[ANTONY ASHLEY COOPER, Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, born April
28, 1801; died October 1, 1885; educated at Harrow and Christ
Church, Oxford (first-class in classics, 1822); Member of
Parliament 1826; bore a leading hand in legislation for improving
condition of laboring classes; President of Ragged School Union,
etc.; succeeded to the earldom on the death of his father, in
1851.]
The industrial expansion of England in the nineteenth century was
not a blessing unalloyed. It built great cities and created
enormous wealth, and gave employment at advanced wages to a
vastly increased population. But it brought with it changes in
the social condition of the laboring classes which were
productive of severe hardship.
The England of the olden time had been an agricultural country
whose laborers, though poorly paid, either worked under mild
conditions in the fields, or followed their trades in their
cottages and workshops. The introduction of the steam engine
brought with it a demand for fuel which forced thousands of men,
women, and children to delve in the mines, and the use of
machines and the adoption of the factory system shut up other
thousands of both sexes, and all ages, to labor for excessive
hours in crowded cities under unsanitary conditions. At the
present time the system of legislation regarding the employment
of women and minors, and the regulation of unsanitary conditions
of labor is so thorough that it is difficult to conceive that it
has all been of recent growth. When the enemies of the abuses in
mine and factory first raised their voices in the British
Parliament, they were even told that such things were not proper
subjects of legislation. In the opening years of the century the
elder Robert Peel had attacked one of the foulest of industrial
abuses--the "apprentice system." Under this system the pauper
children of London and the south of England were rented out to
the tender mercies of the avaricious cotton manufacturers of the
north. From the age of seven they were compelled to work in the
mills at long hours, under unhealthful conditions, and without
opportunity of education or proper recreation. When not at work
they were huddled in comfortless barracks little better than
slave-pens. No wonder they grew up to be hopeless and brutalized,
if they were so unfortunate as to survive the arduous period of
their industrial bondage--for it was no less than that. Peel's
act of 1802, and other remedial legislation which supplemented
it, did away with the worst features of this white slavery, but
the general condition of the women and children in the English
factories and mines continued to be such as to move deeply the
sympathies of the humane.
In the year 1833 the little group of humanitarian leaders who had
succeeded in turning the attention of the nation to the
disgraceful condition of child labor, were striving to get a
hearing in the House of Commons for their "short time" proposal--
a law framed by Michael Thomas Sadler, for the purpose of
limiting the hours of child labor in textile factories to ten
hours a day. Sadler had lost his seat in Parliament, and a new
spokesman was needed for the cause. The committee ventured to ask
Lord Ashley to take charge of the bill, and his acceptance
enlisted in the humanitarian movement a young man who was
destined to be its champion for half a century.
Antony Ashley Cooper, then sitting in the House of Commons under
the name of Lord Ashley, and after 1851 known to the world as the
seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, was one of the most remarkable
Englishmen of the century. This new-found champion of the
working-classes was born in London, April 28, 1801. His father
was the sixth Earl of Shaftesbury, and his mother was a daughter
of the third Earl of Marlborough. The father's preoccupation in
public life and his mother's social duties left the early home
training of the lad to a pious domestic, an earnest Christian,
whose precepts and example did more than anything else to give
bent to his life. In later years the Earl freely owned his
mother's housekeeper to be the best friend he had ever had. He
did little to distinguish himself as a schoolboy at Harrow, but
Oxford appealed to him, and he applied himself to classical
studies at the university with a zeal which won for him a degree
with the first honors.
Parliament was the natural place for a peer's son in those days
of pocket boroughs, and into the House of Commons he went as Lord
Ashley at the age of twenty-five. In his diary he recorded his
devout purpose to use his position "for the success of religion
and true happiness," and on taking the oaths he "breathed a
slight prayer for assistance in thoughts and deeds." A man of
profound introspection, intense religious feeling, and sincere
purpose to be of service to his kind, had some difficulty in
adjusting himself to the selfish politics of the House. The first
subject upon which he found voice was the reform of the laws for
the care of lunatic paupers, a class whose pitiable state might
have moved the most stolid heart. To this merciful project he
addressed himself with a zeal and persistency which were to
characterize his later efforts for other downtrodden classes.
When the labor leaders turned to him, in 1833, to champion their
cause, he took the question into consideration over night,
obtained his wife's cordial approval, consulted his Bible,
resorted to prayer, and the next day gave himself unreservedly to
the cause. His friends of the aristocratic families shunned him,
his parents discountenanced his design and closed their doors
against him for many years, but, said he, in dedication of
himself to the work, "I believe it is my duty to God and to the
poor, and I trust He will support me."
