Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels, 1845

## To The Working-Classes of Great-Britain

Working Men!

To you I dedicate a work, in which I have tried to lay before my German
Countrymen a faithful picture of your condition, of your sufferings and
struggles, of your hopes and prospects. I have lived long enough amidst you to
know something about your circumstances; I have devoted to their knowledge my
most serious attention, I have studied the various official and non-official
documents as far as I was able to get hold of them -- I have not been satisfied
with this, I wanted more than a mere abstract knowledge of my subject, I wanted
to see you in your own homes, to observe you in your everyday life, to chat
with you on your condition and grievances, to witness your struggles against
the social and political power of your oppressors. I have done so: I forsook
the company and the dinner-parties, the port-wine and champagne of the
middle-classes, and devoted my leisure-hours almost exclusively to the
intercourse with plain Working-Men; I am both glad and proud of having done so.
Glad, because thus I was induced to spend many a happy hour in obtaining a
knowledge of the realities of life -- many an hour, which else would have been
wasted in fashionable talk and tiresome etiquette; proud, because thus I got an
opportunity of doing justice to an oppressed and calumniated class of men who
with all their faults and under all the disadvantages of their situation, yet
command the respect of every one but an English money-monger; proud, too,
because thus I was placed in a position to save the English people from the
growing contempt which on the Continent has been the necessary consequence of
the brutally selfish policy and general behaviour of your ruling
middle-class.

Having, at the same time, ample opportunity to watch the middle-classes,
your opponents, I soon came to the conclusion that you are right, perfectly
right in expecting no support whatever from them. Their interest is
diametrically opposed to yours, though they always will try to maintain the
contrary and to make you believe in their most hearty sympathy with your fates.
Their doings give them the lie. I hope to have collected more than sufficient
evidence of the fact, that -- be their words what they please -- the
middle-classes intend in reality nothing else but to enrich themselves by your
labour while they can sell its produce, and to abandon you to starvation as
soon as they cannot make a profit by this indirect trade in human flesh. What
have they done to prove their professed goodwill towards you? Have they ever
paid any serious attention to your grievances? Have they done more than paying
the expenses of half-a-dozen commissions of inquiry, whose voluminous reports
are damned to everlasting slumber among heaps of waste paper on the shelves of
the Home Office? Have they even done as much as to compile from those rotting
blue-books a single readable book from which everybody might easily get some
information on the condition of the great majority of "free-born Britons"? Not
they indeed, those are things they do not like to speak of -- they have left it
to a foreigner to inform the civilised world of the degrading situation you
have to live in.

A foreigner to them, not to you, I hope. Though my English
may not be pure, yet, I hope, you will find it plain English. No
workingman in England -- nor in France either, by-the-by -- ever treated me as
a foreigner. With the greatest pleasure I observed you to be free from that
blasting curse, national prejudice and national pride, which after all means
nothing but wholesale selfishness -- I observed you to sympathise with
every one who earnestly applies his powers to human progress -- may he be an
Englishman or not -- to admire every thing great and good, whether nursed on
your native soil or not -- I found you to be more than mere
Englishmen, members of a single, isolated nation, I found you to be
Men, members of the great and universal family of Mankind, who know their
interest and that of all the human race to be the same. And as such, as members
of this Family of "One and Indivisible" Mankind, as Human Beings in the most
emphatical meaning of the word, as such I, and many others on the Continent,
hail your progress in every direction and wish you speedy success.

Go on then, as you have done hitherto. Much remains to be undergone; be
firm, be undaunted -- your success is certain, and no step you will have to
take in your onward march will be lost to our common cause, the cause of
Humanity!

Barmen (Rhenan Prussia)

March 15th, 1845

## Preface

The book prefaced by the following pages treats of a subject which I
originally intended to deal with in a single chapter of a more comprehensive
work on the social history of England. However, the importance of that subject
soon made it necessary for me to investigate it separately.

