It seems to me that I cannot more appropriately conclude these chapters
of bygone events within my own experience, than by a summary of those
of the past condition of industry which suggest a tone of manly
cheerfulness and confidence in the future, not yet common among the
people. Changes of condition are not estimated as they pass, and when
they have passed, many never look back to calculate their magnificence
or insignificance. This chapter is an attempt to show the change of the
environment of a great class of a character to decrease apprehension
and augment hope. The question answered herein is: "Did things go better
before our time?"
When this question is put to me I answer "No." Things did not go better
before my time--nor that of the working class who were contemporaries
of my earlier years. My answer is given from the working class point of
view, founded on a personal experience extending as far back as 1824,
when I first became familiar with workshops. Many are still under the
impression that things are as bad as they well can be, whereas they
have been much worse than they are now. When I first took an interest in
public affairs, agitators among the people were as despondent as frogs
who were supposed to croak because they were neglected.
They spoke in weeping tones. There were tears even in the songs of
Ebenezer Elliot, the Corn-Law Rhymer,* and not without cause, for the
angels would have been pessimists, had they been in the condition of
the people in those days. I myself worked among men who had Unitarian
masters--who were above the average of employers--even they were as
sheep-dogs who kept the wolf away, but bit the sheep if they turned
aside. But Trades Unions have changed this now, and sometimes bite their
masters (employers they are called now), which is not more commendable.
Still, multitudes of working people, who ought to be in the front ranks
as claimants for redress still needed, yet hang back with handkerchief
to their eyes, oppressed with a feeling of hopelessness, because they
are unaware of what has been won for them, of what has been conceded to
them, and what the trend of progress is bringing nearer to them.
* Thomas Cooper--himself a Chartist poet--published (1841)
in Elliot's days a hymn by William Jones--a Leicester poet--
of which the first verse began thus:
"Come my fellow-slaves of Britain.
Rest, awhile, the weary limb;
Pour your plaints, ye bosom-smitten,
In a sad and solemn hymn."
Of course if there has been no betterment in the condition of the
people, despair is excusable--but if there has, despair is as unseemly
as unnecessary. Every age has its needs and its improvements to make,
but a knowledge of what has been accomplished should take despair out of
workmen's minds. To this end I write of changes which have taken place
in my time.
I was born in tinder-box days. I remember having to strike a light in my
grandfather's garden for his early pipe, when we arrived there at five
o'clock in the morning. At times my fingers bled as I missed the steel
with the jagged flint. Then the timber proved damp where the futile
spark fell, and when ignition came a brimstone match filled the air with
satanic fumes. He would have been thought as much a visionary as Joanna
Southcott, who said the time would come when small, quick-lighting
lucifers would be as plentiful and as cheap as blades of grass. How
tardy was change in olden time! Flint and steel had been in use four
hundred years. Philip the Good put it into the collar of the Golden
Fleece (1429). It was not till 1833 that phosphorus matches were
introduced. The safety match of the present day did not appear until
1845. The consumption of matches is now about eight per day for each
person. To produce eight lights, by a tinder-box, would take a quarter
of an hour With the lucifer match eight lights can be had in two
minutes, occupying only twelve hours a year, while the tinder box
process consumes ninety hours. Thus the lucifer saves nearly eighty
hours annually, which, to the workman, would mean an addition of nearly
eight working days to the year.
In tinder-box days the nimble night burglar heard the flint and steel
going, and had time to pack up his booty and reach the next parish,
before the owner descended the stairs with his flickering candle. Does
any one now fully appreciate the morality of light? Extinguish the gas
in the streets of London and a thousand extra policemen would do less to
prevent outrage and robbery than the ever-burning, order-keeping street
light. Light is a police force--neither ghosts nor burglars like it.
Thieves flee before it as errors flee the mind when the light of truth
bursts on the understanding of the ignorant.
Seventy years ago the evenings were wasted in a million houses of the
poor. After sundown the household lived in gloom. Children who could
read, read, as I did, by the flickering light of the fire, which often
limited for life the power of seeing. Now the pauper reads by a better
light than the squire did in days when squires were county gods. Now old
men see years after the period when their forefathers were blind.
