Having now investigated, somewhat in detail, the conditions under which
the English working-class lives, it is time to draw some further
inferences from the facts presented, and then to compare our inferences
with the actual state of things. Let us see what the workers themselves
have become under the given circumstances, what sort of people they are,
what their physical, mental, and moral status.
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another, such injury that
death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in
advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But
when society {95} places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that
they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is
quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it
deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under
conditions in which they _cannot_ live--forces them, through the strong
arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues
which is the inevitable consequence--knows that these thousands of
victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed
is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised,
malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which
does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the
death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of
omission than of commission. But murder it remains. I have now to prove
that society in England daily and hourly commits what the working-men's
organs, with perfect correctness, characterise as social murder, that it
has placed the workers under conditions in which they can neither retain
health nor live long; that it undermines the vital force of these workers
gradually, little by little, and so hurries them to the grave before
their time. I have further to prove that society knows how injurious
such conditions are to the health and the life of the workers, and yet
does nothing to improve these conditions. That it _knows_ the
consequences of its deeds; that its act is, therefore, not mere
manslaughter, but murder, I shall have proved, when I cite official
documents, reports of Parliament and of the Government, in substantiation
of my charge.
That a class which lives under the conditions already sketched and is so
ill-provided with the most necessary means of subsistence, cannot be
healthy and can reach no advanced age, is self-evident. Let us review
the circumstances once more with especial reference to the health of the
workers. The centralisation of population in great cities exercises of
itself an unfavourable influence; the atmosphere of London can never be
so pure, so rich in oxygen, as the air of the country; two and a half
million pairs of lungs, two hundred and fifty thousand fires, crowded
upon an area three to four miles square, consume an enormous amount of
oxygen, which is replaced with difficulty, because the method of building
cities in itself impedes ventilation. The carbonic acid gas, engendered
by respiration and fire, remains in the streets by reason of its specific
gravity, and the chief air current passes over the roofs of the city. The
lungs of the inhabitants fail to receive the due supply of oxygen, and
the consequence is mental and physical lassitude and low vitality. For
this reason, the dwellers in cities are far less exposed to acute, and
especially to inflammatory, affections than rural populations, who live
in a free, normal atmosphere; but they suffer the more from chronic
affections. And if life in large cities is, in itself, injurious to
health, how great must be the harmful influence of an abnormal atmosphere
in the working-people's quarters, where, as we have seen, everything
combines to poison the air. In the country, it may, perhaps, be
comparatively innoxious to keep a dung-heap adjoining one's dwelling,
because the air has free ingress from all sides; but in the midst of a
large town, among closely built lanes and courts that shut out all
movement of the atmosphere, the case is different. All putrefying
vegetable and animal substances give off gases decidedly injurious to
health, and if these gases have no free way of escape, they inevitably
poison the atmosphere. The filth and stagnant pools of the
working-people's quarters in the great cities have, therefore, the worst
effect upon the public health, because they produce precisely those gases
which engender disease; so, too, the exhalations from contaminated
streams. But this is by no means all. The manner in which the great
multitude of the poor is treated by society to-day is revolting. They
are drawn into the large cities where they breathe a poorer atmosphere
than in the country; they are relegated to districts which, by reason of
the method of construction, are worse ventilated than any others; they
are deprived of all means of cleanliness, of water itself, since pipes
are laid only when paid for, and the rivers so polluted that they are
useless for such purposes; they are obliged to throw all offal and
garbage, all dirty water, often all disgusting drainage and excrement
into the streets, being without other means of disposing of them; they
are thus compelled to infect the region of their own dwellings. Nor is
this enough. All conceivable evils are heaped upon the heads of the
poor. If the population of great cities is too dense in general, it is
they in particular who are packed into the least space. As though the
vitiated atmosphere of the streets were not enough, they are penned in
dozens into single rooms, so that the air which they breathe at night is
enough in itself to stifle them. They are given damp dwellings, cellar
dens that are not waterproof from below, or garrets that leak from above.
Their houses are so built that the clammy air cannot escape. They are
supplied bad, tattered, or rotten clothing, adulterated and indigestible
food. They are exposed to the most exciting changes of mental condition,
the most violent vibrations between hope and fear; they are hunted like
game, and not permitted to attain peace of mind and quiet enjoyment of
life. They are deprived of all enjoyments except that of sexual
indulgence and drunkenness, are worked every day to the point of complete
exhaustion of their mental and physical energies, and are thus constantly
spurred on to the maddest excess in the only two enjoyments at their
command. And if they surmount all this, they fall victims to want of
work in a crisis when all the little is taken from them that had hitherto
been vouchsafed them.
How is it possible, under such conditions, for the lower class to be
healthy and long lived? What else can be expected than an excessive
mortality, an unbroken series of epidemics, a progressive deterioration
in the physique of the working population? Let us see how the facts
stand.