The condition of the working-class is the real basis and point of departure
of all social movements of the present because it is the highest and most
unconcealed pinnacle of the social misery existing in our day. French and
German working-class Communism are its direct, Fourierism and English
Socialism, as well as the Communism of the German educated bourgeoisie, are its
indirect products. A knowledge of proletarian conditions is absolutely
necessary to be able to provide solid ground for socialist theories, on the one
hand, and for judgments about their right to exist, on the other; and to put an
end to all sentimental dreams and fancies pro and con. But proletarian
conditions exist in their classical form, in their perfection, only in
the British Empire, particularly in England proper. Besides, only in England
has the necessary material been so completely collected and put on record by
official enquiries as is essential for any in the least exhaustive presentation
of the subject.

Twenty-one months I had the opportunity to become acquainted with the
English proletariat, its strivings, its sorrows and its joys, to see them from
near, from personal observation and personal intercourse, and at the same time
to supplement my observations by recourse to the requisite authentic sources.
What I have seen, heard and read has been worked up in the present book. I am
prepared to see not only my standpoint attacked in many quarters but also the
facts I have cited, particularly when the book gets into the hands of the
English. I know equally well that here and there I may be proved wrong in some
particular of no importance, something that in view of the comprehensive nature
of the subject and its far-reaching assumptions even an Englishman might be
unable to avoid; so much the more so since even in England there exists as yet
not a single piece of writing which, like mine, takes up all the workers. But
without a moment's hesitation I challenge the English bourgeoisie to prove that
even in a single instance of any consequence for the exposition of my point of
view as a whole I have been guilty of any inaccuracy, and to prove it by data
as authentic as mine.

A description of the classical form which the conditions of existence of the
proletariat have assumed in Britain is very important, particularly for Germany
and precisely at the present moment. German Socialism and Communism have
proceeded, more than any other, from theoretical premises; we German
theoreticians still knew much too little of the real world to be driven
directly by the real relations to reforms of this "bad reality". At any rate
almost none of the avowed champions of such reforms arrived at Communism
otherwise than by way of the Feuerbachian dissolution of Hegelian speculation.
The real conditions of the life of the proletariat are so little known among us
that even the well-meaning "societies for the uplift of the working-classes",
in which our bourgeoisie is now mistreating the social question, constantly
start out from the most ridiculous and preposterous judgments concerning the
condition of the workers. We Germans more than anybody else stand in need of a
knowledge of the facts concerning this question. And while the conditions of
existence of Germany's proletariat have not assumed the classical form that
they have in England, we nevertheless have, at bottom, the same social order,
which sooner or later must necessarily reach the same degree of acuteness as it
has already attained across the North Sea, unless the intelligence of the
nation brings about in time the adoption of measures that will provide a new
basis for the whole social system. The root-causes whose effect in England has
been the misery and oppression of the proletariat exist also in Germany and in
the long run must engender the same results. In the meantime, however, the
established fact of wretched conditions in England will impel us to
establish also the fact of wretched conditions in Germany and will
provide us with a yardstick wherewith to measure their extent and the magnitude
of the danger -- brought to light by the Silesian and Bohemian disturbances --
which directly threatens the tranquillity of Germany from that quarter.

Finally, there are still two remarks I wish to make. Firstly, that I have
used the word Mittelklasse all along in the sense of the English word
middle-class (or middle-classes, as is said almost always). Like the French
word bourgeoisie it means the possessing class, specifically that
possessing class which is differentiated from the so-called aristocracy -- the
class which in France and England is directly and in Germany, figuring as
"public opinion", indirectly in possession of political power. Similarly, I
have continually used the expressions workingmen (Arbeiter) and
proletarians, working-class, propertyless class and proletariat as equivalents.
Secondly, that in the case of most of the quotations I have indicated the party
to which the respective authors belong, because in nearly every instance the
Liberals try to emphasise the distress in the rural areas and to argue away
that which exists in the factory districts, while the Conservatives,
conversely, acknowledge the misery in the factory districts but disclaim any
knowledge of it in the agricultural areas. For the same reason, whenever I
lacked official documents for describing the condition of the industrial
workers, I always preferred to present proof from Liberal sources in
order to defeat the liberal bourgeoisie by casting their own words in their
teeth. I cited Tories or Chartists in my support only when I could confirm
their correctness from personal observation or was convinced of the
truthfulness of the facts quoted because of the personal or literary reputation
of the authorities I referred to.