Then a social tyranny prevailed, unpleasant to the rich and costly to
the poor, which regarded the beard as an outrage. I remember when only
four men in Birmingham had courage to wear beards. They were followers
of Joanna Southcott. They did it in imitation of the apostles, and were
jeered at in the streets by ignorant Christians. George Frederick Muntz,
one of the two first members elected in Birmingham, was the first member
who ventured to wear a beard in the House of Commons; and he would have
been insulted had not he been a powerful man and carried a heavy Malacca
cane, which he was known to apply to any one who offered him a personal
affront. Only military officers were allowed to wear a moustache; among
them--no one, not even Wellington, was hero enough to wear a beard. The
Rev. Edmund R. Larken, of Burton Rectory, near Lincoln, was the first
clergyman (that was as late as 1852) who appeared in the pulpit with a
beard, but he shaved the upper lip as an apology for the audacity of his
chin; George Dawson was the first Nonconformist preacher who delivered
a sermon in a full-blown moustache and beard, which was taken in both
cases as an unmistakable sign of latitudinarianism in doctrine. In the
bank clerk or the workman it was worse. It was flat insubordination not
to shave. The penalty was prompt dismissal. As though there were not
fetters about hard to bear, people made fetters for themselves. Such was
the daintiness of ignorance that a man could not eat, dress, nor even
think as he pleased. He was even compelled to shave by public opinion.
When Mr. Joseph Cowen was first a candidate for Parliament, he wore, as
was his custom, a felt hat (then called a "wide-awake"). He was believed
to be an Italian conspirator, and suspected of holding opinions lacking
in orthodox requirements. Yet all his reputed heresies of acts and
tenets put together did not cost him so many votes as the form and
texture of his hat. He was elected--but his headgear would have ruined
utterly a less brilliant candidate than he This social intolerance now
shows its silly and shameless head no more. A wise Tolerance is the
Angel, which stands at the portal of Progress, and opens the door of the
Temple.
Dr. Church, of Birmingham, was the first person who, in my youth,
contrived a bicycle, and rode upon it in the town, which excited
more consternation than a Southcottean with his beard. He was an able
physician, but his harmless innovation cost him his practice. Patients
refused to be cured by a doctor who rode a horse which had no head, and
ate no oats. Now a parson may ride to church on a bicycle and people
think none the worse of his sermon; and, scandal of scandals, women
are permitted to cycle, although it involves a new convenience of dress
formerly sharply resented.
In these days of public wash-houses, public laundries, and water supply,
few know the discomfort of a washing day in a workman's home, or of the
feuds of a party pump. One pump in a yard had to serve several families.
Quarrels arose as to who should first have the use of it. Sir Edwin
Chadwick told me that more dissensions arose over party pumps in a day
than a dozen preachers could reconcile in a week. Now the poorest house
has a water tap, which might be called moral, seeing the ill-feeling it
prevents. So long as washing had to be done at home, it took place in
the kitchen, which was also the dining-room of a poor family. When the
husband came home to his meals, damp clothes were hanging on lines over
his head, and dripping on to his plate. The children were in the way,
and sometimes the wrong child had its ears boxed because, in the steam,
the mother could not see which was which. This would give rise to
further expressions which kept the Recording Angel, of whom Sterne tells
us, very busy, whom the public wash-houses set free for other, though
scarcely less repugnant duty.
In that day sleeping rooms led to deplorable additions to the register
of "idle words." The introduction of iron bedsteads began a new era of
midnight morality. As a wandering speaker I dreaded the wooden bedstead
of cottage, lodging-house or inn. Fleas I did not much care for, and
had no ill-will towards them. They were too little to be responsible for
what they did; while the malodorous bug is big enough to know better.
Once in Windsor I selected an inn with a white portico, having an air
of pastoral cleanliness. The four-poster in my room, with its white
curtains, was a further assurance of repose. The Boers were not more
skilful in attack and retreat than the enemies I found in the field.
Lighted candles did not drive them from the kopje pillow where they
fought. In Sheffield, in 1840, I asked the landlady for an uninhabited
room. A cleaner looking, white-washed chamber never greeted my eyes.