That the dwellings of the workers in the worst portions of the cities,
together with the other conditions of life of this class, engender
numerous diseases, is attested on all sides. The article already quoted
from the _Artisan_ asserts with perfect truth, that lung diseases must be
the inevitable consequence of such conditions, and that, indeed, cases of
this kind are disproportionately frequent in this class. That the bad
air of London, and especially of the working-people's districts, is in
the highest degree favourable to the development of consumption, the
hectic appearance of great numbers of persons sufficiently indicates. If
one roams the streets a little in the early morning, when the multitudes
are on their way to their work, one is amazed at the number of persons
who look wholly or half-consumptive. Even in Manchester the people have
not the same appearance; these pale, lank, narrow-chested, hollow-eyed
ghosts, whom one passes at every step, these languid, flabby faces,
incapable of the slightest energetic expression, I have seen in such
startling numbers only in London, though consumption carries off a horde
of victims annually in the factory towns of the North. In competition
with consumption stands typhus, to say nothing of scarlet fever, a
disease which brings most frightful devastation into the ranks of the
working-class. Typhus, that universally diffused affliction, is
attributed by the official report on the sanitary condition of the
working-class, directly to the bad state of the dwellings in the matters
of ventilation, drainage, and cleanliness. This report, compiled, it
must not be forgotten, by the leading physicians of England from the
testimony of other physicians, asserts that a single ill-ventilated
court, a single blind alley without drainage, is enough to engender
fever, and usually does engender it, especially if the inhabitants are
greatly crowded. This fever has the same character almost everywhere,
and develops in nearly every case into specific typhus. It is to be
found in the working-people's quarters of all great towns and cities, and
in single ill-built, ill-kept streets of smaller places, though it
naturally seeks out single victims in better districts also. In London
it has now prevailed for a considerable time; its extraordinary violence
in the year 1837 gave rise to the report already referred to. According
to the annual report of Dr. Southwood Smith on the London Fever Hospital,
the number of patients in 1843 was 1,462, or 418 more than in any
previous year. In the damp, dirty regions of the north, south, and east
districts of London, this disease raged with extraordinary violence. Many
of the patients were working-people from the country, who had endured the
severest privation while migrating, and, after their arrival, had slept
hungry and half-naked in the streets, and so fallen victims to the fever.
These people were brought into the hospital in such a state of weakness,
that unusual quantities of wine, cognac, and preparations of ammonia and
other stimulants were required for their treatment; 16.5 per cent. of all
patients died. This malignant fever is to be found in Manchester; in the
worst quarters of the Old Town, Ancoats, Little Ireland, etc., it is
rarely extinct; though here, as in the _English_ towns generally, it
prevails to a less extent than might be expected. In Scotland and
Ireland, on the other hand, it rages with a violence that surpasses all
conception. In Edinburgh and Glasgow it broke out in 1817, after the
famine, and in 1826 and 1837 with especial violence, after the commercial
crisis, subsiding somewhat each time after having raged about three
years. In Edinburgh about 6,000 persons were attacked by the fever
during the epidemic of 1817, and about 10,000 in that of 1837, and not
only the number of persons attacked but the violence of the disease
increased with each repetition. {100a}
But the fury of the epidemic in all former periods seems to have been
child's play in comparison with its ravages after the crisis of 1842. One-
sixth of the whole indigent population of Scotland was seized by the
fever, and the infection was carried by wandering beggars with fearful
rapidity from one locality to another. It did not reach the middle and
upper classes of the population, yet in two months there were more fever
cases than in twelve years before. In Glasgow, twelve per cent. of the
population were seized in the year 1843; 32,000 persons, of whom thirty-
two per cent. perished, while this mortality in Manchester and Liverpool
does not ordinarily exceed eight per cent. The illness reached a crisis
on the seventh and fifteenth days; on the latter, the patient usually
became yellow, which our authority {100b} regards as an indication that
the cause of the malady was to be sought in mental excitement and
anxiety. In Ireland, too, these fever epidemics have become
domesticated. During twenty-one months of the years 1817-1818, 39,000
fever patients passed through the Dublin hospital; and in a more recent
year, according to Sheriff Alison, {100c} 60,000. In Cork the fever
hospital received one-seventh of the population in 1817-1818, in Limerick
in the same time one-fourth, and in the bad quarter of Waterford,
nineteen-twentieths of the whole population were ill of the fever at one
time.
When one remembers under what conditions the working-people live, when
one thinks how crowded their dwellings are, how every nook and corner
swarms with human beings, how sick and well sleep in the same room, in
the same bed, the only wonder is that a contagious disease like this
fever does not spread yet farther. And when one reflects how little
medical assistance the sick have at command, how many are without any
medical advice whatsoever, and ignorant of the most ordinary
precautionary measures, the mortality seems actually small. Dr. Alison,
who has made a careful study of this disease, attributes it directly to
the want and the wretched condition of the poor, as in the report already
quoted. He asserts that privations and the insufficient satisfaction of
vital needs are what prepare the frame for contagion and make the
epidemic widespread and terrible. He proves that a period of privation,
a commercial crisis or a bad harvest, has each time produced the typhus
epidemic in Ireland as in Scotland, and that the fury of the plague has
fallen almost exclusively on the working-class. It is a noteworthy fact,
that according to his testimony, the majority of persons who perish by
typhus are fathers of families, precisely the persons who can least be
spared by those dependent upon them; and several Irish physicians whom he
quotes bear the same testimony.
