poverty, in bringing down buildings to the exempted scale, and in
preventing advances beyond it, is strikingly displayed in Ireland, where
all houses not exceeding the value of 5_l._ are exempted from
contribution to the county cess. The general consequence is that, the
farmers’ residences throughout the country are kept down to the level of
mere cottages or inconvenient hovels, to avoid passing the line of
contribution, and only pass it by indulgent or evasive valuations. But
the supposed exemption (which, if it be not often made up by increased
rent, is a circumstance peculiar to the smaller holdings in that
country)—an exemption which no doubt was procured as a boon, was
productive of further ill effects to the parties intended to be
benefited.[38] Being kept by the immediate expense and the fear of their
share of the tax to thatched roofs, these thatched roofs afforded
facilities to incendiarism, since any one might put a cinder in the
thatch, and run away without detection; hence it has placed the inmates
so far under continued terror in disturbed times, that it would
frequently have been worth the expense of putting on a slate roof as a
measure of preventive police. The depression of the tenement is
practically a depression of the habits and condition of the inhabitants.
I may assume that it has been proved that the labouring classes do
possess the means of purchasing the comforts of superior dwellings, and
also that they are not benefited by exemptions from the immediate
charges wherever requisite to defray the expense of those superior
comforts.
I shall now show how little it is in the power of these classes
voluntarily to obtain these improvements,—setting aside entirely the
consideration of the obstacles arising from depraved habits already
formed.
The workman’s “location,” as it is termed, is generally governed by his
work, near which he must reside. The sort of house, and often the
particular house, may be said to be, and usually is, a monopoly. On
arriving at manhood in a crowded neighbourhood, if he wishes to have a
house, he must avail himself of the first vacancy that presents itself;
if there happen to be more houses vacant than one, the houses being
usually of the same class, little range of choice is thereby presented
to him. In particular neighbourhoods near Manchester, and in other parts
of the county of Lancaster, in some other manufacturing and in some
rural districts, instances occur of the erection of improved ranges of
larger and better constructed houses for the labouring classes; and,
making deduction for the occasional misuse of the increased space by
subdividing them and overcrowding them with lodgers, the extent to which
these improved tenements are sought, and the manner in which an improved
rent is paid, afford gratifying evidence of an increasing disposition
prevalent amongst artisans to avail themselves of such improvements.
These opportunities, however, are comparatively few, and occur in
districts where multitudes continue in the most depressed condition,
apparently without any power of emerging from it.
The individual labourer has little or no power over the internal
structure and economy of the dwelling which has fallen to his lot. If
the water be not laid on in the other houses in the street, or if it be
unprovided with proper receptacles for refuse, it is not in the power of
any individual workman who may perceive the advantages of such
accommodations to procure them. He has as little control over the
external economy of his residence as of the structure of the street
before it, whether it shall be paved or unpaved, drained, or undrained.
It may be said that he might cleanse the street before his own door. By
some local acts the obligation to do so is imposed on the individual
inhabitants. By those inhabitants who have servants this duty may be and
is performed, but the labourer has no servant; all of his family who are
capable of labour are out a-field, or in the manufactory or the
workshop, at daybreak, and return only at nightfall, and this regulation
therefore is unavoidably neglected.
Under the slavery of the existing habits of labourers, it is found that
the faculty of perceiving the advantage of a change is so obliterated as
to render them incapable of using, or indifferent to the use of, the
means of improvement which may happen to come within their reach. The
sense of smell, for instance, which generally gives certain warning of
the presence of malaria or gases noxious to the health, appears often to
be obliterated in the labourer by his employment. He appears to be
insensible to anything but changes of temperature, and there is scarcely
any stench which is not endured to avoid slight cold.
It would have been matter of sincere congratulation to have met with
more extensive evidence of spontaneous improvement amongst the classes
in receipt, of high wages, but nearly all the beneficial changes found
in progress throughout the country are changes that have arisen from the
efforts of persons of the superior classes. Inquiries have been made for
plans of improved tenements, but none have been found which can be
presented as improvements originating with the class intended to be
accommodated. In the rural districts, the worst of the new cottages are
those erected on the borders of commons by the labourers themselves. In
the manufacturing districts, the tenements erected by building clubs and
by speculating builders of the class of workmen, are frequently the
subject of complaint, as being the least substantial and the most
destitute of proper accommodation. The only conspicuous instances of
improved residences of the labouring classes found in the rural
districts are those which have been erected by opulent and benevolent
landlords for the accommodation of the labourers on their own estates;
and in the manufacturing districts, those erected by wealthy
manufacturers for the accommodation of their own workpeople.
