abandoned their law-abiding habits; they wished
to bring about a revolution with the help of the workers. The working-
men were to take the chestnuts from the fire to save the bourgeoisie from
burning their own fingers. The old idea of a "holy month," a general
strike, broached in 1839 by the Chartists, was revived. This time,
however, it was not the working-men who wished to quit work, but the
manufacturers who wished to close their mills and send the operatives
into the country parishes upon the property of the aristocracy, thus
forcing the Tory Parliament and the Tory Ministry to repeal the Corn
Laws. A revolt would naturally have followed, but the bourgeoisie stood
safely in the background and could await the result without compromising
itself if the worst came to the worst. At the end of July business began
to improve; it was high time. In order not to lose the opportunity,
three firms in Staleybridge reduced wages in spite of the improvement.
{232} Whether they did so of their own motion or in agreement with other
manufacturers, especially those of the League, I do not know. Two
withdrew after a time, but the third, William Bailey & Brothers, stood
firm, and told the objecting operatives that "if this did not please
them, they had better go and play a bit." This contemptuous answer the
hands received with cheers. They left the mill, paraded through the
town, and called upon all their fellows to quit work. In a few hours
every mill stood idle, and the operatives marched to Mottram Moor to hold
a meeting. This was on August 5th. August 8th they proceeded to Ashton
and Hyde five thousand strong, closed all the mills and coal-pits, and
held meetings, in which, however, the question discussed was not, as the
bourgeoisie had hoped, the repeal of the Corn Laws, but, "a fair day's
wages for a fair day's work." August 9th they proceeded to Manchester,
unresisted by the authorities (all Liberals), and closed the mills; on
the 11th they were in Stockport, where they met with the first resistance
as they were storming the workhouse, the favourite child of the
bourgeoisie. On the same day there was a general strike and disturbance
in Bolton, to which the authorities here, too, made no resistance. Soon
the uprising spread throughout the whole manufacturing district, and all
employments, except harvesting and the production of food, came to a
standstill. But the rebellious operatives were quiet. They were driven
into this revolt without wishing it. The manufacturers, with the single
exception of the Tory Birley, in Manchester, had, _contrary to their
custom_, not opposed it. The thing had begun without the working-men's
having any distinct end in view, for which reason they were all united in
the determination not to be shot at for the benefit of the Corn Law
repealing bourgeoisie. For the rest, some wanted to carry the Charter,
others who thought this premature wished merely to secure the wages rate
of 1840. On this point the whole insurrection was wrecked. If it had
been from the beginning an intentional, determined working-men's
insurrection, it would surely have carried its point; but these crowds
who had been driven into the streets by their masters, against their own
will, and with no definite purpose, could do nothing. Meanwhile the
bourgeoisie, which had not moved a finger to carry the alliance of
February 10th into effect, soon perceived that the working-men did not
propose to become its tools, and that the illogical manner in which it
had abandoned its law-abiding standpoint threatened danger. It therefore
resumed its law-abiding attitude, and placed itself upon the side of
Government as against the working-men.
It swore in trusty retainers as special constables (the German merchants
in Manchester took part in this ceremony, and marched in an entirely
superfluous manner through the city with their cigars in their mouths and
thick truncheons in their hands). It gave the command to fire upon the
crowd in Preston, so that the unintentional revolt of the people stood
all at once face to face, not only with the whole military power of the
Government, but with the whole property-holding class as well. The
working-men, who had no especial aim, separated gradually, and the
insurrection came to an end without evil results. Later, the bourgeoisie
was guilty of one shameful act after another, tried to whitewash itself
by expressing a horror of popular violence by no means consistent with
its own revolutionary language of the spring; laid the blame of
insurrection upon Chartist instigators, whereas it had itself done more
than all of them together to bring about the uprising; and resumed its
old attitude of sanctifying the name of the law with a shamelessness
perfectly unequalled. The Chartists, who were all but innocent of
bringing about this uprising, who simply did what the bourgeoisie meant
to do when they made the most of their opportunity, were prosecuted and
convicted, while the bourgeoisie escaped without loss, and had, besides,
sold off its old stock of goods with advantage during the pause in work.
The fruit of the uprising was the decisive separation of the proletariat
from the bourgeoisie. The Chartists had not hitherto concealed their
determination to carry the Charter at all costs, even that of a
revolution; the bourgeoisie, which now perceived, all at once, the danger
with which any violent change threatened its position, refused to hear
anything further of physical force, and proposed to attain its end by
moral force, as though this were anything else than the direct or
indirect threat of physical force. This was one point of dissension,
though even this was removed later by the assertion of the Chartists (who
are at least as worthy of being believed as the bourgeoisie) that they,
too, refrained from appealing to physical force. The second point of
dissension and the main one, which brought Chartism to light in its
purity, was the repeal of the Corn Laws. In this the bourgeoisie was
directly interested, the proletariat not. The Chartists therefore
divided into two parties whose political programmes agreed literally, but
which were nevertheless thoroughly different and incapable of union. At
the Birmingham National Convention, in January, 1843, Sturge, the
representative of the Radical bourgeoisie, proposed that the name of the
Charter be omitted from the rules of the Chartist Association, nominally
because this name had become connected with recollections of violence
during the insurrection, a connection, by the way, which had existed for
years, and against which Mr. Sturge had hitherto advanced no objection.
The working-men refused to drop the name, and when Mr. Sturge was
outvoted, that worthy Quaker suddenly became loyal, betook himself out of
the hall, and founded a "Complete Suffrage Association" within the
Radical bourgeoisie. So repugnant had these recollections become to the
Jacobinical bourgeoisie, that he altered even the name Universal Suffrage
into the ridiculous title, Complete Suffrage. The working-men laughed at
him and quietly went their way.
From this moment Chartism was purely a working-man's cause freed from all
bourgeois elements. The "Complete" journals, the _Weekly Dispatch_,
_Weekly Chronicle_, _Examiner_, etc., fell gradually into the sleepy tone
of the other Liberal sheets, espoused the cause of Free Trade, attacked
the Ten Hours' Bill and all exclusively working-men's demands, and let
their Radicalism as a whole fall rather into the background. The Radical
bourgeoisie joined hands with the Liberals against the working-men in
every collision, and in general made the Corn Law question, which for the
English is the Free Trade question, their main business. They thereby
fell under the dominion of the Liberal bourgeoisie, and now play a most
pitiful role.
The Chartist working-men, on the contrary, espoused with redoubled zeal
all the struggles of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Free
competition has caused the workers suffering enough to be hated by them;
its apostles, the bourgeoisie, are their declared enemies. The working-
man has only disadvantages to await from the complete freedom of
competition. The demands hitherto made by him, the Ten Hours' Bill,
protection of the workers against the capitalist, good wages, a
guaranteed position, repeal of the new Poor Law, all of the things which
belong to Chartism quite as essentially as the "Six Points," are directly
opposed to free competition and Free Trade. No wonder, then, that the
working-men will not hear of Free Trade and the repeal of the Corn Laws
(a fact incomprehensible to the whole English bourgeoisie), and while at
least wholly indifferent to the Corn Law question, are most deeply
embittered against its advocates. This question is precisely the point
at which the proletariat separates from the bourgeoisie, Chartism from
Radicalism; and the bourgeois understanding cannot comprehend this,
because it cannot comprehend the proletariat.
Therein lies the difference between Chartist democracy and all previous
political bourgeois democracy. Chartism is of an essentially social
nature, a class movement. The "Six Points" which for the Radical
bourgeois are the beginning and end of the matter, which are meant, at
the utmost, to call forth certain further reforms of the Constitution,
are for the proletarian a mere means to further ends. "Political power
our means, social happiness our end," is now the clearly formulated war-
cry of the Chartists. The "knife and fork question" of the preacher
Stephens was a truth for a part of the Chartists only, in 1838, it is a
truth for all of them in 1845. There is no longer a mere politician
among the Chartists, and even though their Socialism is very little
developed, though their chief remedy for poverty has hitherto consisted
in the land-allotment system, which was superseded {235} by the
introduction of manufacture, though their chief practical propositions
are apparently of a reactionary nature, yet these very measures involve
the alternative that they must either succumb to the power of competition
once more and restore the old state of things, or they must themselves
entirely overcome competition and abolish it. On the other hand, the
present indefinite state of Chartism, the separation from the purely
political party, involves that precisely the characteristic feature, its
social aspect, will have to be further developed. The approach to
Socialism cannot fail, especially when the next crisis directs the
working-men by force of sheer want to social instead of political
remedies. And a crisis must follow the present active state of industry
and commerce in 1847 at the latest, and probably in 1846; one, too, which
will far exceed in extent and violence all former crises. The working-
men will carry their Charter, naturally; but meanwhile they will learn to
see clearly with regard to many points which they can make by means of it
and of which they now know very little.
Meanwhile the socialist agitation also goes forward. English Socialism
comes under our consideration so far only as it affects the
working-class. The English Socialists demand the gradual introduction of
possession in common in home colonies embracing two to three thousand
persons who shall carry on both agriculture and manufacture and enjoy
equal rights and equal education. They demand greater facility of
obtaining divorce, the establishment of a rational government, with
complete freedom of conscience and the abolition of punishment, the same
to be replaced by a rational treatment of the offender. These are their
practical measures, their theoretical principles do not concern us here.
English Socialism arose with Owen, a manufacturer, and proceeds therefore
with great consideration toward the bourgeoisie and great injustice
toward the proletariat in its methods, although it culminates in
demanding the abolition of the class antagonism between bourgeoisie and
proletariat.
The Socialists are thoroughly tame and peaceable, accept our existing
order, bad as it is, so far as to reject all other methods but that of
winning public opinion. Yet they are so dogmatic that success by this
method is for them, and for their principles as at present formulated,
utterly hopeless. While bemoaning the demoralisation of the lower
classes, they are blind to the element of progress in this dissolution of
the old social order, and refuse to acknowledge that the corruption
wrought by private interests and hypocrisy in the property-holding class
is much greater. They acknowledge no historic development, and wish to
place the nation in a state of Communism at once, overnight, not by the
unavoidable march of its political development up to the point at which
this transition becomes both possible and necessary. They understand, it
is true, why the working-man is resentful against the bourgeois, but
regard as unfruitful this class hatred, which is, after all, the only
moral incentive by which the worker can be brought nearer the goal. They
preach instead, a philanthropy and universal love far more unfruitful for
the present state of England. They acknowledge only a psychological
development, a development of man in the abstract, out of all relation to
the Past, whereas the whole world rests upon that Past, the individual
man included. Hence they are too abstract, too metaphysical, and
accomplish little. They are recruited in part from the working-class, of
which they have enlisted but a very small fraction representing, however,
its most educated and solid elements. In its present form, Socialism can
never become the common creed of the working-class; it must condescend to
return for a moment to the Chartist standpoint. But the true proletarian
Socialism having passed through Chartism, purified of its bourgeois
elements, assuming the form which it has already reached in the minds of
many Socialists and Chartist leaders (who are nearly all Socialists),
must, within a short time, play a weighty part in the history of the
development of the English people. English Socialism, the basis of which
is much more ample than that of the French, is behind it in theoretical
development, will have to recede for a moment to the French standpoint in
order to proceed beyond it later. Meanwhile the French, too, will
develop farther. English Socialism affords the most pronounced
expression of the prevailing absence of religion among the working-men,
an expression so pronounced indeed that the mass of the working-men,
being unconsciously and merely practically irreligious, often draw back
before it. But here, too, necessity will force the working-men to
abandon the remnants of a belief which, as they will more and more
clearly perceive, serves only to make them weak and resigned to their
fate, obedient and faithful to the vampire property-holding class.
Hence it is evident that the working-men's movement is divided into two
sections, the Chartists and the Socialists. The Chartists are
theoretically the more backward, the less developed, but they are genuine
proletarians all over, the representatives of their class. The
Socialists are more far-seeing, propose practical remedies against
distress, but, proceeding originally from the bourgeoisie, are for this
reason unable to amalgamate completely with the working-class. The union
of Socialism with Chartism, the reproduction of French Communism in an
English manner, will be the next step, and has already begun. Then only,
when this has been achieved, will the working-class be the true
intellectual leader of England. Meanwhile, political and social
development will proceed, and will foster this new party, this new
departure of Chartism.
These different sections of working-men, often united, often separated,
Trades Unionists, Chartists, and Socialists, have founded on their own
hook numbers of schools and reading-rooms for the advancement of
education. Every Socialist, and almost every Chartist institution, has
such a place, and so too have many trades. Here the children receive a
purely proletarian education, free from all the influences of the
bourgeoisie; and, in the reading-rooms, proletarian journals and books
alone, or almost alone, are to be found. These arrangements are very
dangerous for the bourgeoisie, which has succeeded in withdrawing several
such institutes, "Mechanics' Institutes," from proletarian influences,
and making them organs for the dissemination of the sciences useful to
the bourgeoisie. Here the natural sciences are now taught, which may
draw the working-men away from the opposition to the bourgeoisie, and
perhaps place in their hands the means of making inventions which bring
in money for the bourgeoisie; while for the working-man the acquaintance
with the natural sciences is utterly useless _now_ when it too often
happens that he never gets the slightest glimpse of Nature in his large
town with his long working-hours. Here Political Economy is preached,
whose idol is free competition, and whose sum and substance for the
working-man is this, that he cannot do anything more rational than resign
himself to starvation. Here all education is tame, flabby, subservient
to the ruling politics and religion, so that for the working-man it is
merely a constant sermon upon quiet obedience, passivity, and resignation
to his fate.
The mass of working-men naturally have nothing to do with these
institutes, and betake themselves to the proletarian reading-rooms and to
the discussion of matters which directly concern their own interests,
whereupon the self-sufficient bourgeoisie says its _Dixi et Salvavi_, and
turns with contempt from a class which "prefers the angry ranting of ill-
meaning demagogues to the advantages of solid education." That, however,
the working-men appreciate solid education when they can get it unmixed
with the interested cant of the bourgeoisie, the frequent lectures upon
scientific, aesthetic, and economic subjects prove which are delivered
especially in the Socialist institutes, and very well attended. I have
often heard working-men, whose fustian jackets scarcely held together,
speak upon geological, astronomical, and other subjects, with more
knowledge than most "cultivated" bourgeois in Germany possess. And in
how great a measure the English proletariat has succeeded in attaining
independent education is shown especially by the fact that the
epoch-making products of modern philosophical, political, and poetical
literature are read by working-men almost exclusively. The bourgeois,
enslaved by social conditions and the prejudices involved in them,
trembles, blesses, and crosses himself before everything which really
paves the way for progress; the proletarian has open eyes for it, and
studies it with pleasure and success. In this respect the Socialists,
especially, have done wonders for the education of the proletariat. They
have translated the French materialists, Helvetius, Holbach, Diderot,
etc., and disseminated them, with the best English works, in cheap
editions. Strauss' "Life of Jesus" and Proudhon's "Property" also
circulate among the working-men only. Shelley, the genius, the prophet,
Shelley, and Byron, with his glowing sensuality and his bitter satire
upon our existing society, find most of their readers in the proletariat;
the bourgeoisie owns only castrated editions, family editions, cut down
in accordance with the hypocritical morality of to-day. The two great
practical philosophers of latest date, Bentham and Godwin, are,
especially the latter, almost exclusively the property of the
proletariat; for though Bentham has a school within the Radical
bourgeoisie, it is only the proletariat and the Socialists who have
succeeded in developing his teachings a step forward. The proletariat
has formed upon this basis a literature, which consists chiefly of
journals and pamphlets, and is far in advance of the whole bourgeois
literature in intrinsic worth. On this point more later.
One more point remains to be noticed. The factory operatives, and
especially those of the cotton district, form the nucleus of the labour
movement. Lancashire, and especially Manchester, is the seat of the most
powerful Unions, the central point of Chartism, the place which numbers
most Socialists. The more the factory system has taken possession of a
branch of industry, the more the working-men employed in it participate
in the labour movement; the sharper the opposition between working-men
and capitalists, the clearer the proletarian consciousness in the working-
men. The small masters of Birmingham, though they suffer from the
crises, still stand upon an unhappy middle ground between proletarian
Chartism and shopkeepers' Radicalism. But, in general, all the workers
employed in manufacture are won for one form or the other of resistance
to capital and bourgeoisie; and all are united upon this point, that
they, as working-men, a title of which they are proud, and which is the
usual form of address in Chartist meetings, form a separate class, with
separate interests and principles, with a separate way of looking at
things in contrast with that of all property owners; and that in this
class reposes the strength and the capacity of development of the nation.
THE MINING PROLETARIAT.