Another category of diseases arises directly from the food rather than
the dwellings of the workers. The food of the labourer, indigestible
enough in itself, is utterly unfit for young children, and he has neither
means nor time to get his children more suitable food. Moreover, the
custom of giving children spirits, and even opium, is very general; and
these two influences, with the rest of the conditions of life prejudicial
to bodily development, give rise to the most diverse affections of the
digestive organs, leaving life-long traces behind them. Nearly all
workers have stomachs more or less weak, and are yet forced to adhere to
the diet which is the root of the evil. How should they know what is to
blame for it? And if they knew, how could they obtain a more suitable
regimen so long as they cannot adopt a different way of living and are
not better educated? But new disease arises during childhood from
impaired digestion. Scrofula is almost universal among the
working-class, and scrofulous parents have scrofulous children,
especially when the original influences continue in full force to operate
upon the inherited tendency of the children. A second consequence of
this insufficient bodily nourishment, during the years of growth and
development, is rachitis, which is extremely common among the children of
the working-class. The hardening of the bones is delayed, the
development of the skeleton in general is restricted, and deformities of
the legs and spinal column are frequent, in addition to the usual
rachitic affections. How greatly all these evils are increased by the
changes to which the workers are subject in consequence of fluctuations
in trade, want of work, and the scanty wages in time of crisis, it is not
necessary to dwell upon. Temporary want of sufficient food, to which
almost every working-man is exposed at least once in the course of his
life, only contributes to intensify the effects of his usual sufficient
but bad diet. Children who are half-starved, just when they most need
ample and nutritious food--and how many such there are during every
crisis and even when trade is at its best--must inevitably become weak,
scrofulous and rachitic in a high degree. And that they do become so,
their appearance amply shows. The neglect to which the great mass of
working-men's children are condemned leaves ineradicable traces and
brings the enfeeblement of the whole race of workers with it. Add to
this, the unsuitable clothing of this class, the impossibility of
precautions against colds, the necessity of toiling so long as health
permits, want made more dire when sickness appears, and the only too
common lack of all medical assistance; and we have a rough idea of the
sanitary condition of the English working-class. The injurious effects
peculiar to single employments as now conducted, I shall not deal with
here.
Besides these, there are other influences which enfeeble the health of a
great number of workers, intemperance most of all. All possible
temptations, all allurements combine to bring the workers to drunkenness.
Liquor is almost their only source of pleasure, and all things conspire
to make it accessible to them. The working-man comes from his work
tired, exhausted, finds his home comfortless, damp, dirty, repulsive; he
has urgent need of recreation, he _must_ have something to make work
worth his trouble, to make the prospect of the next day endurable. His
unnerved, uncomfortable, hypochondriac state of mind and body arising
from his unhealthy condition, and especially from indigestion, is
aggravated beyond endurance by the general conditions of his life, the
uncertainty of his existence, his dependence upon all possible accidents
and chances, and his inability to do anything towards gaining an assured
position. His enfeebled frame, weakened by bad air and bad food,
violently demands some external stimulus; his social need can be
gratified only in the public-house, he has absolutely no other place
where he can meet his friends. How can he be expected to resist the
temptation? It is morally and physically inevitable that, under such
circumstances, a very large number of working-men should fall into
intemperance. And apart from the chiefly physical influences which drive
the working-man into drunkenness, there is the example of the great mass,
the neglected education, the impossibility of protecting the young from
temptation, in many cases the direct influence of intemperate parents,
who give their own children liquor, the certainty of forgetting for an
hour or two the wretchedness and burden of life, and a hundred other
circumstances so mighty that the workers can, in truth, hardly be blamed
for yielding to such overwhelming pressure. Drunkenness has here ceased
to be a vice, for which the vicious can be held responsible; it becomes a
phenomenon, the necessary, inevitable effect of certain conditions upon
an object possessed of no volition in relation to those conditions. They
who have degraded the working-man to a mere object have the
responsibility to bear. But as inevitably as a great number of working-
men fall a prey to drink, just so inevitably does it manifest its ruinous
influence upon the body and mind of its victims. All the tendencies to
disease arising from the conditions of life of the workers are promoted
by it, it stimulates in the highest degree the development of lung and
digestive troubles, the rise and spread of typhus epidemics.
