SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH WORKSHOPS.
When Captain Hugh Clapperton, the celebrated English traveller,
visited Bello, the sultan of the Felatahs, at Sackatoo, he made
the monarch some presents, in the name of his majesty the king of
England. These were—two new blunderbusses, a pair of double-barrelled
pistols, a pocket compass, an embroidered jacket, a scarlet bornonse,
a pair of scarlet breeches, thirty-four yards of silk, two turban
shawls, four pounds of cloves, four pounds of cinnamon, three cases
of gunpowder with shot and balls, three razors, three clasp-knives,
three looking-glasses, six snuff-boxes, a spy-glass, and a large
tea-tray. The sultan said—"Every thing is wonderful, but you are the
greatest curiosity of all!" and then added, "What can I give that is
most acceptable to the king of England?" Clapperton replied—"The
most acceptable service you can render to the king of England is to
co-operate with his majesty in putting a stop to the slave-trade on the
coast, as the king of England sends large ships to cruise there, for
the sole purpose of seizing all vessels engaged in this trade, whose
crews are thrown into prison, and of liberating the unfortunate slaves,
on whom lands and houses are conferred, at one of our settlements in
Africa." "What!" exclaimed the sultan, "have you no slaves in England?"
"No: whenever a slave sets his foot in England, he is from that moment
free," replied Clapperton. "What do you then do for servants?" inquired
the sultan. "We hire them for a stated period, and give them regular
wages; nor is any person in England allowed to strike another; and the
very soldiers are fed, clothed, and paid by the government," replied
the English captain. "God is great!" exclaimed the sultan. "You are
a beautiful people." Clapperton had succeeded in putting a beautiful
illusion upon the sultan's imagination, as some English writers have
endeavoured to do among the civilized nations of the earth. If the
sultan had been taken to England, to see the freedom of the "servants"
in the workshops, perhaps he would have exclaimed—"God is great!
Slaves are plenty."
The condition of the apprentices in the British workshops is at
least as bad as that of the children in the factories. According to
the second report of the commissioners appointed by Parliament, the
degrading system of involuntary apprenticeship—in many cases without
the consent of parents—and merely according to the regulations of the
brutal guardians of the workhouses, is general. The commissioners say—
"That in some trades, those especially requiring skilled workmen,
these apprentices are bound by legal indentures, usually at the
age of fourteen, and for a term of seven years, the age being
rarely younger, and the period of servitude very seldom longer;
but by far the greater number are bound _without any prescribed
legal forms_, and in almost all these cases they are required to
serve their masters, _at whatever age they may commence their
apprenticeship, until they attain the age of twenty-one_, in some
instances in employments in which there is nothing deserving
the name of skill to be acquired, and in other instances in
employments in which they are taught to make only one particular
part of the article manufactured: _so that at the end of their
servitude they are altogether unable to make any one article of
their trade in a complete state_. That a large proportion of
these apprentices consist of orphans, or are the children of
widows, or belong to the very poorest families, and frequently
are apprenticed by boards of guardians.
"That in these districts it is common for parents to borrow money
of the employers, and to stipulate, by express agreement, to
repay it from their children's wages; a practice which prevails
likewise in Birmingham and Warrington: in most other places no
evidence was discovered of its existence."—_Second Report of the
Commissioners_, p. 195, 196.
Here we have a fearful text on which to comment. In these few sentences
we see the disclosure of a system which, if followed out and abused,
must produce a state of slavery of the very worst and most oppressive
character. To show that it _is_ thus abused, here are some extracts
from the Reports on the Wolverhampton district, to which the Central
Board of Commissioners direct special attention:—
"The peculiar trade of the Wolverhampton district, with the
exception of a very few large proprietors, is in the hands of
a great number of small masters, who are personally known only
to some of the foremen of the factors to whom they take their
work, and scarcely one of whom is sufficiently important to have
his name over his door or his workshop in front of a street.
In the town of Wolverhampton alone there are of these small
masters, for example, two hundred and sixty locksmiths, sixty
or seventy key-makers, from twenty to thirty screwmakers, and a
like number of latch, bolt, snuffer, tobacco-box, and spectacle
frame and case makers. Each of these small masters, if they have
not children of their own, generally employ from one to three
apprentices."—_Horne, Report_; App. pt. ii. p. 2. s. 13 et seq.
The workshops of the small masters are usually of the dirtiest, most
dilapidated, and confined description, and situated in the most filthy
and undrained localities, at the back of their wretched abodes.
"There are two modes of obtaining apprentices in this district,
namely, the legal one of application to magistrates or boards of
guardians for sanction of indentures; and, secondly, the illegal
mode of taking the children to be bound by an attorney, without
any such reference to the proper authorities. There are many more
bound by this illegal mode than by the former.
"In all cases, the children, of whatever age, are bound till
they attain the age of twenty-one years. If the child be only
seven years of age, the period of servitude remains the same,
however simple the process or nature of the trade to be learnt.
During the first year or two, if the apprentice be very young,
he is merely used to run errands, do dirty household work, nurse
infants, &c.
"If the master die before the apprentice attain the age of
twenty-one years, the apprentice is equally bound as the servant
of his deceased master's heirs, executors, administrators,
and assigns—in fact, the apprentice is part of the deceased
master's goods and chattels. Whoever, therefore, may carry on
the trade, he is the servant of such person or persons until his
manumission is obtained by reaching his one-and-twentieth year.
The apprentice has no regular pocket-money allowed him by the
master. Sometimes a few halfpence are given to him. An apprentice
of eighteen or nineteen years of age often has 2_d._ or 3_d._ a
week given him, but never as a rightful claim."—_Second Report
of Commissioners._
"Among other witnesses, the superintendent registrar states that
in those trades particularly in which the work is by the piece,
the growth of the children is injured; that in these cases more
especially their strength is over-taxed for profit. One of the
constables of the town says that 'there are examples without
number in the place, of deformed men and boys; their backs or
their legs, and often both, grow wrong; the backs grow out and
the legs grow in at the knees—hump-backed and knock-kneed.
There is most commonly only one leg turned in—a K leg; it is
occasioned by standing all day for years filing at a vice; the
hind leg grows in—the leg that is hindermost. Thinks that among
the adults of the working classes of Willenhall, whose work is
all forging and filing, one-third of the number are afflicted
with hernia,' &c."—_Horne, Evidence_, p. 28, No. 128.
As the profits of many of the masters are small, it may be supposed
that the apprentices do not get the best of food, shelter, and
clothing. We have the evidence of Henry Nicholls Payne, superintendent
registrar of Wolverhampton, Henry Hill, Esq., magistrate, and Paul Law,
of Wolverhampton, that it is common for masters to buy offal meat, and
the meat of animals that have died from all manner of causes, for the
food of apprentices. The clothing of these poor creatures is but thin
tatters for all seasons. The apprentices constantly complain that they
do not get enough to eat.
"They are frequently fed," says the sub-commissioner, "especially
during the winter season, on red herrings, potatoes, bread with
lard upon it, and have not always sufficient even of this.
"Their living is poor; they have not enough to eat. Did not know
what it was to have butcher's meat above once a week; often a red
herring was divided between two for dinner. The boys are often
clemmed, (almost starved;) have often been to his house to ask
for a bit of pudding—are frequent complaints. In some trades,
particularly in the casting-shops of founderies, in the shops in
which general forge or smith's work is done, and in the shops
of the small locksmiths, screwmakers, &c., there are no regular
meal-hours, but the children swallow their food as they can,
during their work, often while noxious fumes or dust are flying
about, and perhaps with noxious compositions in their unwashed
hands."