The manufacturers sought to side-track the Ten-Hours Bill by
proposing that nothing should be done until a committee of
Parliament should make thorough inquiry into the alleged
conditions in the mills. But the very commission which they asked
for could not go against the evidence of their own eyes in the
factory towns, swarming with ignorant, ragged child-operatives,
prematurely old. The commission reported: (1) that the work hours
of children and adults were the same; (2) that such labor was
resulting in the permanent physical and intellectual
deterioration of the young; (3) that these maltreated children
were not free agents, but hired out by parents or guardians; and
finally, "that a case was made out for the interference of the
legislature on behalf of the children employed in factories."
In place of the radical measure of Lord Ashley the government
carried a substitute, the Factory Law of 1833. "Night work was
prohibited to persons under eight even in cotton, wool, worsted,
hemp, flax, tow, and linen spinneries and weaving mills; children
from nine to thirteen were not allowed to work more than forty-
eight hours a week, and young persons thirteen to eighteen were
restricted to sixty-eight hours a week. In silk factories
children might be admitted under nine, and children under thirteen
were to be allowed ten hours a day. Provision was made for a
certain amount of school attendance, and factory inspectors were
provided to inquire into violations of the statute." At the time
Ashley and his friends bewailed the passage of the Factory Act as
a defeat, though the former eventually admitted that "it
contained some humane and highly useful provisions, and
established for the first time the great principle that labor and
education should be combined."
Defeat, if that be a defeat, which forces your foe to adopt your
own principles in order to win, only proved Lord Ashley's
superior fitness for the leadership of the cause. Instead of
abandoning the contest he began to prepare for a fresh assault by
collecting information touching every part of the question. He
visited the workrooms and lodgings of the operatives in every
part of the land, examining at first hand their condition, and
studying the problem in all its bearings with the same
persistency and intellectual force which had won him his "first-
class" at the university. Nothing which could subserve his cause
escaped his searching inquiry, and when he arose to address
Parliament his mastery of his subject was so complete as to
baffle the skill of the few who durst ask him questions.
As the Anti-Corn Law gained ground the labor reformers met with a
new form of opposition. Lord Ashley was taunted with
inconsistency in seeking the welfare of the factory workers,
while neglecting to remedy the no less servile condition of the
agricultural laborers. Manufacturers as high-minded as Cobden and
Bright did not scruple to say--as doubtless they believed--that
the outcry against the manufacturers sprang from the desire of
the landowners to harass the opponents of "the tax on bread."
John Bright answered Lord Ashley's arguments for the ten hours'
clause in the bill of 1844 in a speech as vindictive as it was
eloquent. Though Ashley was again defeated, at this time the new
Factory Act, which was passed, carried farther the principles of
the original law. In 1845 his calico print-works measure brought
relief to thousands of weary little hands, and in 1847 the long-
worked-for and earnestly prayed-for Ten-Hours Bill became a law.
Lord Ashley had resigned his seat in Parliament, but had not
relaxed his efforts in behalf of the bill which he had borne on
his heart for fourteen years. When the news came that the bill,
after going through the Commons with flying colors, had passed
the critical stage in the Upper House, Lord Ashley's feelings
found vent in this entry in his journal: "I am humbled that my
heart is not bursting with thankfulness to Almighty God--that I
can find breath and sense to express my joy. What reward shall we
give unto the Lord for all the benefits he hath conferred upon
us? God, in his mercy, prosper the work and grant that these
operatives may receive the cup of salvation, and call upon the
name of the Lord! Praised be the Lord! Praised be the Lord in
Christ Jesus!" The operatives received the news with tumultuous
joy, for the act brought substantial relief to fully three
hundred and sixty thousand persons, more than two-thirds of all
the operatives then employed in the textile industries of the
kingdom.
The manufacturers who attributed Ashley's professions of
friendship for their employees to his class hatred of their
masters little knew the man. His sympathies were engaged in
behalf of the poor and weak in every calling, and the mill-hands
were only the first whose cause he championed. The manufacturers
had sometimes sought to divert attention from their own
shortcomings by pointing to the greater hardship of the colliery
workers, and in 1840 Lord Ashley took up this subject by moving
for a parliamentary commission to inquire into the employment of
the children of the poorer classes in mines and collieries. The
first report of this commission, issued in 1842, is one of the
most appalling of public documents. Sworn testimony was presented
to show that much of the underground labor was performed by
children under thirteen years of age, and that little boys and
girls were set to work in the dark and noisome tunnels at the age
of five. First as "trappers" these child laborers opened and shut
the trap-doors in the passages of the mine. The stronger
children, boys and girls alike, dragged and pushed the little
coal wagons along the narrow passages--the roofs too low for them
to stand upright, often so low as to compel them to creep on all-
fours in the black slime of the floors. Some with laden baskets
on their backs climbed many times a day up steep ascents. Some
stood ankle-deep in water from morning till night in the depths
of the pit, wearing out their little lives at the hand- pumps.
"The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing toward the west.
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free."