Barmen, March 15, 1845

## Introduction

The history of the proletariat in England begins with the second half of the
last century, with the invention of the steam-engine and of machinery for
working cotton. These inventions gave rise, as is well known, to an industrial
revolution, a revolution which altered the whole civil society; one, the
historical importance of which is only now beginning to be recognised. England
is the classic soil of this transformation, which was all the mightier, the
more silently it proceeded; and England is, therefore, the classic land of its
chief product also, the proletariat. Only in England can the proletariat be
studied in all its relations and from all sides.

We have not, here and now, to deal with the history of this revolution, nor
with its vast importance for the present and the future. Such a delineation
must be reserved for a future, more comprehensive work. For the moment, we must
limit ourselves to the little that is necessary for understanding the facts
that follow, for comprehending the present state of the English proletariat.

Before the introduction of machinery, the spinning and weaving of raw
materials was carried on in the workingman's home. Wife and daughter spun the
yarn that the father wove or that they sold, if he did not work it up himself.
These weaver families lived in the country in the neighbourhood of the towns,
and could get on fairly well with their wages, because the home market was
almost the only one and the crushing power of competition that came later, with
the conquest of foreign markets and the extension of trade, did not yet press
upon wages. There was, further, a constant increase in the demand for the home
market, keeping pace with the slow increase in population and employing all the
workers; and there was also the impossibility of vigorous competition of the
workers among themselves, consequent upon the rural dispersion of their homes.
So it was that the weaver was usually in a position to lay by something, and
rent a little piece of land, that he cultivated in his leisure hours, of which
he had as many as he chose to take, since he could weave whenever and as long
as he pleased. True, he was a bad farmer and managed his land inefficiently,
often obtaining but poor crops; nevertheless, he was no proletarian, he had a
stake in the country, he was permanently settled, and stood one step higher in
society than the English workman of today.

So the workers vegetated throughout a passably comfortable existence,
leading a righteous and peaceful life in all piety and probity; and their
material position was far better than that of their successors. They did not
need to overwork; they did no more than they chose to do, and yet earned what
they needed. They had leisure for healthful work in garden or field, work
which, in itself, was recreation for them, and they could take part besides in
the recreations and games of their neighbours, and all these games -- bowling,
cricket, football, etc., contributed to their physical health and vigour. They
were, for the most part, strong, well-built people, in whose physique little or
no difference from that of their peasant neighbours was discoverable. Their
children grew up in the fresh country air, and, if they could help their
parents at work, it was only occasionally; while of eight or twelve hours work
for them there was no question.