The apprentices employed in nail-making are described as so many
poorly fed and poorly clad slaves. Almost the whole population of
Upper Sedgley and Upper Gormal, and nearly one-half of the population
of Coseley, are employed in nail-making. The nails are made at forges
by the hammer, and these forges, which are the workshops, are usually
at the backs of the wretched hovels in which the work-people reside.
"The best kind of forges," says Mr. Horne, "are little brick shops, of
about fifteen feet long and twelve feet wide, in which seven or eight
individuals constantly work together, with no ventilation except the
door, and two slits, or loopholes, in the wall; but the great majority
of these work-places are very much smaller, (about ten feet long by
nine wide,) filthily dirty; and on looking in upon one of them when
the fire is not lighted, presents the appearance of a dilapidated
coal-hole, or little black den." In these places children are first put
to labour from the ages of seven to eight, where they continue to work
daily, from six o'clock in the morning till seven or eight at night;
and on weigh-days—the days the nails are taken to the factors—from
three or four in the morning till nine at night. They gradually advance
in the number of nails they are required to make per day, till they
arrive at the _stint_ of one thousand. A girl or boy of from ten to
twelve years of age continually accomplishes this arduous task from day
to day, and week to week. Their food at the same time is, in general,
insufficient, their clothing miserable, and the wretchedness of their
dwellings almost unparalleled.
"Throughout the long descent of the main roadway, or rather
sludgeway, of Lower Gormal," says Mr. Horne, "and throughout the
very long winding and straggling roadway of Coseley, I never saw
one abode of a working family which had the least appearance of
comfort or wholesomeness, while the immense majority were of
the most wretched and sty-like description. The effect of these
unfavourable circumstances is greatly to injure the health of the
children, and to stop their growth; and it is remarkable that
the boys are more injured than the girls, because the girls are
not put to work as early as the boys by two years or more. They
appear to bear the heat of the forges better, and they sometimes
even become strong by their work."
The children employed in nail-making, in Scotland, evince the nature
of their toil by their emaciated looks and stunted growth. They are
clothed in apparel in which many paupers would not dress; and they are
starved into quickness at their work, as their meals depend on the
quantity of work accomplished.
In the manufacture of earthenware there are many young slaves employed.
The mould-runners are an especially pitiable class of workmen; they
receive on a mould the ware as it is formed by the workmen, and carry
it to the stove-room, where both mould and ware are arranged on shelves
to dry. The same children liberate the mould when sufficiently dry,
and carry it back to receive a fresh supply of ware, to be in like
manner deposited on the shelves. They are also generally required by
the workmen to "wedge their clay;" that is, to lift up large lumps of
clay, which are to be thrown down forcibly on a hard surface to free
the clay from air and to render it more compact. Excepting when thus
engaged, they are constantly "on the run" from morning till night,
always carrying a considerable weight. These children are generally
pale, thin, weak, and unhealthy.
In the manufacture of glass the toil and suffering of the apprentices,
as recorded in the evidence before the commissioners, are extreme. One
witness said—
"From his experience he thinks the community has no idea of what
a boy at a bottle-work goes through; 'it would never be allowed,
if it were known;' he knows himself; he has been carried home
from fair fatigue; and on two several occasions, when laid in
bed, could not rest, and had to be taken out and laid on the
floor. These boys begin work on Sabbath evenings at ten o'clock,
and are not at home again till between one and three on Monday
afternoon. The drawing the bottles out of the arches is a work
which no child should be allowed, on any consideration, to do;
he himself has been obliged several times to have planks put in
to walk on, which have caught fire under the feet; and a woollen
cap over the ears and always mits on the hands; and a boy cannot
generally stop in them above five minutes. There is no man that
works in a bottle-work, but will corroborate the statement that
such work checks the growth of the body; the irregularity and the
unnatural times of work cause the boys and men to feel in a sort
of stupor or dulness from heavy sweats and irregular hours. The
boys work harder than any man in the works; all will allow that.
From their experience of the bad effect on the health, witness
and five others left the work, and none but one ever went to a
bottle-work after."
The young females apprenticed to dressmakers suffer greatly from
over-work and bad treatment, as has long been known. John Dalrymple,
Esq., Assistant Surgeon, Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, narrates the
following case:—
"A delicate and beautiful young woman, an orphan, applied at
the hospital for very defective vision, and her symptoms were
precisely as just described. Upon inquiry it was ascertained that
she had been apprenticed to a milliner, and was in her last year
of indentureship. Her working hours were eighteen in the day,
occasionally even more; her meals were snatched with scarcely an
interval of a few minutes from work, and her general health was
evidently assuming a tendency to consumption. An appeal was made,
by my directions, to her mistress for relaxation; but the reply
was that, in the last year of her apprenticeship, her labours had
become valuable, and that her mistress was entitled to them as a
recompense for teaching. Subsequently a threat of appeal to the
Lord Mayor, and a belief that a continuation of the occupation
would soon render the apprentice incapable of labour, induced the
mistress to cancel the indentures, and the victim was saved."
Frederick Tyrrell, Esq., Surgeon to the London Ophthalmic Hospital, and
to St. Thomas's Hospital, mentions a case equally distressing:—
"A fair and delicate girl, about seventeen years of age, was
brought to witness in consequence of total loss of vision. She
had experienced the train of symptoms which have been detailed,
to the fullest extent. On examination, both eyes were found
disorganized, and recovery therefore was hopeless. She had been
an apprentice as a dress-maker at the west end of the town; and
some time before her vision became affected, her general health
had been materially deranged from too close confinement and
excessive work. The immediate cause of the disease in the eyes
was excessive and continued application to making mourning. She
stated that she had been compelled to remain without changing
her dress for nine days and nights consecutively; that during
this period she had been permitted only occasionally to rest on a
mattrass placed on the floor, for an hour or two at a time; and
that her meals were placed at her side, cut up, so that as little
time as possible should be spent in their consumption. Witness
regrets that he did not, in this and a few other cases nearly as
flagrant and distressing, induce the sufferers to appeal to a
jury for compensation."
It may be asserted, without fear of successful contradiction, that,
in proportion to the numbers employed, there are no occupations in
which so much disease is produced as in dress-making. The report of a
sub-commissioner states that it is a "serious aggravation of this evil,
that the unkindness of the employer very frequently causes these young
persons, when they become unwell, to conceal their illness, from the
fear of being sent out of the house; and in this manner the disease
often becomes increased in severity, or is even rendered incurable.
Some of the principals are so cruel, as to object to the young women
obtaining medical assistance."
[Illustration: SLAVES OF THE NEEDLE.]
