THE DISTRESSED NEEDLE-WOMEN AND HOOD'S SONG OF THE SHIRT.
We take what follows from the January No., 1849, of the Westminster
Review--we having nothing to remark, except as to the line from the
French song, which has taken the place of the Marseilloise as the great
National Song, we should rather say, National Dirge. It is the maddening
cry of hunger for employment and bread, and more resembles the howl of
the wolves of the Pyrennes, as they start in quest of prey, than the
Anthem of Liberty. It truly represents, embodies and personifies the
great Socialistic movement of the day. Whilst statesmen and philosophers
speculate, the mass agitate, organize and threaten. Winter before last,
they took possession of the streets of New York, and levied enforced
charity. This spring, they meet in the Park and resolve, "that there
were fifty thousand men and women in vain seeking employment during the
last inclement winter. America echoes to France, "Vivre en travaillant,
ou mourir en combatant!" 'Tis the tocsin and the watchword of free
society. 'Tis the grumbling noise of the heaving volcano, that
threatens and precedes a social eruption greater than the world has yet
witnessed. But let us give the language of the Reviewer:
"The question of human misery--its causes and their removal, is at
the bottom of the movement which is now convulsing Europe, and
which threatens to agitate it for some time to come. Could some
practicable scheme of relief, generally acceptable to all classes
and adequate to cope with the magnitude of the evil, be but
suggested, what a load of anxiety would be taken from the mind of
many a Minister of State!--what comfort would be offered to many a
desponding philanthropist!
"Human misery has at last found tongues and pens to make itself
heard and felt. It appeals to our feelings and our understandings,
to our sympathies and fears. Its wails melt us to pity, its
ravings terrify us, its woes sicken us. It will no longer hide
itself. We must either remove it, or submit to have it constantly
exposed to our gaze in all its horrid deformity.
"Hitherto the comfortable classes have virtually answered the
bitter complaints of the uncomfortable classes in some such terms
as these: 'Poor people! we are very sorry for your suffering--we
really feel for you--take this trifle--it will be some relief. We
wish we could do more;--and now pray be quiet--don't distress
us with your writhings and agonies--resign yourselves to the
will of Providence, and bear hunger and cold in peace and
seclusion;--above all, attempt no violence, or we must use
violence to keep you quiet.' The answer of the uncomfortable
classes to such admonitions, day by day becoming more
unmistakable, is: 'Relieve us, relieve us! Make us comfortable, or
show us how we may make ourselves comfortable: otherwise we must
make you uncomfortable. We will be comfortable or uncomfortable
together.'
"'Vivre en travaillant, ou mourir en combatant.' In our last
number, we ventured to offer a few indications as to what we
considered a part, an important part, of the remedial measures to
be resorted to for the prevention of human misery. We were then
dealing with that question as a whole. We now propose to address
ourselves to miseries of a class.
"The sufferings of the distressed needle-woman have obtained an
infamous notoriety--they are a scandal to our age and a reproach
to our boasted civilization. They have been clothed in language at
once truthful and impressive, full of pathos and yet free from
exaggeration. Well known as Hood's immortal lines may be, we
reproduce them here, because no narrative, no statistics of ours,
could be more true nor half so much to the purpose:
THE SONG OF THE SHIRT.
"With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread.
Stitch--stitch--stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt;
And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch,
She sang the 'Song of the Shirt!'
"Work--work--work!
While the cock is crowing aloof!
And work--work--work!
Till the stars shine through the roof!
It's O! to be a slave,
Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian work!
"Work--work--work!
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work--work--work!
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam and gusset and band,
Band and gusset and seam,
Till o'er the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!
"O! men, with sisters dear!
O! men, with mothers and wives,
It is not linen you're wearing out!
But human creatures' lives!
Stitch--stitch--stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt;
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A shroud as well as a shirt!
"But why do I talk of death?
That phantom of grisly bone?
I hardly fear his terrible shape,
It seems so like my own!
It seems so like my own,
Because of the fasts I keep--
Oh, God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!
"Work--work--work!
My labor never flags;
And what are its wages? A bed of straw,
A crust of bread, and--rags.
That shatter'd roof, and this naked floor,
A table--a broken chair;
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!
"Work--work--work!
From weary chime to chime,
Work--work--work,
As prisoners work for crime!
Band and gusset and seam,
Seam and gusset and band,
Till the heart is sick and the brain benumb'd,
As well as weary hand.
"Work--work--work!
In dull December light,
And work--work--work,
When the weather is warm and bright--
While underneath the eaves
The brooding swallows cling,
As if to show me their sunny backs
And twit me with the Spring.