Another source of physical mischief to the working-class lies in the
impossibility of employing skilled physicians in cases of illness. It is
true that a number of charitable institutions strive to supply this want,
that the infirmary in Manchester, for instance, receives or gives advice
and medicine to 2,200 patients annually. But what is that in a city in
which, according to Gaskell's calculation, {104} three-fourths of the
population need medical aid every year? English doctors charge high
fees, and working-men are not in a position to pay them. They can
therefore do nothing, or are compelled to call in cheap charlatans, and
use quack remedies, which do more harm than good. An immense number of
such quacks thrive in every English town, securing their _clientele_
among the poor by means of advertisements, posters, and other such
devices. Besides these, vast quantities of patent medicines are sold,
for all conceivable ailments: Morrison's Pills, Parr's Life Pills, Dr.
Mainwaring's Pills, and a thousand other pills, essences, and balsams,
all of which have the property of curing all the ills that flesh is heir
to. These medicines rarely contain actually injurious substances, but,
when taken freely and often, they affect the system prejudicially; and as
the unwary purchasers are always recommended to take as much as possible,
it is not to be wondered at that they swallow them wholesale whether
wanted or not.
It is by no means unusual for the manufacturer of Parr's Life Pills to
sell twenty to twenty-five thousand boxes of these salutary pills in a
week, and they are taken for constipation by this one, for diarrhoea by
that one, for fever, weakness, and all possible ailments. As our German
peasants are cupped or bled at certain seasons, so do the English working-
people now consume patent medicines to their own injury and the great
profit of the manufacturer. One of the most injurious of these patent
medicines is a drink prepared with opiates, chiefly laudanum, under the
name Godfrey's Cordial. Women who work at home, and have their own and
other people's children to take care of, give them this drink to keep
them quiet, and, as many believe, to strengthen them. They often begin
to give this medicine to newly-born children, and continue, without
knowing the effects of this "heartsease," until the children die. The
less susceptible the child's system to the action of the opium, the
greater the quantities administered. When the cordial ceases to act,
laudanum alone is given, often to the extent of fifteen to twenty drops
at a dose. The Coroner of Nottingham testified before a Parliamentary
Commission {105a} that one apothecary had, according to his own
statement, used thirteen hundredweight of laudanum in one year in the
preparation of Godfrey's Cordial. The effects upon the children so
treated may be readily imagined. They are pale, feeble, wilted, and
usually die before completing the second year. The use of this cordial
is very extensive in all great towns and industrial districts in the
kingdom.
The result of all these influences is a general enfeeblement of the frame
in the working-class. There are few vigorous, well-built, healthy
persons among the workers, _i.e_., among the factory operatives, who are
employed in confined rooms, and we are here discussing these only. They
are almost all weakly, of angular but not powerful build, lean, pale, and
of relaxed fibre, with the exception of the muscles especially exercised
in their work. Nearly all suffer from indigestion, and consequently from
a more or less hypochondriac, melancholy, irritable, nervous condition.
Their enfeebled constitutions are unable to resist disease, and are
therefore seized by it on every occasion. Hence they age prematurely,
and die early. On this point the mortality statistics supply
unquestionable testimony.
According to the Report of Registrar-General Graham, the annual death-
rate of all England and Wales is something less than 2.25 per cent. That
is to say, out of forty-five persons, one dies every year. {105b} This
was the average for the year 1839-40. In 1840-41 the mortality
diminished somewhat, and the death-rate was but one in forty-six. But in
the great cities the proportion is wholly different. I have before me
official tables of mortality (_Manchester Guardian_, July 31st, 1844),
according to which the death-rate of several large towns is as
follows:--In Manchester, including Chorlton and Salford, one in 32.72;
and excluding Chorlton and Salford, one in 30.75. In Liverpool,
including West Derby (suburb), 31.90, and excluding West Derby, 29.90;
while the average of all the districts of Cheshire, Lancashire, and
Yorkshire cited, including a number of wholly or partially rural
districts and many small towns, with a total population of 2,172,506 for
the whole, is one death in 39.80 persons. How unfavourably the workers
are placed in the great cities, the mortality for Prescott in Lancashire
shows: a district inhabited by miners, and showing a lower sanitary
condition than that of the agricultural districts, mining being by no
means a healthful occupation. But these miners live in the country, and
the death-rate among them is but one in 47.54, or nearly two-and-a-half
per cent. better than that for all England. All these statements are
based upon the mortality tables for 1843. Still higher is the death-rate
in the Scotch cities; in Edinburgh, in 1838-39, one in 29; in 1831, in
the Old Town alone, one in 22. In Glasgow, according to Dr. Cowen, {106}
the average has been, since 1830, one in 30; and in single years, one in
22 to 24. That this enormous shortening of life falls chiefly upon the
working-class, that the general average is improved by the smaller
mortality of the upper and middle-classes, is attested upon all sides.
One of the most recent depositions is that of a physician, Dr. P. H.
