A.—=Source.=—Lord Beaconsfield’s _Sybil_, bk. iii., chap. iv.
At the beginning of the revolutionary war, Wodgate was a sort of
squatting district of the great mining region to which it was
contiguous, a place where adventurers in the industry which was rapidly
developing, settled themselves. It abounded in fuel which cost nothing,
for though the veins were not worth working as a source of profit, the
soil of Wodgate was similar in its superficial character to that of
the country around. So a population gathered, and rapidly increased,
in the ugliest spot in England, to which neither Nature nor art had
contributed a single charm; where a tree could not be seen, a flower
was unknown, where there was neither belfry nor steeple, nor a single
sight that could soften the heart or humanise the mind.
Whatever may be the cause, whether, as not unlikely, the original
squatters brought with them some traditionary skill, or whether their
isolated and unchequered existence concentrated their energies on
their craft, the fact is certain, that the inhabitants of Wodgate
early acquired a celebrity as skilful workmen. As manufacturers of
ironmongery they carry the palm from the whole district; as founders
of brass and workers of steel, they fear none; while, as nailers and
locksmiths, their fame has spread even to the European markets....
Here Labour reigns supreme. Its division indeed is favoured by their
manners, but the interference or influence of mere capital is instantly
resisted. The business of Wodgate is carried on by master workmen in
their own houses, each of whom possesses an unlimited number of what
they call apprentices, by whom their affairs are principally conducted,
and whom they treat as the Mamlouks treated the Egyptians.
These master workmen, indeed, form a powerful aristocracy, nor is it
possible to conceive one apparently more oppressive. They are ruthless
tyrants; they habitually inflict upon their subjects punishments
more grievous than the slave population of our colonies were ever
visited with; not content with beating them with sticks or flogging
them with knotted ropes, they are in the habit of felling them with
hammers, or cutting their heads open with a file or lock. The most
usual punishment, however, or rather stimulus to increase exertion, is
to pull an apprentice’s ears till they run with blood. These youths,
too, are worked for sixteen and even twenty hours a day; they are
often sold by one master to another; they are fed on carrion, and they
sleep in lofts or cellars: yet, whether it be that they are hardened
by brutality, and really unconscious of their degradation and unusual
sufferings, or whether they are supported by the belief that their day
to be masters and oppressors will surely arrive, the aristocracy of
Wodgate is by no means so unpopular as the aristocracy of most other
places.
In the first place it is a real aristocracy; it is privileged, but it
does something for its privileges. It is distinguished from the main
body not merely by name. It is the most knowing class at Wodgate; it
possesses indeed in its way complete knowledge; and it imparts in its
manner a certain quantity of it to those whom it guides. Thus it is
an aristocracy that leads, and therefore a fact. Moreover, the social
system of Wodgate is not an unvarying course of infinite toil. Their
plan is to work hard, but not always. They seldom exceed four days
of labour in the week. On Sunday the masters begin to drink; for the
apprentices there is dog-fighting without any stint. On Monday and
Tuesday the whole population of Wodgate is drunk; of all stations,
ages, and sexes; even babes, who should be at the breast; for they are
drammed with Godfrey’s cordial. Here is relaxation, excitement; if less
vice otherwise than might be at first anticipated, we must remember
that excesses are checked by poverty of blood and constant exhaustion.
Scanty food and hard labour are in their way, if not exactly moralists,
a tolerably good police.
There are no others at Wodgate to preach or to control. It is not that
the people are immoral, for immorality implies some forethought; or
ignorant, for ignorance is relative; but they are animals; unconscious;
their minds a blank; and their worst actions only the impulse of a
gross or savage instinct. There are many in this town who are ignorant
of their very names; very few who can spell them. It is rare that you
meet with a young person who knows his own age; rarer to find the boy
who has seen a book, or the girl who has seen a flower. Ask them the
name of their sovereign, and they will give you an unmeaning stare; ask
them the name of their religion, and they will laugh: who rules them on
earth, or who can save them in heaven, are alike mysteries to them.
Wodgate had the appearance of a vast squalid suburb. As you advanced,
leaving behind you long lines of little dingy tenements, with infants
lying about the road, you expected every moment to emerge into some
streets and encounter buildings bearing some correspondence in their
size and comfort to the considerable population swarming and busied
about you. Nothing of the kind. There were no public buildings of any
sort; no churches, chapels, town-hall, institute, theatre; and the
principal streets in the heart of the town in which were situate the
coarse and grimy shops, though formed by houses of a greater elevation
than the preceding, were equally narrow and, if possible, more dirty.
At every fourth or fifth house, alleys seldom above a yard wide and
streaming with filth, opened out of the street. These were crowded
with dwellings of various size, while from the principal court often
branched out a number of smaller alleys or rather narrow passages, than
which nothing can be conceived more close and squalid and obscure.
Here, during the days of business, the sound of the hammer and the
file never cease, amid gutters of abomination and piles of foulness
and stagnant pools of filth; reservoirs of leprosy and plague, whose
exhalations were sufficient to taint the atmosphere of the whole
kingdom and fill the country with fever and pestilence.
B.—=Source.=—Lord Beaconsfield’s _Coningsby_, bk. iv., chap. ii.
He had travelled the whole day through the great district of labour,
his mind excited by strange sights, and at length wearied by their
multiplication. He had passed over the plains where iron and coal
supersede turf and corn, dingy as the entrance to Hades, and flaming
with furnaces; and now he was among illumined factories with more
windows than Italian palaces, and smoking chimneys taller than Egyptian
obelisks....
He entered chambers vaster than are told of in Arabian fable, and
peopled with inhabitants more wonderful than Afrite or Peri. For there
he beheld, in long continued ranks, those mysterious forms full of
existence without life, that perform with facility and in an instant,
what man can fulfil only with difficulty and in days. A machine is a
slave that neither brings nor bears degradation; it is a being endowed
with the greatest degree of energy and acting under the greatest
degree of excitement, yet free at the same time from all passion and
emotion. He is therefore not only a slave, but a supernatural slave.
And why should one say that the machine does not live? It breathes,
for its breath forms the atmosphere of some towns. It moves with more
regularity than man. And has it not a voice? Does not the spindle sing
like a merry girl at her work, and the steam engine roar in jolly
chorus like a strong artisan handling his lusty tools, and gaining a
fair day’s wages for a fair day’s toil?
Nor should the weaving-room be forgotten, where a thousand or fifteen
hundred girls may be observed in their coral necklaces working like
Penelope in the day-time; some pretty, some pert, some graceful and
jocund, some absorbed in their occupation; a little serious some, few
sad. And the cotton you have observed in its rude state, that you have
seen the silent spinner change into thread and the bustling weaver
convert into cloth, you may now watch, as in a moment it is tinted
with beautiful colours, or printed with fanciful patterns. And yet the
mystery of mysteries is to view machines making machines; a spectacle
that fills the mind with curious, even awful, speculation.
From early morn to the late twilight, our Coningsby for several days
devoted himself to the comprehension of Manchester. It was to him a new
world pregnant with new ideas, and suggestive of new trains of thought
and feeling. In this unprecedented partnership between capital and
science, working on a spot which Nature had indicated as the fitting
theatre of their exploits, he beheld a great source of the wealth of
nations which had been reserved for these times, and he perceived
that this wealth was rapidly developing classes whose power was very
imperfectly recognised in the constitutional scheme, and whose duties
in the social system seemed altogether omitted.