"Thomas McDurt, workman, has slight fever. Cannot stay at home longer
than four days, because he would fear of losing his place."
And so it goes on in almost all the factories. The employment of young
girls produces all sorts of irregularities during the period of
development. In some, especially those who are better fed, the heat of
the factories hastens this process, so that in single cases, girls of
thirteen and fourteen are wholly mature. Robertson, whom I have already
cited (mentioned in the Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report as the
"eminent" gynaecologist of Manchester), relates in the North of England
_Medical and Surgical Journal_, that he had seen a girl of eleven years
who was not only a wholly developed woman, but pregnant, and that it was
by no means rare in Manchester for women to be confined at fifteen years
of age. In such cases, the influence of the warmth of the factories is
the same as that of a tropical climate, and, as in such climates, the
abnormally early development revenges itself by correspondingly premature
age and debility. On the other hand, retarded development of the female
constitution occurs, the breasts mature late or not at all. {162c}
Menstruation first appears in the seventeenth or eighteenth, sometimes in
the twentieth year, and is often wholly wanting. {163a} Irregular
menstruation, coupled with great pain and numerous affections, especially
with anaemia, is very frequent, as the medical reports unanimously state.
Children of such mothers, particularly of those who are obliged to work
during pregnancy, cannot be vigorous. They are, on the contrary,
described in the report, especially in Manchester, as very feeble; and
Barry alone asserts that they are healthy, but says further, that in
Scotland, where his inspection lay, almost no married women worked in
factories. Moreover, most of the factories there are in the country
(with the exception of Glasgow), a circumstance which contributes greatly
to the invigoration of the children. The operatives' children in the
neighbourhood of Manchester are nearly all thriving and rosy, while those
within the city look pale and scrofulous; but with the ninth year the
colour vanishes suddenly, because all are then sent into the factories,
when it soon becomes impossible to distinguish the country from the city
children.
But besides all this, there are some branches of factory-work which have
an especially injurious effect. In many rooms of the cotton and flax-
spinning mills, the air is filled with fibrous dust, which produces chest
affections, especially among workers in the carding and combing-rooms.
Some constitutions can bear it, some cannot; but the operative has no
choice. He must take the room in which he finds work, whether his chest
is sound or not. The most common effects of this breathing of dust are
blood-spitting, hard, noisy breathing, pains in the chest, coughs,
sleeplessness--in short, all the symptoms of asthma ending in the worst
cases in consumption. {163b} Especially unwholesome is the wet spinning
of linen-yarn which is carried on by young girls and boys. The water
spirts over them from the spindle, so that the front of their clothing is
constantly wet through to the skin; and there is always water standing on
the floor. This is the case to a less degree in the doubling-rooms of
the cotton mills, and the result is a constant succession of colds and
affections of the chest. A hoarse, rough voice is common to all
operatives, but especially to wet spinners and doublers. Stuart,
Mackintosh, and Sir D. Barry express themselves in the most vigorous
terms as to the unwholesomeness of this work, and the small consideration
shown by most of the manufacturers for the health of the girls who do it.
Another effect of flax-spinning is a peculiar deformity of the shoulder,
especially a projection of the right shoulder-blade, consequent upon the
nature of the work. This sort of spinning and the throstle-spinning of
cotton frequently produce diseases of the knee-pan, which is used to
check the spindle during the joining of broken threads. The frequent
stooping and the bending to the low machines common to both these
branches of work have, in general, a stunting effect upon the growth of
the operative. In the throstle-room of the cotton mill at Manchester, in
which I was employed, I do not remember to have seen one single tall,
well-built girl; they were all short, dumpy, and badly-formed, decidedly
ugly in the whole development of the figure. But apart from all these
diseases and malformations, the limbs of the operatives suffer in still
another way. The work between the machinery gives rise to multitudes of
accidents of more or less serious nature, which have for the operative
the secondary effect of unfitting him for his work more or less
completely. The most common accident is the squeezing off of a single
joint of a finger, somewhat less common the loss of the whole finger,
half or a whole hand, an arm, etc., in the machinery. Lockjaw very often
follows, even upon the lesser among these injuries, and brings death with
it. Besides the deformed persons, a great number of maimed ones may be
seen going about in Manchester; this one has lost an arm or a part of
one, that one a foot, the third half a leg; it is like living in the
midst of an army just returned from a campaign. But the most dangerous
portion of the machinery is the strapping which conveys motive power from
the shaft to the separate machines, especially if it contains buckles,
which, however, are rarely used now. Whoever is seized by the strap is
carried up with lightning speed, thrown against the ceiling above and
floor below with such force that there is rarely a whole bone left in the
body, and death follows instantly. Between June 12th and August 3rd,
1843, the _Manchester Guardian_ reported the following serious accidents
(the trifling ones it does not notice): June 12th, a boy died in
Manchester of lockjaw, caused by his hand being crushed between wheels.