So sang Elizabeth Barrett of the sorrows of the children of the
mines and mills in those dismal days, and it must be said for the
great heart of England that its beat was still true. The coal-
owners made the pitiful plea in extenuation of all the misery and
indecency of the mines that without the labor of women and
children the collieries must shut down, not only for lack of
profit, but for the cogent reason that the flexible vertebra of
childhood were especially adapted to the constrained positions
required in the tunnels, and that there could be no good colliers
unless as children they became inured to the privations and
hardships of the life. The government tried to keep the report
out of the hands of the indignant public, but "by a most
providential mistake," as Lord Ashley believed, it got into
circulation, to the horror and disgust of all right-minded
persons. The press joined in the cry for remedial legislation.
Ashley's speech in support of his Mines and Collieries Bill made
an unusual impression in the House of Commons. Even Cobden, who
had been ready to sneer at the "philanthropists" who opposed the
repeal of the tax on bread, came over to the orator's side at the
conclusion of his two hours' plea, and wringing his hand
heartily, declared, "I don't think I have ever been put into such
a frame of mind in all my life." From this time he no longer
entertained doubts of Ashley's sincerity. The Queen and Prince
Albert added their personal support. The government threw
obstacles in the way of the bill, and the peers mutilated it, but
Ashley's persistency carried it at last. Henceforth women and
girls and boys under ten were excluded from underground work, and
a system of mine inspection was established to secure the
observance of the law. Such a triumph for morality and humanity
was worth more to England than many battles won by force of arms.
There has been no retreat from the positions to which Lord Ashley
carried the legislative protection of the working-classes. From
time to time the Factory Laws were extended to cover the special
demands of other industries, until the state had literally taken
under its protection the whole class of children and young
persons employed in manufacturing industries. It has done this in
the name of the moral and physical health of the community. The
general laws governing factories and workshops now cover a very
wide scope. It is required that the building must be kept clean
and sanitary; that dangerous machinery must be boxed and fenced;
the hours of labor and meal-time for women and children are
fixed, and children under ten may not be employed; certain
holidays and half-holidays must be allowed to all "protected"
persons; child-workers must go to school a certain proportion of
the week; medical certificates of fitness for employment are
required in the case of children; and notice of accidents causing
loss of life or bodily injury must be sent to the government
inspector. Many co-operated to bring about these results, but the
chief advocate of all the beneficent reforms which have
reinvigorated the English working-classes, saved the women from
slavish toil and given them opportunity to make homes for their
families, rescued the children from benumbing toil, and given
them time for healthful recreation and mental improvement, is, by
the common award of all, this simple-hearted Christian, Antony
Ashley Cooper.
On the fly-leaf of a book in his library the Earl of Shaftesbury
noted in pencil some of the obstacles which beset his progress
when seeking the good of the distressed children: "I had to break
every political connection, to encounter a most formidable array
of capitalists, mill-owners, doctrinaires, and men who by natural
impulse hate all 'humanity mongers' (tell it riot in Gath!) among
the Radicals, the Irishmen, and a few sincere Whigs and
Conservatives.....Peel was hostile.....Fielden and Brotherton
were the only 'practical' men who supported me, and to practical
prophecies of overthrow of trade, of ruin to the operatives
themselves, I could only oppose 'humanity' and general
principles. The newspapers were on the whole friendly. Out of
Parliament there was in society every form of 'good-natured' and
compassionate contempt.....In few instances did any mill-owner
appear on a platform with me; in still fewer the ministers of any
religious denomination--so cowed were they (or in themselves so
indifferent) by the overwhelming influence of the cotton-lords."
Among his opponents Shaftesbury reckoned Peel, who continually
sought to silence him by giving him government offices; Bright,
whose malignant opposition has already been noticed; Cobden,
though latterly a convert; O'Connell, Brougham, and even
Gladstone, "the only member who voted to delay the bill which
delivered women and children from the mines and pits."
It is foreign to the purpose of this sketch to pursue the later
labors of Lord Shaftesbury; his zeal for education; his warm
espousal of the cause of ragged schools for the instruction of
the waifs of the London streets; his successful agitation in
favor of the pitiable chimney-sweeps; in short, his support of
every cause which appealed to his sympathy for the neglected
classes, or which promised to benefit humanity physically,
morally, intellectually, or spiritually. He was the president of
scores of organizations devoted to Christian and philanthropic
work, and until the close of his long and useful life, his voice
and influence could always be counted on to assist such worthy
causes. As his end approached his only regret was "I cannot bear
to leave the world with all the misery in it." The Dean of
Westminster's suggestion that the Abbey should be his last
resting-place, he brushed aside in favor of the parish church of
St. Giles, where his boyhood had been passed. He died on the 1st
of October, 1885, at Folkestone, where he had been taken for the
invigorating sea breezes. Perhaps the old Abbey Church of
Westminster never saw a funeral where so many classes of English
society gathered to pay respect to a dead earl. Costermongers,
climbing-boys, boot-blacks, cripples, flower-girls sat with
royalty, bishops, peers, and commoners in sincere mourning for a
nobleman who was indeed a noble man.