The production of raw materials and fuel for a manufacture so colossal as
that of England requires a considerable number of workers. But of all
the materials needed for its industries (except wool, which belongs to
the agricultural districts), England produces only the minerals: the
metals and the coal. While Cornwall possesses rich copper, tin, zinc,
and lead mines, Staffordshire, Wales, and other districts yield great
quantities of iron, and almost the whole North and West of England,
central Scotland, and certain districts of Ireland, produce a
superabundance of coal. {241}
In the Cornish mines about 19,000 men, and 11,000 women and children are
employed, in part above and in part below ground. Within the mines below
ground, men and boys above twelve years old are employed almost
exclusively. The condition of these workers seems, according to the
Children's Employment Commission's Reports, to be comparatively
endurable, materially, and the English often enough boast of their
strong, bold miners, who follow the veins of mineral below the bottom of
the very sea. But in the matter of the health of these workers, this
same Children's Employment Commission's Report judges differently. It
shows in Dr. Barham's intelligent report how the inhalation of an
atmosphere containing little oxygen, and mixed with dust and the smoke of
blasting powder, such as prevails in the mines, seriously affects the
lungs, disturbs the action of the heart, and diminishes the activity of
the digestive organs; that wearing toil, and especially the climbing up
and down of ladders, upon which even vigorous young men have to spend in
some mines more than an hour a day, and which precedes and follows daily
work, contributes greatly to the development of these evils, so that men
who begin this work in early youth are far from reaching the stature of
women who work above ground; that many die young of galloping
consumption, and most miners at middle age of slow consumption, that they
age prematurely and become unfit for work between the thirty-fifth and
forty-fifth years, that many are attacked by acute inflammations of the
respiratory organs when exposed to the sudden change from the warm air of
the shaft (after climbing the ladder in profuse perspiration), to the
cold wind above ground, and that these acute inflammations are very
frequently fatal. Work above ground, breaking and sorting the ore, is
done by girls and children, and is described as very wholesome, being
done in the open air.
In the North of England, on the borders of Northumberland and Durham, are
the extensive lead mines of Alston Moor. The reports from this district
{242} agree almost wholly with those from Cornwall. Here, too, there are
complaints of want of oxygen, excessive dust, powder smoke, carbonic acid
gas, and sulphur, in the atmosphere of the workings. In consequence, the
miners here, as in Cornwall, are small of stature, and nearly all suffer
from the thirtieth year throughout life from chest affections, which end,
especially when this work is persisted in, as is almost always the case,
in consumption, so greatly shortening the average of life of these
people. If the miners of this district are somewhat longer lived than
those of Cornwall, this is the case, because they do not enter the mines
before reaching the nineteenth year, while in Cornwall, as we have seen,
this work is begun in the twelfth year. Nevertheless, the majority die
here, too, between forty and fifty years of age, according to medical
testimony. Of 79 miners, whose death was entered upon the public
register of the district, and who attained an average of 45 years, 37 had
died of consumption and 6 of asthma. In the surrounding districts,
Allendale, Stanhope, and Middleton, the average length of life was 49,
48, and 47 years respectively, and the deaths from chest affections
composed 48, 54, and 56 per cent. of the whole number. Let us compare
these figures with the so-called Swedish tables, detailed tables of
mortality embracing all the inhabitants of Sweden, and recognised in
England as the most correct standard hitherto attainable for the average
length of life of the British working-class. According to them, male
persons who survive the nineteenth year attain an average of 57.5 years;
but, according to this, the North of England miners are robbed by their
work of an average of ten years of life. Yet the Swedish tables are
accepted as the standard of longevity of the _workers_, and present,
therefore, the average chances of life as affected by the unfavourable
conditions in which the proletariat lives, a standard of longevity less
than the normal one. In this district we find again the lodging-houses
and sleeping-places with which we have already become acquainted in the
towns, and in quite as filthy, disgusting, and overcrowded a state as
there. Commissioner Mitchell visited one such sleeping barrack, 18 feet
long, 13 feet wide, and arranged for the reception of 42 men and 14 boys,
or 56 persons altogether, one-half of whom slept above the other in
berths as on shipboard. There was no opening for the escape of the foul
air; and, although no one had slept in this pen for three nights
preceding the visit, the smell and the atmosphere were such that
Commissioner Mitchell could not endure it a moment. What must it be
through a hot summer night, with fifty-six occupants? And this is not
the steerage of an American slave ship, it is the dwelling of free-born
Britons!
Let us turn now to the most important branch of British mining, the iron
and coal mines, which the Children's Employment Commission treats in
common, and with all the detail which the importance of the subject
demands. Nearly the whole of the first part of this report is devoted to
the condition of the workers employed in these mines. After the detailed
description which I have furnished of the state of the industrial
workers, I shall, however, be able to be as brief in dealing with this
subject as the scope of the present work requires.
In the coal and iron mines which are worked in pretty much the same way,
children of four, five, and seven years are employed. They are set to
transporting the ore or coal loosened by the miner from its place to the
horse-path or the main shaft, and to opening and shutting the doors
(which separate the divisions of the mine and regulate its ventilation)
for the passage of workers and material. For watching the doors the
smallest children are usually employed, who thus pass twelve hours daily,
in the dark, alone, sitting usually in damp passages without even having
work enough to save them from the stupefying, brutalising tedium of doing
nothing. The transport of coal and iron-stone, on the other hand, is
very hard labour, the stuff being shoved in large tubs, without wheels,
over the uneven floor of the mine; often over moist clay, or through
water, and frequently up steep inclines and through paths so low-roofed
that the workers are forced to creep on hands and knees. For this more
wearing labour, therefore, older children and half-grown girls are
employed. One man or two boys per tub are employed, according to
circumstances; and, if two boys, one pushes and the other pulls. The
loosening of the ore or coal, which is done by men or strong youths of
sixteen years or more, is also very weary work. The usual working-day is
eleven to twelve hours, often longer; in Scotland it reaches fourteen
hours, and double time is frequent, when all the employees are at work
below ground twenty-four, and even thirty-six hours at a stretch. Set
times for meals are almost unknown, so that these people eat when hunger
and time permit.
The standard of living of the miners is in general described as fairly
good and their wages high in comparison with those of the agricultural
labourers surrounding them (who, however, live at starvation rates),
except in certain parts of Scotland and in the Irish mines, where great
misery prevails. We shall have occasion to return later to this
statement, which, by the way, is merely relative, implying comparison to
the poorest class in all England. Meanwhile, we shall consider the evils
which arise from the present method of mining, and the reader may judge
whether any pay in money can indemnify the miner for such suffering.
The children and young people who are employed in transporting coal and
iron-stone all complain of being over-tired. Even in the most recklessly
conducted industrial establishments there is no such universal and
exaggerated overwork. The whole report proves this, with a number of
examples on every page. It is constantly happening that children throw
themselves down on the stone hearth or the floor as soon as they reach
home, fall asleep at once without being able to take a bite of food, and
have to be washed and put to bed while asleep; it even happens that they
lie down on the way home, and are found by their parents late at night
asleep on the road. It seems to be a universal practice among these
children to spend Sunday in bed to recover in some degree from the over-
exertion of the week. Church and school are visited by but few, and even
of these the teachers complain of their great sleepiness and the want of
all eagerness to learn. The same thing is true of the elder girls and
women. They are overworked in the most brutal manner. This weariness,
which is almost always carried to a most painful pitch, cannot fail to
affect the constitution. The first result of such over-exertion is the
diversion of vitality to the one-sided development of the muscles, so
that those especially of the arms, legs, and back, of the shoulders and
chest, which are chiefly called into activity in pushing and pulling,
attain an uncommonly vigorous development, while all the rest of the body
suffers and is atrophied from want of nourishment. More than all else
the stature suffers, being stunted and retarded; nearly all miners are
short, except those of Leicestershire and Warwickshire, who work under
exceptionally favourable conditions. Further, among boys as well as
girls, puberty is retarded, among the former often until the eighteenth
year; indeed, a nineteen years old boy appeared before Commissioner
Symonds, showing no evidence beyond that of the teeth, that he was more
than eleven or twelve years old. This prolongation of the period of
childhood is at bottom nothing more than a sign of checked development,
which does not fail to bear fruit in later years. Distortions of the
legs, knees bent inwards and feet bent outwards, deformities of the
spinal column and other malformations, appear the more readily in
constitutions thus weakened, in consequence of the almost universally
constrained position during work; and they are so frequent that in
Yorkshire and Lancashire, as in Northumberland and Durham, the assertion
is made by many witnesses, not only by physicians, that a miner may be
recognised by his shape among a hundred other persons. The women seem to
suffer especially from this work, and are seldom, if ever, as straight as
other women. There is testimony here, too, to the fact that deformities
of the pelvis and consequent difficult, even fatal, childbearing arise
from the work of women in the mines. But apart from these local
deformities, the coal miners suffer from a number of special affections
easily explained by the nature of the work. Diseases of the digestive
organs are first in order; want of appetite, pains in the stomach,
nausea, and vomiting, are most frequent, with violent thirst, which can
be quenched only with the dirty, lukewarm water of the mine; the
digestion is checked and all the other affections are thus invited.
Diseases of the heart, especially hypertrophy, inflammation of the heart
and pericardium, contraction of the _auriculo-ventricular_ communications
and the entrance of the _aorta_ are also mentioned repeatedly as diseases
of the miners, and are readily explained by overwork; and the same is
true of the almost universal rupture which is a direct consequence of
protracted over-exertion. In part from the same cause and in part from
the bad, dust-filled atmosphere mixed with carbonic acid and hydrocarbon
gas, which might so readily be avoided, there arise numerous painful and
dangerous affections of the lungs, especially asthma, which in some
districts appears in the fortieth, in others in the thirtieth year in
most of the miners, and makes them unfit for work in a short time. Among
those employed in wet workings the oppression in the chest naturally
appears much earlier; in some districts of Scotland between the twentieth
and thirtieth years, during which time the affected lungs are especially
susceptible to inflammations and diseases of a feverish nature. The
peculiar disease of workers of this sort is "black spittle," which arises
from the saturation of the whole lung with coal particles, and manifests
itself in general debility, headache, oppression of the chest, and thick,
black mucous expectoration. In some districts this disease appears in a
mild form; in others, on the contrary, it is wholly incurable, especially
in Scotland. Here, besides the symptoms just mentioned, which appear in
an intensified form, short, wheezing, breathing, rapid pulse (exceeding
100 per minute), and abrupt coughing, with increasing leanness and
debility, speedily make the patient unfit for work. Every case of this
disease ends fatally. Dr. Mackellar, in Pencaitland, East Lothian,
testified that in all the coal mines which are properly ventilated this
disease is unknown, while it frequently happens that miners who go from
well to ill-ventilated mines are seized by it. The profit-greed of mine
owners which prevents the use of ventilators is therefore responsible for
the fact that this working-men's disease exists at all. Rheumatism, too,
is, with the exception of the Warwick and Leicestershire workers, a
universal disease of the coal miners, and arises especially from the
frequently damp working-places. The consequence of all these diseases is
that, in all districts _without exception_, the coal miners age early and
become unfit for work soon after the fortieth year, though this is
different in different places. A coal miner who can follow his calling
after the 45th or 50th year is a very great rarity indeed. It is
universally recognised that such workers enter upon old age at forty.
This applies to those who loosen the coal from the bed; the loaders, who
have constantly to lift heavy blocks of coal into the tubs, age with the
twenty-eighth or thirtieth year, so that it is proverbial in the coal
mining districts that the loaders are old before they are young. That
this premature old age is followed by the early death of the colliers is
a matter of course, and a man who reaches sixty is a great exception
among them. Even in South Staffordshire, where the mines are
comparatively wholesome, few men reach their fifty-first year. Along
with this early superannuation of the workers we naturally find, just as
in the case of the mills, frequent lack of employment of the elder men,
who are often supported by very young children. If we sum up briefly the
results of the work in coal mines, we find, as Dr. Southwood Smith, one
of the commissioners, does, that through prolonged childhood on the one
hand and premature age on the other, that period of life in which the
human being is in full possession of his powers, the period of manhood,
is greatly shortened, while the length of life in general is below the
average. This, too, on the debit side of the bourgeoisie's reckoning!
All this deals only with the average of the English coal mines. But
there are many in which the state of things is much worse, those, namely,
in which thin seams of coal are worked. The coal would be too expensive
if a part of the adjacent sand and clay were removed; so the mine owners
permit only the seams to be worked; whereby the passages which elsewhere
are four or five feet high and more are here kept so low that to stand
upright in them is not to be thought of. The working-man lies on his
side and loosens the coal with his pick; resting upon his elbow as a
pivot, whence follow inflammations of the joint, and in cases where he is
forced to kneel, of the knee also. The women and children who have to
transport the coal crawl upon their hands and knees, fastened to the tub
by a harness and chain (which frequently passes between the legs), while
a man behind pushes with hands and head. The pushing with the head
engenders local irritations, painful swellings, and ulcers. In many
cases, too, the shafts are wet, so that these workers have to crawl
through dirty or salt water several inches deep, being thus exposed to a
special irritation of the skin. It can be readily imagined how greatly
the diseases already peculiar to the miners are fostered by this
especially frightful, slavish toil.
But these are not all the evils which descend upon the head of the coal
miner. In the whole British Empire there is no occupation in which a man
may meet his end in so many diverse ways as in this one. The coal mine
is the scene of a multitude of the most terrifying calamities, and these
come directly from the selfishness of the bourgeoisie. The hydrocarbon
gas which develops so freely in these mines, forms, when combined with
atmospheric air, an explosive which takes fire upon coming into contact
with a flame, and kills every one within its reach. Such explosions take
place, in one mine or another, nearly every day; on September 28th, 1844,
one killed 96 men in Haswell Colliery, Durham. The carbonic acid gas,
which also develops in great quantities, accumulates in the deeper parts
of the mine, frequently reaching the height of a man, and suffocates
every one who gets into it. The doors which separate the sections of the
mines are meant to prevent the propagation of explosions and the movement
of the gases; but since they are entrusted to small children, who often
fall asleep or neglect them, this means of prevention is illusory. A
proper ventilation of the mines by means of fresh air-shafts could almost
entirely remove the injurious effects of both these gases. But for this
purpose the bourgeoisie has no money to spare, preferring to command the
working-men to use the Davy lamp, which is wholly useless because of its
dull light, and is, therefore, usually replaced by a candle. If an
explosion occurs, the recklessness of the miner is blamed, though the
bourgeois might have made the explosion well-nigh impossible by supplying
good ventilation. Further, every few days the roof of a working falls
in, and buries or mangles the workers employed in it. It is the interest
of the bourgeois to have the seams worked out as completely as possible,
and hence the accidents of this sort. Then, too, the ropes by which the
men descend into the mines are often rotten, and break, so that the
unfortunates fall, and are crushed. All these accidents, and I have no
room for special cases, carry off yearly, according to the _Mining
Journal_, some fourteen hundred human beings. The _Manchester Guardian_
reports at least two or three accidents every week for Lancashire alone.
In nearly all mining districts the people composing the coroner's juries
are, in almost all cases, dependent upon the mine owners, and where this
is not the case, immemorial custom insures that the verdict shall be:
"Accidental Death." Besides, the jury takes very little interest in the
state of the mine, because it does not understand anything about the
matter. But the Children's Employment Commission does not hesitate to
make the mine owners directly responsible for the greater number of these
cases.
As to the education and morals of the mining population, they are,
according to the Children's Employment Commission, pretty good in
Cornwall, and excellent in Alston Moor; in the coal districts, in
general, they are, on the contrary, reported as on an excessively low
plane. The workers live in the country in neglected regions, and if they
do their weary work, no human being outside the police force troubles
himself about them. Hence, and from the tender age at which children are
put to work, it follows that their mental education is wholly neglected.
The day schools are not within their reach, the evening and Sunday
schools mere shams, the teachers worthless. Hence, few can read and
still fewer write. The only point upon which their eyes are as yet open
is the fact that their wages are far too low for their hateful and
dangerous work. To church they go seldom or never; all the clergy
complain of their irreligion as beyond comparison. As a matter of fact,
their ignorance of religious and of secular things, alike, is such that
the ignorance of the factory operatives, shown in numerous examples in
the foregoing pages, is trifling in comparison with it. The categories
of religion are known to them only from the terms of their oaths. Their
morality is destroyed by their work itself. That the overwork of all
miners must engender drunkenness is self-evident. As to their sexual
relations, men, women, and children work in the mines, in many cases,
wholly naked, and in most cases, nearly so, by reason of the prevailing
heat, and the consequences in the dark, lonely mines may be imagined. The
number of illegitimate children is here disproportionately large, and
indicates what goes on among the half-savage population below ground; but
proves too, that the illegitimate intercourse of the sexes has not here,
as in the great cities, sunk to the level of prostitution. The labour of
women entails the same consequences as in the factories, dissolves the
family, and makes the mother totally incapable of household work.
When the Children's Employment Commission's Report was laid before
Parliament, Lord Ashley hastened to bring in a bill wholly forbidding the
work of women in the mines, and greatly limiting that of children. The
bill was adopted, but has remained a dead letter in most districts,
because no mine inspectors were appointed to watch over its being carried
into effect. The evasion of the law is very easy in the country
districts in which the mines are situated; and no one need be surprised
that the Miners' Union laid before the Home Secretary an official notice,
last year, that in the Duke of Hamilton's coal mines in Scotland, more
than sixty women were at work; or that the _Manchester Guardian_ reported
that a girl perished in an explosion in a mine near Wigan, and no one
troubled himself further about the fact that an infringement of the law
was thus revealed. In single cases the employment of women may have been
discontinued, but in general the old state of things remains as before.