"Oh! but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet--
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet,
For only one short hour--
To feel as I used to feel,
Before I knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs a meal!
"Oh, but for one short hour!
A respite however brief!
No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
But only time for Grief!
A little weeping would ease my heart--
But in their briny bed
My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!
"With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread--
Stitch--stitch--stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
Would that its tone could reach the rich!
She sang this 'Song of the Shirt!'"
We annex part of an article from Jerrold's Magazine, which draws quite
as clear a picture of the condition of the English poor, and points out
the only feasible remedy for the evils of that condition:
SLAVERY.
THE ONLY REMEDY FOR THE MISERIES OF THE ENGLISH POOR.
BY A PHILANTHROPIST.
Whoever is unprepared to cast aside not only his prejudices, but many of
what may be considered well-formed opinions, had better not attempt to
peruse the following few pages. I must demand of my reader that he come
to the perusal, the _beau ideal_ of a juryman. No information that he
has gained elsewhere, no feelings that he has cherished as virtues, no
sentiments that he has cultivated as noble, and no opinions that he may
have formed as infallible, must interfere with his purely and simply
receiving the following arguments on their own cogency and truth alone.
The writer considers he has made a great discovery in moral and
political science; and elevated by his subject above all personal
influences, he commits it to be worked out by others, without the
ostentation of recording his name, or deeming that the applause of
present or of future generations can add to his sublime delight, in
discovering and applying a "panacea" to the varied and bitter ills that
beset three-fourths of the poor inhabitants of the "_United_ Kingdom."
As some account of the means by which a great discovery has been arrived
at is necessary, in order to prepare the mind for its reception with due
respect, I shall give a brief outline of the process by which this
all-important truth was elicited.
Born with natural sensibilities, I early learnt to shrink from pain
endured by others, as if felt actually and bodily by myself. Thus
constituted, what a scene was displayed to me when I came into the great
and moving society of mankind! What mighty heaps of misery did I
discern! What details did the records of the various courts of justice
disclose! What regions of squalor, misery, and degradation did my
travels reveal to me in every city, and every hamlet, I visited! The
bent of my future avocation was soon fixed, and I became a
philanthropist by profession. Not to make a trade of it at monster
meetings, or fancy fairs, but as a pursuit to which I felt myself called
by a spiritual voice, as distinct, I should say, as that which ever
called a theologian from a curacy of fifty pounds a year to a bishopric
of twenty thousand.
It is not necessary to recapitulate the horrors I have witnessed in the
regions of poverty. It is said that the eras of pestilence and famine
are passed, but so will not those say who have visited the dwellings of
the operatives of our great manufacturing towns, when the markets are
glutted, and the mills and manufactories are closed. Pestilence still
rages fiercely as ever, in the form of typhus, engendered by want. In
the mission I have called myself to, I have stood upon the mud floor,
over the corpse of the mother and the new-born child--both the victims
of want. I have seen a man (God's image) stretched on straw, wrapped
only in a mat, resign his breath, from starvation, in the prime of age.
I have entered, on a sultry summer's night, a small house, situate on
the banks of a common sewer, wherein one hundred and twenty-seven human
beings, of both sexes and all ages, were indiscriminately crowded. I
have been in the pestilential hovels of our great manufacturing cities,
where life was corrupted in every possible mode, from the malaria of the
sewer to the poison of the gin-bottle. I have been in sheds of the
peasant, worse than the hovel of the Russian, where eight squalid,
dirty, boorish creatures were to be kept alive by eight shillings per
week, irregularly paid. I have seen the humanities of life desecrated in
every way. I have seen the father snatch the bread from his child, and
the mother offer the gin-bottle for the breast. I have seen, too,
generous sacrifices and tender considerations, to which the boasted
chivalries of Sydney and Edward were childish ostentation. I have found
wrong so exalted, and right so debased--I have seen and known of so much
misery, that the faith in good has shivered within me.
For a time, when I urged these things in the circles of the comfortable,
I received many various replies. By some it was said that it was the lot
of humanity--that it had always been so, and, therefore, always must.
That to enlarge on the evil was only to create discontent, and so injure
"the better classes." It was in vain I urged to these reasoners that for
hundreds, and, perhaps, thousands of years, creatures little better than
Calibans infested the morasses and forests of Europe. That civilization
had an onward progress, and that the history of the world proved the one
great truth--that man is the creature of circumstances. By some, the
evils were denied: by some few, deplored. By all, the discussion was
avoided; though the destruction that menaced the Roman empire from the
invasion of the barbarian world was never so imminent, nor could the
consequence be so dreadful, as that which the wealthy, and civilization
itself, would sustain from the insurrection of outraged poverty.
