VTHE FACTORY TOWNS
The dictionary contains the history of the race, if you search deep into its mysteries; every word tells its own story and bears its present meaning because men, at different times, thought precisely as they did and not otherwise.
Servius Tullius made six divisions of the citizens of Rome for the purposes of taxation and these divisions were called classes. A seventh included the mass of the population, those who were not possessed of any taxable property—that is to say the laboring poor. It is from this circumstance that our word “class” derives its peculiar meaning. Now it is significant that before the great extension of manufactures occasioned by the factory, we find no referencein our language to the working classes. The laboring poor belonged to no class; but when great cities grew up about the factories, populated by toilers whose interests in life were identical, the masses suddenly became conscious of their common life, their common needs, their common hopes. Blindly at first, and then more surely, they struggled for recognition as a class, and at last the struggle found expression in the language of their time. The arousing of this class consciousness amongst the workers I take to be the chief contribution of the factory to the social progress of mankind; and for this reason the rise of the manufacturing towns becomes a subject of great importance.
In the town hall at Manchester there is a fresco by Ford Maddox Brown which bears the title of “The Establishment of Flemish Weavers in Manchester,” and shows Queen Philippa visiting the colony which she founded in 1363. Mr. GeorgeSaintsbury, in his history of Manchester, questions the historical accuracy of the event portrayed; “but,” he adds, “Queen Philippa did many things which we should all be sorry to give up as art and literature and which, yet, are somewhat dubious history.”
No one knows when Manchester first became a manufacturing town, and the introduction of Flemish artificers in the reign of Edward III is rather a probable than a certain starting-point. Nothing is distinctly known of the progress of woolen manufacture, until the reign of Henry VIII, at which time it had evidently grown into considerable importance. In the statute of the thirty-third year of his reign it appears that the inhabitants of Manchester carried on a considerable manufacture both of linens and woolens by which they were acquiring great wealth; but no mention has yet been found of cotton manufacture in that city earlier than the year 1641. By this time, however, it had become well established.
The labor was entirely handicraft; and it was not until the establishment of the factory by Arkwright that Manchester and the other manufacturing towns of England came into prominence in the political life of the nation; indeed it was not until the nineteenth century was well advanced that the inhabitants of these cities were represented in Parliament.
It has been held that the factory is an episode, not an element, in modern sociological development, and in a strict sense this is true. But because the factory led to the growth of great manufacturing towns and caused the migration thither of a vast population from the agricultural districts, and because it was among this population that the social discontent, which for a long period had existed in the lower classes, first became articulate, the factory directly contributed to the development of modern democracy.
The factory transformed not only craftsmeninto operatives, but agricultural laborers as well, the latter becoming for the first time free to dispose of their own labor; for while serfdom had been declared illegal long before the establishment of the factory, yet the peasant remained dependent, in a large measure, upon the good will of his employer and he was bound by custom if not by law to the soil he tilled. The migration of this vast laboring population from the fields to the towns led to far-reaching social results.
“Meanwhile, at social Industry’s commandHow quick and fast an increase! From the germOf some poor hamlet, rapidly produced,Here a large town, continuous and compact,Hiding the face of earth for leagues—and there,Where not a habitation stood before,Abodes of men irregularly massedLike trees in forests—spread through spacious tracts,O’er which the smoke of unremitting firesHangs permanent, and plentiful as wreathsOf vapor glittering in the morning sun.”
“Meanwhile, at social Industry’s commandHow quick and fast an increase! From the germOf some poor hamlet, rapidly produced,Here a large town, continuous and compact,Hiding the face of earth for leagues—and there,Where not a habitation stood before,Abodes of men irregularly massedLike trees in forests—spread through spacious tracts,O’er which the smoke of unremitting firesHangs permanent, and plentiful as wreathsOf vapor glittering in the morning sun.”