These are, however, not all the afflictions known to the coal miners. The
bourgeoisie, not content with ruining the health of these people, keeping
them in danger of sudden loss of life, robbing them of all opportunity
for education, plunders them in other directions in the most shameless
manner. The truck system is here the rule, not the exception, and is
carried on in the most direct and undisguised manner. The cottage
system, likewise, is universal, and here almost a necessity; but it is
used here, too, for the better plundering of the workers. To these means
of oppression must be added all sorts of direct cheating. While coal is
sold by weight, the worker's wages are reckoned chiefly by measure; and
when his tub is not perfectly full he receives no pay whatever, while he
gets not a farthing for over-measure. If there is more than a specified
quantity of dust in the tub, a matter which depends much less upon the
miner than upon the nature of the seam, he not only loses his whole wage
but is fined besides. The fine system in general is so highly perfected
in the coal mines, that a poor devil who has worked the whole week and
comes for his wages, sometimes learns from the overseer, who fine at
discretion and without summoning the workers, that he not only has no
wages but must pay so and so much in fines extra! The overseer has, in
general, absolute power over wages; he notes the work done, and can
please himself as to what he pays the worker, who is forced to take his
word. In some mines, where the pay is according to weight, false decimal
scales are used, whose weights are not subject to the inspection of the
authorities; in one coal mine there was actually a regulation that any
workman who intended to complain of the falseness of the scales _must
give notice to the overseer three weeks in advance_! In many districts,
especially in the North of England, it is customary to engage the workers
by the year; they pledge themselves to work for no other employer during
that time, but the mine owner by no means pledges himself to give them
work, so that they are often without it for months together, and if they
seek elsewhere, they are sent to the treadmill for six weeks for breach
of contract. In other contracts, work to the amount of 26s. every 14
days, is promised the miners, but not furnished, in others still, the
employers advance the miners small sums to be worked out afterwards, thus
binding the debtors to themselves. In the North, the custom is general
of keeping the payment of wages one week behindhand, chaining the miners
in this way to their work. And to complete the slavery of these
enthralled workers, nearly all the Justices of the Peace in the coal
districts are mine owners themselves, or relatives or friends of mine
owners, and possess almost unlimited power in these poor, uncivilised
regions where there are few newspapers, these few in the service of the
ruling class, and but little other agitation. It is almost beyond
conception how these poor coal miners have been plundered and tyrannised
over by Justices of the Peace acting as judges in their own cause.
So it went on for a long time. The workers did not know any better than
that they were there for the purpose of being swindled out of their very
lives. But gradually, even among them, and especially in the factory
districts, where contact with the more intelligent operatives could not
fail of its effect, there arose a spirit of opposition to the shameless
oppression of the "coal kings." The men began to form Unions and strike
from time to time. In civilised districts they joined the Chartists body
and soul. The great coal district of the North of England, shut off from
all industrial intercourse, remained backward until, after many efforts,
partly of the Chartists and partly of the more intelligent miners
themselves, a general spirit of opposition arose in 1843. Such a
movement seized the workers of Northumberland and Durham that they placed
themselves at the forefront of a general Union of coal miners throughout
the kingdom, and appointed W. P. Roberts, a Chartist solicitor, of
Bristol, their "Attorney General," he having distinguished himself in
earlier Chartist trials. The Union soon spread over a great majority of
the districts; agents were appointed in all directions, who held meetings
everywhere and secured new members; at the first conference of delegates,
in Manchester, in 1844, there were 60,000 members represented, and at
Glasgow, six months later, at the second conference, 100,000. Here all
the affairs of the coal miners were discussed and decisions as to the
greater strikes arrived at. Several journals were founded, especially
the _Miners' Advocate_, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, for defending the rights
of the miners. On March 31st, 1844, the contracts of all the miners of
Northumberland and Durham expired. Roberts was empowered to draw up a
new agreement, in which the men demanded: (1) Payment by weight instead
of measure; (2) Determination of weight by means of ordinary scales
subject to the public inspectors; (3) Half-yearly renewal of contracts;
(4) Abolition of the fines system and payment according to work actually
done; (5) The employers to guarantee to miners in their exclusive service
at least four days' work per week, or wages for the same. This agreement
was submitted to the "coal kings," and a deputation appointed to
negotiate with them; they answered, however, that for them the Union did
not exist, that they had to deal with single workmen only, and should
never recognise the Union. They also submitted an agreement of their own
which ignored all the foregoing points, and was, naturally, refused by
the miners. War was thus declared. On March 31st, 1844, 40,000 miners
laid down their picks, and every mine in the county stood empty. The
funds of the Union were so considerable that for several months a weekly
contribution of 2s. 6d. could be assured to each family. While the
miners were thus putting the patience of their masters to the test,
Roberts organised with incomparable perseverance both strike and
agitation, arranged for the holding of meetings, traversed England from
one end to the other, preached peaceful and legal agitation, and carried
on a crusade against the despotic Justices of the Peace and truck
masters, such as had never been known in England. This he had begun at
the beginning of the year. Wherever a miner had been condemned by a
Justice of the Peace, he obtained a _habeas corpus_ from the Court of
Queen's bench, brought his client to London, and always secured an
acquittal. Thus, January 13th, Judge Williams of Queen's bench acquitted
three miners condemned by the Justices of the Peace of Bilston, South
Staffordshire; the offence of these people was that they refused to work
in a place which threatened to cave in, and had actually caved in before
their return! On an earlier occasion, Judge Patteson had acquitted six
working-men, so that the name Roberts began to be a terror to the mine
owners. In Preston four of his clients were in jail. In the first week
of January he proceeded thither to investigate the case on the spot, but
found, when he arrived, the condemned all released before the expiration
of the sentence. In Manchester there were seven in jail; Roberts
obtained a _habeas corpus_ and acquittal for all from Judge Wightman. In
Prescott nine coal miners were in jail, accused of creating a disturbance
in St. Helen's, South Lancashire, and awaiting trial; when Roberts
arrived upon the spot, they were released at once. All this took place
in the first half of February. In April, Roberts released a miner from
jail in Derby, four in Wakefield, and four in Leicester. So it went on
for a time until these Dogberries came to have some respect for the
miners. The truck system shared the same fate. One after another
Roberts brought the disreputable mine owners before the courts, and
compelled the reluctant Justices of the Peace to condemn them; such dread
of this "lightning" "Attorney General" who seemed to be everywhere at
once spread among them, that at Belper, for instance, upon Roberts'
arrival, a truck firm published the following notice:
"NOTICE!"
"PENTRICH COAL MINE.
"The Messrs. Haslam think it necessary, in order to prevent all
mistakes, to announce that all persons employed in their colliery will
receive their wages wholly in cash, and may expend them when and as
they choose to do. If they purchase goods in the shops of Messrs.
Haslam they will receive them as heretofore at wholesale prices, but
they are not expected to make their purchases there, and work and
wages will be continued as usual whether purchases are made in these
shops or elsewhere."
This triumph aroused the greatest jubilation throughout the English
working-class, and brought the Union a mass of new members. Meanwhile
the strike in the North was proceeding. Not a hand stirred, and
Newcastle, the chief coal port, was so stripped of its commodity that
coal had to be brought from the Scotch coast, in spite of the proverb. At
first, while the Union's funds held out, all went well, but towards
summer the struggle became much more painful for the miners. The
greatest want prevailed among them; they had no money, for the
contributions of the workers of all branches of industry in England
availed little among the vast number of strikers, who were forced to
borrow from the small shopkeepers at a heavy loss. The whole press, with
the single exception of the few proletarian journals, was against them;
the bourgeois, even the few among them who might have had enough sense of
justice to support the miners, learnt from the corrupt Liberal and
Conservative sheets only lies about them. A deputation of twelve miners
who went to London received a sum from the proletariat there, but this,
too, availed little among the mass who needed support. Yet, in spite of
all this, the miners remained steadfast, and what is even more
significant, were quiet and peaceable in the face of all the hostilities
and provocation of the mine owners and their faithful servants. No act
of revenge was carried out, not a renegade was maltreated, not one single
theft committed. Thus the strike had continued well on towards four
months, and the mine owners still had no prospect of getting the upper
hand. One way was, however, still open to them. They remembered the
cottage system; it occurred to them that the houses of the rebellious
spirits were THEIR property. In July, notice to quit was served the
workers, and, in a week, the whole forty thousand were put out of doors.
This measure was carried out with revolting cruelty. The sick, the
feeble, old men and little children, even women in childbirth, were
mercilessly turned from their beds and cast into the roadside ditches.
One agent dragged by the hair from her bed, and into the street, a woman
in the pangs of childbirth. Soldiers and police in crowds were present,
ready to fire at the first symptom of resistance, on the slightest hint
of the Justices of the Peace, who had brought about the whole brutal
procedure. This, too, the working-men endured without resistance. The
hope had been that the men would use violence; they were spurred on with
all force to infringements of the laws, to furnish an excuse for making
an end of the strike by the intervention of the military. The homeless
miners, remembering the warnings of their Attorney General, remained
unmoved, set up their household goods upon the moors or the harvested
fields, and held out. Some, who had no other place, encamped on the
roadsides and in ditches, others upon land belonging to other people,
whereupon they were prosecuted, and, having caused "damage of the value
of a halfpenny," were fined a pound, and, being unable to pay it, worked
it out on the treadmill. Thus they lived eight weeks and more of the wet
fag-end of last summer under the open sky with their families, with no
further shelter for themselves and their little ones than the calico
curtains of their beds; with no other help than the scanty allowances of
their Union and the fast shrinking credit with the small dealers.
Hereupon Lord Londonderry, who owns considerable mines in Durham,
threatened the small tradesmen in "his" town of Seaham with his most high
displeasure if they should continue to give credit to "his" rebellious
workers. This "noble" lord made himself the first clown of the turnout
in consequence of the ridiculous, pompous, ungrammatical ukases addressed
to the workers, which he published from time to time, with no other
result than the merriment of the nation. When none of their efforts
produced any effect, the mine owners imported, at great expense, hands
from Ireland and such remote parts of Wales as have as yet no labour
movement. And when the competition of workers against workers was thus
restored, the strength of the strikers collapsed. The mine owners
obliged them to renounce the Union, abandon Roberts, and accept the
conditions laid down by the employers. Thus ended at the close of
September the great five months' battle of the coal miners against the
mine owners, a battle fought on the part of the oppressed with an
endurance, courage, intelligence, and coolness which demands the highest
admiration. What a degree of true human culture, of enthusiasm and
strength of character, such a battle implies on the part of men who, as
we have seen in the Children's Employment Commission's Report, were
described as late as 1840, as being thoroughly brutal and wanting in
moral sense! But how hard, too, must have been the pressure which
brought these forty thousand colliers to rise as one man and to fight out
the battle like an army not only well-disciplined but enthusiastic, an
army possessed of one single determination, with the greatest coolness
and composure, to a point beyond which further resistance would have been
madness. And what a battle! Not against visible, mortal enemies, but
against hunger, want, misery, and homelessness, against their own
passions provoked to madness by the brutality of wealth. If they had
revolted with violence, they, the unarmed and defenceless, would have
been shot down, and a day or two would have decided the victory of the
owners. This law-abiding reserve was no fear of the constable's staff,
it was the result of deliberation, the best proof of the intelligence and
self-control of the working-men.
Thus were the working-men forced once more, in spite of their unexampled
endurance, to succumb to the might of capital. But the fight had not
been in vain. First of all, this nineteen weeks' strike had torn the
miners of the North of England forever from the intellectual death in
which they had hitherto lain; they have left their sleep, are alert to
defend their interests, and have entered the movement of civilisation,
and especially the movement of the workers. The strike, which first
brought to light the whole cruelty of the owners, has established the
opposition of the workers here, forever, and made at least two-thirds of
them Chartists; and the acquisition of thirty thousand such determined,
experienced men is certainly of great value to the Chartists. Then, too,
the endurance and law-abiding which characterised the whole strike,
coupled with the active agitation which accompanied it, has fixed public
attention upon the miners. On the occasion of the debate upon the export
duty on coal, Thomas Duncombe, the only decidedly Chartist member of the
House of Commons, brought up the condition of the coal miners, had their
petition read, and by his speech forced the bourgeois journals to
publish, at least in their reports of Parliamentary proceedings, a
correct statement of the case. Immediately after the strike, occurred
the explosion at Haswell; Roberts went to London, demanded an audience
with Peel, insisted as representative of the miners upon a thorough
investigation of the case, and succeeded in having the first geological
and chemical notabilities of England, Professors Lyell and Faraday,
commissioned to visit the spot. As several other explosions followed in
quick succession, and Roberts again laid the details before the Prime
Minister, the latter promised to propose the necessary measures for the
protection of the workers, if possible, in the next session of
Parliament, _i.e_., the present one of 1845. All this would not have
been accomplished if these workers had not, by means of the strike,
proved themselves freedom-loving men worthy of all respect, and if they
had not engaged Roberts as their counsel.
Scarcely had it become known that the coal miners of the North had been
forced to renounce the Union and discharge Roberts, when the miners of
Lancashire formed a Union of some ten thousand men, and guaranteed their
Attorney General a salary of 1200 pounds a year. In the autumn of last
year they collected more than 700 pounds, rather more than 200 pounds of
which they expended upon salaries and judicial expenses, and the rest
chiefly in support of men out of work, either through want of employment
or through dissensions with their employers. Thus the working-men are
constantly coming to see more clearly that, united, they too are a
respectable power, and can, in the last extremity, defy even the might of
the bourgeoisie. And this insight, the gain of all labour movements, has
been won for all the miners of England by the Union and the strike of
1844. In a very short time the difference of intelligence and energy
which now exists in favour of the factory operatives will have vanished,
and the miners of the kingdom will be able to stand abreast of them in
every respect. Thus one piece of standing ground after another is
undermined beneath the feet of the bourgeoisie; and how long will it be
before their whole social and political edifice collapses with the basis
upon which it rests? {259}
But the bourgeoisie will not take warning. The resistance of the miners
does but embitter it the more. Instead of appreciating this forward step
in the general movement of the workers, the property-holding class saw in
it only a source of rage against a class of people who are fools enough
to declare themselves no longer submissive to the treatment they had
hitherto received. It saw in the just demands of the non-possessing
workers only impertinent discontent, mad rebellion against "Divine and
human order;" and, in the best case, a success (to be resisted by the
bourgeoisie with all its might) won by "ill-intentioned demagogues who
live by agitation and are too lazy to work." It sought, of course,
without success, to represent to the workers that Roberts and the Union's
agents whom the Union very naturally had to pay, were insolent swindlers,
who drew the last farthing from the working-men's pockets. When such
insanity prevails in the property-holding class, when it is so blinded by
its momentary profit that it no longer has eyes for the most conspicuous
signs of the times, surely all hope of a peaceful solution of the social
question for England must be abandoned. The only possible solution is a
violent revolution, which cannot fail to take place.
THE AGRICULTURAL PROLETARIAT.
We have seen in the introduction how, simultaneously with the small
bourgeoisie and the modest independence of the former workers, the small
peasantry also was ruined when the former Union of industrial and
agricultural work was dissolved, the abandoned fields thrown together
into large farms, and the small peasants superseded by the overwhelming
competition of the large farmers. Instead of being landowners or
leaseholders, as they had been hitherto, they were now obliged to hire
themselves as labourers to the large farmers or the landlords. For a
time this position was endurable, though a deterioration in comparison
with their former one. The extension of industry kept pace with the
increase of population until the progress of manufacture began to assume
a slower pace, and the perpetual improvement of machinery made it
impossible for manufacture to absorb the whole surplus of the
agricultural population. From this time forward, the distress which had
hitherto existed only in the manufacturing districts, and then only at
times, appeared in the agricultural districts too. The twenty-five
years' struggle with France came to an end at about the same time; the
diminished production at the various seats of the wars, the shutting off
of imports, and the necessity of providing for the British army in Spain,
had given English agriculture an artificial prosperity, and had besides
withdrawn to the army vast numbers of workers from their ordinary
occupations. This check upon the import trade, the opportunity for
exportation, and the military demand for workers, now suddenly came to an
end; and the necessary consequence was what the English call agricultural
distress. The farmers had to sell their corn at low prices, and could,
therefore, pay only low wages. In 1815, in order to keep up prices, the
Corn Laws were passed, prohibiting the importation of corn so long as the
price of wheat continued less than 80 shillings per quarter. These
naturally ineffective laws were several times modified, but did not
succeed in ameliorating the distress in the agricultural districts. All
that they did was to change the disease, which, under free competition
from abroad, would have assumed an acute form, culminating in a series of
crises, into a chronic one which bore heavily but uniformly upon the farm
labourers.
For a time after the rise of the agricultural proletariat, the
patriarchal relation between master and man, which was being destroyed
for manufacture, developed here the same relation of the farmer to his
hands which still exists almost everywhere in Germany. So long as this
lasted, the poverty of the farm hands was less conspicuous; they shared
the fate of the farmer, and were discharged only in cases of the direst
necessity. But now all this is changed. The farm hands have become day
labourers almost everywhere, are employed only when needed by the
farmers, and, therefore, often have no work for weeks together,
especially in winter. In the patriarchal time, the hands and their
families lived on the farm, and their children grew up there, the farmer
trying to find occupation on the spot for the oncoming generation; day
labourers, then, were the exception, not the rule. Thus there was, on
every farm, a larger number of hands than were strictly necessary. It
became, therefore, the interest of the farmers to dissolve this relation,
drive the farm hand from the farm, and transform him into a day labourer.
This took place pretty generally towards the year 1830, and the
consequence was that the hitherto latent over-population was set free,
the rate of wages forced down, and the poor-rate enormously increased.