The London Times, in an exceedingly able article upon "Seamstress
Slavery," thus describes the terrible system:—
"Granting that the negro gangs who are worked on the cotton
grounds of the Southern States of North America, or in the sugar
plantations of Brazil, are slaves, in what way should we speak
of persons who are circumstanced in the manner we are about
to relate? Let us consider them as inhabitants of a distant
region—say of New Orleans—no matter about the colour of their
skins, and then ask ourselves what should be our opinion of a
nation in which such things are tolerated. They are of a sex
and age the least qualified to struggle with the hardships of
their lot—young women, for the most part, between sixteen and
thirty years of age. As we would not deal in exaggerations, we
would promise that we take them at their busy season, just as
writers upon American slavery are careful to select the season
of cotton-picking and sugar-crushing as illustrations of their
theories. The young female slaves, then, of whom we speak, are
worked in gangs, in ill-ventilated rooms, or rooms that are not
ventilated at all; for it is found by experience that if air
be admitted it brings with it "blacks" of another kind, which
damage the work upon which the seamstresses are employed. Their
occupation is to sew from morning till night and night till
morning—stitch, stitch, stitch—without pause, without speech,
without a smile, without a sigh. In the gray of the morning they
must be at work, say at six o'clock, having a quarter of an hour
allowed them for breaking their fast. The food served out to them
is scanty and miserable enough, but still, in all probability,
more than their fevered system can digest. We do not, however,
wish to make out a case of starvation; the suffering is of
another kind, equally dreadful of endurance. From six o'clock
till eleven it is stitch, stitch. At eleven a small piece of dry
bread is served to each seamstress, but still she must stitch
on. At one o'clock, twenty minutes are allowed for dinner—a
slice of meat and a potato, with a glass of toast-and-water to
each workwoman. Then again to work—stitch, stitch, until five
o'clock, when fifteen minutes are again allowed for tea. The
needles are then set in motion once more—stitch, stitch, until
nine o'clock, when fifteen minutes are allowed for supper—a
piece of dry bread and cheese and a glass of beer. From nine
o'clock at night until one, two, and three o'clock in the
morning, stitch, stitch; the only break in this long period being
a minute or two—just time enough to swallow a cup of strong tea,
which is supplied lest the young people should 'feel sleepy.' At
three o'clock A.M., to bed; at six o'clock A.M., out of it again
to resume the duties of the following day. There must be a good
deal of monotony in the occupation.
"But when we have said that for certain months in the year these
unfortunate young persons are worked in the manner we describe,
we have not said all. Even during the few hours allotted
to sleep—should we not rather say to a feverish cessation
from toil—their miseries continue. They are cooped up in
sleeping-pens, ten in a room which would perhaps be sufficient
for the accommodation of two persons. The alternation is from the
treadmill—and what a treadmill!—to the Black Hole of Calcutta.
Not a word of remonstrance is allowed, or is possible. The
seamstresses may leave the mill, no doubt, but what awaits them
on the other side of the door?—starvation, if they be honest;
if not, in all probability, prostitution and its consequence.
They would scarcely escape from slavery that way. Surely this
is a terrible state of things, and one which claims the anxious
consideration of the ladies of England who have pronounced
themselves so loudly against the horrors of negro slavery in the
United States. Had this system of oppression against persons of
their own sex been really exercised in New Orleans, it would
have elicited from them many expressions of sympathy for the
sufferers, and of abhorrence for the cruel task-masters who could
so cruelly over-work wretched creatures so unfitted for the toil.
It is idle to use any further mystification in the matter. The
scenes of misery we have described exist at our own doors, and in
the most fashionable quarters of luxurious London. It is in the
dress-making and millinery establishments of the 'West-end' that
the system is steadily pursued. The continuous labour is bestowed
upon the gay garments in which the 'ladies of England' love to
adorn themselves. It is to satisfy their whims and caprices that
their wretched sisters undergo these days and nights of suffering
and toil. It is but right that we should confess the fault
does not lie so much at the door of the customers as with the
principals of these establishments. The milliners and dressmakers
of the metropolis will not employ hands enough to do the work.
They increase their profits from the blood and life of the
wretched creatures in their employ. Certainly the prices charged
for articles of dress at any of the great West-end establishments
are sufficiently high—as most English heads of families know to
their cost—to enable the proprietors to retain a competent staff
of work-people, and at the same time to secure a very handsome
profit to themselves. Wherein, then, lies the remedy? Will the
case of these poor seamstresses be bettered if the ladies of
England abstain partially, or in great measure, from giving their
usual orders to their usual houses? In that case it may be said
some of the seamstresses will be dismissed to starvation, and
the remainder will be over-worked as before. We freely confess
we do not see our way through the difficulty; for we hold the
most improbable event in our social arrangements to be the fact,
that a lady of fashion will employ a second-rate instead of a
first-rate house for the purchase of her annual finery. The
leading milliners and dressmakers of London have hold of English
society at both ends. They hold the ladies by their vanity and
their love of fine clothes, and the seamstresses by what appears
to be their interest and by their love of life. Now, love of fine
clothes and love of life are two very strong motive springs of
human action."
In confirmation of this thrilling representation of the seamstress
slavery in London, the following letter subsequently appeared in the
Times:—
"_To the Editor of the Times_:
"Sir,—May I beg of you to insert this letter in your valuable
paper at your earliest convenience, relative to the letters of
the 'First Hand?' I can state, without the slightest hesitation,
that they are perfectly true. My poor sister was apprenticed to
one of those fashionable West-end houses, and my father paid the
large sum of £40 only to procure for his daughter a lingering
death. I was allowed to visit her during her illness; I found her
in a very small room, which two large beds would fill. In this
room there were six children's bedsteads, and these were each to
contain three grown-up young women. In consequence of my sister
being so ill, she was allowed, on payment of 5_s._ per week, a
bed to herself—one so small it might be called a cradle. The
doctor who attended her when dying, can authenticate this letter.
"Apologizing for encroaching on your valuable time, I remain your
obedient servant,
A POOR CLERK."
Many witnesses attest the ferocious bodily chastisement inflicted upon
male apprentices in workshops:—
"In Sedgley they are sometimes struck with a red-hot iron, and
burned and bruised simultaneously; sometimes they have 'a flash
of lightning' sent at them. When a bar of iron is drawn white-hot
from the forge it emits fiery particles, which the man commonly
flings in a shower upon the ground by a swing of his arm, before
placing the bar upon the anvil. This shower is sometimes directed
at the boy. It may come over his hands and face, his naked arms,
or on his breast. If his shirt be open in front, which is usually
the case, the red-hot particles are lodged therein, and he has
to shake them out as fast as he can."—_Horne, Report_, p. 76, §
757. See also witnesses, p. 56, 1. 24; p. 59, 1. 54.
"In Darlaston, however, the children appear to be very little
beaten, and in Bilston there were only a few instances of cruel
treatment: 'the boys are kicked and cuffed abundantly, but not
with any vicious or cruel intention, and only with an idea that
this is getting the work done.'"—Ibid. p. 62, 65, §§ 660, 688.
"In Wednesbury the treatment is better than in any other town in
the district. The boys are not generally subject to any severe
corporal chastisement, though a few cases of ill-treatment
occasionally occur. 'A few months ago an adult workman broke a
boy's arm by a blow with a piece of iron; the boy went to school
till his arm got well; his father and mother thought it a good
opportunity to give him some schooling.'"—Ibid. _Evidence_, No.
331.
"But the class of children in this district the most abused and
oppressed are the apprentices, and particularly those who are
bound to the small masters among the locksmiths, key and bolt
makers, screwmakers, &c. Even among these small masters, there
are respectable and humane men, who do not suffer any degree of
poverty to render them brutal; but many of these men treat their
apprentices not so much with neglect and harshness, as with
ferocious violence, the result of unbridled passions, excited
often by ardent spirits, acting on bodies exhausted by over-work,
and on minds which have never received the slightest moral or
religious culture, and which, therefore, never exercise the
smallest moral or religious restraint."—Ibid.
Evidence from all classes,—masters, journeymen, residents,
magistrates, clergymen, constables, and, above all, from the mouths of
the poor oppressed sufferers themselves, is adduced to a heart-breaking
extent. The public has been excited to pity by Dickens's picture of
Smike—in Willenhall, there are many Smikes.
"— —, aged sixteen: 'His master stints him from six in
the morning till ten and sometimes eleven at night, as much as
ever he can do; and if he don't do it, his master gives him no
supper, and gives him a good hiding, sometimes with a big strap,
sometimes with a big stick. His master has cut his head open
five times—once with a key and twice with a lock; knocked the
corner of a lock into his head twice—once with an iron bolt, and
once with an iron shut—a thing that runs into the staple. His
master's name is — —, of Little London. There is another
apprentice besides him, who is treated just as bad.'"—Ibid. p.