“Meanwhile, at social Industry’s commandHow quick and fast an increase! From the germOf some poor hamlet, rapidly produced,Here a large town, continuous and compact,Hiding the face of earth for leagues—and there,Where not a habitation stood before,Abodes of men irregularly massedLike trees in forests—spread through spacious tracts,O’er which the smoke of unremitting firesHangs permanent, and plentiful as wreathsOf vapor glittering in the morning sun.”
“Meanwhile, at social Industry’s command
How quick and fast an increase! From the germ
Of some poor hamlet, rapidly produced,
Here a large town, continuous and compact,
Hiding the face of earth for leagues—and there,
Where not a habitation stood before,
Abodes of men irregularly massed
Like trees in forests—spread through spacious tracts,
O’er which the smoke of unremitting fires
Hangs permanent, and plentiful as wreaths
Of vapor glittering in the morning sun.”
Thus Wordsworth inThe Excursiondescribes the rise of the manufacturing towns.
Our first concern is with the social conditions existing in these great manufacturing cities. The factory system was first applied to the spinning of yarn; but weaving continued, for a time, as a handicraft. This period was one of great prosperity to the hand-loom weavers. Before the invention of spinning-machinery, several spinners were required to furnish one loom with yarn; and one half of the weaver’s time was spent in waiting for work. This time was employed in farming. But with the establishment of the spinning-mills the situation was reversed, and the weaver, plentifully supplied with yarn, ceased to cultivate the soil and devoted his whole time to the loom, a far more profitable occupation.
Villages of hand-loom weavers sprang up throughout the country adjacent to themanufacturing towns, and hither the master spinners sent their yarn and received back the finished cloth; while sometimes the weaving was done in “dandy” shops containing eight or ten and often as many as twenty looms. These little factories were usually owned by a single weaver who hired others to assist him in his work; but whatever the method, the profits from the business were always great.
“One of the happiest sights in Lancashire life at this time,” writes a contemporary historian, “was the home of a family of weavers.... There could be heard the merry song to the tune of the clacking shuttles and the bumping of the lathes; the cottage surrounded with a garden filled with flowers and situated in the midst of green fields where the larks sang and the throstles whistled their morning adoration to the rising sun. The weaving thus carried on at home, where several persons of the same family andapprentices were employed, made them prosperous small manufacturers and a proud lot of people.” This was about 1800.
“The trade of muslin weaver,” says a Bolton manufacturer of the same period, “was that of a gentleman. The weavers brought home their work in top boots and ruffled shirts; they had a cane and took a coach in some instances, and appeared as well as military officers of the first degree. They used to walk about the streets with a five-pound Bank of England note spread out under their hat-bands; they would smoke none but long churchwarden pipes, and objected to the intrusion of any other craftsman into the particular rooms of the public-houses which they frequented.” This abnormal prosperity, however, preceded their downfall. Two events were preparing it,—the invention of the power loom and the application of steam power to all the processes of manufacture.
Before considering the condition of thelaboring population after the establishment of factories for weaving as well as for spinning, we should glance backward into the previous history of the laboring poor. During the prevalence of the feudal system the population of England was purely agricultural. The chief landed proprietors possessed a certain number of slaves who were employed generally in domestic service, but who also manufactured the wearing apparel and household furniture. “Priests are set apart for prayer,” says an ancient chronicle, “but it is fit that noble chevaliers should enjoy all ease, and taste all pleasures, while the laborer toils, in order that they may be nourished in abundance—they, and their horse, and their dogs.” This class of laborers, however, was never very large.
The great body of the peasantry was composed, first, of persons who rented small farms, and who paid their rent either in kind or in agricultural labor; and secondly,of cottagers, each of whom had a small parcel of land attached to his dwelling, and the privilege of turning out a cow, or pigs, or a few sheep into the woods, commons and wastes of the manor. During this whole period the entire population derived its subsistence immediately from the land. The mechanics of each village, not having time to cultivate a sufficient quantity of land to yield them a sustenance, received a fixed annual allowance of produce from each tenant. The peasantry worked hard and fared scantily enough, but still there was never an absolute want of food; the whole body was poor, but it contained no paupers.