As in England so in Scotland, the most important improvements have been
effected through enlightened landlords. The members of the Highland
Society, who have made the best exertions for improving the condition of
the labouring population in the rural districts, and have offered prizes
for the best-constructed cottages and the best plans, competition being
open to all parties, got nothing from the lower classes, and only
succeeded in exciting the interest of the most intelligent proprietors,
and getting improvements effected through their exertions. Mr. Loudon,
in an appeal on behalf of the agricultural labourers, lays it down as a
primary position that, “In general, proprietors ought not to entrust the
erection of labourers’ cottages on their estates to the farmers, as it
is chiefly owing to this practice that so many wretched hovels exist in
the best cultivated districts of Scotland and Northumberland.”
_Employers’ influence on the Health of Workpeople by means of improved
Habitations._
Preparatory to the exposition of the means of protection of the public
health provided by the existing law, and of the modifications that
appear to be requisite for the attainment of the object in question, I
would submit for consideration practical examples of its partial
attainment by means of improved dwellings; combined with examples of
other improvements effected in the moral condition of the labouring
classes, by the judicious exercise of the influence possessed by their
superiors in condition.
Throughout the country examples are found of a desire, on the part of
persons of the higher class, to improve the condition of the poorer
classes by the erection of dwellings of a superior order for their
accommodation. These, however, are generally at a cost beyond any return
to be expected in the present state of the habits of the people in the
shape of rent, or any return in money for an outlay on an ordinary
investment of capital. But the instances about to be noticed, though
generally originating in benevolence, and without the expectation of a
return, do, in the results, prove that in money and money’s worth, the
erection of good tenements affords the inducement of a fair remuneration
to the employers of labour to provide improved accommodation for their
own labourers.
Wherever it has been brought under observation, the connexion of the
labourer’s residence with his employment as part of the farm, or of the
estate, or of the manufactory on which he is employed, and as part of
the inducement to service, appears to be mutually advantageous to the
employer and the employed. The first advantages are to the person
employed.
We everywhere find (in contradiction to statements frequently made in
popular declamations) that the labourer gains by his connexion with
large capital: in the instances presented in the course of this inquiry,
of residences held from the employer, we find that the labourer gains by
the expenditure for the external appearance of that which is known to be
part of the property,—an expenditure that is generally accompanied by
corresponding internal comforts; he gains by all the surrounding
advantages of good roads and drainage, and by more sustained and
powerful care to maintain them; he gains by the closer proximity to his
work attendant on such an arrangement, and he thus avoids all the
attacks of disease, occasioned by exposure to wet and cold, and the
additional fatigue in traversing long distances to and from his home to
the place of work, in the damp of early morning or of nightfall. The
exposure to weather, after leaving the place of work, is one prolific
cause of disease, especially to the young. When the home is near to the
place of work, the labourer is enabled to take his dinner with his
family instead of at the beer-shop.
The wife and family generally gain, by proximity to the employer or the
employer’s family, in motives to neatness and cleanliness by their being
known and being under observation; as a general rule, the whole economy
of the cottages in bye-lanes and out-of-the-way places appears to be
below those exposed to observation. In connexion with property or large
capital, the labourer gains in the stability of employment, and the
regularity of income incidental to operations on a large scale; there is
a mutual benefit also in the wages for service being given in the shape
of buildings or permanent and assured comforts; that is, in what would
be the best application of wages, rather than wholly in money wages.
In the manufacturing districts there is a mutual and large gain by the
diminution of the labour of the collection of rents, the avoidance of
the risks of non-payment, and also in the power of control for the
prevention of disturbances, and the removal of tenants of bad character
and conduct.
Surprise is frequently expressed at the enormous rents ranging up to and
beyond 20 per cent. on the outlay, exacted by the building speculators
in the towns. But when the experience of these descriptions of tenements
is examined, it is found that the labour of collecting the rents, and
the labour of protecting the property itself against waste from
unprincipled tenants, is such as to prove that accommodation given to
the disorderly and vicious is scarcely remunerative at any price. The
tenants are loosely attached, and large numbers migratory, partly from
the nature of their work; and having little or no goods or furniture,
they have no obstacles to removal; they frequently, before absconding,
commit every description of waste; they often burn shelves and
cupboard-doors, and the door itself, and all timber that can be got at
for the purpose.[39] An objection frequently made against laying on the
water in houses inhabited by a population addicted to drinking is, that
they would sell the receptacles and destroy the pipe, and let the water
run to waste, for the sake of the lead. The expense and delay of legal
remedies precludes redress for such injuries.