What the moral and intellectual character of this class was may be guessed.
Shut off from the towns, which they never entered, their yarn and woven stuff
being delivered to travelling agents for payment of wages -- so shut off that
old people who lived quite in the neighborhood of the town never went thither
until they were robbed of their trade by the introduction of machinery and
obliged to look about them in the towns for work -- the weavers stood upon the
moral and intellectual plane of the yeomen with whom they were usually
immediately connected through their little holdings. They regarded their
squire, the greatest landholder of the region, as their natural superior; they
asked advice of him, laid their small disputes before him for settlement, and
gave him all honour, as this patriarchal relation involved. They were
"respectable" people, good husbands and fathers, led moral lives because they
had no temptation to be immoral, there being no groggeries or low houses in
their vicinity, and because the host, at whose inn they now and then quenched
their thirst, was also a respectable man, usually a large tenant-farmer who
took pride in his good order, good beer, and early hours. They had their
children the whole day at home, and brought them up in obedience and the fear
of God; the patriarchal relationship remained undisturbed so long as the
children were unmarried. The young people grew up in idyllic simplicity and
intimacy with their playmates until they married; and even though sexual
intercourse before marriage almost unfailingly took place, this happened only
when the moral obligation of marriage was recognised on both sides, and a
subsequent wedding made everything good. In short, the English industrial
workers of those days lived and thought after the fashion still to be found
here and there in Germany, in retirement and seclusion, without mental activity
and without violent fluctuations in their position in life. They could rarely
read and far more rarely write; went regularly to church, never talked
politics, never conspired, never thought, delighted in physical exercises,
listened with inherited reverence when the Bible was read, and were, in their
unquestioning humility, exceedingly well-disposed towards the "superior"
classes. But intellectually, they were dead; lived only for their petty,
private interest, for their looms and gardens, and knew nothing of the mighty
movement which, beyond their horizon, was sweeping through mankind. They were
comfortable in their silent vegetation, and but for the industrial revolution
they would never have emerged from this existence, which, cosily romantic as it
was, was nevertheless not worthy of human beings. In truth, they were not human
beings; they were merely toiling machines in the service of the few aristocrats
who had guided history down to that time. The industrial revolution has simply
carried this out to its logical end by making the workers machines pure and
simple, taking from them the last trace of independent activity, and so forcing
them to think and demand a position worthy of men. As in France politics, so in
England manufacture and the movement of civil society in general drew into the
whirl of history the last classes which had remained sunk in apathetic
indifference to the universal interests of mankind.

The first invention which gave rise to a radical change in the state of the
English workers was the jenny, invented in the year 1764 by a weaver, James
Hargreaves, of Stanhill, near Blackburn, in North Lancashire. This machine was
the rough beginning of the later invented mule, and was moved by hand. Instead
of one spindle like the ordinary spinning-wheel, it carried sixteen or eighteen
manipulated by a single workman. This invention made it possible to deliver
more yarn than heretofore. Whereas, though one weaver had employed three
spinners, there had never been enough yarn, and the weaver had often been
obliged to wait for it, there was now more yarn to be had than could be woven
by the available workers. The demand for woven goods, already increasing, rose
yet more in consequence of the cheapness of these goods, which cheapness, in
turn, was the outcome of the diminished cost of producing the yarn. More
weavers were needed, and weavers' wages rose. Now that the weaver could earn
more at his loom, he gradually abandoned his farming, and gave his whole time
to weaving. At that time a family of four grown persons and two children (who
were set to spooling) could earn, with eight hours' daily work, four pounds
sterling in a week, and often more if trade was good and work pressed. It
happened often enough that a single weaver earned two pounds a week at his
loom. By degrees the class of farming weavers wholly disappeared, and was
merged in the newly arising class of weavers who lived wholly upon wages, had
no property whatever, not even the pretended property of a holding, and so
became workingmen, proletarians. Moreover, the old relation between spinner and
weaver was destroyed. Hitherto, so far as this had been possible, yarn had been
spun and woven under one roof. Now that the jenny as well as the loom required
a strong hand, men began to spin, and whole families lived by spinning, while
others laid the antiquated, superseded spinning-wheel aside; and, if they had
not means of purchasing a jenny, were forced to live upon the wages of the
father alone. Thus began with spinning and weaving that division of labour
which has since been so infinitely perfected.

While the industrial proletariat was thus developing with the first still
very imperfect machine, the same machine gave rise to the agricultural
proletariat. There had, hitherto, been a vast number of small landowners,
yeomen, who had vegetated in the same unthinking quiet as their neighbours, the
farming weavers. They cultivated their scraps of land quite after the ancient
and inefficient fashion of their ancestors, and opposed every change with the
obstinacy peculiar to such creatures of habit, after remaining stationary from
generation to generation. Among them were many small holders also, not tenants
in the present sense of the word, but people who had their land handed down
from their fathers, either by hereditary lease, or by force of ancient custom,
and had hitherto held it as securely as if it had actually been their own
property. When the industrial workers withdrew from agriculture, a great number
of small holdings fell idle, and upon these the new class of large tenants
established themselves, tenants-at-will, holding fifty, one hundred, two
hundred or more acres, liable to be turned out at the end of the year, but able
by improved tillage and larger farming to increase the yield of the land. They
could sell their produce more cheaply than the yeoman, for whom nothing
remained when his farm no longer supported him but to sell it, procure a jenny
or a loom, or take service as an agricultural labourer in the employ of a large
farmer. His inherited slowness and the inefficient methods of cultivation
bequeathed by his ancestors, and above which he could not rise, left him no
alternative when forced to compete with men who managed their holdings on
sounder principles and with all the advantages bestowed by farming on a large
scale and the investment of capital for the improvement of the soil.