I next tried the politicians. I devoted some years to history and
political economy. I even entered the senate. In politics, I found no
means of relief. The struggle there was for the preponderance in power,
and the reply, "Help us to get into power, and then we will see what we
can do." The utmost was to institute inquiries; and from the information
thus gathered, has been collected a record of misery, such as never was
before displayed.
It is true, some steps have at last been taken in the right direction;
some few noble spirits have spoken out to the "comfortable," the
dreadful truths. That something must be done, is now acknowledged by all
who think. The foolish, the careless, and the truculent, can no longer
avowedly declare the cries and groans of the miserable multitude to be
seditious discontent; nor ascribe their sufferings to the results of
retributive justice.
Baffled in every search for a remedy at home, I determined to search
foreign nations, and having carefully journeyed through Europe, I sought
successively the East and West, until I had traversed the civilized
countries of the world. It was in the remote regions of the East and
West that I found a clue to my discovery. I here found mankind as
multitudinous as at home, but much more happy. Starvation, except in
cases of general famine, was unknown; and, on the contrary, I heard the
sounds of revelry and dancing, of mirth and leisure, amongst the lowest
classes. How different to the everlasting toil of the superior
Englishman! "These, then," I said, "are the concomitants of bondage!"
Having thus struck out the idea, I followed it up with logical severity,
and enunciated the truth that _slavery and content, and liberty and
discontent, are natural results of each other_. Applying this, then, to
the toil-worn, half-fed, pauperized population of England, I found that
the only way to permanently and efficiently remedy the complicated
evils, would be to ENSLAVE _the whole of the people of England who have
not property_.
Of course, I expect a shout of execration and contempt at such a bold
proposition; but, as I have already said, I seek only to gain the
hearing, at first, of the impartial and the original thinker. That I am
disinterested, will at once be allowed, when I declare I do not seek to
be one of the enslaved. But let us proceed to examine how this mighty
benefit would manifest itself. The first great advantage would be, that
the lower classes of society would be placed on an equality with the
domestic animals; and by becoming property, become valuable and valued.
At present there can be no doubt that a horse that is worth fifty pounds
is much more cared for than a man who is worth nothing. We have lately
seen a case where a woman was allowed to expire in parturition, because
no more than eight shillings was allowed for the midwife's fee; whereas,
when a famous racing mare foaled, ten guineas were not thought too great
a sum to secure the attendance of a first-rate veterinary surgeon. Now,
had the woman been a slave, her offspring would have been worth
something, and, of course, her safety secured.
Like all great discoveries, the ramifications of the advantages are
found to be endless, and, if once fully entertained, would be
irresistible. Entire and complete slavery of the poor would put an end
to all the discussions of their rights, and clearly and definitely work
out the relative duties of all classes. We should have no more occasion
for vague special pleading, such as we find in Paley and other moral
philosophers, who endeavor to reconcile dependence and independence, and
liberty and obedience. Sedition would be at once annihilated; for where
there was no hope nor recognition of equality, there would be no attempt
to raise claims which were stifled before born. All vain ambition, such
as that now subsisting, between the potboy and the peer, as manifested
in Chesterfield's mosaic gold and cigars, would be prevented. The potboy
would be a contented slave, and the peer left to his superiority in
clothes, trinkets, and sensualities.
It will of course be asserted that the people would not be contented as
slaves, but it is only to make a state inevitable, and humanity is soon
reconciled to it, as we are to death, governments, and the income-tax.
Besides, what is liberty? a word now almost forgotten; a battle sound
used to juggle men in every age and country; in Greece, Rome, and
America, the war-cry of slaves to fight for the liberty of slavery. Must
we, then, ever remain the tools of words; reject all the true advantages
of slavery because we cannot bear the name, and take all its evils, and
more, because we wish to renounce the sound? What are soldiers and
sailors but bondsmen? Indeed, they are a happy specimen of slavery; well
fed, clad, and tended; with plenty of leisure and repose. Why, then,
should they be happier than the peasant, who pines away his dreary
existence on bread and potatoes and water? What is the convict but a
slave, who by his crimes has earned his right to be kept well and safe
from the elements and want? We reward the criminal with slavery and
competence, and leave the honest man to liberty and want.
If, indeed, the old noble cry of "Liberty _and Beer_" could be realized,
then it were vain to urge my discovery; but as Englishmen, in proportion
as they have gained their liberty, have lost their beer, it behooves us
to see whether they had not better hasten back to that state, when
inventoried with their masters' swine they shared also their
superfluities.