But I soon found that a whole battalion of red-coated cannibals were
stationed there, on active service. Wooden bedsteads in the houses of
the poor were the fortresses of the enemy, which then possessed the
land. Iron bedsteads have ended this, and given to the workman two hours
more sleep at night than was possible before that merciful invention. A
gain of two hours for seven nights amounted to a day's holiday a
week. Besides, these nocturnal irritations were a fruitful source of
tenemental sin, from which iron bedsteads have saved residents and
wayfarers.
Of all the benefits that have come to the working class in my time,
those of travel are among the greatest. Transit by steam has changed
the character of man, and the facilities of the world. Nothing brings
toleration into the mind like seeing new lands, new people, new usages.
They who travel soon discover that other people have genius, manners,
and taste. The traveller loses on his way prejudices of which none could
divest him at home, and he brings back in his luggage new ideas never
contained in it before. Think what the sea-terror of the emigrant
used to be, as he thought of the dreadful voyage over the tempestuous
billows. The first emigrants to America were six months in the
_Mayflower_. Now a workman can go from Manchester into the heart of
America or Canada in a fortnight. The deadly depression which weighed
on the heart of home-sick emigrants occurs no more, since he can return
almost at will. A mechanic can now travel farther than a king could
a century ago. When I first went to Brighton, third-class passengers
travelled in an open cattle truck, exposed to wind and rain. For years
the London and North-Western Railway shunted the third-class passengers
at Blisworth for two hours, while the gentlemen's trains went by. Now
workmen travel in better carriages than gentlemen did half a century
ago. In Newcastle-on-Tyne I have entered a third-class carriage at a
quarter to five in the morning. It was like Noah's Ark. The windows were
openings which in storm were closed by wooden shutters to keep out wind
and rain, when all was darkness. It did not arrive in London till nine
o'clock in the evening, being sixteen hours on the journey. Now the
workman can leave New-castle at ten o'clock in the morning, and be in
London in the afternoon.
Does any one think what advantage has come to the poor by the extension
of dentistry? Teeth are life-givers. They increase comeliness, comfort,
health and length of years--advantages now shared more or less by the
poorer classes--once confined to the wealthy alone. Formerly the sight
of dental instruments struck terror in the heart of the patient Now,
fear arises when few instruments are seen, as the more numerous they
are and the more skilfully they are made, the assurance of less pain
is given. The simple instruments which formerly alarmed give confidence
now, which means that the patient is wiser than of yore.
Within the days of this generation what shrieks were heard in
the hospital, which have been silenced for ever by a discovery of
pain-arresting chloroform! No prayer could still the agony of the knife.
The wise surgeon is greater than the priest. If any one would know
what pain was in our time, let him read Dr. John Brown's "Rab and his
Friends," which sent a pang of dangerous horror into the heart of every
woman who read it. Now the meanest hospital gives the poorest patient
who enters it a better chance of life than the wealthy could once
command.
It was said formerly:--
"The world is a market full of streets,
And Death is a merchant whom every one meets,
If life were a thing which money could buy--
The poor could not live, and the rich would not die."
Now the poor man can deal with death, and buy life on very reasonable
terms, if he has commonsense enough to observe half the precepts given
him by generous physicians on temperance and prudence.
Not long since no man was tolerated who sought to cure an ailment, or
prolong human life in any new way. Even persons so eminent as Harriet
Martineau, Dr. Elliotson, and Sir Bulwer Lytton were subjected to public
ridicule and resentment because they suffered themselves to be restored
to health by mesmerism or hydropathy. But in these libertine and
happier days any one who pleases may follow Mesmer, Pressnitz, or even
Hahnemann, and attain health by any means open to him, and is no longer
expected to die according to the direction of antediluvian doctors.
Until late years the poor man's stomach was regarded as the waste-paper
basket of the State, into which anything might be thrown that did not
agree with well-to-do digestion. Now, the Indian proverb is taken to be
worth heeding--that "Disease enters by the mouth," and the health of
the people is counted as part of the wealth of the nation. Pestilence
is subjected to conditions. Diseases are checked at will, which formerly
had an inscrutable power of defiance. The sanitation of towns is now a
public care. True, officers of health have mostly only official noses,
but they can be made sensible of nuisances by intelligent occupiers.