32, 1. 4.
"— —, aged fifteen: 'Works at knob-locks with — —.
Is a fellow-apprentice with — —. Lives in the house of his
master. Is beaten by his master, who hits him sometimes with
his fists, and sometimes with the file-haft, and sometimes with
a stick—it's no matter what when he's a bit cross; sometimes
hits him with the locks; has cut his head open four or five
times; so he has his fellow apprentice's head. Once when he cut
his head open with a key, thinks half a pint of blood run off
him.'"—Ibid. p. 32, 1. 19.
"— —, aged fourteen: 'Has been an in-door apprentice three
years. Has no wages; nobody gets any wages for him. Has to serve
till he is twenty-one. His master behaves very bad. His mistress
behaves worse, like a devil; she beats him; knocks his head
against the wall. His master goes out a-drinking, and when he
comes back, if any thing's gone wrong that he (the boy) knows
nothing about, he is beat all the same.'"—Ibid. p. 32, 1. 36.
"— —, aged sixteen: 'His master sometimes hits him with his
fist, sometimes kicks him; gave him the black eye he has got;
beat him in bed while he was asleep, at five in the morning,
because he was not up to work. He came up-stairs and set about
him—set about him with his fist. Has been over to the public
office, Brummagem, to complain; took a note with him, which was
written for him; his brother gave it to the public office there,
but they would not attend to it; they said they could do no good,
and gave the note back. He had been beaten at that time with a
whip-handle—it made wales all down his arms and back and all;
everybody he showed it to said it was scandalous. Wishes he could
be released from his master, who's never easy but when he's
a-beating of me. Never has enough to eat at no time; ax him for
more, he won't gie it me.'"—Ibid. p. 30, 1. 5.
"— —, aged seventeen: 'Has no father or mother to take his
part. His master once cut his head open with a flat file-haft,
and used to pull his ears nearly off; they bled so he was obliged
to go into the house to wipe them with a cloth,'"—Ibid. p. 37,
1. 7.
"— —, aged fifteen: 'The neighbours who live agen the shop
will say how his master beats him; beats him with a strap, and
sometimes a nut-stick; sometimes the wales remain upon him for a
week; his master once cut his eyelid open, cut a hole in it, and
it bled all over his files that he was working with,'"—Ibid. p.
37, 1. 47.
"— —, aged 18: 'His master once ran at him with a hammer,
and drove the iron-head of the hammer into his side—he felt it
for weeks; his master often knocks him down on the shop-floor;
he can't tell what it's all for, no more than you can; don't
know what it can be for unless it's this, his master thinks he
don't do enough work for him. When he is beaten, his master
does not lay it on very heavy, as some masters do, only beats
him for five minutes at a time; should think that was enough,
though.'"—_Horne, Evidence_, p. 37, 1. 57.
All this exists in a Christian land! Surely telescopic philanthropists
must be numerous in Great Britain. Wonderful to relate, there are many
persons instrumental in sustaining this barbarous system, who profess
a holy horror of slavery, and who seldom rise up or lie down without
offering prayers on behalf of the African bondsmen, thousands of miles
away. Verily, there are many people in this motley world so organized
that they can scent corruption "afar off," but gain no knowledge of the
foulness under their very noses.
Henry Mayhew, in his "London Labour and the London Poor," gives some
very interesting information in regard to the workshops in the great
metropolis of the British Empire. "In the generality of trades,
the calculation is that one-third of the hands are fully employed,
one-third partially, and one-third unemployed throughout the year." The
wages of those who are regularly employed being scant, what must be
the condition of those whose employment is but casual and precarious?
Mayhew says—
"The hours of labour in mechanical callings are usually twelve,
two of them devoted to meals, or seventy-two hours (less by the
permitted intervals) in a week. In the course of my inquiries for
the _Chronicle_, I met with slop cabinet-makers, tailors, and
milliners, who worked sixteen hours and more daily, their toil
being only interrupted by the necessity of going out, if small
masters, to purchase materials, and offer the goods for sale; or,
if journeymen in the slop trade, to obtain more work and carry
what was completed to the master's shop. They worked on Sundays
also; one tailor told me that the coat he worked at on the
previous Sunday was for the Rev. Mr. —, who 'little thought
it,' and these slop-workers rarely give above a few minutes to
a meal. Thus they toil forty hours beyond the hours usual in an
honourable trade, (112 hours instead of 72,) in the course of a
week, or between three and four days of the regular hours of work
of the six working days. In other words, two such men will in
less than a week accomplish work which should occupy three men a
full week; or 1000 men will execute labour fairly calculated to
employ 1500 at the least. A paucity of employment is thus caused
among the general body, by this system of over-labour decreasing
the share of work accruing to the several operatives, and so
adding to surplus hands.
"Of over-work, as regards excessive labour, both in the general
and fancy cabinet trade, I heard the following accounts, which
different operatives concurred in giving; while some represented
the labour as of longer duration by at least an hour, and some by
two hours a day, than I have stated.
"The labour of the men who depend entirely on 'the
slaughter-houses' for the purchase of their articles is usually
seven days a week the year through. That is, seven days—for
Sunday-work is all but universal—each of thirteen hours, or
ninety-one hours in all; while the established hours of labour
in the 'honourable trade' are six days of the week, each of ten
hours, or sixty hours in all. Thus fifty per cent. is added to
the extent of the production of low-priced cabinet work, merely
from 'over-hours'; but in some cases I heard of fifteen hours for
seven days in the week, or 105 hours in all.
"Concerning the hours of labour in this trade, I had the
following minute particulars from a garret-master who was a
chair-maker:—
"'I work from six every morning to nine at night; some work
till ten. My breakfast at eight stops me for ten minutes. I can
breakfast in less time, but it's a rest. My dinner takes me say
twenty minutes at the outside; and my tea eight minutes. All
the rest of the time I'm slaving at my bench. How many minutes'
rest is that, sir? Thirty-eight; well, say three-quarters of an
hour, and that allows a few sucks at a pipe when I rest; but I
can smoke and work too. I have only one room to work and eat in,
or I should lose more time. Altogether, I labour fourteen and a
quarter hours every day, and I must work on Sundays—at least
forty Sundays in the year. One may as well work as sit fretting.
But on Sundays I only work till it's dusk, or till five or six in
summer. When it's dusk I take a walk. I'm not well dressed enough
for a Sunday walk when it's light, and I can't wear my apron on
that day very well to hide patches. But there's eight hours that
I reckon I take up every week, one with another, in dancing about
to the slaughterers. I'm satisfied that I work very nearly 100
hours a week the year through; deducting the time taken up by the
slaughterers, and buying stuff—say eight hours a week—it gives
more than ninety hours a week for my work, and there's hundreds
labour as hard as I do, just for a crust.'
"The East-end turners generally, I was informed, when inquiring
into the state of that trade, labour at the lathe from six
o'clock in the morning till eleven and twelve at night, being
eighteen hours' work per day, or one hundred and eight hours
per week. They allow themselves two hours for their meals. It
takes them, upon an average, two hours more every day fetching
and carrying their work home. Some of the East-end men work on
Sundays, and not a few either,' said my informant. 'Sometimes
I have worked hard,' said one man, 'from six one morning till
four the next, and scarcely had any time to take my meals in the
bargain. I have been almost suffocated with the dust flying down
my throat after working so many hours upon such heavy work too,
and sweating so much. It makes a man drink where he would not.'