Holland, in Manchester, who investigated Chorlton-on-Medlock, a suburb of
Manchester, under official commission. He divided the houses and streets
into three classes each, and ascertained the following variations in the
death-rate:
First class of Streets. Houses I. class. Mortality one in 51
,, ,, ,, II. ,, ,, ,, 45
,, ,, ,, III. ,, ,, ,, 36
Second ,, ,, I. ,, ,, ,, 55
,, ,, ,, II. ,, ,, ,, 38
,, ,, ,, III. ,, ,, ,, 35
Third ,, ,, I. ,, Wanting --- ----
,, ,, ,, II. ,, Mortality ,, 35
,, ,, ,, III. ,, ,, ,, 25
It is clear from other tables given by Holland that the mortality in the
_streets_ of the second class is 18 per cent. greater, and in the streets
of the third class 68 per cent. greater than in those of the first class;
that the mortality in the _houses_ of the second class is 31 per cent
greater, and in the third class 78 per cent. greater than in those of the
first class; that the mortality is those bad streets which were improved,
decreased 25 per cent. He closes with the remark, very frank for an
English bourgeois: {107}
"When we find the rate of mortality four times as high in some streets
as in others, and twice as high in whole classes of streets as in
other classes, and further find that it is all but invariably high in
those streets which are in bad condition, and almost invariably low in
those whose condition is good, we cannot resist the conclusion that
multitudes of our fellow-creatures, _hundreds of our immediate
neighbours_, are annually destroyed for want of the most evident
precautions."
The Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Working-Class contains
information which attests the same fact. In Liverpool, in 1840, the
average longevity of the upper-classes, gentry, professional men, etc.,
was thirty-five years; that of the business men and better-placed
handicraftsmen, twenty-two years; and that of the operatives,
day-labourers, and serviceable class in general, but fifteen years. The
Parliamentary reports contain a mass of similar facts.
The death-rate is kept so high chiefly by the heavy mortality among young
children in the working-class. The tender frame of a child is least able
to withstand the unfavourable influences of an inferior lot in life; the
neglect to which they are often subjected, when both parents work or one
is dead, avenges itself promptly, and no one need wonder that in
Manchester, according to the report last quoted, more than fifty-seven
per cent. of the children of the working-class perish before the fifth
year, while but twenty per cent. of the children of the higher classes,
and not quite thirty-two per cent. of the children of all classes in the
country die under five years of age. {108a} The article of the
_Artisan_, already several times referred to, furnishes exacter
information on this point, by comparing the city death-rate in single
diseases of children with the country death-rate, thus demonstrating
that, in general, epidemics in Manchester and Liverpool are three times
more fatal than in country districts; that affections of the nervous
system are quintupled, and stomach troubles trebled, while deaths from
affections of the lungs in cities are to those in the country as 2.5 to
1. Fatal cases of smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, and whooping cough,
among small children, are four times more frequent; those of water on the
brain are trebled, and convulsions ten times more frequent. To quote
another acknowledged authority, I append the following table. Out of
10,000 persons, there die--{108b}
Under 5-19 20-39 40-59 60-69 70-79 80-89 90-99 100 x
5 years
In Rutlandshire, a
healthy agricultural
district 2,865 891 1,275 1,299 1,189 1,428 938 112 3
Essex, marshy
agricultural
district 3,159 1,110 1,526 1,413 963 1,019 630 177 3
Town of Carlisle,
1779-1787, before
introduction of
mills 4,408 921 1,006 1,201 940 826 633 153 22
Town of Carlisle,
after introduction
of mills 4,738 930 1,201 1,134 677 727 452 80 1
Preston, factory
town 4,947 1,136 1,379 1,114 553 532 298 38 3
Leeds, factory
town 5,286 927 1,228 1,198 593 512 225 29 2
Apart from the divers diseases which are the necessary consequence of the
present neglect and oppression of the poorer classes, there are other
influences which contribute to increase the mortality among small
children. In many families the wife, like the husband, has to work away
from home, and the consequence is the total neglect of the children, who
are either locked up or given out to be taken care of. It is, therefore,
not to be wondered at if hundreds of them perish through all manner of
accidents. Nowhere are so many children run over, nowhere are so many
killed by falling, drowning, or burning, as in the great cities and towns
of England. Deaths from burns and scalds are especially frequent, such a
case occurring nearly every week during the winter months in Manchester,
and very frequently in London, though little mention is made of them in
the papers. I have at hand a copy of the _Weekly Despatch_ of December
15th, 1844, according to which, in the week from December 1st to December
7th inclusive, _six_ such cases occurred. These unhappy children,
perishing in this terrible way, are victims of our social disorder, and
of the property-holding classes interested in maintaining and prolonging
this disorder. Yet one is left in doubt whether even this terribly
torturing death is not a blessing for the children in rescuing them from
a long life of toil and wretchedness, rich in suffering and poor in
enjoyment. So far has it gone in England; and the bourgeoisie reads
these things every day in the newspapers and takes no further trouble in
the matter. But it cannot complain if, after the official and
non-official testimony here cited which must be known to it, I broadly
accuse it of social murder. Let the ruling class see to it that these
frightful conditions are ameliorated, or let it surrender the
administration of the common interests to the labouring-class. To the
latter course it is by no means inclined; for the former task, so long as
it remains the bourgeoisie crippled by bourgeois prejudice, it has not
the needed power. For if, at last, after hundreds of thousands of
victims have perished, it manifests some little anxiety for the future,
passing a "Metropolitan Buildings Act," under which the most unscrupulous
overcrowding of dwellings is to be, at least in some slight degree,
restricted; if it points with pride to measures which, far from attacking
the root of the evil, do not by any means meet the demands of the
commonest sanitary policy, it cannot thus vindicate itself from the
accusation. The English bourgeoisie has but one choice, either to
continue its rule under the unanswerable charge of murder and in spite of
this charge, or to abdicate in favour of the labouring-class. Hitherto
it has chosen the former course.