From this time the agricultural districts became the headquarters of
permanent, as the manufacturing districts had long been of periodic,
pauperism; and the modification of the Poor Law was the first measure
which the State was obliged to apply to the daily increasing
impoverishment of the country parishes. Moreover, the constant extension
of farming on a large scale, the introduction of threshing and other
machines, and the employment of women and children (which is now so
general that its effects have recently been investigated by a special
official commission), threw a large number of men out of employment. It
is manifest, therefore, that here, too, the system of industrial
production has made its entrance, by means of farming on a large scale,
by the abolition of the patriarchal relation, which is of the greatest
importance just here, by the introduction of machinery, steam, and the
labour of women and children. In so doing, it has swept the last and
most stationary portion of working humanity into the revolutionary
movement. But the longer agriculture had remained stationary, the
heavier now became the burden upon the worker, the more violently broke
forth the results of the disorganisation of the old social fabric. The
"over-population" came to light all at once, and could not, as in the
manufacturing districts, be absorbed by the needs of an increasing
production. New factories could always be built, if there were consumers
for their products, but new land could not be created. The cultivation
of waste common land was too daring a speculation for the bad times
following the conclusion of peace. The necessary consequence was that
the competition of the workers among each other reached the highest point
of intensity, and wages fell to the minimum. So long as the old Poor Law
existed, the workers received relief from the rates; wages naturally fell
still lower, because the farmers forced the largest possible number of
labourers to claim relief. The higher poor-rate, necessitated by the
surplus population, was only increased by this measure, and the new Poor
Law, of which we shall have more to say later, was now enacted as a
remedy. But this did not improve matters. Wages did not rise, the
surplus population could not be got rid of, and the cruelty of the new
law did but serve to embitter the people to the utmost. Even the poor-
rate, which diminished at first after the passage of the new law,
attained its old height after a few years. Its only effect was that
whereas previously three to four million half paupers had existed, a
million of total paupers now appeared, and the rest, still half paupers,
merely went without relief. The poverty in the agricultural districts
has increased every year. The people live in the greatest want, whole
families must struggle along with 6, 7, or 8 shillings a week, and at
times have nothing. Let us hear a description of this population given
by a Liberal member of Parliament as early as 1830. {264}
"An English agricultural labourer and an English pauper, these words
are synonymous. His father was a pauper and his mother's milk
contained no nourishment. From his earliest childhood he had bad
food, and only half enough to still his hunger, and even yet he
undergoes the pangs of unsatisfied hunger almost all the time that he
is not asleep. He is half clad, and has not more fire than barely
suffices to cook his scanty meal. And so cold and damp are always at
home with him, and leave him only in fine weather. He is married, but
he knows nothing of the joys of the husband and father. His wife and
children, hungry, rarely warm, often ill and helpless, always careworn
and hopeless like himself, are naturally grasping, selfish, and
troublesome, and so, to use his own expression, he hates the sight of
them, and enters his cot only because it offers him a trifle more
shelter from rain and wind than a hedge. He must support his family,
though he cannot do so, whence come beggary, deceit of all sorts,
ending in fully developed craftiness. If he were so inclined, he yet
has not the courage which makes of the more energetic of his class
wholesale poachers and smugglers. But he pilfers when occasion
offers, and teaches his children to lie and steal. His abject and
submissive demeanour towards his wealthy neighbours shows that they
treat him roughly and with suspicion; hence he fears and hates them,
but he never will injure them by force. He is depraved through and
through, too far gone to possess even the strength of despair. His
wretched existence is brief, rheumatism and asthma bring him to the
workhouse, where he will draw his last breath without a single
pleasant recollection, and will make room for another luckless wretch
to live and die as he has done."
Our author adds that besides this class of agricultural labourers, there
is still another, somewhat more energetic and better endowed physically,
mentally, and morally; those, namely, who live as wretchedly, but were
not born to this condition. These he represents as better in their
family life, but smugglers and poachers who get into frequent bloody
conflicts with the gamekeepers and revenue officers of the coast, become
more embittered against society during the prison life which they often
undergo, and so stand abreast of the first class in their hatred of the
property-holders. "And," he says, in closing, "this whole class is
called, by courtesy, the bold peasantry of England."
Down to the present time, this description applies to the greater portion
of the agricultural labourers of England. In June, 1844, the _Times_
sent a correspondent into the agricultural districts to report upon the
condition of this class, and the report which he furnished agreed wholly
with the foregoing. In certain districts wages were not more than six
shillings a week; not more, that is, that in many districts in Germany,
while the prices of all the necessaries of life are at least twice as
high. What sort of life these people lead may be imagined; their food
scanty and bad, their clothing ragged, their dwellings cramped and
desolate, small, wretched huts, with no comforts whatsoever; and, for
young people, lodging-houses, where men and women are scarcely separated,
and illegitimate intercourse thus provoked. One or two days without work
in the course of a month must inevitably plunge such people into the
direst want. Moreover, they cannot combine to raise wages, because they
are scattered, and if one alone refuses to work for low wages, there are
dozens out of work, or supported by the rates, who are thankful for the
most trifling offer, while to him who declines work, every other form of
relief than the hated workhouse is refused by the Poor Law guardians as
to a lazy vagabond; for the guardians are the very farmers from whom or
from whose neighbours and acquaintances alone he can get work. And not
from one or two special districts of England do such reports come. On
the contrary, the distress is general, equally great in the North and
South, the East and West. The condition of the labourers in Suffolk and
Norfolk corresponds with that of Devonshire, Hampshire, and Sussex. Wages
are as low in Dorsetshire and Oxfordshire as in Kent and Surrey,
Buckinghamshire and Cambridgeshire.
One especially barbaric cruelty against the working-class is embodied in
the Game Laws, which are more stringent than in any other country, while
the game is plentiful beyond all conception. The English peasant who,
according to the old English custom and tradition, sees in poaching only
a natural and noble expression of courage and daring, is stimulated still
further by the contrast between his own poverty and the _car tel est
notre plaisir_ of the lord, who preserves thousands of hares and game
birds for his private enjoyment. The labourer lays snares, or shoots
here and there a piece of game. It does not injure the landlord as a
matter of fact, for he has a vast superfluity, and it brings the poacher
a meal for himself and his starving family. But if he is caught he goes
to jail, and for a second offence receives at the least seven years'
transportation. From the severity of these laws arise the frequent
bloody conflicts with the gamekeepers, which lead to a number of murders
every year Hence the post of gamekeeper is not only dangerous, but of ill-
repute and despised. Last year, in two cases, gamekeepers shot
themselves rather than continue their work. Such is the moderate price
at which the landed aristocracy purchases the noble sport of shooting;
but what does it matter to the lords of the soil? Whether one or two
more or less of the "surplus" live or die matters nothing, and even if in
consequence of the Game Laws half the surplus population could be put out
of the way, it would be all the better for the other half--according to
the philanthropy of the English landlords.
Although the conditions of life in the country, the isolated dwellings,
the stability of the surroundings and occupations, and consequently of
the thoughts, are decidedly unfavourable to all development, yet poverty
and want bear their fruits even here. The manufacturing and mining
proletariat emerged early from the first stage of resistance to our
social order, the direct rebellion of the individual by the perpetration
of crime; but the peasants are still in this stage at the present time.
Their favourite method of social warfare is incendiarism. In the winter
which followed the Revolution of July, in 1830-31, these incendiarisms
first became general. Disturbances had taken place, and the whole region
of Sussex and the adjacent counties has been brought into a state of
excitement in October, in consequence of an increase of the coastguard
(which made smuggling much more difficult and "ruined the coast"--in the
words of a farmer), changes in the Poor Law, low wages, and the
introduction of machinery. In the winter the farmers' hay and
corn-stacks were burnt in the fields, and the very barns and stables
under their windows. Nearly every night a couple of such fires blazed
up, and spread terror among the farmers and landlords. The offenders
were rarely discovered, and the workers attributed the incendiarism to a
mythical person whom they named "Swing." Men puzzled their brains to
discover who this Swing could be and whence this rage among the poor of
the country districts. Of the great motive power, Want, Oppression, only
a single person here and there thought, and certainly no one in the
agricultural districts. Since that year the incendiarisms have been
repeated every winter, with each recurring unemployed season of the
agricultural labourers. In the winter of 1843-44, they were once more
extraordinarily frequent. There lies before me a series of numbers of
the _Northern Star_ of that time, each one of which contains a report of
several incendiarisms, stating in each case its authority. The numbers
wanting in the following list I have not at hand; but they, too,
doubtless contain a number of cases. Moreover, such a sheet cannot
possibly ascertain all the cases which occur. November 25th, 1843, two
cases; several earlier ones are discussed. December 16th, in
Bedfordshire, general excitement for a fortnight past in consequence of
frequent incendiarisms, of which several take place every night. Two
great farmhouses burnt down within the last few days; in Cambridgeshire
four great farmhouses, Hertfordshire one, and besides these, fifteen
other incendiarisms in different districts. December 30th, in Norfolk
one, Suffolk two, Essex two, Cheshire one, Lancashire one, Derby,
Lincoln, and the South twelve. January 6th, 1844, in all ten. January
13th, seven. January 20th, four incendiarisms. From this time forward,
three or four incendiarisms per week are reported, and not as formerly
until the spring only, but far into July and August. And that crimes of
this sort are expected to increase in the approaching hard season of 1844-
45, the English papers already indicate.
What do my readers think of such a state of things in the quiet, idyllic
country districts of England? Is this social war, or is it not? Is it a
natural state of things which can last? Yet here the landlords and
farmers are as dull and stupefied, as blind to everything which does not
directly put money into their pockets, as the manufacturers and the
bourgeoisie in general in the manufacturing districts. If the latter
promise their employees salvation through the repeal of the Corn Laws,
the landlords and a great part of the farmers promise theirs Heaven upon
earth from the maintenance of the same laws. But in neither case do the
property-holders succeed in winning the workers to the support of their
pet hobby. Like the operatives, the agricultural labourers are
thoroughly indifferent to the repeal or non-repeal of the Corn Laws. Yet
the question is an important one for both. That is to say--by the repeal
of the Corn Laws, free competition, the present social economy is carried
to its extreme point; all further development within the present order
comes to an end, and the only possible step farther is a radical
transformation of the social order. {268} For the agricultural labourers
the question has, further, the following important bearing: Free
importation of corn involves (how, I cannot explain _here_) the
emancipation of the farmers from the landlords, their transformation into
Liberals. Towards this consummation the Anti-Corn Law League has already
largely contributed, and this is its only real service. When the farmers
become Liberals, _i.e_., conscious bourgeois, the agricultural labourers
will inevitably become Chartists and Socialists; the first change
involves the second. And that a new movement is already beginning among
the agricultural labourers is proved by a meeting which Earl Radnor, a
Liberal landlord, caused to be held in October, 1844, near Highworth,
where his estates lie, to pass resolutions against the Corn Laws. At
this meeting, the labourers, perfectly indifferent as to these laws,
demanded something wholly different, namely small holdings, at low rent,
for themselves, telling Earl Radnor all sorts of bitter truths to his
face. Thus the movement of the working-class is finding its way into the
remote, stationary, mentally dead agricultural districts; and, thanks to
the general distress, will soon be as firmly rooted and energetic as in
the manufacturing districts. {269} As to the religious state of the
agricultural labourers, they are, it is true, more pious than the
manufacturing operatives; but they, too, are greatly at odds with the
Church--for in these districts members of the Established Church almost
exclusively are to be found. A correspondent of the _Morning Chronicle_,
who, over the signature, "One who has whistled at the plough," reports
his tour through the agricultural districts, relates, among other things,
the following conversation with some labourers after service: "I asked
one of these people whether the preacher of the day was their own
clergyman. "Yes, blast him! He is our own parson, and begs the whole
time. He's been always a-begging as long as I've known him." (The
sermon had been upon a mission to the heathen.) "And as long as I've
known him too," added another; "and I never knew a parson but what was
begging for this or the other." "Yes," said a woman, who had just come
out of the church, "and look how wages are going down, and see the rich
vagabonds with whom the parsons eat and drink and hunt. So help me God,
we are more fit to starve in the workhouse than pay the parsons as go
among the heathen." "And why," said another, "don't they send the
parsons as drones every day in Salisbury Cathedral, for nobody but the
bare stones? Why don't _they_ go among the heathen?" "They don't go,"
said the old man whom I had first asked, "because they are rich, they
have all the land they need, they want the money in order to get rid of
the poor parsons. I know what they want. I know them too long for
that." "But, good friends," I asked, "you surely do not always come out
of the church with such bitter feelings towards the preacher? Why do you
go at all?" "What for do we go?" said the woman. "We must, if we do not
want to lose everything, work and all, we must." I learned later that
they had certain little privileges of fire-wood and potato land (which
they paid for!) on condition of going to church." After describing their
poverty and ignorance, the correspondent closes by saying: "And now I
boldly assert that the condition of these people, their poverty, their
hatred of the church, their external submission and inward bitterness
against the ecclesiastical dignitaries, is the rule among the country
parishes of England, and its opposite is the exception."
If the peasantry of England shows the consequences which a numerous
agricultural proletariat in connection with large farming involves for
the country districts, Wales illustrates the ruin of the small holders.
If the English country parishes reproduce the antagonism between
capitalist and proletarian, the state of the Welsh peasantry corresponds
to the progressive ruin of the small bourgeoisie in the towns. In Wales
are to be found, almost exclusively, small holders, who cannot with like
profit sell their products as cheaply as the larger, more favourably
situated English farmers, with whom, however, they are obliged to
compete. Moreover, in some places the quality of the land admits of the
raising of live stock only, which is but slightly profitable. Then, too,
these Welsh farmers, by reason of their separate nationality, which they
retain pertinaciously, are much more stationary than the English farmers.
But the competition among themselves and with their English neighbours
(and the increased mortgages upon their land consequent upon this) has
reduced them to such a state that they can scarcely live at all; and
because they have not recognised the true cause of their wretched
condition, they attribute it to all sorts of small causes, such as high
tolls, etc, which do check the development of agriculture and commerce,
but are taken into account as standing charges by every one who takes a
holding, and are therefore really ultimately paid by the landlord. Here,
too, the new Poor Law is cordially hated by the tenants, who hover in
perpetual danger of coming under its sway. In 1843, the famous "Rebecca"
disturbances broke out among the Welsh peasantry; the men dressed in
women's clothing, blackened their faces, and fell in armed crowds upon
the toll-gates, destroyed them amidst great rejoicing and firing of guns,
demolished the toll-keepers' houses, wrote threatening letters in the
name of the imaginary "Rebecca," and once went so far as to storm the
workhouse of Carmarthen. Later, when the militia was called out and the
police strengthened, the peasants drew them off with wonderful skill upon
false scents, demolished toll-gates at one point while the militia, lured
by false signal bugles, was marching in some opposite direction; and
betook themselves finally, when the police was too thoroughly reinforced,
to single incendiarisms and attempts at murder. As usual, these greater
crimes were the end of the movement. Many withdrew from disapproval,
others from fear, and peace was restored of itself. The Government
appointed a commission to investigate the affair and its causes, and
there was an end of the matter. The poverty of the peasantry continues,
however, and will one day, since it cannot under existing circumstances
grow less, but must go on intensifying, produce more serious
manifestations than these humorous Rebecca masquerades.
If England illustrates the results of the system of farming on a large
scale and Wales on a small one, Ireland exhibits the consequences of
overdividing the soil. The great mass of the population of Ireland
consists of small tenants who occupy a sorry hut without partitions, and
a potato patch just large enough to supply them most scantily with
potatoes through the winter. In consequence of the great competition
which prevails among these small tenants, the rent has reached an unheard-
of height, double, treble, and quadruple that paid in England. For every
agricultural labourer seeks to become a tenant-farmer, and though the
division of land has gone so far, there still remain numbers of labourers
in competition for plots. Although in Great Britain 32,000,000 acres of
land are cultivated, and in Ireland but 14,000,000; although Great
Britain produces agricultural products to the value of 150,000,000
pounds, and Ireland of but 36,000,000 pounds, there are in Ireland 75,000
agricultural proletarians _more_ than in the neighbouring island. {272a}
How great the competition for land in Ireland must be is evident from
this extraordinary disproportion, especially when one reflects that the
labourers in Great Britain are living in the utmost distress. The
consequence of this competition is that it is impossible for the tenants
to live much better than the labourers, by reason of the high rents paid.
The Irish people is thus held in crushing poverty, from which it cannot
free itself under our present social conditions. These people live in
the most wretched clay huts, scarcely good enough for cattle-pens, have
scant food all winter long, or, as the report above quoted expresses it,
they have potatoes half enough thirty weeks in the year, and the rest of
the year nothing. When the time comes in the spring at which this
provision reaches its end, or can no longer be used because of its
sprouting, wife and children go forth to beg and tramp the country with
their kettle in their hands. Meanwhile the husband, after planting
potatoes for the next year, goes in search of work either in Ireland or
England, and returns at the potato harvest to his family. This is the
condition in which nine-tenths of the Irish country folks live. They are
poor as church mice, wear the most wretched rags, and stand upon the
lowest plane of intelligence possible in a half-civilised country.
According to the report quoted, there are, in a population of 8.5
millions, 585,000 heads of families in a state of total destitution; and
according to other authorities, cited by Sheriff Alison, {272b} there are
in Ireland 2,300,000 persons who could not live without public or private
assistance--or 27 per cent. of the whole population paupers!
The cause of this poverty lies in the existing social conditions,
especially in competition here found in the form of the subdivision of
the soil. Much effort has been spent in finding other causes. It has
been asserted that the relation of the tenant to the landlord who lets
his estate in large lots to tenants, who again have their sub-tenants,
and sub-sub-tenants, in turn, so that often ten middlemen come between
the landlord and the actual cultivator--it has been asserted that the
shameful law which gives the landlord the right of expropriating the
cultivator who may have paid his rent duly, if the first tenant fails to
pay the landlord, that this law is to blame for all this poverty. But
all this determines only the form in which the poverty manifests itself.