Economists, less regarded than they ought to be, have proved that it
is cheaper to prevent pestilence than bury the dead. Besides, disease,
which has no manners, is apt to attack respectable people.
What are workshops now to what they once were? Any hole or stifling
room was thought good enough for a man to work in. They, indeed, abound
still, but are now regarded as discreditable. Many mills and factories
are palaces now compared with what they were. Considering how many
millions of men and women are compelled to pass half their lives in some
den of industry or other, it is of no mean importance that improvement
has set in in workshops.
Co-operative factories have arisen, light, spacious and clean, supplied
with cool air in summer and warm air in winter. In my youth men were
paid late on Saturday night; poor nailers trudged miles into Birmingham,
with their week's work in bags on their backs, who were to be seen
hanging about merchants' doors up to ten and eleven o'clock to get
payment for their goods. The markets were closing or closed when the
poor workers reached them. It was midnight, or Sunday morning, before
they arrived at home. Twelve or more hours a day was the ordinary
working period. Wages, piece-work and day-work, were cut down at will.
I did not know then that these were "the good old times" of which, in
after years, I should hear so much.
The great toil of other days in many trades is but exercise now, as
exhaustion is limited by mechanical contrivances. A pressman in my
employ has worked at a hand-press twenty-four hours continuously, before
publishing day. Now a gas engine does all the labour. Machinery is the
deliverer which never tires and never grows pale.
The humiliation of the farm labourer is over. He used to sing:
"Mr Smith is a very good man,
He lets us ride in his harvest van,
He gives us food and he gives us ale,
We pray his heart may never fail."
There is nothing to be said against Mr. Smith, who was evidently a
kindly farmer of his time. Yet to what incredible humiliation his
"pastors and masters" had brought poor Hodge, who could sing these
lines, as though he had reached the Diamond Jubilee of his life when
he rode in somebody else's cart, and had cheese and beer. Now the farm
workers of a co-operative way of thinking have learned how to ride in
their own vans, to possess the crop with which they are loaded, and to
provide themselves with a harvest supper.
In my time the mechanic had no personal credit for his work, whatever
might be his skill. Now in industrial exhibitions the name of the
artificer is attached to his work, and he is part of the character
of the firm which employs him. He has, also, now--if co-operation
prevails--a prospect of participating in the profits of his own
industry. Half a century ago employers were proud of showing their
machinery to a visitor--never their men. Now they show their work-people
as well--whose condition and contentment is the first pride of great
firms.
Above all knowledge is a supreme improvement, which has come to workmen.
They never asked for it, the ignorant never do ask for knowledge, and do
not like those who propose it to them. Brougham first turned aside their
repugnance by telling them what Bacon knew, that "knowledge is power."
Now they realise the other half of the great saying, Dr. Creighton, the
late Bishop of London, supplied, that "ignorance is impotence." They
can see that the instructed son of the gentleman has power, brightness,
confidence, and alertness; while the poor man's child, untrained,
incapable, dull in comparison, often abject, is unconscious of his own
powers which lie latent within him. If an educated and an ignorant child
were sold by weight, the intelligent child would fetch more per pound
avoirdupois than the ignorant one. Now education can be largely had for
working men's children for nothing. Even scholarships and degrees are
open to the clever sort. Moreover, how smooth science has made the early
days of instruction, formerly made jagged with the rod.
Sir Edwin Chadwick showed that the child mind could not profitably be
kept learning more than an hour at a time, and recreation must intervene
before a second hour can be usefully spent. What a mercy and advantage
to thousands of poor children this has been! Even the dreary schoolroom
of the last generation is disappearing. A schoolroom should be spacious
and bright, and board schools are beginning to be made so now. I have
seen a board school in a dismal court in Whitechapel which looked like
an alley of hell. All thoughts for pleasant impressions in the child
mind, which make learning alluring, were formerly uncared for. Happier
now is the lot of poor children than any former generation knew.
Within my time no knowledge of public affairs was possible to the
people, save in a second-hand way from sixpenny newspapers a month old.
