Dickens's England (23 page)

In pottery factories, boys worked twelve to fifteen hours daily, alternating between heated rooms and the open air, receiving perhaps 2
s
6
d
a week, stunted growth, rheumatism, ‘potter's asthma' and lead or arsenical poisoning. Girls, bent over lace-making in poorly-ventilated, poorly-lit, overcrowded rooms developed short sight and chest diseases; others, making ‘lucifer' phosphorus matches, developed ‘phossy jaw', in which the jaw slowly rotted and was eaten away before an early death. Thousands of homeless or destitute children worked the streets as scavengers, crossing-sweepers or horse-holders; older girls went on to prostitution. Other young women, more fortunate, went into domestic service to provide the status requirements of middle-class wives obliged to be idle.

It is not clear that, by the 1840s, the working classes were gaining significantly from the industrial revolution, with poor working conditions, and with wives and children forced to work, while housing was often disgracefully inadequate – indeed, often life-threatening (in Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, 50 per cent of children died before the age of five). Some employers set up model industrial settlements: W.H. Lever's Port Sunlight, Salt's Saltaire, Cadbury's Bournville and the Rowntrees' New Earswick. During the second half of the century, housing improved in quantity and quality, and mortality and birth rates declined.

Workers were by no means wholly submissive (though not revolutionary): trades union membership increased unstoppably, there were widespread engineering strikes and disputes in 1851–2, a major textile dispute in Preston in 1853–4, strikes and disputes in the Yorkshire and Staffordshire mines in 1864, a great wave of industrial unrest in many trades in 1871–3. Eventually, pay and conditions improved.

Overall, it appears that while there were only limited improvements for the poorer before the 1840s, there were significant improvements in wages and standards of living from the 1860s onwards. Industrialisation, for all its early inhumanities, made the working classes (like the rest) generally better off than they might have been otherwise (as comparisons with non-industrialised countries suggest), and working-class standards in Britain were generally higher than elsewhere in Europe. A vigorous, urban working-class culture developed, its members, while still hard-worked and not well housed, healthier, more educated and confident, by no means ‘umble or repressed.

It's the same the 'ole world over,

It's the poor wot gets the blame,

It's the rich wot gets the pleasure,

Ain't it all a bloomin' shame!

Anon., music-hall song, late Victorian

* * *

‘THE SONG OF THE LOWER CLASSES'

We plough and sow – we're so very, very low,

That we delve in the dirty clay,

Till we bless the plain with the golden grain,

And the vale with the fragrant hay.

Our place we know, we're so very low,

'Tis down at the landlord's feet:

We're not too low the bread to grow,

But too low the bread to eat.

Down, down we go, we're so very low,

To the hell of the deep sunk mines,

But we gather the proudest gems that glow,

When the crown of a despot shines.

And whenever he lacks, upon our backs

Fresh loads he deigns to lay:

We're far too low to vote the tax,

But not too low to pay. . . .

We're low, we're low, we're very, very low,

Yet from our fingers glide

The silken flow, and the robes that glow

Round the limbs of the sons of pride.

And what we get, and what we give,

We know, and we know our share;

We're not too low the cloth to weave,

But too low the cloth to wear. . . .

Ernest Jones, Chartist (
c
. 1848)

THE BENEFITS OF THE FACTORY SYSTEM

This island is pre-eminent among civilised nations for the prodigious development of its factory wealth, and has therefore been long viewed with a jealous admiration by foreign powers. This very pre-eminence, however, has been contemplated in a very different light by many influential members of our own community, and has been even denounced by them as the certain origin of innumerable evils to the people, and of revolutionary convulsions to the state. If the affairs of the kingdom be wisely administered, I believe such allegations and fears will prove to be groundless, and to proceed more from the envy of one ancient and powerful order of the commonwealth towards another suddenly grown into political importance, than from the nature of things. . . .

