"Mr Smith is a very good man,He lets us ride in his harvest van,He gives us food and he gives us ale,We pray his heart may never fail."
There is nothing to be said against Mr. Smith, who was evidently a kindly farmer of his time. Yet to what incredible humiliation his "pastors and masters" had brought poor Hodge, who could sing these lines, as though he had reached the Diamond Jubilee of his life when he rode in somebody else's cart, and had cheese and beer. Now the farm workers of a co-operative way of thinking have learned how to ride in their own vans, to possess the crop with which they are loaded, and to provide themselves with a harvest supper.
In my time the mechanic had no personal credit for his work, whatever might be his skill. Now in industrial exhibitions the name of the artificer is attached to his work, and he is part of the character of the firm which employs him. He has, also, now—if co-operation prevails—a prospect of participating in the profits of his own industry. Half a century ago employers were proud of showing their machinery to a visitor—never their men. Now they show their work-people as well—whose condition and contentment is the first pride of great firms.
Above all knowledge is a supreme improvement, which has come to workmen. They never asked for it, the ignorant never do ask for knowledge, and do not like those who propose it to them. Brougham first turned aside their repugnance by telling them what Bacon knew, that "knowledge is power." Now they realise the other half of the great saying, Dr. Creighton, the late Bishop of London, supplied, that "ignorance is impotence." They can see that the instructed son of the gentleman has power, brightness, confidence, and alertness; while the poor man's child, untrained, incapable, dull in comparison, often abject, is unconscious of his own powers which lie latent within him. If an educated and an ignorant child were sold by weight, the intelligent child would fetch more per pound avoirdupois than the ignorant one. Now education can be largely had for working men's children for nothing. Even scholarships and degrees are open to the clever sort. Moreover, how smooth science has made the early days of instruction, formerly made jagged with the rod.
Sir Edwin Chadwick showed that the child mind could not profitably be kept learning more than an hour at a time, and recreation must intervene before a second hour can be usefully spent. What a mercy and advantage to thousands of poor children this has been! Even the dreary schoolroom of the last generation is disappearing. A schoolroom should be spacious and bright, and board schools are beginning to be made so now. I have seen a board school in a dismal court in Whitechapel which looked like an alley of hell. All thoughts for pleasant impressions in the child mind, which make learning alluring, were formerly uncared for. Happier now is the lot of poor children than any former generation knew.
Within my time no knowledge of public affairs was possible to the people, save in a second-hand way from sixpenny newspapers a month old. Now a workman can read in the morning telegrams from all parts of the world in a halfpenny paper, hours before his employer is out of bed. If a pestilence broke out in the next street to the man's dwelling, the law compelled him to wait a month for the penny paper, the only one he could afford to buy, before he became aware of his danger, and it often happened that some of his family never lived to read of their risk.
The sons of working people are now welcomed in the army, and their record there has commanded the admiration of the onlooking world. But they are not flogged as they once were, at the will of any arrogant dandy who had bought his mastership over them. Intelligence has awakened manliness and self-respect in common men, and the recruiting-sergeant has to go about without the lash under his coat. The working man further knows now that there is a better future for his sons in the public service, in army or navy, than ever existed before our time. Even the emigrant ship has regulations for the comfort of steerage passengers, unknown until recent years. People always professed great regard for "Poor Jack," but until Mr. Plimsoll arose, they left him to drown.
Until a few years ago millions of home-born Englishmen were kept without votes, like the Uitlanders of South Africa, and no one sent an army into the country to put down the "corrupt oligarchy," as Mr. Chamberlain called those who withheld redress. But it has come, though in a limping, limited way. Carlylean depredators of Parliament decried the value of workmen possessing "a hundred thousandth part in the national palavers." But we no longer hear workmen at election times referred to as the "swinish multitude" who can now send representatives of their own order into the House of Commons. If the claims of labour are not much considered, they are no longer contemned. It is always easier for the rider than the horse. The people are always being ridden, but it is much easier for the horse now than it ever was before.
Sir Michael Foster, in a recent Presidential Address to the British Association, said that, "the appliances of science have, as it were, covered with a soft cushion the rough places of life, and that not for the rich only but also for the poor." It is not, however, every kind of progress, everywhere, in every department of human knowledge, in which the reader is here concerned, but merely with such things as Esdras says, which have "passed by us in daily life," and which every ordinary Englishman has observed or knows.
If the question be asked whether the condition of the working class has improved in proportion to that of the middle and upper class of our time, the answer must be it has not. But that is not the question considered here. The question is, "Are the working class to-day better off than their fathers were?" The answer already given is Yes. Let the reader think what, in a general way, the new advantages are. The press is free, and articulate with a million voices—formerly dumb. Now a poor man can buy a better library for a few shillings than Solomon with all his gold and glory could in his day; or than the middle class man possessed fifty years ago. Toleration—not only of ideas but of action, is enlarged, and that means much—social freedom is greater, and that means more. The days of children are happier, schoolrooms are more cheerful, and one day they will be educated so as to fit them for self-dependence and the duties of daily life. Another change is that the pride in ignorance, which makes for impotence, is decreasing, is no longer much thought of among those whose ignorance was their only attainment.