Now a workman can read in the morning telegrams from all parts of the
world in a halfpenny paper, hours before his employer is out of bed. If
a pestilence broke out in the next street to the man's dwelling, the law
compelled him to wait a month for the penny paper, the only one he
could afford to buy, before he became aware of his danger, and it often
happened that some of his family never lived to read of their risk.
The sons of working people are now welcomed in the army, and their
record there has commanded the admiration of the onlooking world. But
they are not flogged as they once were, at the will of any arrogant
dandy who had bought his mastership over them. Intelligence has awakened
manliness and self-respect in common men, and the recruiting-sergeant
has to go about without the lash under his coat. The working man further
knows now that there is a better future for his sons in the public
service, in army or navy, than ever existed before our time. Even the
emigrant ship has regulations for the comfort of steerage passengers,
unknown until recent years. People always professed great regard for
"Poor Jack," but until Mr. Plimsoll arose, they left him to drown.
Until a few years ago millions of home-born Englishmen were kept without
votes, like the Uitlanders of South Africa, and no one sent an army
into the country to put down the "corrupt oligarchy," as Mr. Chamberlain
called those who withheld redress. But it has come, though in a limping,
limited way. Carlylean depredators of Parliament decried the value of
workmen possessing "a hundred thousandth part in the national palavers."
But we no longer hear workmen at election times referred to as the
"swinish multitude" who can now send representatives of their own
order into the House of Commons. If the claims of labour are not much
considered, they are no longer contemned. It is always easier for the
rider than the horse. The people are always being ridden, but it is much
easier for the horse now than it ever was before.
Sir Michael Foster, in a recent Presidential Address to the British
Association, said that, "the appliances of science have, as it were,
covered with a soft cushion the rough places of life, and that not for
the rich only but also for the poor." It is not, however, every kind of
progress, everywhere, in every department of human knowledge, in which
the reader is here concerned, but merely with such things as Esdras
says, which have "passed by us in daily life," and which every ordinary
Englishman has observed or knows.
If the question be asked whether the condition of the working class
has improved in proportion to that of the middle and upper class of
our time, the answer must be it has not. But that is not the question
considered here. The question is, "Are the working class to-day better
off than their fathers were?" The answer already given is Yes. Let the
reader think what, in a general way, the new advantages are. The press
is free, and articulate with a million voices--formerly dumb. Now a poor
man can buy a better library for a few shillings than Solomon with
all his gold and glory could in his day; or than the middle class man
possessed fifty years ago. Toleration--not only of ideas but of action,
is enlarged, and that means much--social freedom is greater, and that
means more. The days of children are happier, schoolrooms are more
cheerful, and one day they will be educated so as to fit them for
self-dependence and the duties of daily life. Another change is that
the pride in ignorance, which makes for impotence, is decreasing, is
no longer much thought of among those whose ignorance was their only
attainment.
Not less have the material conditions of life improved. Food is
purer--health is surer--life itself is safer and lasts longer. Comfort
has crept into a million houses where it never found its way before.
Security can be better depended upon. The emigrant terror has gone.
Instead of sailing out on hearsay to an unknown land and finding himself
in the wrong one, or in the wrong part of the right country, as has
happened to thousands, the emigrant can now obtain official information,
which may guide him rightly. Towns are brighter, there are more public
buildings which do the human eye good to look upon. Means of recreation
are continually being multiplied. Opportunity of change from town to
country, or coast, fall now to the poorest Not in cattle trucks any
more. Life is better worth living. Pain none could escape is evadable
now. Parks are multiplied and given as possessions to the people.
Paintings and sculpture are now to be seen on the Sunday by workmen,
which their forefathers never saw, being barred from them on the only
day when they could see them.
By a device within the memory of most, house owning has become possible
to those whose fathers never thought it possible. Temperance, once a
melancholy word, is now a popular resource of health and economy. The
fortune of industry is higher in many ways. Into how many firesides does
it bring gladness to know that in barrack, or camp, or ship, the son is
better treated than heretofore.
Can any of the middle-aged doubt that some things are better now
than before their time? Now two hundred workshops exist on the
labour co-partnership principle. Forty years ago those commenced,
failed--failed through lack of intelligence on the part of workers. The
quality of workmen to be found everywhere in our day did not exist then.