"This system of over-work exists in the 'slop' part of almost
every business; indeed, it is the principal means by which the
cheap trade is maintained. Let me cite from my letters in the
_Chronicle_ some more of my experience on this subject. As
regards the London mantuamakers, I said:—'The workwomen for good
shops that give fair, or tolerably fair wages, and expect good
work, can make six average-sized mantles in a week, _working from
ten to twelve hours a day_; but the slop-workers by toiling from
thirteen to sixteen hours a day, will make _nine_ such sized
mantles in a week. In a season of twelve weeks, 1000 workers for
the slop-houses and warehouses would at this rate make 108,000
mantles, or 36,000 more than workers for the fair trade. Or, to
put it in another light, these slop-women, by being compelled, in
order to live, to work such over-hours as inflict lasting injury
on the health, supplant, by their over-work and over-hours, the
labour of 500 hands, working the regular hours."
Mr. Mayhew states it as a plain, unerring law, that "over-work makes
under-pay, and under-pay makes over-work." True; but under-pay in the
first place gave rise to prolonged hours of toil; and in spite of all
laws that may be enacted, as long as a miserable pittance is paid to
labourers, and that, too, devoured by taxes, supporting an aristocracy
in luxury, so long will the workman be compelled to slave for a
subsistence.
The "strapping" system, which demands an undue quantity of work from a
journeyman in the course of a day, is extensively maintained in London.
Mr. Mayhew met with a miserable victim of this system of slavery, who
appeared almost exhausted with excessive toil. The poor fellow said—
"'I work in what is called a strapping-shop, and have worked
at nothing else for these many years past in London. I call
"strapping" doing as much work as a human being or a horse
possibly can in a day, and that without any hanging upon the
collar, but with the foreman's eyes constantly fixed upon you,
from six o'clock in the morning to six o'clock at night. The shop
in which I work is for all the world like a prison; the silent
system is as strictly carried out there as in a model jail. If a
man was to ask any common question of his neighbour, except it
was connected with his trade, he would be discharged there and
then. If a journeyman makes the least mistake he is packed off
just the same. A man working at such places is almost always in
fear; for the most trifling things he's thrown out of work in an
instant. And then the quantity of work that one is forced to get
through is positively awful; if he can't do a plenty of it he
don't stop long where I am. No one would think it was possible
to get so much out of blood and bones. No slaves work like we
do. At some of the strapping shops the foreman keeps continually
walking about with his eyes on all the men at once. At others
the foreman is perched high up, so that he can have the whole of
the men under his eye together. I suppose since I knew the trade
that a _man does four times the work that he did formerly_. I
know a man that's done four pairs of sashes in a day, and one is
considered to be a good day's labour. What's worse than all, the
men are every one striving one against the other. Each is trying
to get through the work quicker than his neighbours. Four or
five men are set the same job, so that they may be all pitted
against one another, and then away they go, every one striving
his hardest for fear that the others should get finished first.
They are all tearing along, from the first thing in the morning
to the last at night, as hard as they can go, and when the time
comes to knock off they are ready to drop. It was hours after I
got home last night before I could get a wink of sleep; the soles
of my feet were on fire, and my arms ached to that degree that I
could hardly lift my hand to my head. Often, too, when we get up
of a morning, we are more tired than when we went to bed, for we
can't sleep many a night; but we musn't let our employers know
it, or else they'd be certain we couldn't do enough for them,
and we'd get the sack. So, tired as we may be, we are obliged to
look lively, somehow or other, at the shop of a morning. If we're
not beside our bench the very moment the bell's done ringing,
our time's docked—they won't give us a single minute out of the
hour. If I was working for a fair master, I should do nearly
one-third, and sometimes a half, less work than I am now forced
to get through; and, even to manage that much, I shouldn't be
idle a second of my time. It's quite a mystery to me how they
_do_ contrive to get so much work out of the men. But they are
very clever people. They know how to have the most out of a man,
better than any one in the world. They are all picked men in the
shop—regular "strappers," and no mistake. The most of them are
five foot ten, and fine broad-shouldered, strong-backed fellows
too—if they weren't they wouldn't have them. Bless you, they
make no words with the men, they sack them if they're not strong
enough to do all they want; and they can pretty soon tell, the
very first shaving a man strikes in the shop, what a chap is
made of. Some men are done up at such work—quite old men and
gray, with spectacles on, by the time they are forty. I have
seen fine strong men, of thirty-six, come in there, and be bent
double in two or three years. They are most all countrymen at
the strapping shops. If they see a great strapping fellow, who
they think has got some stuff about him that will come out, they
will give him a job directly. We are used for all the world like
cab or omnibus-horses. Directly they've had all the work out
of us, we are turned off, and I am sure, after my day's work
is over, my feelings must be very much the same as one of the
London cab-horses. As for Sunday, it is _literally_ a day of rest
with us, for the greater part of us lay a-bed all day, and even
that will hardly take the aches and pains out of our bones and
muscles. When I'm done and flung by, of course I must starve.'"
It may be said that, exhausting as this labour certainly is, it is not
slavery; for the workman has a will of his own, and need not work if
he does not choose to do it. Besides, he is not held by law; he may
leave the shop; he may seek some other land. These circumstances make
his case very different from the negro slave of America. True, but the
difference is in favour of the negro slave. The London workman has only
the alternative—such labour as has been described, the workhouse, or
starvation. The negro slave seldom has such grinding toil, is provided
for whether he performs it or not, and can look forward to an old age
of comfort and repose. The London workman may leave his shop, but he
will be either consigned to the prison of a workhouse or starved. He
might leave the country, if he could obtain the necessary funds.
Family work, or the conjoint labour of a workman's wife and children,
is one of the results of the wretchedly rewarded slavery in the various
trades. Mr Mayhew gives the following statement of a "fancy cabinet"
worker upon this subject:—
"The most on us has got large families; we put the children to
work as soon as we can. My little girl began about six, but about
eight or nine is the usual age. 'Oh, poor little things,' said
the wife, 'they are obliged to begin the very minute they can
use their fingers at all.' The most of the cabinet-makers of the
East end have from five to six in family, and they are generally
all at work for them. The small masters mostly marry when they
are turned of twenty. You see our trade's coming to such a pass,
that unless a man has children to help him he can't live at all.
I've worked more than a month together, and the longest night's
rest I've had has been an hour and a quarter; ay, and I've been
up three nights a week besides. I've had my children lying ill,
and been obliged to wait on them into the bargain. You see we
couldn't live if it wasn't for the labour of our children, though
it makes 'em—poor little things!—old people long afore they are
growed up.'
"'Why, I stood at this bench,' said the wife, 'with my child,
only ten years of age, from four o'clock on Friday morning till
ten minutes past seven in the evening, without a bit to eat or
drink. I never sat down a minute from the time I began till I
finished my work, and then I went out to sell what I had done.
I walked all the way from here [Shoreditch] down to the Lowther
Arcade to get rid of the articles.' Here she burst out into
a violent flood of tears, saying, 'Oh, sir, it is hard to be
obliged to labour from morning till night as we do, all of us,
little ones and all, and yet not be able to live by it either.'