Not less have the material conditions of life improved. Food is purer—health is surer—life itself is safer and lasts longer. Comfort has crept into a million houses where it never found its way before. Security can be better depended upon. The emigrant terror has gone. Instead of sailing out on hearsay to an unknown land and finding himself in the wrong one, or in the wrong part of the right country, as has happened to thousands, the emigrant can now obtain official information, which may guide him rightly. Towns are brighter, there are more public buildings which do the human eye good to look upon. Means of recreation are continually being multiplied. Opportunity of change from town to country, or coast, fall now to the poorest Not in cattle trucks any more. Life is better worth living. Pain none could escape is evadable now. Parks are multiplied and given as possessions to the people. Paintings and sculpture are now to be seen on the Sunday by workmen, which their forefathers never saw, being barred from them on the only day when they could see them.
By a device within the memory of most, house owning has become possible to those whose fathers never thought it possible. Temperance, once a melancholy word, is now a popular resource of health and economy. The fortune of industry is higher in many ways. Into how many firesides does it bring gladness to know that in barrack, or camp, or ship, the son is better treated than heretofore.
Can any of the middle-aged doubt that some things are better now than before their time? Now two hundred workshops exist on the labour co-partnership principle. Forty years ago those commenced, failed—failed through lack of intelligence on the part of workers. The quality of workmen to be found everywhere in our day did not exist then. Sixteen years ago there were found more than a dozen workshops owned and conducted by working men. There are more than a hundred now; and hundreds in which the workers receive an addition to their wages, undreamt of in the last generation. In this, and in other respects, things go better than they did. Though there is still need of enlargement, the means of self-defence are not altogether wanting. Co-operation has arisen—a new force for the self-extrication of the lowest. Without charity, or patronage, or asking anything from the State, it puts into each man's hand the "means to cancel his captivity."
The rich man may vote twenty times where the poor man can vote only once. Still, the one voter counts for something where the unfranchised counted for nothing.
Political as well as civil freedom has come in a measure to those who dwell in cottages and lodgings. For one minute every seven years the workman is free. He can choose his political masters at the poll, and neither his neighbour, his employer, nor his priest, has the knowledge to harm him on that account. One minute of liberty in seven years is not much, but there is no free country in the world where that minute is so well secured as in England. If any one would measure the present by the past, let him recall the lines:—
"Allah! Allah!" cried the stranger,"Wondrous sights the traveller sees,But the latest is the greatest,Where the drones control the bees."
They do it still, but not to the extent they did. The control of wisdom, when the drones have it, is all very well, but it is the other sort of control which is now happily to some extent controllable by the bees. The manners of the rich are better. Their sympathy with the people has increased. Their power of doing ill is no longer absolute. Employers think more of the condition of those who labour for them. The better sort still throw crumbs to Lazarus. But now Dives is expected to explain why it is that Lazarus cannot get crumbs himself.
In ways still untold the labour class is gradually attaining to social equality with the idle class and to that independence hitherto the privilege of those who do nothing. The workman's power of self-defence grows—his influence extends—his rights enlarge. Injury suffered in industry is beginning to be compensated; even old-age pensions are in the air, though not as yet anywhere else. Notwithstanding, "John Brown's soul goes marching on." But it must be owned its shoes are a little down at the heels. Nevertheless, though there is yet much to be done—more liberty to win, more improvements to attain, and more than all, if it be possible, permanences of prosperity to secure—I agree with Sydney Smith—
"For olden times let others prate,I deem it lucky I was born so late."
There is a foolish praise of the past and a foolish depreciation of the present The past had its evils, the present has fewer. The past had its promise, the present great realisations. It is not assumed in what has been said that all the advantages recounted were originated and acquired by working men alone. Many came by the concessions of those who had the power of withholding them. More concessions will not lack acknowledgment "Just gifts" to men who have honour in their hearts, "bind the recipients to the giver for ever."
The Chinese put the feet of children in a boot and the foot never grows larger. There are boots of the mind as well as of the feet, that are worn by the young of all nations, which have no expansion in them, and which cramp the understanding of those grown up. This prevents many from comprehending the changes by which they benefit or realising the facts of their daily life. Considering what the men of labour have done for themselves and what has been won for them by their advocates, and conceded to them from time to time by others, despair and the counsels of outrage which spring from it, are unseemly, unnecessary, and ungrateful. This is the moral of this story.
A doleful publicist should be superannuated. He is already obsolete. Whoever despairs of a cause in whose success he once exulted, should fall out of the ranks, where some ambulance waits to carry away the sick or dispirited. He has no business to utter his discouraging wail in the ears of the constant and confident, marching to the front, where the battle of progress is being fought.
Since so much has been accomplished in half a century, when there were few advantages to begin with—what may not be gained in the next fifty years with the larger means now at command and the confidence great successes of the past should inspire! If working people adhere to the policy of advancing their own honest interests without destroying others as rightfully engaged in seeking theirs, the workers may make their own future what they will. They may then acquire power sufficient, as theTimesonce said: "To turn a reform mill which would grind down an abuse a day."
NOTE.
The last chapter is reprinted from theFortnightly Reviewby courtesy of the Editor, and a similar acknowledgment is due to the Editor of theWeekly Times and Echo, in whose pages several of the preceding chapters appeared.