Make the small tenant a landowner himself and what follows? The majority
could not live upon their holdings even if they had no rent to pay, and
any slight improvement which might take place would be lost again in a
few years in consequence of the rapid increase of population. The
children would then live to grow up under the improved conditions who now
die in consequence of poverty in early childhood. From another side
comes the assertion that the shameless oppression inflicted by the
English is the cause of the trouble. It is the cause of the somewhat
earlier appearance of this poverty, but not of the poverty itself. Or
the blame is laid on the Protestant Church forced upon a Catholic nation;
but divide among the Irish what the Church takes from them, and it does
not reach six shillings a head. Besides, tithes are a tax upon landed
property, not upon the tenant, though he may nominally pay them; now,
since the Commutation Bill of 1838, the landlord pays the tithes directly
and reckons so much higher rent, so that the tenant is none the better
off. And in the same way a hundred other causes of this poverty are
brought forward, all proving as little as these. This poverty is the
result of our social conditions; apart from these, causes may be found
for the manner in which it manifests itself, but not for the fact of its
existence. That poverty manifests itself in Ireland thus and not
otherwise, is owing to the character of the people, and to their
historical development. The Irish are a people related in their whole
character to the Latin nations, to the French, and especially to the
Italians. The bad features of their character we have already had
depicted by Carlyle. Let us now hear an Irishman, who at least comes
nearer to the truth than Carlyle, with his prejudice in favour of the
Teutonic character: {273}
"They are restless, yet indolent, clever and indiscreet, stormy,
impatient, and improvident; brave by instinct, generous without much
reflection, quick to revenge and forgive insults, to make and to
renounce friendships, gifted with genius prodigally, sparingly with
judgment."
With the Irish, feeling and passion predominate; reason must bow before
them. Their sensuous, excitable nature prevents reflection and quiet,
persevering activity from reaching development--such a nation is utterly
unfit for manufacture as now conducted. Hence they held fast to
agriculture, and remained upon the lowest plane even of that. With the
small subdivisions of land, which were not here artificially created, as
in France and on the Rhine, by the division of great estates, but have
existed from time immemorial, an improvement of the soil by the
investment of capital was not to be thought of; and it would, according
to Alison, require 120 million pounds sterling to bring the soil up to
the not very high state of fertility already attained in England. The
English immigration, which might have raised the standard of Irish
civilisation, has contented itself with the most brutal plundering of the
Irish people; and while the Irish, by their immigration into England,
have furnished England a leaven which will produce its own results in the
future, they have little for which to be thankful to the English
immigration.
The attempts of the Irish to save themselves from their present ruin, on
the one hand, take the form of crimes. These are the order of the day in
the agricultural districts, and are nearly always directed against the
most immediate enemies, the landlord's agents, or their obedient
servants, the Protestant intruders, whose large farms are made up of the
potato patches of hundreds of ejected families. Such crimes are
especially frequent in the South and West. On the other hand, the Irish
hope for relief by means of the agitation for the repeal of the
Legislative Union with England. From all the foregoing, it is clear that
the uneducated Irish must see in the English their worst enemies; and
their first hope of improvement in the conquest of national independence.
But quite as clear is it, too, that Irish distress cannot be removed by
any Act of Repeal. Such an Act would, however, at once lay bare the fact
that the cause of Irish misery, which now seems to come from abroad, is
really to be found at home. Meanwhile, it is an open question whether
the accomplishment of repeal will be necessary to make this clear to the
Irish. Hitherto, neither Chartism nor Socialism has had marked success
in Ireland.
I close my observations upon Ireland at this point the more readily, as
the Repeal Agitation of 1843 and O'Connell's trial have been the means of
making the Irish distress more and more known in Germany.
We have now followed the proletariat of the British Islands through all
branches of its activity, and found it everywhere living in want and
misery under totally inhuman conditions. We have seen discontent arise
with the rise of the proletariat, grow, develop, and organise; we have
seen open bloodless and bloody battles of the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie. We have investigated the principles according to which the
fate, the hopes, and fears of the proletariat are determined, and we have
found that there is no prospect of improvement in their condition.
We have had an opportunity, here and there, of observing the conduct of
the bourgeoisie towards the proletariat, and we have found that it
considers only itself, has only its own advantage in view. However, in
order not to be unjust, let us investigate its mode of action somewhat
more exactly.
THE ATTITUDE OF THE BOURGEOISIE TOWARDS THE PROLETARIAT.
In speaking of the bourgeoisie I include the so-called aristocracy, for
this is a privileged class, an aristocracy, only in contrast with the
bourgeoisie, not in contrast with the proletariat. The proletarian sees
in both only the property-holder--_i.e_., the bourgeois. Before the
privilege of property all other privileges vanish. The sole difference
is this, that the bourgeois proper stands in active relations with the
manufacturing, and, in a measure, with the mining proletarians, and, as
farmer, with the agricultural labourers, whereas the so-called aristocrat
comes into contact with the agricultural labourer only.
I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by
selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English
bourgeoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper,
particularly the Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing
exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded.
It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing
gold. {276} In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not
possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted.
True, these English bourgeois are good husbands and family men, and have
all sorts of other private virtues, and appear, in ordinary intercourse,
as decent and respectable as all other bourgeois; even in business they
are better to deal with than the Germans; they do not higgle and haggle
so much as our own pettifogging merchants; but how does this help
matters? Ultimately it is self-interest, and especially money gain,
which alone determines them. I once went into Manchester with such a
bourgeois, and spoke to him of the bad, unwholesome method of building,
the frightful condition of the working-people's quarters, and asserted
that I had never seen so ill-built a city. The man listened quietly to
the end, and said at the corner where we parted: "And yet there is a
great deal of money made here; good morning, sir." It is utterly
indifferent to the English bourgeois whether his working-men starve or
not, if only he makes money. All the conditions of life are measured by
money, and what brings no money is nonsense, unpractical, idealistic
bosh. Hence, Political Economy, the Science of Wealth, is the favourite
study of these bartering Jews. Every one of them is a Political
Economist. The relation of the manufacturer to his operatives has
nothing human in it; it is purely economic. The manufacturer is Capital,
the operative Labour. And if the operative will not be forced into this
abstraction, if he insists that he is not Labour, but a man, who
possesses, among other things, the attribute of labour force, if he takes
it into his head that he need not allow himself to be sold and bought in
the market, as the commodity "Labour," the bourgeois reason comes to a
standstill. He cannot comprehend that he holds any other relation to the
operatives than that of purchase and sale; he sees in them not human
beings, but hands, as he constantly calls them to their faces; he
insists, as Carlyle says, that "Cash Payment is the only nexus between
man and man." Even the relation between himself and his wife is, in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, mere "Cash Payment." Money
determines the worth of the man; he is "worth ten thousand pounds." He
who has money is of "the better sort of people," is "influential," and
what _he_ does counts for something in his social circle. The
huckstering spirit penetrates the whole language, all relations are
expressed in business terms, in economic categories. Supply and demand
are the formulas according to which the logic of the English bourgeois
judges all human life. Hence free competition in every respect, hence
the _regime_ of _laissez-faire, laissez-aller_ in government, in
medicine, in education, and soon to be in religion, too, as the State
Church collapses more and more. Free competition will suffer no
limitation, no State supervision; the whole State is but a burden to it.
It would reach its highest perfection in a _wholly_ ungoverned anarchic
society, where each might exploit the other to his heart's content.
Since, however, the bourgeoisie cannot dispense with government, but must
have it to hold the equally indispensable proletariat in check, it turns
the power of government against the proletariat and keeps out of its way
as far as possible.
Let no one believe, however, that the "cultivated" Englishman openly
brags with his egotism. On the contrary, he conceals it under the vilest
hypocrisy. What? The wealthy English fail to remember the poor? They
who have founded philanthropic institutions, such as no other country can
boast of! Philanthropic institutions forsooth! As though you rendered
the proletarians a service in first sucking out their very life-blood and
then practising your self-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them,
placing yourselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity
when you give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what
belongs to them! Charity which degrades him who gives more than him who
takes; charity which treads the downtrodden still deeper in the dust,
which demands that the degraded, the pariah cast out by society, shall
first surrender the last that remains to him, his very claim to manhood,
shall first beg for mercy before your mercy deigns to press, in the shape
of an alms, the brand of degradation upon his brow. But let us hear the
English bourgeoisie's own words. It is not yet a year since I read in
the _Manchester Guardian_ the following letter to the editor, which was
published without comment as a perfectly natural, reasonable thing:
"MR. EDITOR,--For some time past our main streets are haunted by
swarms of beggars, who try to awaken the pity of the passers-by in a
most shameless and annoying manner, by exposing their tattered
clothing, sickly aspect, and disgusting wounds and deformities. I
should think that when one not only pays the poor-rate, but also
contributes largely to the charitable institutions, one had done
enough to earn a right to be spared such disagreeable and impertinent
molestations. And why else do we pay such high rates for the
maintenance of the municipal police, if they do not even protect us so
far as to make it possible to go to or out of town in peace? I hope
the publication of these lines in your widely-circulated paper may
induce the authorities to remove this nuisance; and I remain,--Your
obedient servant,
"A LADY."
There you have it! The English bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-
interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business
matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: "If I spend this much upon
benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled
any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and
not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall
despair as before, but you shall despair unseen, this I require, this I
purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!" It is
infamous, this charity of a Christian bourgeois! And so writes "A Lady;"
she does well to sign herself such, well that she has lost the courage to
call herself a woman! But if the "Ladies" are such as this, what must
the "Gentlemen" be? It will be said that this is a single case; but no,
the foregoing letter expresses the temper of the great majority of the
English bourgeoisie, or the editor would not have accepted it, and some
reply would have been made to it, which I watched for in vain in the
succeeding numbers. And as to the efficiency of this philanthropy, Canon
Parkinson himself says that the poor are relieved much more by the poor
than by the bourgeoisie; and such relief given by an honest proletarian
who knows himself what it is to be hungry, for whom sharing his scanty
meal is really a sacrifice, but a sacrifice borne with pleasure, such
help has a wholly different ring to it from the carelessly-tossed alms of
the luxurious bourgeois.
In other respects, too, the bourgeoisie assumes a hypocritical, boundless
philanthropy, but only when its own interests require it; as in its
Politics and Political Economy. It has been at work now well on towards
five years to prove to the working-men that it strives to abolish the
Corn Laws solely in their interest. But the long and short of the matter
is this: the Corn Laws keep the price of bread higher than in other
countries, and thus raise wages, but these high wages render difficult
competition of the manufacturers against other nations in which bread,
and consequently wages, are cheaper. The Corn Laws being repealed, the
price of bread falls, and wages gradually approach those of other
European countries, as must be clear to every one from our previous
exposition of the principles according to which wages are determined. The
manufacturer can compete more readily, the demand for English goods
increases, and, with it, the demand for labour. In consequence of this
increased demand wages would actually rise somewhat, and the unemployed
workers be re-employed; but for how long? The "surplus population" of
England, and especially of Ireland, is sufficient to supply English
manufacture with the necessary operatives, even if it were doubled; and,
in a few years, the small advantage of the repeal of the Corn Laws would
be balanced, a new crisis would follow, and we should be back at the
point from which we started, while the first stimulus to manufacture
would have increased population meanwhile. All this the proletarians
understand very well, and have told the manufacturers to their faces;
but, in spite of that, the manufacturers have in view solely the
immediate advantage which the Corn Laws would bring them. They are too
narrow-minded to see that, even for themselves, no permanent advantage
can arise from this measure, because their competition with each other
would soon force the profit of the individual back to its old level; and
thus they continue to shriek to the working-men that it is purely for the
sake of the starving millions that the rich members of the Liberal party
pour hundreds and thousands of pounds into the treasury of the Anti-Corn
Law League, while every one knows that they are only sending the butter
after the cheese, that they calculate upon earning it all back in the
first ten years after the repeal of the Corn Laws. But the workers are
no longer to be misled by the bourgeoisie, especially since the
insurrection of 1842. They demand of every one who presents himself as
interested in their welfare, that he should declare himself in favour of
the People's Charter as proof of the sincerity of his professions, and in
so doing, they protest against all outside help, for the Charter is a
demand for the power to help themselves. Whoever declines so to declare
himself they pronounce their enemy, and are perfectly right in so doing,
whether he be a declared foe or a false friend Besides, the Anti-Corn Law
League has used the most despicable falsehoods and tricks to win the
support of the workers. It has tried to prove to them that the money
price of labour is in inverse proportion to the price of corn; that wages
are high when grain is cheap, and _vice versa_, an assertion which it
pretends to prove with the most ridiculous arguments, and one which is,
in itself, more ridiculous than any other that has proceeded from the
mouth of an Economist. When this failed to help matters, the workers
were promised bliss supreme in consequence of the increased demand in the
labour market; indeed, men went so far as to carry through the streets
two models of loaves of bread, on one of which, by far the larger, was
written: "American Eightpenny Loaf, Wages Four Shillings per Day," and
upon the much smaller one: "English Eightpenny Loaf, Wages Two Shillings
a Day." But the workers have not allowed themselves to be misled. They
know their lords and masters too well.
But rightly to measure the hypocrisy of these promises, the practice of
the bourgeoisie must be taken into account. We have seen in the course
of our report how the bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat in every
conceivable way for its own benefit! We have, however, hitherto seen
only how the single bourgeois maltreats the proletariat upon his own
account. Let us turn now to the manner in which the bourgeoisie as a
party, as the power of the State, conducts itself towards the
proletariat. Laws are necessary only because there are persons in
existence who own nothing; and although this is directly expressed in but
few laws, as, for instance, those against vagabonds and tramps, in which
the proletariat as such is outlawed, yet enmity to the proletariat is so
emphatically the basis of the law that the judges, and especially the
Justices of the Peace, who are bourgeois themselves, and with whom the
proletariat comes most in contact, find this meaning in the laws without
further consideration. If a rich man is brought up, or rather summoned,
to appear before the court, the judge regrets that he is obliged to
impose so much trouble, treats the matter as favourably as possible, and,
if he is forced to condemn the accused, does so with extreme regret, etc.
etc., and the end of it all is a miserable fine, which the bourgeois
throws upon the table with contempt and then departs. But if a poor
devil gets into such a position as involves appearing before the Justice
of the Peace--he has almost always spent the night in the station-house
with a crowd of his peers--he is regarded from the beginning as guilty;
his defence is set aside with a contemptuous "Oh! we know the excuse,"
and a fine imposed which he cannot pay and must work out with several
months on the treadmill. And if nothing can be proved against him, he is
sent to the treadmill, none the less, "as a rogue and a vagabond." The
partisanship of the Justices of the Peace, especially in the country,
surpasses all description, and it is so much the order of the day that
all cases which are not too utterly flagrant are quietly reported by the
newspapers, without comment. Nor is anything else to be expected. For
on the one hand, these Dogberries do merely construe the law according to
the intent of the farmers, and, on the other, they are themselves
bourgeois, who see the foundation of all true order in the interests of
their class. And the conduct of the police corresponds to that of the
Justices of the Peace. The bourgeois may do what he will and the police
remain ever polite, adhering strictly to the law, but the proletarian is
roughly, brutally treated; his poverty both casts the suspicion of every
sort of crime upon him and cuts him off from legal redress against any
caprice of the administrators of the law; for him, therefore, the
protecting forms of the law do not exist, the police force their way into
his house without further ceremony, arrest and abuse him; and only when a
working-men's association, such as the miners, engages a Roberts, does it
become evident how little the protective side of the law exists for the
working-men, how frequently he has to bear all the burdens of the law
without enjoying its benefits.
Down to the present hour, the property-holding class in Parliament still
struggles against the better feelings of those not yet fallen a prey to
egotism, and seeks to subjugate the proletariat still further. One piece
of common land after another is appropriated and placed under
cultivation, a process by which the general cultivation is furthered, but
the proletariat greatly injured. Where there were still commons, the
poor could pasture an ass, a pig, or geese, the children and young people
had a place where they could play and live out of doors; but this is
gradually coming to an end. The earnings of the worker are less, and the
young people, deprived of their playground, go to the beer-shops. A mass
of acts for enclosing and cultivating commons is passed at every session
of Parliament. When the Government determined during the session of 1844
to force the all monopolising railways to make travelling possible for
the workers by means of charges proportionate to their means, a penny a
mile, and proposed therefore to introduce such a third class train upon
every railway daily, the "Reverend Father in God," the Bishop of London,
proposed that Sunday, the only day upon which working-men in work _can_
travel, be exempted from this rule, and travelling thus be left open to
the rich and shut off from the poor. This proposition was, however, too
direct, too undisguised to pass through Parliament, and was dropped. I
have no room to enumerate the many concealed attacks of even one single
session upon the proletariat. One from the session of 1844 must suffice.
An obscure member of Parliament, a Mr. Miles, proposed a bill regulating
the relation of master and servant which seemed comparatively
unobjectionable. The Government became interested in the bill, and it
was referred to a committee. Meanwhile the strike among the miners in
the North broke out, and Roberts made his triumphal passage through
England with his acquitted working-men. When the bill was reported by
the committee, it was discovered that certain most despotic provisions
had been interpolated in it, especially one conferring upon the employer
the power to bring before any Justice of the Peace every working-man who
had contracted verbally or in writing to do any work whatsoever, in case
of refusal to work or other misbehaviour, and have him condemned to
prison with hard labour for two months, upon the oath of the employer or
his agent or overlooker, _i.e_., upon the oath of the accuser. This bill
aroused the working-men to the utmost fury, the more so as the Ten Hours'
Bill was before Parliament at the same time, and had called forth a
considerable agitation. Hundreds of meetings were held, hundreds of
working-men's petitions forwarded to London to Thomas Duncombe, the
representative of the interests of the proletariat. This man was, except
Ferrand, the representative of "Young England," the only vigorous
opponent of the bill; but when the other Radicals saw that the people
were declaring against it, one after the other crept forward and took his
place by Duncombe's side; and as the Liberal bourgeoisie had not the
courage to defend the bill in the face of the excitement among the
working-men, it was ignominiously lost.