The constant aim and effect of scientific improvement in manufactures are philanthropic, as they tend to relieve the workmen either from niceties of adjustment which exhaust his mind and fatigue his eyes, or from painful repetition of effort which distort or wear out his frame. At every step of each manufacturing process described in this volume, the humanity of science will be manifest . . .

In my recent tour, continued during several months, through the manufacturing districts, I have seen tens of thousands of old, young, and middle-aged of both sexes, many of them too feeble to get their daily bread by any of the former modes of industry, earning abundant food, raiment and domestic accommodation without perspiring at a single pore, screened meanwhile from the summer's sun and the winter's frost, in apartments more airy and salubrious than those of the metropolis, in which our legislative and fashionable aristocracies assemble. In those spacious halls the benignant power of steam summons around him his myriads of willing menials, and assigns to each the regulated task, substituting for painful muscular effort on their part the energies of his own gigantic arm, and demanding in return only attention and dexterity to correct such little aberrations as casually occur in his workmanship. The gentle docility of this moving force qualifies it for impelling the tiny bobbins of the lace-machine with a precision and speed inimitable by the most dexterous hands, directed by the sharpest eyes. Hence, under its auspices, and in obedience to Arkwright's polity, magnificent edifices, surpassing far in number, value, usefulness and ingenuity of construction the boasted monuments of Asiatic, Egyptian and Roman despotism, have, within the short period of fifty years, risen up in this kingdom, to show to what extent capital, industry and science may augment the resources of a state, while they meliorate the conditions of its citizens. Such is the factory system, replete with prodigies in mechanics and political economy, which promises, in its future growth, to become the great minister of civilization to the terraqueous globe, enabling this country, as its heart, to diffuse along with its commerce, the life-blood of science and religion to myriads of people still lying ‘in the region and shadow of death'. . . .

The principle of the factory system then is, to substitute mechanical science for hand skill, and the partition of a process into its essential constituents, for the division or graduation of labour among artisans. On the handicraft plan, labour more or less skilled was usually the most expensive element of production –
Materiam superabat opus
; but on the automatic plan, skilled labour gets progressively superseded, and will eventually be replaced by mere overlookers of machines. . . .

Steam-engines furnish the means not only of their [workers'] support but of their multiplication. They create a vast demand for fuel; and, while they lend their powerful arms to drain the pits and to raise the coals, they call into employment multitudes of miners, engineers, shipbuilders and sailors, and cause the construction of canals and railways; and, while they enable these rich fields of industry to be cultivated to the utmost, they leave thousands of fine arable fields free for the production of food to man, which must have been otherwise allotted to the food of horses. Steam-engines moreover, by the cheapness and steadiness of their action, fabricate cheap goods, and procure in their exchange a liberal supply of the necessaries and comforts of life produced in foreign lands.

Andrew Ure,
The Philosophy of Manufactures
(1835)

THE WORKERS' LIFE

Any man who has stood at twelve o'clock at the single narrow doorway which serves as the place of exit for the hands employed in the great cotton-mills must acknowledge that an uglier set of men and women, of boys and girls, taken them in the mass, it would be impossible to congregate in a smaller compass. Their complexion is sallow and pallid, with a peculiar flatness of feature, caused by the want of a proper quantity of adipose substance to cushion out the cheeks. Their stature low – the average height of four hundred men, measured at different times and at different places, being five feet six inches. Their limbs slender, and playing badly and ungracefully. A very general bowing of the legs. Great numbers of girls and women walking lamely or awkwardly, with raised chests and spinal flexures. Nearly all have flat feet . . .

The mode of life which the system of labour pursued in manufactories forces upon the operative, is one singularly unfavourable to domesticity. Rising at or before daybreak, between four and five o'clock the year round, scarcely refreshed by his night's repose, he swallows a hasty meal, or hurries to the mill without taking any food whatever. At eight o'clock, half an hour, and in some instances forty minutes, are allowed for breakfast. In many cases, the engine continues at work during meal-time, obliging the labourer to eat and still overlook his work. This, however, is not universal. This meal is brought to the mill, and generally consists of weak tea, of course nearly cold, with a little bread; in other instances, of milk-and-meal porridge. Tea, however, may be called the universal breakfast, flavoured of late years too often with gin or other stimulants.