Meanwhile, the industrial movement did not stop here. Single capitalists
began to set up spinning jennies in great buildings and to use water-power for
driving them, so placing themselves in a position to diminish the number of
workers, and sell their yarn more cheaply than single spinners could do who
moved their own machines by hand. There were constant improvements in the
jenny, so that machines continually became antiquated, and must be altered or
even laid aside; and though the capitalists could hold out by the application
of water-power even with the old machinery, for the single spinner this was
impossible. And the factory system, the beginning of which was thus made,
received a fresh extension in 1767, through the spinning throstle invented by
Richard Arkwright, a barber, in Preston, in North Lancashire. After the
steam-engine, this is the most important mechanical invention of the 18th
century. It was calculated from the beginning for mechanical motive power, and
was based upon wholly new principles. By the combination of the peculiarities
of the jenny and throstle, Samuel Crompton, of Firwood, Lancashire, contrived
the mule in 1785, and as Arkwright invented the carding engine, and preparatory
("slubbing and roving") frames about the same time, the factory system became
the prevailing one for the spinning of cotton. By means of trifling
modifications these machines were gradually adapted to the spinning of flax,
and so to the superseding of handwork here, too. But even then, the end was not
yet. In the closing years of the last century, Dr. Cartwright, a country
parson, had invented the power-loom, and about 1804 had so far perfected it,
that it could successfully compete with the hand-weaver; and all this machinery
was made doubly important by James Watt's steam-engine, invented in 1764 and
used for supplying motive power for spinning since 1785.

With these inventions, since improved from year to year, the victory of
machine-work over hand-work in the chief branches of English industry was won;
and the history of the latter from that time forward simply relates how the
hand-workers have been driven by machinery from one position after another. The
consequences of this were, on the one hand, a rapid fall in price of all
manufactured commodities, prosperity of commerce and manufacture, the conquest
of nearly all the unprotected foreign markets, the sudden multiplication of
capital and national wealth; on the other hand, a still more rapid
multiplication of the proletariat, the destruction of all property-holding and
of all security of employment for the working-class, demoralisation, political
excitement, and all those facts so highly repugnant to Englishmen in
comfortable circumstances, which we shall have to consider in the following
pages. Having already seen what a transformation in the social condition of the
lower classes a single such clumsy machine as the jenny had wrought, there is
no cause for surprise as to that which a complete and interdependent system of
finely adjusted machinery has brought about, machinery which receives raw
material and turns out woven goods.