Sixteen years ago there were found more than a dozen workshops owned
and conducted by working men. There are more than a hundred now; and
hundreds in which the workers receive an addition to their wages,
undreamt of in the last generation. In this, and in other respects,
things go better than they did. Though there is still need of
enlargement, the means of self-defence are not altogether wanting.
Co-operation has arisen--a new force for the self-extrication of the
lowest. Without charity, or patronage, or asking anything from the
State, it puts into each man's hand the "means to cancel his captivity."
The rich man may vote twenty times where the poor man can vote only
once. Still, the one voter counts for something where the unfranchised
counted for nothing.
Political as well as civil freedom has come in a measure to those who
dwell in cottages and lodgings. For one minute every seven years the
workman is free. He can choose his political masters at the poll, and
neither his neighbour, his employer, nor his priest, has the knowledge
to harm him on that account. One minute of liberty in seven years is not
much, but there is no free country in the world where that minute is so
well secured as in England. If any one would measure the present by the
past, let him recall the lines:--
"Allah! Allah!" cried the stranger,
"Wondrous sights the traveller sees,
But the latest is the greatest,
Where the drones control the bees."
They do it still, but not to the extent they did. The control of wisdom,
when the drones have it, is all very well, but it is the other sort of
control which is now happily to some extent controllable by the bees.
The manners of the rich are better. Their sympathy with the people has
increased. Their power of doing ill is no longer absolute. Employers
think more of the condition of those who labour for them. The better
sort still throw crumbs to Lazarus. But now Dives is expected to explain
why it is that Lazarus cannot get crumbs himself.
In ways still untold the labour class is gradually attaining to social
equality with the idle class and to that independence hitherto the
privilege of those who do nothing. The workman's power of self-defence
grows--his influence extends--his rights enlarge. Injury suffered in
industry is beginning to be compensated; even old-age pensions are in
the air, though not as yet anywhere else. Notwithstanding, "John Brown's
soul goes marching on." But it must be owned its shoes are a little down
at the heels. Nevertheless, though there is yet much to be done--more
liberty to win, more improvements to attain, and more than all, if it be
possible, permanences of prosperity to secure--I agree with Sydney
Smith--
"For olden times let others prate,
I deem it lucky I was born so late."
There is a foolish praise of the past and a foolish depreciation of the
present The past had its evils, the present has fewer. The past had its
promise, the present great realisations. It is not assumed in what has
been said that all the advantages recounted were originated and acquired
by working men alone. Many came by the concessions of those who had the
power of withholding them. More concessions will not lack acknowledgment
"Just gifts" to men who have honour in their hearts, "bind the
recipients to the giver for ever."
The Chinese put the feet of children in a boot and the foot never grows
larger. There are boots of the mind as well as of the feet, that are
worn by the young of all nations, which have no expansion in them, and
which cramp the understanding of those grown up. This prevents many from
comprehending the changes by which they benefit or realising the facts
of their daily life. Considering what the men of labour have done
for themselves and what has been won for them by their advocates, and
conceded to them from time to time by others, despair and the counsels
of outrage which spring from it, are unseemly, unnecessary, and
ungrateful. This is the moral of this story.
A doleful publicist should be superannuated. He is already obsolete.
Whoever despairs of a cause in whose success he once exulted, should
fall out of the ranks, where some ambulance waits to carry away the sick
or dispirited. He has no business to utter his discouraging wail in the
ears of the constant and confident, marching to the front, where the
battle of progress is being fought.
Since so much has been accomplished in half a century, when there were
few advantages to begin with--what may not be gained in the next fifty
years with the larger means now at command and the confidence great
successes of the past should inspire! If working people adhere to the
policy of advancing their own honest interests without destroying others
as rightfully engaged in seeking theirs, the workers may make their own
future what they will. They may then acquire power sufficient, as the
_Times_ once said: "To turn a reform mill which would grind down an
abuse a day."
NOTE.
The last chapter is reprinted from the _Fortnightly Review_ by courtesy
of the Editor, and a similar acknowledgment is due to the Editor of
the _Weekly Times and Echo_, in whose pages several of the preceding
chapters appeared.