During the fourteenth century the demand for wool not only to supply the markets of the Netherlands, but also the newly established manufacture of England, rapidly increased and the owners of the land found sheep-feeding more profitable than husbandry; and the sudden extensionof manufacture in the fifteenth century greatly increased the demand. This circumstance led to an important change in the distribution of the population and the peasants previously employed in tillage were turned adrift upon the world. The allotments of arable land which had formerly afforded them the means of subsistence were converted into sheep walks and this policy greatly accelerated a social revolution which had already commenced. It eventually led to a complete severance between the English peasantry and the English soil; and with the exception of those employed in domestic manufacture, the little farmers and cottiers of the country were converted into day laborers depending entirely upon wages for their subsistence.
Thus when we come to consider the pitiable condition of the working classes, following the establishment of the factory, we must remember this underlying cause ofthe poverty and suffering, holding in mind the fact that from the beginning the increase of English poor rates kept pace visibly with the progress of the enclosure of the common land. Complaints against vagrancy and idleness, and the difficulty of providing for the poor increased proportionately with the progress of the system of consolidating farms, and abstracting from the English cottager his crofts and rights to the common lands. Upon the factory has fallen the blame for social conditions which had their source in causes long antedating its establishment—but the factory has sufficient misery for which to answer.
Arkwright’s inventions, as we have seen, took manufactures out of the cottages and farm houses of England and assembled them in factories. Thousands of hands were suddenly required especially in Lancashire, which until then was comparatively thinly populated. A great migrationof population from the rural districts to the manufacturing towns was set in motion, thousands of families leaving the quiet life of the country for the intenser life of the city, but still the new demand for labor was unsatisfied. The custom sprang up of procuring apprentices from the parish workhouses of London, Birmingham, and elsewhere; and many thousand children between the ages of seven and fourteen years were thus sent to swell the numbers of the laboring population. Beside the factories stood apprentice houses in which the children were lodged and fed; and it was also the custom for the master manufacturer to furnish the apprentice with clothes.
The work required of the children was exacting. The pay of the overseers was fixed in proportion to the work produced, a circumstance which bore hard on the apprentices. The greatest cruelties were practiced to spur the children to excessivelabor; they were flogged, fettered, and in many cases they were starved and some were driven to commit suicide. We have it on the authority of Mr. John Fielding, himself, a master manufacturer and member of Parliament for Oldham, that the happiest moments in the lives of many of these children were those passed in the workhouse.
The profits of manufacturing were enormous and so was the greed of the newborn manufacturing aristocracy. Night work was begun, the day shift going to sleep in the same beds that the night shift had just quitted, so that it was a common saying in Lancashire that the beds never got cold. Although the master manufacturers were unmoved by the dictates of humanity, they were not proof against the malignant fevers which broke out in the congested districts and spread their ravages throughout the manufacturing towns.
Public opinion was soon aroused whichled to the institution in Manchester of a board of health which in the year 1796 made an interesting report. It appeared that the children and others working in the cotton factories were peculiarly disposed to the contagion of fever; and that large factories were generally injurious to those employed in them even when no particular disease prevailed, not only on account of the close confinement and the debilitating effect of the hot and impure air, but on account of the untimely labor of the night and the protracted hours of the working day.
These conditions with respect to the children not only tended to diminish the sum of life by destroying the health and thus affecting the vital stamina of the rising generation; but it also encouraged idleness and profligacy in the parents, who, in many instances, lived upon the labor of their children. It further appeared that the children employed in factories were debarredfrom all opportunities of education as well as from moral and religious instruction. The investigation produced this report and nothing more—“when the dangers of infection were removed the precautions of mercy were forgotten.”