Let us turn from the physical to the mental state of the workers. Since
the bourgeoisie vouchsafes them only so much of life as is absolutely
necessary, we need not wonder that it bestows upon them only so much
education as lies in the interest of the bourgeoisie; and that, in truth,
is not much. The means of education in England are restricted out of all
proportion to the population. The few day schools at the command of the
working-class are available only for the smallest minority, and are bad
besides. The teachers, worn-out workers, and other unsuitable persons
who only turn to teaching in order to live, are usually without the
indispensable elementary knowledge, without the moral discipline so
needful for the teacher, and relieved of all public supervision. Here,
too, free competition rules, and, as usual, the rich profit by it, and
the poor, for whom competition is _not_ free, who have not the knowledge
needed to enable them to form a correct judgment, have the evil
consequences to bear. Compulsory school attendance does not exist. In
the mills it is, as we shall see, purely nominal; and when in the session
of 1843 the Ministry was disposed to make this nominal compulsion
effective, the manufacturing bourgeoisie opposed the measure with all its
might, though the working-class was outspokenly in favour of compulsory
school attendance. Moreover, a mass of children work the whole week
through in the mills or at home, and therefore cannot attend school. The
evening schools, supposed to be attended by children who are employed
during the day, are almost abandoned or attended without benefit. It is
asking too much, that young workers who have been using themselves up
twelve hours in the day, should go to school from eight to ten at night.
And those who try it usually fall asleep, as is testified by hundreds of
witnesses in the Children's Employment Commission's Report. Sunday
schools have been founded, it is true, but they, too, are most scantily
supplied with teachers, and can be of use to those only who have already
learnt something in the day schools. The interval from one Sunday to the
next is too long for an ignorant child to remember in the second sitting
what it learned in the first, a week before. The Children's Employment
Commission's Report furnishes a hundred proofs, and the Commission itself
most emphatically expresses the opinion, that neither the week-day nor
the Sunday schools, in the least degree, meet the needs of the nation.
This report gives evidence of ignorance in the working-class of England,
such as could hardly be expected in Spain or Italy. It cannot be
otherwise; the bourgeoisie has little to hope, and much to fear, from the
education of the working-class. The Ministry, in its whole enormous
budget of 55,000,000 pounds, has only the single trifling item of 40,000
pounds for public education, and, but for the fanaticism of the religious
sects which does at least as much harm as good, the means of education
would be yet more scanty. As it is, the State Church manages its
national schools and the various sects their sectarian schools for the
sole purpose of keeping the children of the brethren of the faith within
the congregation, and of winning away a poor childish soul here and there
from some other sect. The consequence is that religion, and precisely
the most unprofitable side of religion, polemical discussion, is made the
principal subject of instruction, and the memory of the children
overburdened with incomprehensible dogmas and theological distinctions;
that sectarian hatred and bigotry are awakened as early as possible, and
all rational mental and moral training shamefully neglected. The working
class has repeatedly demanded of Parliament a system of strictly secular
public education, leaving religion to the ministers of the sects; but,
thus far, no Ministry has been induced to grant it. The Minister is the
obedient servant of the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie is divided into
countless sects; but each would gladly grant the workers the otherwise
dangerous education on the sole condition of their accepting, as an
antidote, the dogmas peculiar to the especial sect in question. And as
these sects are still quarrelling among themselves for supremacy, the
workers remain for the present without education. It is true that the
manufacturers boast of having enabled the majority to read, but the
quality of the reading is appropriate to the source of the instruction,
as the Children's Employment Commission proves. According to this
report, he who knows his letters can read enough to satisfy the
conscience of the manufacturers. And when one reflects upon the confused
orthography of the English language which makes reading one of the arts,
learned only under long instruction, this ignorance is readily
understood. Very few working-people write readily; and writing
orthographically is beyond the powers even of many "educated" persons.