"'And you see the worst of it is, this here children's labour is
of such value now in our trade, that there's more brought into
the business every year, so that it's really for all the world
_like breeding slaves_. Without my children I don't know how we
should be able to get along.' 'There's that little thing,' said
the man, pointing to the girl ten years of age, before alluded
to, as she sat at the edge of the bed, 'why she works regularly
every day from six in the morning till ten at night. She never
goes to school; we can't spare her. There's schools enough about
here for a penny a week, but we could not afford to keep her
without working. If I'd ten more children I should be obliged to
employ them all the same way, and there's hundreds and thousands
of children now slaving at this business. There's the M—'s;
they have a family of eight, and the youngest to the oldest of
all works at the bench; and the oldest a'n't fourteen. I'm sure,
of the two thousand five hundred small masters in the cabinet
line, you may safely say that two thousand of them, at the very
least, have from five to six in family, and that's upward of
twelve thousand children that's been put to the trade since
prices have come down. Twenty years ago I don't think there was a
child at work in our business; and I am sure there is not a small
master now whose whole family doesn't assist him. But what I want
to know is, what's to become of the twelve thousand children when
they're growed up and come regular into the trade? Here are all
my ones growing up without being taught any thing but a business
that I know they must starve at.'
"In answer to my inquiry as to what dependence he had in case
of sickness, 'Oh, bless you,' he said, 'there's nothing but the
parish for us. I _did_ belong to a benefit society about four
years ago, but I couldn't keep up my payments any longer. I was
in the society above five-and-twenty years, and then was obliged
to leave it after all. I don't know of one as belongs to any
friendly society, and I don't think there is a man as can afford
it in our trade now. They must all go to the workhouse when
they're sick or old.'"
The "trading operatives," or those labourers who employ subordinate and
cheaper work-people, are much decried in England; but they, also, are
the creations of the general system. A workman frequently ascertains
that he can make more money with less labour, by employing women or
children at home, than if he did all of his own work; and very often
men are driven to this resource to save themselves from being worked
to death. The condition of those persons who work for the "trading
operatives," or "middlemen," is as miserable as imagination may
conceive.
In Charles Kingsley's popular novel, "Alton Locke," we find a vivid and
truthful picture of the London tailor's workshop, and the slavery of
the workmen, which may be quoted here in illustration:—
"I stumbled after Mr. Jones up a dark, narrow iron staircase,
till we emerged through a trap-door into a garret at the top
of the house. I recoiled with disgust at the scene before me;
and here I was to work—perhaps through life! A low lean-to
room, stifling me with the combined odours of human breath and
perspiration, stale beer, the sweet sickly smell of gin, and the
sour and hardly less disgusting one of new cloth. On the floor,
thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends of thread, sat
some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, with a mingled look
of care and recklessness that made me shudder. The windows were
tight closed to keep out the cold winter air; and the condensed
breath ran in streams down the panes, checkering the dreary
outlook of chimney-tops and smoke. The conductor handed me over
to one of the men.
"'Here Crossthwaite, take this younker and make a tailor of
him. Keep him next you, and prick him up with your needle if he
shirks.'
"He disappeared down the trap-door, and mechanically, as if in a
dream, I sat down by the man and listened to his instructions,
kindly enough bestowed. But I did not remain in peace two
minutes. A burst of chatter rose as the foreman vanished, and a
tall, bloated, sharp-nosed young man next me bawled in my ear—
"'I say, young 'un, fork out the tin and pay your footing at
Conscrumption Hospital!'
"'What do you mean?'
"'An't he just green?—Down with the stumpy—a tizzy for a pot of
half-and-half.'
"'I never drink beer.'
"'Then never do,' whispered the man at my side; 'as sure as
hell's hell, it's your only chance.'
"There was a fierce, deep earnestness in the tone, which made me
look up at the speaker, but the other instantly chimed in.
"'Oh, yer don't, don't yer, my young Father Mathy! then yer'll
soon learn it here if yer want to keep your victuals down.'
"'And I have promised to take my wages home to my mother.'
"'Oh criminy! hark to that, my coves! here's a chap as is going
to take the blunt home to his mammy.'
"'Ta'nt much of it the old un'll see,' said another. 'Ven yer
pockets it at the Cock and Bottle, my kiddy, yer won't find much
of it left o' Sunday mornings.'
"'Don't his mother know he's out?' asked another; 'and won't she
know it—
Ven he's sitting in his glory
Half-price at the Vic-tory.
Oh no, ve never mentions her—her name is never heard. Certainly
not, by no means. Why should it?'
"'Well, if yer won't stand a pot,' quoth the tall man, 'I will,
that's all, and blow temperance. 'A short life and a merry one,'
says the tailor—
The ministers talk a great deal about port,
And they makes Cape wine very dear,
But blow their hi's if ever they tries
To deprive a poor cove of his beer.
Here, Sam, run to the Cock and Bottle for a pot of half-and-half
to my score.'
"A thin, pale lad jumped up and vanished, while my tormentor
turned to me:
"I say, young 'un, do you know why we're nearer heaven here than
our neighbours?'
"'I shouldn't have thought so,' answered I with a _naïveté_ which
raised a laugh, and dashed the tall man for a moment.
"'Yer don't? then I'll tell yer. Acause we're atop of the house
in the first place, and next place yer'll die here six months
sooner nor if yer worked in the room below. A'n't that logic and
science, Orator?' appealing to Crossthwaite.
"'Why?' asked I.
"'Acause you get all the other floors' stinks up here, as well
as your own. Concentrated essence of man's flesh, is this here
as you're a-breathing. Cellar work-room we calls Rheumatic Ward,
because of the damp. Ground-floor's, Fever Ward—them as don't
get typhus gets dysentery, and them as don't get dysentery
gets typhus—your nose 'd tell yer why if you opened the back
windy. First floor's Ashmy Ward—don't you hear 'um now through
the cracks in the boards, a-puffing away like a nest of young
locomotives? And this here more august and upper-crust cockloft
is the Conscrumptive Hospital. First you begins to cough, then
you proceed to expectorate—spittoons, as you see, perwided free
gracious for nothing—fined a kivarten if you spits on the floor—
Then your cheeks they grow red, and your nose it grows thin,
And your bones they sticks out, till they comes through
your skin:
and then, when you've sufficiently covered the poor dear
shivering bare backs of the hairystocracy,
Die, die, die,
Away you fly,
Your soul is in the sky!
as the hinspired Shakspeare wittily remarks.'
"And the ribald lay down on his back, stretched himself out, and
pretended to die in a fit of coughing, which last was alas! no
counterfeit, while poor I, shocked and bewildered, let my tears
fall fast upon my knees.
"'Fine him a pot!' roared one, 'for talking about kicking the
bucket. He's a nice young man to keep a cove's spirits up, and
talk about "a short life and a merry one." Here comes the heavy.
Hand it here to take the taste of that fellow's talk out of my
mouth.'
"'Well, my young 'un,' recommenced my tormentor, 'and how do you
like your company?'
"'Leave the boy alone,' growled Crossthwaite: 'don't you see he's
crying?'
"'Is that any thing good to eat? Give me some on it, if it
is—it'll save me washing my face.' And he took hold of my hair
and pulled my head back.
"'I'll tell you what, Jemmy Downes,' said Crossthwaite, in a
voice that made him draw back, 'if you don't drop that, I'll give
you such a taste of my tongue as shall turn you blue.'
"'You'd better try it on, then. Do—only just now—if you please.'
"'Be quiet, you fool!' said another. 'You're a pretty fellow to
chaff the orator. He'll slang you up the chimney afore you can
get your shoes on.'
"'Fine him a kivarten for quarrelling,' cried another; and
the bully subsided into a minute's silence, after a _sotto
voce_—'Blow temperance, and blow all Chartists, say I!' and then
delivered himself of his feelings in a doggrel song:
Some folks leads coves a dance,
With their pledge of temperance,
And their plans for donkey sociation;
And their pocket-fulls they crams
By their patriotic flams,
And then swears 'tis for the good of the nation.
