IN FACTORY AND MINE.
I do not know any story, not even that of the slave-trade, which can
compare, for brutality and callousness of heart, with the story of the
women and children employed in the factories and the mines of this
realm. There is nothing in the whole history of mankind which shows
more clearly the enormities which become possible when men, spurred by
desire for gain, are left uncontrolled by laws or the weight of public
opinion, and placed in the position of absolute mastery over their
fellow-men. The record of the slavery time is black in the West Indies
and the United States, God knows; but the record of the English mine
and factory is blacker still. It is so black that it seems incredible
to us. We ask ourselves in amazement if, fifty years ago, these things
could be. Alas! my friends, there are cruelties as great still going on
around us in every great city, and wherever women are forced to work
for bread. For the women and the children are inarticulate, and in the
dark places, where no light of publicity penetrates, the hand of the
master is armed with a scourge of scorpions. Let us therefore humble
ourselves, and read the story of the children in the mines with shame
as well as with indignation. The cry of the needlewomen is louder in
our ears than the cry of the children in the mines ever was to our
fathers; yet we regard it not.
[Illustration: LETTING CHILDREN DOWN A COAL MINE
(From a Plate in the _Westminster Review_)]
Fellow-sinners and partakers in the crimes of slavery, torture, and
robbery of light, life, youth, and joy, hear the tale of the Factory
and the Mine.
Early in the century--in the year 1801--the overcrowding of the
factories and mills, the neglect of the simplest sanitary precautions,
the long hours, the poor food, and insufficient rest, caused the
outbreak of a dreadful epidemic fever, which alarmed even the
mill-owners, because if they lost their hands they lost their
machinery. The hands are the producers, and the aim of the masters was
to regard the producers as so many machines. Now if your machine is
laid low with fever it is as good as an engine out of repair.
For the first time in history, not only was the public conscience
awakened, but the House of Commons was called upon to act in the
interests of health, public morals, humanity, and justice. Strange,
that the world had been Christian for so long, yet no law had been
passed to protect women and children. In the Year of Grace 1802 a
beginning was made.
By the Act then passed the daily hours of labour for children were
to be not more than twelve--yet think of making young children work
for twelve hours a day!--exclusive of an hour and a half for meals
and rest, so that the working day really covered thirteen hours and a
half, say from six in the morning until half-past seven in the evening.
This seems a good day’s work to exact of children, but it was a little
heaven compared with the state of things which preceded the Act.
Next, no children were to be employed under the age of nine. Certain
factories, proved to be unwholesome for children, were closed to them
altogether. Twenty years later Sir John Cam Hobhouse--may his soul find
peace!--invented the Saturday half-holiday for factories. There was
found, however, a loophole for cruelty and overwork; the limitation of
hours was evaded by making the hands work in relays, by which means a
child might be kept at work half the night. It was, therefore, in 1833
enacted that there should be no work done at all between 8.30 P.M.
and 5.30 A.M.: that children under thirteen should not work more than
forty-eight hours a week, and those under eighteen should not work more
than sixty-eight hours a week.
[Illustration: J. C. Hobhouse
-SIR JOHN C. HOBHOUSE-]
Observe that nothing--not the light of publicity, not public opinion,
not common humanity, not pity towards the tender children--nothing but
Law had any power to stop this daily massacre of the innocents. Yet,
no doubt, the manufacturers were subscribing for all kinds of good
objects, and reviling the Yankees continually for the institution of
Slavery.
What happened next? Greed of gain, seeing the factory closed, looked
round, and saw wide open--not the gates of Hell--but the mouth of the
Pit, and they flung the children down into the darkness, and made them
work among the narrow passages and galleries of the coal mines.
They took the child--boy or girl--at six years of age; they carried
the little thing away from the light of heaven, and lowered it deep
down into the black and gloomy pit; they placed it behind a door, and
ordered it to pull this open to let the corves, or trucks, come and
go, and to keep it shut when they were not passing. The child was set
at the door in the dark--at first they gave it a candle, which would
burn for an hour or two and then go out. Think of taking a child of
six--your child, Madam!--and putting it all alone down the dark mine!
