{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. 9et 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 bourgeoisiepromisesthe 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}SeeWeekly 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 inPunch, 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 Together20 years 20 years 20 years 20 YearsCoal mines 83,408 32,475 1,185 1,165 118,233Copper mines 9,866 3,428 913 1,200 15,407Lead mines 9,427 1,932 40 20 11,419Iron mines 7,733 2,679 424 73 10,949Tin mines 4,602 1,349 68 82 6,101Various, themineral notspecified 24,162 6,591 472 491 31,616Total 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 aclass, and that all such facts as refer to individuals serve merely as evidence of the way of thinking and acting of aclass. 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.