Meanwhile the most open declaration of war of the bourgeoisie upon the
proletariat is Malthus' Law of Population and the New Poor Law framed in
accordance with it. We have already alluded several times to the theory
of Malthus. We may sum up its final result in these few words, that the
earth is perennially over-populated, whence poverty, misery, distress,
and immorality must prevail; that it is the lot, the eternal destiny of
mankind, to exist in too great numbers, and therefore in diverse classes,
of which some are rich, educated, and moral, and others more or less
poor, distressed, ignorant, and immoral. Hence it follows in practice,
and Malthus himself drew this conclusion, that charities and poor-rates
are, properly speaking, nonsense, since they serve only to maintain, and
stimulate the increase of, the surplus population whose competition
crushes down wages for the employed; that the employment of the poor by
the Poor Law Guardians is equally unreasonable, since only a fixed
quantity of the products of labour can be consumed, and for every
unemployed labourer thus furnished employment, another hitherto employed
must be driven into enforced idleness, whence private undertakings suffer
at cost of Poor Law industry; that, in other words, the whole problem is
not how to support the surplus population, but how to restrain it as far
as possible. Malthus declares in plain English that the right to live, a
right previously asserted in favour of every man in the world, is
nonsense. He quotes the words of a poet, that the poor man comes to the
feast of Nature and finds no cover laid for him, and adds that "she bids
him begone," for he did not before his birth ask of society whether or
not he is welcome. This is now the pet theory of all genuine English
bourgeois, and very naturally, since it is the most specious excuse for
them, and has, moreover, a good deal of truth in it under existing
conditions. If, then, the problem is not to make the "surplus
population" useful, to transform it into available population, but merely
to let it starve to death in the least objectionable way and to prevent
its having too many children, this, of course, is simple enough, provided
the surplus population perceives its own superfluousness and takes kindly
to starvation. There is, however, in spite of the violent exertions of
the humane bourgeoisie, no immediate prospect of its succeeding in
bringing about such a disposition among the workers. The workers have
taken it into their heads that they, with their busy hands, are the
necessary, and the rich capitalists, who do nothing, the surplus
population.
Since, however, the rich hold all the power, the proletarians must
submit, if they will not good-temperedly perceive it for themselves, to
have the law actually declare them superfluous. This has been done by
the New Poor Law. The Old Poor Law which rested upon the Act of 1601
(the 43rd of Elizabeth), naively started from the notion that it is the
duty of the parish to provide for the maintenance of the poor. Whoever
had no work received relief, and the poor man regarded the parish as
pledged to protect him from starvation. He demanded his weekly relief as
his right, not as a favour, and this became, at last, too much for the
bourgeoisie. In 1833, when the bourgeoisie had just come into power
through the Reform Bill, and pauperism in the country districts had just
reached its full development, the bourgeoisie began the reform of the
Poor Law according to its own point of view. A commission was appointed,
which investigated the administration of the Poor Laws, and revealed a
multitude of abuses. It was discovered that the whole working-class in
the country was pauperised and more or less dependent upon the rates,
from which they received relief when wages were low; it was found that
this system by which the unemployed were maintained, the ill-paid and the
parents of large families relieved, fathers of illegitimate children
required to pay alimony, and poverty, in general, recognised as needing
protection, it was found that this system was ruining the nation, was--
"A check upon industry, a reward for improvident marriage, a stimulus
to increased population, and a means of counterbalancing the effect of
an increased population upon wages; a national provision for
discouraging the honest and industrious, and protecting the lazy,
vicious, and improvident; calculated to destroy the bonds of family
life, hinder systematically the accumulation of capital, scatter that
which is already accumulated, and ruin the taxpayers. Moreover, in
the provision of aliment, it sets a premium upon illegitimate
children."
(Words of the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners.) {286} This
description of the action of the Old Poor Law is certainly correct;
relief fosters laziness and increase of "surplus population." Under
present social conditions it is perfectly clear that the poor man is
compelled to be an egotist, and when he can choose, living equally well
in either case, he prefers doing nothing to working. But what follows
therefrom? That our present social conditions are good for nothing, and
not as the Malthusian Commissioners conclude, that poverty is a crime,
and, as such, to be visited with heinous penalties which may serve as a
warning to others.
But these wise Malthusians were so thoroughly convinced of the
infallibility of their theory that they did not for one moment hesitate
to cast the poor into the Procrustean bed of their economic notions and
treat them with the most revolting cruelty. Convinced with Malthus and
the rest of the adherents of free competition that it is best to let each
one take care of himself, they would have preferred to abolish the Poor
Laws altogether. Since, however, they had neither the courage nor the
authority to do this, they proposed a Poor Law constructed as far as
possible in harmony with the doctrine of Malthus, which is yet more
barbarous than that of _laissez-faire_, because it interferes actively in
cases in which the latter is passive. We have seen how Malthus
characterises poverty, or rather the want of employment, as a crime under
the title "superfluity," and recommends for it punishment by starvation.
The commissioners were not quite so barbarous; death outright by
starvation was something too terrible even for a Poor Law Commissioner.
"Good," said they, "we grant you poor a right to exist, but only to
exist; the right to multiply you have not, nor the right to exist as
befits human beings. You are a pest, and if we cannot get rid of you as
we do of other pests, you shall feel, at least, that you are a pest, and
you shall at least be held in check, kept from bringing into the world
other "surplus," either directly or through inducing in others laziness
and want of employment. Live you shall, but live as an awful warning to
all those who might have inducements to become "superfluous."
They accordingly brought in the New Poor Law, which was passed by
Parliament in 1834, and continues in force down to the present day. All
relief in money and provisions was abolished; the only relief allowed was
admission to the workhouses immediately built. The regulations for these
workhouses, or, as the people call them, Poor Law Bastilles, is such as
to frighten away every one who has the slightest prospect of life without
this form of public charity. To make sure that relief be applied for
only in the most extreme cases and after every other effort had failed,
the workhouse has been made the most repulsive residence which the
refined ingenuity of a Malthusian can invent. The food is worse than
that of the most ill-paid working-man while employed, and the work
harder, or they might prefer the workhouse to their wretched existence
outside. Meat, especially fresh meat, is rarely furnished, chiefly
potatoes, the worst possible bread and oatmeal porridge, little or no
beer. The food of criminal prisoners is better, as a rule, so that the
paupers frequently commit some offence for the purpose of getting into
jail. For the workhouse is a jail too; he who does not finish his task
gets nothing to eat; he who wishes to go out must ask permission, which
is granted or not, according to his behaviour or the inspector's whim,
tobacco is forbidden, also the receipt of gifts from relatives or friends
outside the house; the paupers wear a workhouse uniform, and are handed
over, helpless and without redress, to the caprice of the inspectors. To
prevent their labour from competing with that of outside concerns, they
are set to rather useless tasks: the men break stones, "as much as a
strong man can accomplish with effort in a day;" the women, children, and
aged men pick oakum, for I know not what insignificant use. To prevent
the "superfluous" from multiplying, and "demoralised" parents from
influencing their children, families are broken up, the husband is placed
in one wing, the wife in another, the children in a third, and they are
permitted to see one another only at stated times after long intervals,
and then only when they have, in the opinion of the officials, behaved
well. And in order to shut off the external world from contamination by
pauperism within these bastilles, the inmates are permitted to receive
visits only with the consent of the officials, and in the
reception-rooms; to communicate in general with the world outside only by
leave and under supervision.
Yet the food is supposed to be wholesome and the treatment humane with
all this. But the intent of the law is too loudly outspoken for this
requirement to be in any wise fulfilled. The Poor Law Commissioners and
the whole English bourgeoisie deceive themselves if they believe the
administration of the law possible without these results. The treatment,
which the letter of the law prescribes, is in direct contradiction of its
spirit. If the law in its essence proclaims the poor criminals, the
workhouses prisons, their inmates beyond the pale of the law, beyond the
pale of humanity, objects of disgust and repulsion, then all commands to
the contrary are unavailing. In practice, the spirit and not the letter
of the law is followed in the treatment of the poor, as in the following
few examples:
"In the workhouse at Greenwich, in the summer of 1843, a boy five years
old was punished by being shut into the dead-room, where he had to sleep
upon the lids of the coffins. In the workhouse at Herne, the same
punishment was inflicted upon a little girl for wetting the bed at night,
and this method of punishment seems to be a favourite one. This
workhouse, which stands in one of the most beautiful regions of Kent, is
peculiar, in so far as its windows open only upon the court, and but two,
newly introduced, afford the inmates a glimpse of the outer world. The
author who relates this in the _Illuminated Magazine_, closes his
description with the words: "If God punished men for crimes as man
punishes man for poverty, then woe to the sons of Adam!"
In November, 1843, a man died at Leicester, who had been dismissed two
days before from the workhouse at Coventry. The details of the treatment
of the poor in this institution are revolting. The man, George Robson,
had a wound upon the shoulder, the treatment of which was wholly
neglected; he was set to work at the pump, using the sound arm; was given
only the usual workhouse fare, which he was utterly unable to digest by
reason of the unhealed wound and his general debility; he naturally grew
weaker, and the more he complained, the more brutally he was treated.
When his wife tried to bring him her drop of beer, she was reprimanded,
and forced to drink it herself in the presence of the female warder. He
became ill, but received no better treatment. Finally, at his own
request, and under the most insulting epithets, he was discharged,
accompanied by his wife. Two days later he died at Leicester, in
consequence of the neglected wound and of the food given him, which was
utterly indigestible for one in his condition, as the surgeon present at
the inquest testified. When he was discharged, there were handed to him
letters containing money, which had been kept back six weeks, and opened,
according to a rule of the establishment, by the inspector! In
Birmingham such scandalous occurrences took place, that finally, in 1843,
an official was sent to investigate the case. He found that four tramps
had been shut up naked under a staircase in a black hole, eight to ten
days, often deprived of food until noon, and that at the severest season
of the year. A little boy had been passed through all grades of
punishment known to the institution; first locked up in a damp, vaulted,
narrow, lumber-room; then in the dog-hole twice, the second time three
days and three nights; then the same length of time in the old dog-hole,
which was still worse; then the tramp-room, a stinking, disgustingly
filthy hole, with wooden sleeping stalls, where the official, in the
course of his inspection, found two other tattered boys, shrivelled with
cold, who had been spending three days there. In the dog-hole there were
often seven, and in the tramp-room, twenty men huddled together. Women,
also, were placed in the dog-hole, because they refused to go to church;
and one was shut four days into the tramp-room, with God knows what sort
of company, and that while she was ill and receiving medicine! Another
woman was placed in the insane department for punishment, though she was
perfectly sane. In the workhouse at Bacton, in Suffolk, in January,
1844, a similar investigation revealed the fact that a feeble-minded
woman was employed as nurse, and took care of the patients accordingly;
while sufferers, who were often restless at night, or tried to get up,
were tied fast with cords passed over the covering and under the
bedstead, to save the nurses the trouble of sitting up at night. One
patient was found dead, bound in this way. In the St. Pancras workhouse
in London (where the cheap shirts already mentioned are made), an
epileptic died of suffocation during an attack in bed, no one coming to
his relief; in the same house, four to six, sometimes eight children,
slept in one bed. In Shoreditch workhouse a man was placed, together
with a fever patient violently ill, in a bed teeming with vermin. In
Bethnal Green workhouse, London, a woman in the sixth month of pregnancy
was shut up in the reception-room with her two-year-old child, from
February 28th to March 20th, without being admitted into the workhouse
itself, and without a trace of a bed or the means of satisfying the most
natural wants. Her husband, who was brought into the workhouse, begged
to have his wife released from this imprisonment, whereupon he received
twenty-four hours imprisonment, with bread and water, as the penalty of
his insolence. In the workhouse at Slough, near Windsor, a man lay dying
in September, 1844. His wife journeyed to him, arriving at midnight; and
hastening to the workhouse, was refused admission. She was not permitted
to see her husband until the next morning, and then only in the presence
of a female warder, who forced herself upon the wife at every succeeding
visit, sending her away at the end of half-an-hour. In the workhouse at
Middleton, in Lancashire, twelve, and at times eighteen, paupers, of both
sexes, slept in one room. This institution is not embraced by the New
Poor Law, but is administered under an old special act (Gilbert's Act).
The inspector had instituted a brewery in the house for his own benefit.
In Stockport, July 31st, 1844, a man, seventy-two years old, was brought
before the Justice of the Peace for refusing to break stones, and
insisting that, by reason of his age and a stiff knee, he was unfit for
his work. In vain did he offer to undertake any work adapted to his
physical strength; he was sentenced to two weeks upon the treadmill. In
the workhouse at Basford, an inspecting official found that the sheets
had not been changed in thirteen weeks, shirts in four weeks, stockings
in two to ten months, so that of forty-five boys but three had stockings,
and all their shirts were in tatters. The beds swarmed with vermin, and
the tableware was washed in the slop-pails. In the west of London
workhouse, a porter who had infected four girls with syphilis was not
discharged, and another who had concealed a deaf and dumb girl four days
and nights in his bed was also retained.
As in life, so in death. The poor are dumped into the earth like
infected cattle. The pauper burial-ground of St. Brides, London, is a
bare morass, in use as a cemetery since the time of Charles II., and
filled with heaps of bones; every Wednesday the paupers are thrown into a
ditch fourteen feet deep; a curate rattles through the Litany at the top
of his speed; the ditch is loosely covered in, to be re-opened the next
Wednesday, and filled with corpses as long as one more can be forced in.
The putrefaction thus engendered contaminates the whole neighbourhood. In
Manchester, the pauper burial-ground lies opposite to the Old Town, along
the Irk: this, too, is a rough, desolate place. About two years ago a
railroad was carried through it. If it had been a respectable cemetery,
how the bourgeoisie and the clergy would have shrieked over the
desecration! But it was a pauper burial-ground, the resting-place of the
outcast and superfluous, so no one concerned himself about the matter. It
was not even thought worth while to convey the partially decayed bodies
to the other side of the cemetery; they were heaped up just as it
happened, and piles were driven into newly-made graves, so that the water
oozed out of the swampy ground, pregnant with putrefying matter, and
filled the neighbourhood with the most revolting and injurious gases. The
disgusting brutality which accompanied this work I cannot describe in
further detail.
Can any one wonder that the poor decline to accept public relief under
these conditions? That they starve rather than enter these bastilles? I
have the reports of five cases in which persons actually starving, when
the guardians refused them outdoor relief, went back to their miserable
homes and died of starvation rather than enter these hells. Thus far
have the Poor Law Commissioners attained their object. At the same time,
however, the workhouses have intensified, more than any other measure of
the party in power, the hatred of the working-class against the property-
holders, who very generally admire the New Poor Law.
From Newcastle to Dover, there is but one voice among the workers--the
voice of hatred against the new law. The bourgeoisie has formulated so
clearly in this law its conception of its duties towards the proletariat,
that it has been appreciated even by the dullest. So frankly, so boldly
had the conception never yet been formulated, that the non-possessing
class exists solely for the purpose of being exploited, and of starving
when the property-holders can no longer make use of it. Hence it is that
this new Poor Law has contributed so greatly to accelerate the labour
movement, and especially to spread Chartism; and, as it is carried out
most extensively in the country, it facilitates the development of the
proletarian movement which is arising in the agricultural districts. Let
me add that a similar law in force in Ireland since 1838, affords a
similar refuge for eighty thousand paupers. Here, too, it has made
itself disliked, and would have been intensely hated if it had attained
anything like the same importance as in England. But what difference
does the ill-treatment of eighty thousand proletarians make in a country
in which there are two and a half millions of them? In Scotland there
are, with local exceptions, no Poor Laws.
I hope that after this picture of the New Poor Law and its results, no
word which I have said of the English bourgeoisie will be thought too
stern. In this public measure, in which it acts _in corpore_ as the
ruling power, it formulates its real intentions, reveals the animus of
those smaller transactions with the proletariat, of which the blame
apparently attaches to individuals. And that this measure did not
originate with any one section of the bourgeoisie, but enjoys the
approval of the whole class, is proved by the Parliamentary debates of
1844. The Liberal party had enacted the New Poor Law; the Conservative
party, with its Prime Minister Peel at the head, defends it, and only
alters some petty-fogging trifles in the Poor Law Amendment Bill of 1844.
A Liberal majority carried the bill, a Conservative majority approved it,
and the "Noble Lords" gave their consent each time. Thus is the
expulsion of the proletariat from State and society outspoken, thus is it
publicly proclaimed that proletarians are not human beings, and do not
deserve to be treated as such. Let us leave it to the proletarians of
the British Empire to re-conquer their human rights. {293}
Such is the state of the British working-class as I have come to know it
in the course of twenty-one months, through the medium of my own eyes,
and through official and other trustworthy reports. And when I call this
condition, as I have frequently enough done in the foregoing pages, an
utterly unbearable one, I am not alone in so doing. As early as 1833,
Gaskell declared that he despaired of a peaceful issue, and that a
revolution can hardly fail to follow. In 1838, Carlyle explained
Chartism and the revolutionary activity of the working-men as arising out
of the misery in which they live, and only wondered that they have sat so
quietly eight long years at the Barmecide feast, at which they have been
regaled by the Liberal bourgeoisie with empty promises. And in 1844 he
declared that the work of organising labour must be begun at once "if
Europe or at least England, is long to remain inhabitable." And the
_Times_, the "first journal of Europe," said in June, 1844: "War to
palaces, peace unto cabins--that is a battle-cry of terror which may come
to resound throughout our country. Let the wealthy beware!"