June 16th, a youth in Saddleworth seized by a wheel and carried away with
it; died, utterly mangled. June 29th, a young man at Green Acres Moor,
near Manchester, at work in a machine shop, fell under the grindstone,
which broke two of his ribs and lacerated him terribly. July 24th, a
girl in Oldham died, carried around fifty times by a strap; no bone
unbroken. July 27th, a girl in Manchester seized by the blower (the
first machine that receives the raw cotton), and died of injuries
received. August 3rd, a bobbins turner died in Dukenfield, caught in a
strap, every rib broken. In the year 1843, the Manchester Infirmary
treated 962 cases of wounds and mutilations caused by machinery, while
the number of all other accidents within the district of the hospital was
2,426, so that for five accidents from all other causes, two were caused
by machinery. The accidents which happened in Salford are not included
here, nor those treated by surgeons in private practice. In such cases,
whether or not the accident unfits the victim for further work, the
employer, at best, pays the doctor, or, in very exceptional cases, he may
pay wages during treatment; what becomes of the operative afterwards, in
case he cannot work, is no concern of the employer.
The Factory Report says on this subject, that employers must be made
responsible for all cases, since children cannot take care, and adults
will take care in their own interest. But the gentlemen who write the
report are bourgeois, and so they must contradict themselves and bring up
later all sorts of bosh on the subject of the culpable temerity of the
operatives.
The state of the case is this: If children cannot take care, the
employment of children must be forbidden. If adults are reckless, they
must be mere over-grown children on a plane of intelligence which does
not enable them to appreciate the danger in its full scope; and who is to
blame for this but the bourgeoisie which keeps them in a condition in
which their intelligence cannot develop? Or the machinery is
ill-arranged, and must be surrounded with fencing, to supply which falls
to the share of the bourgeoisie. Or the operative is under inducements
which outweigh the threatened danger; he must work rapidly to earn his
wages, has no time to take care, and for this, too, the bourgeoisie is to
blame. Many accidents happen, for instance, while the operatives are
cleaning machinery in motion. Why? Because the bourgeois would
otherwise oblige the worker to clean the machinery during the free hours
while it is not going, and the worker naturally is not disposed to
sacrifice any part of his free time. Every free hour is so precious to
the worker that he often risks his life twice a week rather than
sacrifice one of them to the bourgeois. Let the employer take from
working-hours the time required for cleaning the machinery, and it will
never again occur to an operative to clean machinery in motion. In
short, from whatever point of view, the blame falls ultimately on the
manufacturer, and of him should be required, at the very least, life-long
support of the incapacitated operative, and support of the victim's
family in case death follows the accident. In the earliest period of
manufacture, the accidents were much more numerous in proportion than
now, for the machinery was inferior, smaller, more crowded, and almost
never fenced. But the number is still large enough, as the foregoing
cases prove, to arouse grave question as to a state of things which
permits so many deformities and mutilations for the benefit of a single
class, and plunges so many industrious working-people into want and
starvation by reason of injuries undergone in the service and through the
fault of the bourgeoisie.
A pretty list of diseases engendered purely by the hateful money greed of
the manufacturers! Women made unfit for childbearing, children deformed,
men enfeebled, limbs crushed, whole generations wrecked, afflicted with
disease and infirmity, purely to fill the purses of the bourgeoisie. And
when one reads of the barbarism of single cases, how children are seized
naked in bed by the overlookers, and driven with blows and kicks to the
factory, their clothing over their arms, {167a} how their sleepiness is
driven off with blows, how they fall asleep over their work nevertheless,
how one poor child sprang up, still asleep, at the call of the
overlooker, and mechanically went through the operations of its work
after its machine was stopped; when one reads how children, too tired to
go home, hide away in the wool in the drying-room to sleep there, and
could only be driven out of the factory with straps; how many hundreds
came home so tired every night, that they could eat no supper for
sleepiness and want of appetite, that their parents found them kneeling
by the bedside, where they had fallen asleep during their prayers; when
one reads all this and a hundred other villainies and infamies in this
one report, all testified to on oath, confirmed by several witnesses,
deposed by men whom the commissioners themselves declare trustworthy;
when one reflects that this is a Liberal report, a bourgeois report, made
for the purpose of reversing the previous Tory report, and rehabilitating
the pureness of heart of the manufacturers, that the commissioners
themselves are on the side of the bourgeoisie, and report all these
things against their own will, how can one be otherwise than filled with
wrath and resentment against a class which boasts of philanthropy and
self-sacrifice, while its one object is to fill its purse _a tout prix_?
Meanwhile, let us listen to the bourgeoisie speaking through the mouth of
its chosen apostle, Dr. Ure, who relates in his "Philosophy of
Manufactures" {167b} that the workers have been told that their wages
bore no proportion to their sacrifices, the good understanding between
masters and men being thus disturbed. Instead of this, the working-men
should have striven to recommend themselves by attention and industry,
and should have rejoiced in the prosperity of their masters. They would
then become overseers, superintendents, and finally partners, and would
thus--(Oh! Wisdom, thou speakest as the dove!)--"have increased at the
same time the demand for their companions' labour in the market!"
"Had it not been for the violent collisions and interruptions
resulting from erroneous views among the operatives, the factory
system would have been developed still more rapidly and beneficially."
{168a}
Hereupon follows a long Jeremiad upon the spirit of resistance of the
operatives, and on the occasion of a strike of the best paid workers, the
fine spinners, the following naive observation: {168b}
"In fact, it was their high wages which enabled them to maintain a
stipendiary committee in affluence, and to pamper themselves into
nervous ailments, by a diet too rich and exciting for their indoor
employments."