Later, in the Parliamentary debate of 1815, Mr. Horner, one of the early factory reformers, graphically described the practices of the apprentice system. He told how, with a bankrupt’s effects, a gang of workhouse children were put up for sale and publicly advertised as a part of the property; how a number of boys apprenticed by a parish in London to one manufacturer, had been transferred to another and in the process were left in a starving condition; how an agreement had been made between a London parish and a Lancashire manufacturer by which it was stipulated that with every twenty sound children one idiot should be taken.
Among the master manufacturers whohad been incredulous concerning these conditions until the alarm of contagion arose, was the first Sir Robert Peel. He made a personal investigation and saw the abominations of the system; he declared his convictions and introduced into Parliament the first legislative measure for the protection of children. This was in the year 1802, and after many reverses he ultimately obtained the act known as the 42d Geo. III, “for the preservation of the Health and Morals of Apprentices and others, employed in Cotton and other mills.”
This act is chiefly interesting because it established the principle of factory legislation, a principle which later in the century was greatly to promote the welfare of the masses. His first bill, however, referred only to apprentices and after its enactment children instead of being imported from the workhouses as formerly were nevertheless hired from their parents. Their services were dignified by the name of free labor,but because they were not accorded the protection given to apprentices their condition was little better than that of actual slavery.
The next step in the progress of factory legislation was to extend the protection to young persons engaged in manual employment whether apprentices or not. Time does not permit us to follow the interesting history of factory legislation, under the devoted leadership of Mr. Horner, Sir John Hobhouse (afterwards Lord Broughton), Mr. Saddler, and Lord Astley (afterwards the Earl of Shaftesbury). But the evidences of the social condition of the toilers brought out by the Parliamentary debates of 1816, 1818, 1819, and 1832, are all of the same nature and reveal a state of human misery without a parallel in history.
We turn now from child labor to the sanitary conditions of the manufacturing towns. The report printed by Doctor Kayin 1832, is an astounding document; it shows that out of six hundred and eighty-seven streets inspected, more than one half contained heaps of refuse or stagnant pools; and of nearly seven thousand houses inspected, more than one third were out of repair, damp, or ill-ventilated, and an equally large proportion lacked all sanitary conveniences, even of the most primitive kind.
The population lived on the simplest diet. Breakfast consisted of tea or coffee with a little bread, while sometimes the men had oatmeal porridge; dinner consisted generally of boiled potatoes heaped into one large dish over which melted lard was poured and sometimes a few pieces of fried fat bacon were added. Those who obtained higher wages or families whose aggregate income was large added a greater portion of animal food to this meal at least three times a week, but the quantity of meat consumed by the laboring population was not large.
The typical family sat around the table, plunging their spoons into the common dish and with animal eagerness satisfied the cravings of their appetite. The evening meal consisted of tea, often mingled with spirits and accompanied by a little bread. The population thus scantily nourished was crowded in one dense mass in cottages, separated by narrow, unpaved streets, in an atmosphere loaded with smoke. Engaged in an employment which unremittingly exhausted their physical energies, these men and women lacked every moral and intellectual stimulus; living in squalid wretchedness and on meagre food it was small wonder that their superfluous gains were spent in debauchery. With domestic economy neglected, domestic comfort unknown, home had no other relation to the factory operative than that of a shelter. At this period the number of operatives above the age of forty was incredibly small.
In a pamphlet printed during a greatturnout in 1831, we find certain very interesting statistics concerning 1665 persons whose ages ranged between fifteen and sixty. Of these 1584 were under forty-five years of age, only fifty-one between forty-five and fifty were counted as fit for work, while only three had lived to be sixty years old. Such figures make it evident that large numbers of workers, prematurely unfitted for labor, came to live upon the toil of their own children. Nor was this all, for “puny and sickly parents gave birth to puny and sickly children, and thus the mischief continued its progress, one generation transmitting its accumulated evils to the next.”