* * * * *
Meanwhile, let us review once more the chances of the English
bourgeoisie. In the worst case, foreign manufacture, especially that of
America, may succeed in withstanding English competition, even after the
repeal of the Corn Laws, inevitable in the course of a few years. German
manufacture is now making great efforts, and that of America has
developed with giant strides. America, with its inexhaustible resources,
with its unmeasured coal and iron fields, with its unexampled wealth of
water-power and its navigable rivers, but especially with its energetic,
active population, in comparison with which the English are phlegmatic
dawdlers,--America has in less than ten years created a manufacture which
already competes with England in the coarser cotton goods, has excluded
the English from the markets of North and South America, and holds its
own in China, side by side with England. If any country is adapted to
holding a monopoly of manufacture, it is America. Should English
manufacture be thus vanquished--and in the course of the next twenty
years, if the present conditions remain unchanged, this is inevitable--the
majority of the proletariat must become forever superfluous, and has no
other choice than to starve or to rebel. Does the English bourgeoisie
reflect upon this contingency? On the contrary; its favourite economist,
M'Culloch, teaches from his student's desk, that a country so young as
America, which is not even properly populated, cannot carry on
manufacture successfully or dream of competing with an old manufacturing
country like England. It were madness in the Americans to make the
attempt, for they could only lose by it; better far for them to stick to
their agriculture, and when they have brought their whole territory under
the plough, a time may perhaps come for carrying on manufacture with a
profit. So says the wise economist, and the whole bourgeoisie worships
him, while the Americans take possession of one market after another,
while a daring American speculator recently even sent a shipment of
American cotton goods to England, where they were sold for
re-exportation!
But assuming that England retained the monopoly of manufactures, that its
factories perpetually multiply, what must be the result? The commercial
crises would continue, and grow more violent, more terrible, with the
extension of industry and the multiplication of the proletariat. The
proletariat would increase in geometrical proportion, in consequence of
the progressive ruin of the lower middle-class and the giant strides with
which capital is concentrating itself in the hands of the few; and the
proletariat would soon embrace the whole nation, with the exception of a
few millionaires. But in this development there comes a stage at which
the proletariat perceives how easily the existing power may be
overthrown, and then follows a revolution.
Neither of these supposed conditions may, however, be expected to arise.
The commercial crises, the mightiest levers for all independent
development of the proletariat, will probably shorten the process, acting
in concert with foreign competition and the deepening ruin of the lower
middle-class. I think the people will not endure more than one more
crisis. The next one, in 1846 or 1847, will probably bring with it the
repeal of the Corn Laws {296} and the enactment of the Charter. What
revolutionary movements the Charter may give rise to remains to be seen.
But, by the time of the next following crisis, which, according to the
analogy of its predecessors, must break out in 1852 or 1853, unless
delayed perhaps by the repeal of the Corn Laws or hastened by other
influences, such as foreign competition--by the time this crisis arrives,
the English people will have had enough of being plundered by the
capitalists and left to starve when the capitalists no longer require
their services. If, up to that time, the English bourgeoisie does not
pause to reflect--and to all appearance it certainly will not do so--a
revolution will follow with which none hitherto known can be compared.
The proletarians, driven to despair, will seize the torch which Stephens
has preached to them; the vengeance of the people will come down with a
wrath of which the rage of 1793 gives no true idea. The war of the poor
against the rich will be the bloodiest ever waged. Even the union of a
part of the bourgeoisie with the proletariat, even a general reform of
the bourgeoisie, would not help matters. Besides, the change of heart of
the bourgeoisie could only go as far as a lukewarm _juste-milieu_; the
more determined, uniting with the workers, would only form a new Gironde,
and succumb in the course of the mighty development. The prejudices of a
whole class cannot be laid aside like an old coat: least of all, those of
the stable, narrow, selfish English bourgeoisie. These are all
inferences which may be drawn with the greatest certainty: conclusions,
the premises for which are undeniable facts, partly of historical
development, partly facts inherent in human nature. Prophecy is nowhere
so easy as in England, where all the component elements of society are
clearly defined and sharply separated. The revolution must come; it is
already too late to bring about a peaceful solution; but it can be made
more gentle than that prophesied in the foregoing pages. This depends,
however, more upon the development of the proletariat than upon that of
the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the proletariat absorbs socialistic
and communistic elements, will the revolution diminish in bloodshed,
revenge, and savagery. Communism stands, in principle, above the breach
between bourgeoisie and proletariat, recognises only its historic
significance for the present, but not its justification for the future:
wishes, indeed, to bridge over this chasm, to do away with all class
antagonisms. Hence it recognises as justified, so long as the struggle
exists, the exasperation of the proletariat towards its oppressors as a
necessity, as the most important lever for a labour movement just
beginning; but it goes beyond this exasperation, because Communism is a
question of humanity and not of the workers alone. Besides, it does not
occur to any Communist to wish to revenge himself upon individuals, or to
believe that, in general, the single bourgeois can act otherwise, under
existing circumstances, than he does act. English Socialism, _i.e_.
Communism, rests directly upon the irresponsibility of the individual.
Thus the more the English workers absorb communistic ideas, the more
superfluous becomes their present bitterness, which, should it continue
so violent as at present, could accomplish nothing; and the more their
action against the bourgeoisie will lose its savage cruelty. If, indeed,
it were possible to make the whole proletariat communistic before the war
breaks out, the end would be very peaceful; but that is no longer
possible, the time has gone by. Meanwhile, I think that before the
outbreak of open, declared war of the poor against the rich, there will
be enough intelligent comprehension of the social question among the
proletariat, to enable the communistic party, with the help of events, to
conquer the brutal element of the revolution and prevent a "Ninth
Thermidor." In any case, the experience of the French will not have been
undergone in vain, and most of the Chartist leaders are, moreover,
already Communists. And as Communism stands above the strife between
bourgeoisie and proletariat, it will be easier for the better elements of
the bourgeoisie (which are, however, deplorably few, and can look for
recruits only among the rising generation) to unite with it than with
purely proletarian Chartism.
If these conclusions have not been sufficiently established in the course
of the present work, there may be other opportunities for demonstrating
that they are necessary consequences of the historical development of
England. But this I maintain, the war of the poor against the rich now
carried on in detail and indirectly will become direct and universal. It
is too late for a peaceful solution. The classes are divided more and
more sharply, the spirit of resistance penetrates the workers, the
bitterness intensifies, the guerilla skirmishes become concentrated in
more important battles, and soon a slight impulse will suffice to set the
avalanche in motion. Then, indeed, will the war-cry resound through the
land: "War to the palaces, peace to the cottages!"--but then it will be
too late for the rich to beware.
TRANSLATORS NOTE.
Being unable at this late day to obtain the original English, the
translator has been compelled to re-translate from the German the
passages quoted in the text from the following sources:--G. Alston,
preacher of St. Philip's, Bethnal Green.--D. W. P. Alison, F.R.S.E.,
"Observations on the Management of the Poor in Scotland," 1840.--The
_Artisan_, 1842, October number.--J. C. Symonds, "Arts and Artisans at
Home and Abroad," Edin., 1839.--Report of the Town Council of Leeds,
published in _Statistical Journal_, vol. ii., p. 404.--Nassau W. Senior,
"Letters on the Factory Act to the Rt. Hon. the President of the Board of
Trade" (Chas. Poulett Thomson, Esq.), London, 1837.--Report of the
Children's Employment Commission.--Mr. Parkinson, Canon of Manchester,
"On the Present Condition of the Labouring Poor in Manchester," 3rd Ed.,
1841.--Factories' Inquiries Commission's Report.--E. G. Wakefield, M. P.,
"Swing Unmasked; or, The Cause of Rural Incendiarism," London, 1831.--A
Correspondent of the _Morning Chronicle_.--Anonymous pamphlet on "The
State of Ireland," London, 1807; 2nd Ed., 1821.--Report of the Poor Law
Commissioners: Extracts from Information received by the Poor Law
Commissioners. Published by Authority, London, 1833.
INDEX
Accidents, 109, 143, 150, 164, 165, 294.
Adulteration, 67, _et seq_.
Apprentices, 169, 191, 197, _et seq_. 209.
Charter, 225, _et seq_. 280, 296.
Chartism, xiv., xix., 65, 123, 228, _et seq_. 275, 292.
Chartists, 135, 176, 199, 231, _et seq_. 253, 258.
Corn Laws, 113, 261, 268, 279, 280, 294.
League, 122, 231, 268, 280.
Repeal of, vi., 17, 231, 232, 275.
Cottage System, v., 182, 183, 251, 252, 256.
Crime--Form of Rebellion, 266, _et seq_. 274.
Increase of, 130, _et seq_.
Juvenile, 200, 204.
Result of Overcrowding, 65, 120, 121.
Diseases, Engendered by Dwellings, 201, 202.
Filth, 35, 40, 41, 64, 96, 97.
Occupation, 162-3, 177-8, 191-2, 206.
Overwork, 153, 155, _et seq_. 171, 245-6.
Want, 30, 73, 88, 108, 199, 210-11.
Education--Means of, 108, _et seq_. 195, 200, 201, 202, 238, 254.
Want of, 90, 91, 126, 129, 148, 149.
Employment of Children,
In Agriculture, 262, 263.
In Factories, 141, _et seq_. 167, 171, _et seq_. 193.
In House Industry, 191, _et seq_.
In Mines, 241, 244, _et seq_.
In the Night, 191, 207.
Employment of Women,
In Agriculture, 263.
In Factories, 141, _et seq_. 160, _et seq_. 175, 192.
In Mines, 241, 242, 248, 249.
In Sewing, 209, _et seq_.
Epidemics, vi., 37, 41, 61, 64, 98, 100, 110, 158.
Factory Acts, x., xi., 17, 134, 151, 168, 116, 176, 188.
Food--Adulteration of, 98.
Insufficiency of, 32, 74, 101, 102, 193, 208.
Quality of, 68, 71, 91, 140, 201.
Free Trade, vii., viii., _et seq_. 183, 234, 268.
Intemperance, 102, 127, 128.
Inventions. 1, 4, _et seq_. 42, 134, _et seq_. 223, 224.
Law--A Bourgeois Institution, 113, 130, 173, 176, 227, 281, 282, 288.
New Poor, 174, 175, 230, 235, 262, _et seq_. 269, 284, _et seq_.
Old Poor, 176, 284, 285.
Of Wages, xi., 77, _et seq_. 219.
Mortality, 100, 101, 104, _et seq_. 143, 150, 243.
Parliament, 17, 96, 111, 214, 228, 251, 283, 287.
Philanthropy, 27, 28, 88, 173, 212, 278.
Police, 132, 221, 225, 226, 281, 282.
Reform Bill, ix., 17, 214, 229, 285.
Reserve Army, 85, 90.
Schools--Day, 110, _et seq_. 173, 200, 207, 250.
Night, 110, 250.
Sunday, 111, 202, 250.
Socialism, vi., vii., xii., 122, 236, _et seq_. 275, 297.
Starvation, 25, 29, 73, 76, 88, 117, 167, 189, 285.
Strikes, ix., xiv., xv., 168, 215, 218, 223, 224, 231, 254, 256, 257.
Suicide, 115, 116.
Surplus Population, 81, _et seq_. 139, 263, 266, 280, 287.
Ten Hours' Bill, vii., 142, 172, 174, _et seq_. 230, 235, 284.
Truck System, vii., viii., 182-3, 185, 252, 253.
Ventilation of Dwellings, 36.
Mines, 249.
Towns, 27, 28, 36, 53, _et seq_. 63, 64, 96, _et seq_.
Workrooms, 155, 156, 158.
Workhouses, 287, _et seq_.
Footnotes.
{7} According to Porter's _Progress of the Nation_, London, 1836, vol.
i., 1838, vol. ii., 1843, vol. iii. (official data), and other sources
chiefly official.
{20} Compare on this point my "Outlines for a Critique of Political
Economy" in the _Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher_.
{23} This applies to the time of sailing vessels. The Thames now is a
dreary collection of ugly steamers.--F. E.
{32} _Times_, Oct. 12th, 1843.
{33} Quoted by Dr. W. P. Alison, F.R.S.E, Fellow and late President of
the Royal College of Physicians, etc. etc. "Observations on the
Management of the Poor in Scotland and its Effects on the Health of Great
Towns." Edinburgh, 1840. The author is a religious Tory, brother of the
historian, Archibald Alison.
{35a} "Report to the Home Secretary from the Poor-Law Commissioners on
an Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Classes in Great
Britain with Appendix." Presented to both Houses of Parliament in July
1842, 3 vols. Folio.
{35b} _The Artisan_, October, 1842.
{38} "Arts and Artisan at Home and Abroad," by J. C. Symonds, Edinburgh,
1839. The author, as it seems, himself a Scotchman, is a Liberal, and
consequently fanatically opposed to every independent movement of working-
men. The passages here cited are to be found p. 116 _et seq_.
{40a} It must be borne in mind that these cellars are not mere storing-
rooms for rubbish, but dwellings of human beings.
{40b} Compare Report of the Town Council in the Statistical Journal,
vol. 2, p. 404.
{49} "The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working-Classes Employed
in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester." By James Ph. Kay, M.D. 2nd
Ed. 1832.
Dr. Kay confuses the working-class in general with the factory workers,
otherwise an excellent pamphlet.
{55} And yet an English Liberal wiseacre asserts, in the Report of the
Children's Employment Commission, that these courts are the masterpiece
of municipal architecture, because, like a multitude of little parks,
they improve ventilation, the circulation of air! Certainly, if each
court had two or four broad open entrances facing each other, through
which the air could pour; but they never have two, rarely one, and
usually only a narrow covered passage.
{63} Nassau W. Senior. "Letters on the Factory Act to the Rt. Hon. the
President of the Board of Trade" (Chas. Poulett Thompson, Esq.), London,
1837, p. 24.
{64} Kay, loc. cit., p. 32.
{65} P. Gaskell. "The Manufacturing Population of England: its Moral,
Social and Physical Condition, and the Changes which have arisen from the
Use of Steam Machinery; with an Examination of Infant Labour." "Fiat
Justitia," 1833.--Depicting chiefly the state of the working-class in
Lancashire. The author is a Liberal, but wrote at a time when it was not
a feature of Liberalism to chant the happiness of the workers. He is
therefore unprejudiced, and can afford to have eyes for the evils of the
present state of things, and especially for the factory system. On the
other hand, he wrote before the Factories Enquiry Commission, and adopts
from untrustworthy sources many assertions afterwards refuted by the
Report of the Commission. This work, although on the whole a valuable
one, can therefore only be used with discretion, especially as the
author, like Kay, confuses the whole working-class with the mill hands.
The history of the development of the proletariat contained in the
introduction to the present work, is chiefly taken from this work of
Gaskell's.
{67} Thomas Carlyle. "Chartism," London, 1840, p. 28.
{80} Adam Smith. "Wealth of Nations" I., McCulloch's edition in one
volume, sect. 8, p. 36: "The wear and tear of a slave, it has been said,
is at the expense of his master, but that of a free servant is at his own
expense. The wear and tear of the latter, however, is, in reality, as
much at the expense of his master as that of the former. The wages paid
to journeymen and servants of every kind, must be such as may enable
them, one with another, to continue the race of journeymen and servants,
according as the increasing, diminishing, or stationary demand of the
society may happen to require. But though the wear and tear of a free
servant be equally at the expense of his master, it generally costs him
much less than that of a slave. The fund for replacing or repairing, if
I may say so, the wear and tear of the slave, is commonly managed by a
negligent master or careless overseer."
{87} And it came in 1847.
{90a} Archibald Alison. "Principles of Population and their Connection
with Human Happiness," two vols., 1840. This Alison is the historian of
the French Revolution, and, like his brother, Dr. W. P. Alison, a
religious Tory.
{90b} "Chartism," pp. 28, 31, etc.
{95} When as here and elsewhere I speak of society as a responsible
whole, having rights and duties, I mean, of course, the ruling power of
society, the class which at present holds social and political control,
and bears, therefore, the responsibility for the condition of those to
whom it grants no share in such control. This ruling class in England,
as in all other civilised countries, is the bourgeoisie. But that this
society, and especially the bourgeoisie, is charged with the duty of
protecting every member of society, at least, in his life, to see to it,
for example, that no one starves, I need not now prove to my _German_
readers. If I were writing for the English bourgeoisie, the case would
be different. (And so it is now in Germany. Our German capitalists are
fully up to the English level, in this respect at least, in the year of
grace, 1886.)
{100a} Dr. Alison. "Management of the Poor in Scotland."
{100b} Alison. "Principles of Population," vol. ii.
{100c} Dr. Alison in an article read before the British Association for
the Advancement of Science. October, 1844, in York.
{104} "Manufacturing Population," ch 8.
{105a} Report of Commission of Inquiry into the Employment of Children
and Young Persons in Mines and Collieries and in the Trades and
Manufactures in which numbers of them work together, not being included
under the terms of the Factories' Regulation Act. First and Second
Reports, Grainger's Report. Second Report usually cited as "Children's
Employment Commission's Report." First Report, 1841; Second Report,
1843.