The Sunday schools of the State Church, of the Quakers, and, I think, of
several other sects, do not teach writing, "because it is too worldly an
employment for Sunday." The quality of the instruction offered the
workers in other directions may be judged from a specimen or two, taken
from the Children's Employment Commission's Report, which unfortunately
does not embrace mill-work proper:
"In Birmingham," says Commissioner Grainger, "the children examined by
me are, as a whole, utterly wanting in all that could be in the
remotest degree called a useful education. Although in almost all the
schools religious instruction alone is furnished, the profoundest
ignorance even upon that subject prevailed."--"In Wolverhampton," says
Commissioner Horne, "I found, among others, the following example: A
girl of eleven years had attended both day and Sunday school, 'had
never heard of another world, of Heaven, or another life.' A boy,
seventeen years old, did not know that twice two are four, nor how
many farthings in two pence even when the money was placed in his
hand. Several boys had never heard of London nor of Willenhall,
though the latter was but an hour's walk from their homes, and in the
closest relations with Wolverhampton. Several had never heard the
name of the Queen nor other names, such as Nelson, Wellington,
Bonaparte; but it was noteworthy that those who had never heard even
of St. Paul, Moses, or Solomon, were very well instructed as to the
life, deeds, and character of Dick Turpin, and especially of Jack
Sheppard. A youth of sixteen did not know how many twice two are, nor
how much four farthings make. A youth of seventeen asserted that four
farthings are four half pence; a third, seventeen years old, answered
several very simple questions with the brief statement, that he 'was
ne jedge o' nothin'.'" {112a} These children who are crammed with
religious doctrines four or five years at a stretch, know as little at
the end as at the beginning. One child "went to Sunday school
regularly for five years; does not know who Jesus Christ is, but had
heard the name; had never heard of the twelve Apostles, Samson, Moses,
Aaron, etc." {112b} Another "attended Sunday school regularly six
years; knows who Jesus Christ was; he died on the Cross to save our
Saviour; had never heard of St. Peter or St. Paul." {113a} A third,
"attended different Sunday schools seven years; can read only the
thin, easy books with simple words of one syllable; has heard of the
Apostles, but does not know whether St. Peter was one or St. John; the
latter must have been St. John Wesley." {113b} To the question who
Christ was, Horne received the following answers among others: "He was
Adam," "He was an Apostle," "He was the Saviour's Lord's Son," and
from a youth of sixteen: "He was a king of London long ago." In
Sheffield, Commissioner Symonds let the children from the Sunday
school read aloud; they could not tell what they had read, or what
sort of people the Apostles were, of whom they had just been reading.
After he had asked them all one after the other about the Apostles
without securing a single correct answer, one sly-looking little
fellow, with great glee, called out: "I know, mister; they were the
lepers!" {113c} From the pottery districts and from Lancashire the
reports are similar.
This is what the bourgeoisie and the State are doing for the education
and improvement of the working-class. Fortunately the conditions under
which this class lives are such as give it a sort of practical training,
which not only replaces school cramming, but renders harmless the
confused religious notions connected with it, and even places the workers
in the vanguard of the national movement of England. Necessity is the
mother of invention, and what is still more important, of thought and
action. The English working-man who can scarcely read and still less
write, nevertheless knows very well where his own interest and that of
the nation lies. He knows, too, what the especial interest of the
bourgeoisie is, and what he has to expect of that bourgeoisie. If he
cannot write he can speak, and speak in public; if he has no arithmetic,
he can, nevertheless, reckon with the Political Economists enough to see
through a Corn-Law-repealing bourgeois, and to get the better of him in
argument; if celestial matters remain very mixed for him in spite of all
the effort of the preachers, he sees all the more clearly into
terrestrial, political, and social questions. We shall have occasion to
refer again to this point; and pass now to the moral characteristics of
our workers.
It is sufficiently clear that the instruction in morals can have no
better effect than the religious teaching, with which in all English
schools it is mixed up. The simple principles which, for plain human
beings, regulate the relations of man to man, brought into the direst
confusion by our social state, our war of each against all, necessarily
remain confused and foreign to the working-man when mixed with
incomprehensible dogmas, and preached in the religious form of an
arbitrary and dogmatic commandment. The schools contribute, according to
the confession of all authorities, and especially of the Children's
Employment Commission, almost nothing to the morality of the
working-class. So short-sighted, so stupidly narrow-minded is the
English bourgeoisie in its egotism, that it does not even take the
trouble to impress upon the workers the morality of the day, which the
bourgeoisie has patched together in its own interest for its own
protection! Even this precautionary measure is too great an effort for
the enfeebled and sluggish bourgeoisie. A time must come when it will
repent its neglect, too late. But it has no right to complain that the
workers know nothing of its system of morals, and do not act in
accordance with it.
Thus are the workers cast out and ignored by the class in power, morally
as well as physically and mentally. The only provision made for them is
the law, which fastens upon them when they become obnoxious to the
bourgeoisie. Like the dullest of the brutes, they are treated to but one
form of education, the whip, in the shape of force, not convincing but
intimidating. There is, therefore, no cause for surprise if the workers,
treated as brutes, actually become such; or if they can maintain their
consciousness of manhood only by cherishing the most glowing hatred, the
most unbroken inward rebellion against the bourgeoisie in power. They
are men so long only as they burn with wrath against the reigning class.
They become brutes the moment they bend in patience under the yoke, and
merely strive to make life endurable while abandoning the effort to break
the yoke.