In some of the worst neighbourhoods in Manchester, the whole population
of a street have risen to resist the service of legal process by the
civil officers. In the course of the Constabulary Inquiry I was informed
by the superintendent of the old police of that town, that one of the
most dangerous services for a small force was attending to enforce
ejectments. This they had often to do, cutlass in hand, and were
frequently driven off by showers of bricks from the mobs. The collection
of the rents weekly in such neighbourhoods is always a disagreeable
service, requiring high payment. This, and the frequent running away of
the tenant, and the waste, greatly reduce the apparently enormous rent
obtainable from this poorer class of tenants. For all these vices,
risks, and defaults of others, the frugal and well-conducted workman who
has no choice of habitation, is compelled to pay in the shape of an
increased rent; he is most largely taxed in the increased rent,
necessary as an insurance for the risks and losses occasioned by the
defective state of legal remedies.
All these risks the employer is enabled to diminish or avoid, by
selecting his own tenants, and he has the best means of doing so; by
reservations of rent on the payment of wages, he saves the labour and
risks of collection; nor will the vicious workman so readily commit
waste in the house belonging to his employer as in one belonging to a
poorer and unconnected owner. The employer has, moreover, the most
direct interest in the health and strength of his workpeople.
It is not supposed that these are arrangements which can be universal,
or readily made the subject of legislation. At the commencement of some
manufactures, the additional outlay may not be practicable. But those
manufactures have generally had the greatest success where good
accommodation for the workpeople was comprehended in the first
arrangements. When, however, a manufactory has been once established and
brought into systematic operation, when the first uncertainties have
been overcome and the employer has time to look about him, there appears
to be no position from which so extensive and certain a beneficial
influence may be exercised as that of the capitalist who stands in the
double relation of landlord and employer. He will find that whilst an
unhealthy and vicious population is an expensive as well as a dangerous
one, all improvements in the condition of the population have their
compensation. In one instance, of a large outlay on improved tenements,
and in provision for the moral improvement of the rising generation of
workpeople, by an expensive provision for schools, the proprietor
acknowledged to me that although he made the improvements from motives
of a desire to improve the condition of his workpeople, or what might be
termed the satisfaction derived from the improvements as a “hobby,” he
was surprised by a pecuniary gain found in the superior order and
efficiency of his establishment, in the regularity and trustworthiness
of his workpeople, which gave even pecuniary compensation for the outlay
of capital and labour bestowed upon them. He stated that he would not,
for 7000_l._, change the entire set of workpeople on whom care had been
bestowed for the promiscuous assemblage of workpeople engaged in the
same description of manufactures.
I would now submit for consideration, with the view to promulgation for
voluntary adoption, instances of the arrangements which have been found
most beneficial in their operation on the condition of the manufacturing
population.
The most prominent of these instances was pointed out to our attention
in the course of the Factory Inquiry, in the habitations connected with
the mills superintended by the late Mr. Archibald Buchanan, at Catrine,
in Ayrshire. Nearly 1000 persons are employed in these mills, the places
of work are well ventilated and carefully kept; the village where the
workpeople live is advantageously situated, and the houses are well
built. They are thus described by his son in answer to my inquiries:—
“The system that has been pursued here, and which was adopted by my
father for the purpose of giving the workers a greater interest in the
place, at the same time that it gave them an object to be careful and
saving, while it raised them in point of standing and respectability,
has been different from that generally acted upon at country works.
Instead of our company continuing the proprietors of the
dwelling-houses and letting them to the workpeople, my father gave the
workers every encouragement to save money, so that they might
themselves become the proprietors of a house and small garden, either
by making a purchase from the company or fencing ground and building a
house for themselves. This plan has been very successful, and many of
our people are proprietors of excellent houses with gardens attached,
which afford them employment and amusement in their spare hours; and
among themselves they have a horticultural society and an annual
competition. Though many houses have been sold in this way, a
considerable part of the village is still the property of our company,
and those that have been built by other parties are in accordance with
a plan of streets laid down; and I should say are about equal to the
others in comfort and conveniences, it being the interest of the
person investing his money to get the best return he can for it; and
that he may get his house let and a fair rent for it, he must build as
good a house as the tenant can get for the same rent from another. The
houses are substantially built of stone and lime, and slated, and are
generally of two stories, containing four families, occupying two
rooms each. They have generally small plots of garden-ground behind,
in which are dungsteads and necessaries, with a space between them and
the houses. The village is well supplied with water by spring-wells
and pumps in various parts of it; and some of the streets have water
conveyed to them in pipes from the aqueduct to the water-wheels that
give motion to the works. I cannot, however, very well give any
distinct plan or drawing of the dwellings of the workpeople, our
houses being a good deal mixed with those belonging to others.
“The population of the village, per census taken 30th December last,
is 2699, and the number of families 566, so that the proportion of
individuals to each family is 4‑435/566, and the number employed in
the works is 936. The proprietors of houses appoint annually a
committee of their number to attend to the repairs of the streets, and
the keeping of them clean; and they have a man constantly in their
employment for this purpose, the expense being defrayed by the feuers
assessing themselves according to the rental of their properties.”