{105b} Fifth Annual Report of the Reg. Gen. of Births, Deaths, and
Marriages.
{106} Dr. Cowen. "Vital Statistics of Glasgow."
{107} Report of Commission of Inquiry into the State of Large Towns and
Populous Districts. First Report, 1844. Appendix.
{108a} Factories' Inquiry Commission's Reports, 3rd vol. Report of Dr.
Hawkins on Lancashire, in which Dr. Robertson is cited--the "Chief
Authority for Statistics in Manchester."
{108b} Quoted by Dr. Wade from the Report of the Parliamentary
Factories' Commission of 1832, in his "History of the Middle and Working-
Classes." London, 1835, 3rd ed.
{112a} Children's Employment Commission's Report. App. Part II. Q. 18,
No. 216, 217, 226, 233, etc. Horne.
{112b} _Ibid_. evidence, p. 9, 39; 133.
{113a} _Ibid_. p. 9, 36; 146.
{113b} _Ibid_. p. 34; 158.
{113c} Symonds' Rep. App. Part I., pp. E, 22, _et seq_.
{115a} "Arts and Artisans."
{115b} "Principles of Population," vol. ii. pp. 136, 197.
{116} We shall see later how the rebellion of the working-class against
the bourgeoisie in England is legalised by the right of coalition.
{117a} "Chartism," p. 34, _et seq_.
{117b} _Ibid_., p. 40.
{119} Shall I call bourgeois witnesses to bear testimony from me here,
too? I select one only, whom every one may read, namely, Adam Smith.
"Wealth of Nations" (McCulloch's four volume edition), vol. iii., book 5,
chap. 8, p. 297.
{120} "Principles of Population," vol. ii., p. 76, _et seq_. p. 82, p.
135.
{122} "Philosophy of Manufactures," London, 1835, p. 406, _et seq_. We
shall have occasion to refer further to this reputable work.
{125} "On the Present Condition of the Labouring Poor in Manchester,"
etc. By the Rev. Rd. Parkinson, Canon of Manchester, 3d Ed., London and
Manchester, 1841, Pamphlet.
{131a} "Manufacturing Population of England," chap. 10.
{131b} The total of population, about fifteen millions, divided by the
number of convicted criminals (22,733).
{134a} "The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain," by Dr. A. Ure, 1836.
{134b} "History of the Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain," by E.
Baines, Esq.
{135} "Stubborn Facts from the Factories by a Manchester Operative."
Published and dedicated to the working-classes, by Wm. Rashleigh, M.P.,
London, Ollivier, 1844, p. 28, _et seq_.
{136} Compare Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report.
{138} L. Symonds, in "Arts and Artisans."
{140} See Dr. Ure in the "Philosophy of Manufacture."
{141} Report of Factory Inspector, L. Homer, October, 1844: "The state
of things in the matter of wages is greatly perverted in certain branches
of cotton manufacture in Lancashire; there are hundreds of young men,
between twenty and thirty, employed as piecers and otherwise, who do not
get more than 8 or 9 shillings a week, while children under thirteen
years, working under the same roof, earn 5 shillings, and young girls,
from sixteen to twenty years, 10-12 shillings per week."
{143a} Report of Factories' Inquiry Commission. Testimony of Dr.
Hawkins, p. 3.
{143b} In 1843, among the accidents brought to the Infirmary in
Manchester, one hundred and eighty-nine were from burning.
{144} Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, Power's Report on Leeds:
passim Tufnell Report on Manchester, p. 17. etc.
{145} This letter is re-translated from the German, no attempt being
made to re-produce either the spelling or the original Yorkshire dialect.
{147a} How numerous married women are in the factories is seen from
information furnished by a manufacturer: In 412 factories in Lancashire,
10,721 of them were employed; of the husbands of these women, but 5,314
were also employed in the factories, 3,927 were otherwise employed, 821
were unemployed, and information was wanting as to 659; or two, if not
three men for each factory, are supported by the work of their wives.
{147b} House of Commons, March 15th, 1844.
{147c} Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, p. 4.
{148a} For further examples and information compare Factories' Inquiry
Commission's Report. Cowell Evidence, pp. 37, 38, 39, 72, 77, 59;
Tufnell Evidence, pp. 9, 15, 45, 54, etc.
{148b} Cowell Evidence, pp. 35, 37, and elsewhere.
{148c} Power Evidence, p. 8.
{149a} Cowell Evidence, p. 57
{149b} Cowell Evidence, p. 82.
{149c} Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, p. 4, Hawkins.
{151} Stuart Evidence, p. 35.
{152a} Tufnell Evidence, p. 91.
{152b} Dr. Loudon Evidence, pp. 12, 13.
{153a} Dr. Loudon Evidence, p. 16.
{153b} Drinkwater Evidence, pp. 72, 80, 146, 148, 150 (two brothers); 69
(two brothers); 155, and many others.
Power Evidence, pp. 63, 66, 67 (two cases); 68 (three cases); 69 (two
cases); in Leeds, pp. 29, 31, 40, 43, 53, _et seq_.
Loudon Evidence, pp. 4, 7 (four cases); 8 (several cases), etc.
Sir D. Barry Evidence, pp. 6, 8, 13, 21, 22, 44, 55 (three cases), etc.
Tufnell Evidence, pp. 5, 6, 16, etc.
{154a} Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, 1836, Sir D. Barry
Evidence, p. 21 (two cases).
{154b} Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, 1836, Loudon Evidence,
pp. 13, 16, etc.
{155} In the spinning-room of a mill at Leeds, too, chairs had been
introduced. Drinkwater Evidence, p. 80.
{156} General report by Sir D. Barry.
{157a} Power Report, p. 74.
{157b} The surgeons in England are scientifically educated as well as
the physicians, and have, in general, medical as well as surgical
practice. They are in general, for various reasons, preferred to the
physicians.
{159a} This statement is not taken from the report.
{159b} Tufnell, p. 59.
{160a} Stuart Evidence, p. 101.
{160b} Tufnell Evidence, pp. 3, 9, 15.
{161} Hawkins Report, p. 4; Evidence, p. 14, etc. etc. Hawkins
Evidence, pp. 11, 13.
{162a} Cowell Evidence, p. 77.
{162b} Sir D. Barry Evidence, p. 44.
{162c} Cowell, p. 35.
{163a} Dr. Hawkins Evidence, p. 11; Dr. Loudon, p. 14, etc.; Sir D.
Barry, p. 5, etc.
{163b} Compare Stuart, pp. 13, 70, 101; Mackintosh, p. 24, etc.; Power
Report on Nottingham, on Leeds; Cowell, p. 33, etc.; Barry, p. 12; (five
cases in one factory), pp. 17, 44, 52, 60, etc.; Loudon, p. 13.
{167a} Stuart, p. 39.
{167b} "Philosophy of Manufactures," by Dr. Andrew Ure, p. 277, _et
seq_.
{168a} _Ibid_., 277.
{168b} _Ibid_., p. 298.
{168c} _Ibid_., p. 301.
{169} Dr. Andrew Ure. "Philosophy of Manufactures," pp. 405, 406, _et
seq_.
{174} Afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, died 1885.
{176} It is notorious that the House of Commons made itself ridiculous a
second time in the same session in the same way on the Sugar Question,
when it first voted against the ministry and then for it, after an
application of the ministerial whip.
{178} Let us hear another competent judge: "If we consider the example
of the Irish in connection with the ceaseless toil of the cotton
operative class, we shall wonder less at their terrible demoralisation.
Continuous exhausting toil, day after day, year after year, is not
calculated to develop the intellectual and moral capabilities of the
human being. The wearisome routine of endless drudgery, in which the
same mechanical process is ever repeated, is like the torture of
Sisyphus; the burden of toil, like the rock, is ever falling back upon
the worn-out drudge. The mind attains neither knowledge nor the power of
thought from the eternal employment of the same muscles. The intellect
dozes off in dull indolence, but the coarser part of our nature reaches a
luxuriant development. To condemn a human being to such work is to
cultivate the animal quality in him. He grows indifferent, he scorns the
impulses and customs which distinguish his kind. He neglects the
conveniences and finer pleasures of life, lives in filthy poverty with
scanty nourishment, and squanders the rest of his earnings in
debauchery."--Dr. J. Kay.
{179a} _Manchester Guardian_, October 30th.
{179b} "Stubborn Facts," p. 9 _et seq_.
{181a} Drinkwater Evidence; p. 80.
{181b} "Stubborn Facts," pp. 13-17.
{184} _Sun_, a London daily; end of November, 1844.
{186} I have neither time nor space to deal in detail with the replies
of the manufacturers to the charges made against them for twelve years
past. These men will not learn because their supposed interest blinds
them. As, moreover, many of their objections have been met in the
foregoing, the following is all that it is necessary for me to add:
You come to Manchester, you wish to make yourself acquainted with the
state of affairs in England. You naturally have good introductions to
respectable people. You drop a remark or two as to the condition of the
workers. You are made acquainted with a couple of the first Liberal
manufacturers, Robert Hyde Greg, perhaps, Edmund Ashworth, Thomas Ashton,
or others. They are told of your wishes. The manufacturer understands
you, knows what he has to do. He accompanies you to his factory in the
country; Mr. Greg to Quarrybank in Cheshire, Mr. Ashworth to Turton near
Bolton, Mr. Ashton to Hyde. He leads you through a superb, admirably
arranged building, perhaps supplied with ventilators, he calls your
attention to the lofty, airy rooms, the fine machinery, here and there a
healthy-looking operative. He gives you an excellent lunch, and proposes
to you to visit the operatives' homes; he conducts you to the cottages,
which look new, clean and neat, and goes with you into this one and that
one, naturally only to overlookers, mechanics, etc., so that you may see
"families who live wholly from the factory." Among other families you
might find that only wife and children work, and the husband darns
stockings. The presence of the employer keeps you from asking indiscreet
questions; you find every one well-paid, comfortable, comparatively
healthy by reason of the country air; you begin to be converted from your
exaggerated ideas of misery and starvation. But, that the cottage system
makes slaves of the operatives, that there may be a truck shop in the
neighbourhood, that the people hate the manufacturer, this they do not
point out to you, because he is present. He has built a school, church,
reading-room, etc. That he uses the school to train children to
subordination, that he tolerates in the reading-room such prints only as
represent the interests of the bourgeoisie, that he dismisses his
employees if they read Chartist or Socialist papers or books, this is all
concealed from you. You see an easy, patriarchal relation, you see the
life of the overlookers, you see what the bourgeoisie _promises_ the
workers if they become its slaves, mentally and morally. This "country
manufacture" has always been what the employers like to show, because in
it the disadvantages of the factory system, especially from the point of
view of health, are, in part, done away with by the free air and
surroundings, and because the patriarchal servitude of the workers can
here be longest maintained. Dr. Ure sings a dithyramb upon the theme.
But woe to the operatives to whom it occurs to think for themselves and
become Chartists! For them the paternal affection of the manufacturer
comes to a sudden end. Further, if you should wish to be accompanied
through the working-people's quarters of Manchester, if you should desire
to see the development of the factory system in a factory town, you may
wait long before these rich bourgeoisie will help you! These gentlemen
do not know in what condition their employees are nor what they want, and
they dare not know things which would make them uneasy or even oblige
them to act in opposition to their own interests. But, fortunately, that
is of no consequence: what the working-men have to carry out, they carry
out for themselves.
{189} Grainger Report. Appendix, Part I., pp. 7, 15, _et seq_., 132-
142.
{192a} Grainger's whole Report.
{192b} Grainger Children's Employment Commission's Report.
{193} Burns, Children's Employment Commission's Report.
{194} Leach. "Stubborn Facts from the Factories," p. 47.
{196} Leach. "Stubborn Facts from the Factories," p. 33.
{197} Leach. "Stubborn Facts from the Factories," p. 37-40.
{199} Children's Employment Commission's Report.
{200a} See p. 112.
{200b} Grainger Report and Evidence.
{202} Horne Report and Evidence.
{203} Dr. Knight, Sheffield.
{205} Symonds Report and Evidence.
{207} Scriven Report and Evidence.
{208} Leifchild Report Append., Part II., p. L 2, ss. 11,12; Franks
Report Append., Part II., p. K 7, s. 48, Tancred Evid. Append., Part II.,
p. I 76, etc.--Children's Employment Commission's Rep't.
{210} See _Weekly Dispatch_, March 16th, 1844.
{211} Thomas Hood, the most talented of all the English humorists now
living, and, like all humorists, full of human feeling, but wanting in
mental energy, published at the beginning of 1844 a beautiful poem, "The
Song of the Shirt," which drew sympathetic but unavailing tears from the
eyes of the daughters of the bourgeoisie. Originally published in
_Punch_, it made the round of all the papers. As discussions of the
condition of the sewing-women filled all the papers at the time, special
extracts are needless.
{214} "Arts and Artisans," p. 137, _et seq_.
{221a} So called from the East Indian tribe, whose only trade is the
murder of all the strangers who fall into its hands.
{221b} "What kind of wild justice must it be in the hearts of these men
that prompts them, with cold deliberation, in conclave assembled, to doom
their brother workman, as the deserter of his order and his order's
cause, to die a traitor's and a deserter's death, have him executed, in
default of any public judge and hangman, then by a secret one; like your
old Chivalry Fehmgericht and Secret Tribunal, suddenly revived in this
strange guise; suddenly rising once more on the astonished eye, dressed
not now in mail shirts, but in fustian jackets, meeting not in
Westphalian forests, but in the paved Gallowgate of Glasgow! Such a
temper must be widespread virulent among the many when, even in its worst
acme, it can take such form in the few."--Carlyle. "Chartism," p. 40.
{222a} Dr. Ure, "Philosophy of Manufacture," p. 282.
{222b} _Ibid_., p. 282.
{223a} Dr. Ure, "Philosophy of Manufacture," p. 367.
{223b} _Ibid_., p. 366, _et seq_.
{232} Compare Report of Chambers of Commerce of Manchester and Leeds at
the end of July and beginning of August.
{235} See Introduction.
{241} According to the census of 1841, the number of working-men
employed in mines in Great Britain, without Ireland, was:
Men over Men under Women over Women under Together
20 years 20 years 20 years 20 Years
Coal mines 83,408 32,475 1,185 1,165 118,233
Copper mines 9,866 3,428 913 1,200 15,407
Lead mines 9,427 1,932 40 20 11,419
Iron mines 7,733 2,679 424 73 10,949
Tin mines 4,602 1,349 68 82 6,101
Various, the
mineral not
specified 24,162 6,591 472 491 31,616
Total 137,398 48,454 3,102 3,031 193,725
As the coal and iron mines are usually worked by the same people, a part
of the miners attributed to the coal mines, and a very considerable part
of those mentioned under the last heading, are to be attributed to the
iron mines.
{242} Also found in the Children's Employment Commission's Report:
Commissioner Mitchell's Report.
{259} The coal miners have at this moment, 1886, six of their body
sitting in the House of Commons.
{264} E. G. Wakefield, M.P. "Swing Unmasked; or, The Cause of Rural
Incendiarism." London, 1831. Pamphlet. The foregoing extracts may be
found pp. 9-13, the passages dealing in the original with the then still
existing Old Poor Law being here omitted.
{268} This has been literally fulfilled. After a period of unexampled
extension of trade, Free Trade has landed England in a crisis, which
began in 1878, and is still increasing in energy in 1886.
{269} The agricultural labourers have now a Trade's Union; their most
energetic representative, Joseph Arch, was elected M.P. in 1885.
{272a} Report of the Poor Law Commission upon Ireland.
{272b} "Principles of Population," vol. ii.
{273} "The State of Ireland." London, 1807; 2nd Ed., 1821. Pamphlet.
{276} Carlyle gives in his "Past and Present" (London, 1843) a splendid
description of the English bourgeoisie and its disgusting money greed.
{286} Extracts from Information received from the Poor Law
Commissioners. Published by authority. London, 1833.
{293} To prevent misconstructions and consequent objections, I would
observe that I have spoken of the bourgeoisie as a _class_, and that all
such facts as refer to individuals serve merely as evidence of the way of
thinking and acting of a _class_. Hence I have not entered upon the
distinctions between the divers sections, subdivisions and parties of the
bourgeoisie, which have a mere historical and theoretical significance.
And I can, for the same reason, mention but casually the few members of
the bourgeoisie who have shown themselves honourable exceptions. These
are, on the one hand, the pronounced Radicals, who are almost Chartists,
such as a few members of the House of Commons, the manufacturers Hindly
of Ashton, and Fielden of Todmordon (Lancashire), and, on the other hand,
the philanthropic Tories, who have recently constituted themselves "Young
England," among whom are the members of Parliament, D'Israeli, Borthwick,
Ferrand, Lord John Manners, etc. Lord Ashley, too, is in sympathy with
them. The hope of Young England is a restoration of the old "Merry
England" with its brilliant features and its romantic feudalism. This
object is of course unattainable and ridiculous, a satire upon all
historic development; but the good intention, the courage to resist the
existing state of things and prevalent prejudices, and to recognise the
vileness of our present condition, is worth something anyhow. Wholly
isolated is the half-German Englishman, Thomas Carlyle, who, originally a
Tory, goes beyond all those hitherto mentioned. He has sounded the
social disorder more deeply than any other English bourgeois, and demands
the organisation of labour.
{296} And it did.
***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING-CLASS
IN ENGLAND IN 1844***
******* This file should be named 17306.txt or 17306.zip *******
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/3/0/17306
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
https://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit:
https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
https://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