But I don't care two inions
For political opinions,
While I can stand my heavy and my quartern;
For to drown dull care within,
In baccy, beer, and gin,
Is the prime of a working-tailor's fortin!
"'There's common sense for you now; hand the pot here.'
"I recollect nothing more of that day, except that I bent
myself to my work with assiduity enough to earn praises from
Crossthwaite. It was to be done, and I did it. The only virtue
I ever possessed (if virtue it be) is the power of absorbing my
whole heart and mind in the pursuit of the moment, however dull
or trivial, if there be good reason why it should be pursued at
all.
"I owe, too, an apology to my readers for introducing all this
ribaldry. God knows it is as little to my taste as it can be to
theirs, but the thing exists; and those who live, if not by,
yet still beside such a state of things, ought to know what the
men are like, to whose labour, ay, life-blood, they owe their
luxuries. They are 'their brothers' keepers,' let them deny it as
they will."
As a relief from misery, the wretched workmen generally resort to
intoxicating liquors, which, however, ultimately render them a
hundredfold more miserable. In "Alton Locke," this is illustrated with
an almost fearful power, in the life and death of the tailor Downes.
After saving the wretched man from throwing himself into the river,
Alton Locke accompanies him to a disgusting dwelling, in Bermondsey.
The story continues:—
"He stopped at the end of a miserable blind alley, where a dirty
gas-lamp just served to make darkness visible, and show the
patched windows and rickety doorways of the crazy houses, whose
upper stories were lost in a brooding cloud of fog; and the pools
of stagnant water at our feet: and the huge heap of cinders which
filled up the waste end of the alley—a dreary black, formless
mound, on which two or three spectral dogs prowled up and down
after the offal, appearing and vanishing like dark imps in and
out of the black misty chaos beyond.
"The neighbourhood was undergoing, as it seemed, 'improvements,'
of that peculiar metropolitan species which consists in pulling
down the dwellings of the poor, and building up rich men's houses
instead; and great buildings, within high temporary palings,
had already eaten up half the little houses; as the great fish
and the great estates, and the great shopkeepers, eat up the
little ones of their species—by the law of competition, lately
discovered to be the true creator and preserver of the universe.
There they loomed up, the tall bullies, against the dreary sky,
looking down with their grim, proud, stony visages, on the misery
which they were driving out of one corner, only to accumulate and
intensify it in another.
"The house at which we stopped was the last in the row; all its
companions had been pulled down; and there it stood, leaning
out with one naked ugly side into the gap, and stretching out
long props, like feeble arms and crutches, to resist the work of
demolition.
"A group of slatternly people were in the entry, talking loudly,
and as Downes pushed by them, a woman seized him by the arm.
"'Oh! you unnatural villain!—To go away after your drink, and
leave all them poor dead corpses locked up, without even letting
a body go in to stretch them out!'
"'And breeding the fever, too, to poison the whole house!'
growled one.
"'The relieving-officer's been here, my cove,' said another; 'and
he's gone for a peeler and a search-warrant to break open the
door, I can tell you!'
"But Downes pushed past unheeding, unlocked a door at the end
of the passage, thrust me in, locked it again, and then rushed
across the room in chase of two or three rats, who vanished into
cracks and holes.
"And what a room! A low lean-to with wooden walls, without a
single article of furniture; and through the broad chinks of the
floor shone up as it were ugly glaring eyes, staring at us. They
were the reflections of the rushlight in the sewer below. The
stench was frightful—the air heavy with pestilence. The first
breath I drew made my heart sink, and my stomach turn. But I
forgot every thing in the object which lay before me, as Downes
tore a half-finished coat off three corpses laid side by side on
the bare floor.
"There was his little Irish wife;—dead—and naked—the wasted
white limbs gleamed in the lurid light; the unclosed eyes stared,
as if reproachfully, at the husband whose drunkenness had brought
her there to kill her with the pestilence; and on each side of
her a little, shrivelled, impish, child-corpse—the wretched man
had laid their arms round the dead mother's neck—and there they
slept, their hungering and wailing over at last for ever: the
rats had been busy already with them—but what matter to them now?
"'Look!' he cried; 'I watched 'em dying! Day after day I saw
the devils come up through the cracks, like little maggots and
beetles, and all manner of ugly things, creeping down their
throats; and I asked 'em, and they said they were the fever
devils.'
"It was too true; the poisonous exhalations had killed them.
The wretched man's delirium tremens had given that horrible
substantiality to the poisonous fever gases.
"Suddenly Downes turned on me almost menacingly. 'Money! money! I
want some gin!'
"I was thoroughly terrified—and there was no shame in feeling
fear, locked up with a madman far my superior in size and
strength, in so ghastly a place. But the shame, and the folly
too, would have been in giving way to my fear; and with a
boldness half assumed, half the real fruit of excitement and
indignation at the horrors I beheld, I answered—
"'If I had money, I would give you none. What do you want with
gin? Look at the fruits of your accursed tippling. If you had
taken my advice, my poor fellow,' I went on, gaining courage as I
spoke, 'and become a water-drinker, like me'—
"'Curse you and your water-drinking! If you had had no water to
drink or wash with for two years but that—that,' pointing to the
foul ditch below—'If you had emptied the slops in there with one
hand, and filled your kettle with the other'—
"'Do you actually mean that that sewer is your only drinking
water?'
"'Where else can we get any? Everybody drinks it; and you shall
too—you shall!' he cried, with a fearful oath, 'and then see if
you don't run off to the gin-shop, to take the taste of it out of
your mouth. Drink! and who can help drinking, with his stomach
turned with such hell-broth as that—or such a hell's blast as
this air is here, ready to vomit from morning till night with the
smells? I'll show you. You shall drink a bucket-full of it, as
sure as you live, you shall.'
"And he ran out of the back door, upon a little balcony, which
hung over the ditch.
"I tried the door, but the key was gone, and the handle
too. I beat furiously on it, and called for help. Two gruff
authoritative voices were heard in the passage.
"'Let us in; I'm the policeman!'
"'Let me out, or mischief will happen!'
"The policeman made a vigorous thrust at the crazy door; and just
as it burst open, and the light of his lantern streamed into the
horrible den, a heavy splash was heard outside.
"'He has fallen into the ditch!'
"'He'll be drowned, then, as sure as he's a born man,' shouted
one of the crowd behind.
"We rushed out on the balcony. The light of the policeman's
lantern glared over the ghastly scene—along the double row of
miserable house-backs, which lined the sides of the open tidal
ditch—over strange rambling jetties, and balconies, and sleeping
sheds, which hung on rotting piles over the black waters, with
phosphorescent scraps of rotten fish gleaming and twinkling out
of the dark hollows, like devilish gravelights—over bubbles
of poisonous gas, and bloated carcases of dogs, and lumps of
offal, floating on the stagnant olive-green hell-broth—over the
slow sullen rows of oily ripple which were dying away into the
darkness far beyond, sending up, as they stirred, hot breaths
of miasma—the only sign that a spark of humanity, after years
of foul life, had quenched itself at last in that foul death. I
almost fancied that I could see the haggard face staring up at me
through the slimy water; but no—it was as opaque as stone."
Downes had been a "sweater," and before his death was a "sweater's
slave."