These mills were pointed out to our attention during the Factory
Inquiry, by Mr. Stuart, the commissioner, who observed that the
workpeople, “more especially the females, are not only apparently in the
possession of good health, but many of them (quite as large a proportion
as we have seen in any of the extensive well-regulated similar
establishments in country districts) are blooming—as unlike as possible
to the pale, languid-looking females too frequently to be found in
similar works in great cities.”
_Mr. Hill_, the prison inspector for Scotland, stated that the
procurator fiscal, or public prosecutor, reported to him that he had
nothing to do in that village; and in his Third Report he thus mentions
it:—
“There is little crime here, and very few offences of any kind, and it
is reported that there is not a single person in the village who is of
a bad character. Indeed no person of bad character, or who is in the
habit of drunkenness, is allowed to remain in the mills, on which
nearly the whole population of the village is directly or indirectly
dependent. The few offences which are committed are almost all by
vagrants. The inhabitants of Catrine appear to be in the enjoyment of
an unusual amount of comfort; they are well clad, live in neat houses,
many of them their own property, and look healthy and cheerful; indeed
the only person in the village who has reason to be downcast is the
medical man, who complains that he has nothing to do.”
Similar effects are manifested in the mills at New Lanark, at the
flax-mills near Cupar. These instances would suffice to establish the
fact of the very little sickness that is _essential_ to the occupation
itself. _Mr. Hill_ who, by his office, is led to appreciate highly
instances of exemption from crime and disorder, exclaims, upon the sight
of such establishments,—“Notwithstanding what has been said on the
subject of factories, I have no hesitation in declaring that I believe
that the workpeople at Catrine, New Lanark, and other similar
establishments, form some of the healthiest, happiest, and most moral
communities in the world.”
From other examples it appears to be by no means essential to such
improvements that the labourers should become proprietors of their
occupations. _Mr. Buchanan, jun._, expresses his concurrence in the
general conclusions to which I have arrived of the advantages derived by
the labourer from his connexion with his place of work, and says,—
“I perfectly agree that a labouring man will generally be found in a
state of greater comfort, holding a tenement from his employer, than
when left to provide a dwelling of whatever kind he chooses for
himself. In our case the proprietors, in the first place, furnished
the house, in which the workmen formed habits of cleanliness and
comfort, and when by care and economy he had saved as much as enabled
him to purchase it, he was advanced a step higher by becoming himself
the proprietor, continuing to occupy part of the house himself, and
letting the other parts to his fellow-workmen.
“I believe that our people enjoy as good health, and have as many
comforts as any of the same class either in the same or any other
employment, as their appearance will testify; and the generally
different appearance of the manufacturing population in towns is to be
attributed to the habits of the people themselves, and the way in
which they are crowded together, and not to anything in the nature of
the employment.”[40]
The following account which I have received in answer to inquiries from
_Mr. Henry Ashworth_, of Turton, near Bolton, with relation to the
manufacturing population of that place, is so far characteristic of the
progress of a population of more extensive districts, and of the means
of their improvement, that I submit it at full length:—
“On the early introduction of the cotton manufacture, the parties who
entered into it were men of limited capital, and anxious to invest the
whole of it in mills and machinery, and therefore too much absorbed
with the doubtful success of their own affairs to look after the
necessities of their workpeople.
“Families were attracted from all parts for the benefit of employment,
and obliged, as a temporary resort, to crowd together into such
dwellings as the neighbourhood afforded: often two families into one
house; others into cellars or very small dwellings: eventually, as the
works became established, either the proprietor or some neighbour
would probably see it advantageous to build a few cottages; these were
often of the worst description; in such case the prevailing
consideration was not how to promote the health and comfort of the
occupants, but how many cottages could be built upon the smallest
space of ground and at the least possible cost. We find many built
back to back, a most objectionable form, as precluding the possibility
of any outlet behind.
“People brought together as these were for a living, had no
alternative but to occupy such dwellings. Whatever the weekly income,
the wife could never make such a house comfortable; she had only one
room in which to do all her work; it may be readily supposed the
husband would not always find the comfort he wished in such a home.
The public-house would then be his only resort. But here the evil does
not end; the children brought up in such dwellings knew no better
accommodation than such afforded, nor had they any opportunities of
seeing better domestic management. Few of the parents in these parts
have ever lived as domestic servants, so that it becomes no matter of
surprise that the major part should have so little knowledge of
improving their social condition even when the pecuniary means are
within their reach. It must be allowed that the introduction of
manufactures is not justly chargeable with producing the whole of this
evil. About this time the old Poor Law was exercising a very
pernicious influence upon the labouring classes, by means of inducing
both the landowners and farmers to discourage cottage property for
fear the inmates should gain parish settlements.