This, then, is all that the bourgeoisie has done for the education of the
proletariat--and when we take into consideration all the circumstances in
which this class lives, we shall not think the worse of it for the
resentment which it cherishes against the ruling class. The moral
training which is not given to the worker in school is not supplied by
the other conditions of his life; that moral training, at least, which
alone has worth in the eyes of the bourgeoisie; his whole position and
environment involves the strongest temptation to immorality. He is poor,
life offers him no charm, almost every enjoyment is denied him, the
penalties of the law have no further terrors for him; why should he
restrain his desires, why leave to the rich the enjoyment of his
birthright, why not seize a part of it for himself? What inducement has
the proletarian not to steal! It is all very pretty and very agreeable
to the ear of the bourgeois to hear the "sacredness of property"
asserted; but for him who has none, the sacredness of property dies out
of itself. Money is the god of this world; the bourgeois takes the
proletarian's money from him and so makes a practical atheist of him. No
wonder, then, if the proletarian retains his atheism and no longer
respects the sacredness and power of the earthly God. And when the
poverty of the proletarian is intensified to the point of actual lack of
the barest necessaries of life, to want and hunger, the temptation to
disregard all social order does but gain power. This the bourgeoisie for
the most part recognises. Symonds {115a} observes that poverty exercises
the same ruinous influence upon the mind which drunkenness exercises upon
the body; and Dr. Alison explains to property-holding readers, with the
greatest exactness, what the consequences of social oppression must be
for the working-class. {115b} Want leaves the working-man the choice
between starving slowly, killing himself speedily, or taking what he
needs where he finds it--in plain English, stealing. And there is no
cause for surprise that most of them prefer stealing to starvation and
suicide.
True, there are, within the working-class, numbers too moral to steal
even when reduced to the utmost extremity, and these starve or commit
suicide. For suicide, formerly the enviable privilege of the upper
classes, has become fashionable among the English workers, and numbers of
the poor kill themselves to avoid the misery from which they see no other
means of escape.
But far more demoralising than his poverty in its influence upon the
English working-man is the insecurity of his position, the necessity of
living upon wages from hand to mouth, that in short which makes a
proletarian of him. The smaller peasants in Germany are usually poor,
and often suffer want, but they are less at the mercy of accident, they
have at least something secure. The proletarian, who has nothing but his
two hands, who consumes to-day what he earned yesterday, who is subject
to every possible chance, and has not the slightest guarantee for being
able to earn the barest necessities of life, whom every crisis, every
whim of his employer may deprive of bread, this proletarian is placed in
the most revolting, inhuman position conceivable for a human being. The
slave is assured of a bare livelihood by the self-interest of his master,
the serf has at least a scrap of land on which to live; each has at worst
a guarantee for life itself. But the proletarian must depend upon
himself alone, and is yet prevented from so applying his abilities as to
be able to rely upon them. Everything that the proletarian can do to
improve his position is but a drop in the ocean compared with the floods
of varying chances to which he is exposed, over which he has not the
slightest control. He is the passive subject of all possible
combinations of circumstances, and must count himself fortunate when he
has saved his life even for a short time; and his character and way of
living are naturally shaped by these conditions. Either he seeks to keep
his head above water in this whirlpool, to rescue his manhood, and this
he can do solely in rebellion {116} against the class which plunders him
so mercilessly and then abandons him to his fate, which strives to hold
him in this position so demoralising to a human being; or he gives up the
struggle against his fate as hopeless, and strives to profit, so far as
he can, by the most favourable moment. To save is unavailing, for at the
utmost he cannot save more than suffices to sustain life for a short
time, while if he falls out of work, it is for no brief period. To
accumulate lasting property for himself is impossible; and if it were
not, he would only cease to be a working-man and another would take his
place. What better thing can he do, then, when he gets high wages, than
live well upon them? The English bourgeoisie is violently scandalised at
the extravagant living of the workers when wages are high; yet it is not
only very natural but very sensible of them to enjoy life when they can,
instead of laying up treasures which are of no lasting use to them, and
which in the end moth and rust (_i.e_., the bourgeoisie) get possession
of. Yet such a life is demoralising beyond all others. What Carlyle
says of the cotton spinners is true of all English industrial workers:
{117a}
"Their trade, now in plethoric prosperity, anon extenuated into
inanition and 'short time,' is of the nature of gambling; they live by
it like gamblers, now in luxurious superfluity, now in starvation.
Black, mutinous discontent devours them; simply the miserablest
feeling that can inhabit the heart of man. English commerce, with its
world-wide, convulsive fluctuations, with its immeasurable Proteus
Steam demon, makes all paths uncertain for them, all life a
bewilderment; society, steadfastness, peaceable continuance, the first
blessings of man are not theirs.--This world is for them no home, but
a dingy prison-house, of reckless unthrift, rebellion, rancour,
indignation against themselves and against all men. Is it a green,
flowery world, with azure everlasting sky stretched over it, the work
and government of a God; or a murky, simmering Tophet, of copperas
fumes, cotton fuz, gin riot, wrath and toil, created by a Demon,
governed by a Demon?"