When the comparatively respectable workshop in which Alton Locke
laboured was broken up, and the workmen were told by the heartless
employer that he intended to give out work, for those who could labour
at home, these toil-worn men held a meeting, at which a man named John
Crossthwaite, thus spoke for his oppressed and degraded class:—
"We were all bound to expect this. Every working tailor must come
to this at last, on the present system; and we are only lucky in
having been spared so long. You all know where this will end—in
the same misery as fifteen thousand out of twenty thousand of
our class are enduring now. We shall become the slaves, often
the bodily prisoners, of Jews, middlemen, and sweaters, who draw
their livelihood out of our starvation. We shall have to face, as
the rest have, ever-decreasing prices of labour, ever-increasing
profits made out of that labour by the contractors who will
employ us—arbitrary fines, inflicted at the caprice of
hirelings—the competition of women, and children, and starving
Irish—our hours of work will increase one-third, our actual pay
decrease to less than one-half; and in all this we shall have no
hope, no chance of improvement in wages, but ever more penury,
slavery, misery, as we are pressed on by those who are sucked by
fifties—almost by hundreds—yearly, out of the honourable trade
in which we were brought up, into the infernal system of contract
work, which is devouring our trade and many others, body and
soul. Our wives will be forced to sit up night and day to help
us—our children must labour from the cradle, without chance of
going to school, hardly of breathing the fresh air of heaven—our
boys as they grow up must turn beggars or paupers—our daughters,
as thousands do, must eke out their miserable earnings by
prostitution. And, after all, a whole family will not gain what
one of us had been doing, as yet, single-handed. You know there
will be no hope for us. There is no use appealing to government
or Parliament. I don't want to talk politics here. I shall keep
them for another place. But you can recollect as well as I can,
when a deputation of us went up to a member of Parliament—one
that was reputed a philosopher, and a political economist,
and a liberal—and set before him the ever-increasing penury
and misery of our trade and of those connected with it; you
recollect his answer—that, however glad he would be to help us,
it was impossible—he could not alter the laws of nature—that
wages were regulated by the amount of competition among the men
themselves, and that it was no business of government, or any
one else, to interfere in contracts between the employer and
employed, that those things regulated themselves by the laws of
political economy, which it was madness and suicide to oppose.
He may have been a wise man. I only know that he was a rich one.
Every one speaks well of the bridge which carries him over. Every
one fancies the laws which fill his pockets to be God's laws. But
I say this: If neither government nor members of Parliament can
help us, we must help ourselves. Help yourselves, and Heaven will
help you. Combination among ourselves is the only chance. One
thing we can do—sit still.'
"'And starve!' said some one."
Crossthwaite is represented as having preferred to endure want rather
than work under the sweating system. But there are few men who possess
such spirit and determination. Men with families are compelled, by
considering those who are dependent upon them, to work for whatever
prices the masters choose to pay. They are free labourers—if they do
not choose to work—they are perfectly free—to starve!
The government took the initiative in the sweating system. It set the
example by giving the army and navy clothes to contractors, and taking
the lowest tenders. The police clothes, the postmen's clothes, the
convict's clothes, are all contracted for by sweaters and sub-sweaters,
till government work is the very last, lowest resource to which a poor,
starved-out wretch betakes himself, to keep body and soul together.
Thus is profit made from the pauperism of men, the slavery of children,
and the prostitution of women, in Great Britain.
Some years ago the following announcement appeared in the Village
Gazette:—
"Peter Moreau and his wife are dead, aged twenty-five years. Too
much work has killed them and many besides. We say—Work like a
negro, like a galley-slave: we ought to say—Work like a freeman."
Work like negro slaves, indeed! There is no such work in America, even
among the slaves; all day long, from Monday morning till Saturday
night, week after week, and year after year, till the machine is worn
out. American slaves and convicts in New South Wales are fat and happy,
compared with the labourers of England. It frequently happens that
Englishmen commit crimes for the purpose of becoming galley-slaves in
New South Wales. They do not keep their purpose secret; they declare
it loudly with tears and passionate exclamations to the magistrate who
commits them for trial, to the jury who try them, and to the judge who
passes sentence on them. This is published in the newspapers, but so
often that it excites no particular comment.
The parish apprentices are the worst-treated slaves in the world. They
are at the mercy of their masters and mistresses during their term of
apprenticeship, without protectors, and without appeal against the most
cruel tyranny. In the reign of George III., one Elizabeth Brownrigg was
hanged for beating and starving to death her parish apprentices. In
1831, another woman, Esther Hibner by name, was hanged in London for
beating and starving to death a parish apprentice. Two instances of
punishment, for thousands of cases of impunity!
"The evidence in the case of Esther Hibner proved that a number
of girls, pauper apprentices, were employed in a workshop; that
their victuals consisted of garbage, commonly called hog's-wash,
and that of this they never had enough to stay the pains of
hunger; that they were kept half-naked, half-clothed in dirty
rags; that they slept in a heap on the floor, amid filth and
stench; that they suffered dreadfully from cold; that they were
forced to work so many hours together that they used to fall
asleep while at work; that for falling asleep, for not working
as hard as their mistress wished, they were beaten with sticks,
with fists, dragged by the hair, dashed on to the ground,
trampled upon, and otherwise tortured; that they were found, all
of them more or less, covered with chilblains, scurvy, bruises,
and wounds; that one of them died of ill-treatment; and—mark
this—that the discovery of that murder was made in consequence
of the number of coffins which had issued from Esther Hibner's
premises, and raised the curiosity of her neighbours. For this
murder Mrs. Hibner was hanged; but what did she get for all the
other murders which, referring to the number of coffins, we have
a right to believe that she committed? She got for each £10.
That is to say, whenever she had worked, starved, beaten, dashed
and trampled a girl to death, she got another girl to treat in
the same way, with £10 for her trouble. She carried on a trade
in the murder of parish apprentices; and if she had conducted
it with moderation, if the profit and custom of murder had not
made her grasping and careless, the constitution, which protects
the poor as well as the rich, would never have interfered with
her. The law did not permit her to do what she liked with her
apprentices, as Americans do with their slaves; oh no. Those
free-born English children were merely bound as apprentices, with
their own consent, under the eye of the magistrate, in order
that they might learn a trade and become valuable subjects. But
did the magistrate ever visit Mrs. Hibner's factory to see how
she treated the free-born English girls? never. Did the parish
officers? no. Was there any legal provision for the discovery of
the woman's trade in murder? none."
"You still read on the gates of London poorhouses, 'strong,
healthy boys and girls,' &c.; and boys or girls you may obtain
by applying within, as many as you please, free-born, with the
usual fee. Having been paid for taking them, and having gone
through the ceremonies of asking their consent and signing bonds
before a magistrate, you may make them into sausages, for any
thing the constitution will do to prevent you. If it should be
proved that you kill even one of them, you will be hanged; but
you may half-starve them, beat them, torture them, any thing
short of killing them, with perfect security; and using a little
circumspection, you may kill them too, without much danger.
Suppose they die, who cares? Their parents? they are orphans, or
have been abandoned by their parents. The parish officers? very
likely, indeed, that these, when the poorhouse is crammed with
orphan and destitute children, should make inquiries troublesome
to themselves; inquiries which, being troublesome to you, might
deprive them of your custom in future. The magistrate? he asked
the child whether it consented to be your apprentice; the child
said 'Yes, your worship;' and there his worship's duty ends. The
neighbours? of course, if you raise their curiosity like Esther
Hibner, but not otherwise. In order to be quite safe, I tell you
you must be a little circumspect. But let us suppose that you are
timid, and would drive a good trade without the shadow of risk.
In that case, half-starve your apprentices, cuff them, kick them,
torment them till they run away from you. They will not go back
to the poorhouse, because there they would be flogged for having
run away from you: besides, the poorhouse is any thing but a
pleasant place. The boys will turn beggars or thieves, and the
girls prostitutes; you will have pocketed £10 for each of them,
and may get more boys and girls on the same terms, to treat in
the same way. This trade is as safe as it is profitable."[89]