They kept the little creature there for twelve interminable hours. If
the child cried, or went to sleep, or neglected to pull the door open,
they beat that child. The work began at four in the morning, and it
was not brought out of the pit until four, or perhaps later, in the
evening, so that in the winter the children never saw daylight at
all. The evidence given before the Royal Commission showed that the
children, when they were brought up to the pit’s mouth, were heavy and
stupefied, and cared for little when they had taken their supper but to
go to bed. And yet the men who owned these collieries had children of
their own! And they would have gone on to this very day starving the
children of light and loading them with work, stunting their growth,
and suffering them to grow up in ignorance all their days, but for Lord
Shaftesbury. This is what is written of the children and their work by
one who visited the mines:--
To ascertain the nature of the employment of these children, I
went down a pit.... Descending a shaft, 600 feet deep, I went some
distance along a subterranean road which, I was told, was three
miles in length. To the right and left of one of these roads or
ways are low galleries, called workings, in which the hewers are
employed, in a state of almost perfect nudity, on account of the
great heat, digging out the coal. To these galleries there are
traps, or doors, which are kept shut, to guard against the ingress
or egress of inflammable air, and to prevent counter-currents
disturbing the ventilation. The use of a child, six years of age,
is to open and shut one of these doors when the loaded corves, or
coal trucks, pass and repass. For this object the child is trained
to sit by itself in a dark gallery for the number of hours I have
described. The older boys drive horses and load the corves, but
the little children are always trap-keepers. When first taken down
they have a candle given them, but, gradually getting accustomed to
the gloom of the place, they have to do without, and sit therefore
literally in the dark the whole time of their imprisonment.
[Illustration: CHILDREN WORKING IN A COAL MINE
(From a Plate in the _Westminster Review_)]
When a child grew strong enough, he or she--boy or girl--was promoted
to the post of drawer, or thrutcher. The drawer, boy or girl alike,
clad in a short pair of trousers and nothing else, had a belt tied
round the waist and a chain attached by one end to the belt and the
other to the corve, or truck, which he dragged along the galleries
to the place where it was loaded for the mouth, the chain passing
between his legs; on account of the low height of the galleries he had
generally to go on all-fours. Those who were the thrutchers pushed the
truck along with their heads and hands. They wore a thick cap, but
the work made them bald on the top of the head. When the boys grew up
they became hewers, but the women, if they stayed in the pit, remained
drawers or thrutchers, continuing to the end of the day to push or drag
the truck dressed in nothing but the pair of short trousers. This was a
beautiful kind of life for Christian women and children to be leading.
So many children were wanted, that in one colliery employing 400 hands
there were 100 under twenty and 56 under thirteen. In another, where
there was an inundation, there were 44 children, of whom 26 were
drowned; of these 11 were girls and 15 boys; 9 were under ten years of
age. Again, in the year 1838, there were 38 children under thirteen
killed by colliery accidents and 62 young people under eighteen.
When men talk about the interference of the State and the regulation
of hours, let us always remember this history of the children in the
Pit. Yet there were men in plenty who denounced the action of the
Government: some of them were leaders in the philanthropic world; some
of them were religious men; some of them humane men; but they could
not bear to think that any limit should be imposed upon the power of
the employer. In point of fact, when one considers the use which the
employer has always made of his power, how every consideration has been
always set aside which might interfere with the acquisition of wealth,
it seems as if the chief business of the Legislature should be the
protection of the employed.
[Illustration: LONDON STREET CHARACTERS, 1837
(From a Drawing by John Leech)]
Again, take the story of the chimney-sweep. Fifty years ago the
master went his morning rounds accompanied by his climbing boys. It
is difficult now to understand how much time and trouble it took
to convince people that the climbing boy was made to endure an
extraordinary amount of suffering quite needlessly, because a brush
would do the work quite as well. Consider: the poor little wretch’s
hands, elbows, and knees were constantly being torn by the bricks;
sometimes he stuck going up, sometimes coming down; sometimes the
chimney-pot at the top fell off, the child with it, so that he was
killed. He was beaten and kicked unmercifully; his master would
sometimes light a fire underneath so as to force him to come down
quickly. The boy’s life was intolerable to him. He was badly fed, badly
clothed, and never washed, though his occupation demanded incessant
cleanliness--the neglect of which was certain to bring on a most
dreadful disease. And all this because his master would not use a
broom. It was not until 1841 that the children were protected by Acts
of Parliament.
The men have shown themselves able to protect themselves. The
improvement in their position is due wholly to their own combination.
That it will still more improve no one can for a moment doubt. If
we were asked to forecast the future, one thing would be safe to
prophesy--namely, that it will become, day by day, increasingly
difficult to get rich. Meanwhile, let us remember that we have with
us still the women and the children, who cannot combine. _We have
protected the latter; how--oh! my brothers--how shall we protect the
former?_