At twelve o'clock the engine stops, and an hour is given for dinner. The hands leave the mill and seek their homes, where this meal is usually taken. It consists of potatoes boiled, very often eaten alone; sometimes with a little bacon, and sometimes with a portion of animal food. This latter is, however, only found at the tables of the more provident and reputable workmen. If, as it often happens, the majority of the labourers reside at some distance, a great portion of the allotted time is necessarily taken up by the walk, or rather run, backwards and forwards. . . .

As soon as this is effected, the family is again scattered. No rest has been taken; and even the exercise, such as it is, is useless, from its excess, and even harmful, being taken at a time when repose is necessary for the digestive operations.

Again they are closely immured from one o'clock till eight or nine, with the exception of twenty minutes, this being allowed for tea, or baggin-time, as it is called. This imperfect meal is almost universally taken in the mill: it consists of tea and wheaten bread, with a very few exceptions. During the whole of this long period they are actively and unremittingly engaged in a crowded room and an elevated temperature, so that, when finally dismissed for the day, they are exhausted equally in body and mind.

It must be remembered, that father, mother, son and daughter are alike engaged; no one capable of working is spared to make home (to which, after a day of such toil and deprivation, they are hastening) comfortable and desirable. No clean and tidy wife appears to welcome her husband – no smiling and affectionate mother to receive her children – no home, cheerful and inviting, to make it regarded. On the contrary, all assemble there equally jaded; it is miserably furnished, dirty and squalid in its appearance. Another meal, sometimes of a better quality, is now taken, and they either seek that repose which is so much needed, or leave home in the pursuit of pleasure or amusements, which still further tend to increase the evils under which they unavoidably labour. . . .

In those divisions of the manufacturing towns occupied by the lower classes of inhabitants, whether engaged in mill-labour alone, or in mill-labour conjointly with hand-loom weaving, the houses are of the most flimsy and imperfect structure. Tenanted by the week by an improvident and changeable set of beings, the owners seldom lay out any money upon them, and seem indeed only anxious that they should be tenantable at all, long enough to reimburse them for the first outlay. Hence, in a very few years they become ruinous to a degree.

One of the circumstances in which they are especially defective, is that of drainage and water-closets. Whole ranges of these houses are either totally undrained, or only very partially . . . The whole of the washings and filth from these consequently are thrown into the front or back street, which being often unpaved and cut up into deep ruts, allows them to collect into stinking and stagnant pools; while fifty, or more even than that number, having only a single convenience common to them all, it is in a very short time completely choked up with excrementitious matter. No alternative is left to the inhabitants but adding this to the already defiled street, and thus leading to a violation of all those decencies which shed a protection over family morals. . . . Most of these houses have cellars beneath them, occupied – if it is possible to find a lower class – by a still lower class than those living above them. . . .

From some recent inquiries in the subject, it would appear that upwards of 20,000 individuals live in cellars in Manchester alone. These are generally Irish families – handloom weavers, bricklayers' labourers, etc., etc., whose children are beggars or matchsellers in conjunction with their mothers. The crowds of beings that emerge from these dwellings every morning are truly astonishing, and present very little variety as to respectability of appearance; all are ragged, all are filthy, all are squalid . . .

Peter Gaskell,
The Manufacturing Population of England
(1833)

EVIDENCE OF THE APPRENTICES' MASTER, BACKBARROW, LANCASHIRE

Were any children employed in those mills?

There were 111 children employed when I went there first, and as many as 150 when I left. All parish apprentices, chiefly from London – the parishes of Whitechapel, St James's and St Clement's, I think. There was a few from Liverpool workhouse. Those that came from London were from seven to eleven; those from Liverpool were from eight or ten to fifteen. . . .