Meanwhile, let us trace the development of English manufacturers[1] somewhat more minutely, beginning with the
cotton industry. In the years 1771-1775, there were annually imported into
England rather less than 5,000,000 pounds of raw cotton; in the year 1841 there
were imported 528,000,000 pounds, and the import for 1844 will reach at least
600,000,000 pounds. In 1854 England exported 556,000,000 yards of woven cotton
goods, 76,500,000 pounds of cotton yarn, and cotton hosiery to the value of
£1,200,000. In the same year over 8,000,000 mule spindles were at work, 110,000
power and 250,000 hand-looms, throstle spindles not included, in the service of
the cotton industry; and, according to McCulloch's reckoning nearly a million
and a half human beings were supported by this branch, of whom but 220,000
worked in the mills; the power used in these mills was steam, equivalent to
53,000 horsepower, and water, equivalent to 11,000 horsepower. At present these
figures are far from adequate, and it may be safely assumed that, in the year
1845, the power and number of the machines and the number of the workers is
greater by one-half than it was in 1834. The chief centre of this industry is
Lancashire, where it originated; it has thoroughly revolutionised this county,
converting it from an obscure, ill-cultivated swamp into a busy, lively region,
multiplying its population tenfold in eighty years, and causing giant cities
such as Liverpool and Manchester, containing together 700,000 inhabitants, and
their neighbouring towns, Bolton with 60,000, Rochdale with 75,000, Oldham with
50,000, Preston with 60,000, Ashton and Stalybridge with 40,000, and a whole
list of other manufacturing towns to spring up as if by a magic touch. The
history of South Lancashire contains some of the greatest marvels of modern
times, yet no one ever mentions them and all these miracles are the product of
the cotton industry. Glasgow, too, the centre for the cotton district of
Scotland, for Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, has increased in population from
30,000 to 300,000 since the introduction of the industry. The hosiery
manufacture of Nottingham and Derby also received one fresh impulse from the
lower price of yarn, and a second one from an improvement of the stocking loom,
by means of which two stockings could be woven at once. The manufacture of
lace, too, became an important branch of industry after the invention of the
lace machine in 1777; soon after that date Lindley invented the point-net
machine, and in 1809 Heathcoat invented the bobbinnet machine, in consequence
of which the production of lace was greatly simplified, and the demand
increased proportionately in consequence of the diminished cost, so that now,
at least 200,000 persons are supported by this industry. Its chief centres are
Nottingham, Leicester, and the West of England, Wiltshire, Devonshire, etc. A
corresponding extension has taken place in the branches dependent upon the
cotton industry, in dyeing, bleaching, and printing. Bleaching by the
application of chlorine in place of the oxygen of the atmosphere, dyeing and
printing by the rapid development of chemistry, and printing by a series of
most brilliant mechanical inventions, received a yet greater advance which,
with the extension of these branches caused by the growth of the cotton
industry, raised them to a previously unknown degree of prosperity.

The same activity manifested itself in the manufacture of wool. This had
hitherto been the leading department of English industry, but the quantities
formerly produced are as nothing in comparison with that which is now
manufactured. In 1782 the whole wool crop of the preceding three years lay
unused for want of workers, and would have continued so to lie if the newly
invented machinery had not come to its assistance and spun it. The adaptation
of this machinery to the spinning of wool was most successfully accomplished.
Then began the same sudden development in the wool districts which we have
already seen in the cotton districts. In 1738 there were 75,000 pieces of
woollen cloth produced in the West Riding of Yorkshire; in 1817 there were
490,000 pieces, and so rapid was the extension of the industry that in 1854,
450,000 more pieces were produced than in 1825. In 1801, 101,000,000 pounds of
wool (7,000,000 pounds of it imported) were worked up; in 1855, 180,000,000
pounds were worked up, of which 42,000,000 pounds were imported. The principal
centre of this industry is the West Riding of Yorkshire, where, especially at
Bradford, long English wool is converted into worsted yarns, etc., while in the
other cities, Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield, etc., short wool is converted into
hard-spun yarn and cloth. Then come the adjacent part of Lancashire, the region
of Rochdale, where in addition to the cotton industry much flannel is produced,
and the West of England, which supplies the finest cloths. Here also the growth
of population is worthy of observation:

in 1801
and
in 1831

Bradford
contained
29,000
"
77,000
inhabitants

Halifax
"
63,000
"
110,000
"

Huddersfield
"
15,000
"
34,000
"

Leeds
"
53,000
"
123,000
"

And the whole West Riding
"
564,000
"
980,000
"

A population which, since 1831, must have increased at least 20 to 25 per
cent further. In 1835 the spinning of wool employed in the United Kingdom 1,313
mills, with 71,300 workers, these last being but a small portion of the
multitude who are supported directly or indirectly by the manufacture of wool,
and excluding nearly all weavers.

Progress in the linen trade developed later, because the nature of the raw
material made the application of spinning machinery very difficult. Attempts
had been made in the last years of the last century in Scotland, but the
Frenchman Girard, who introduced flax spinning in 1810, was the first who
succeeded practically, and even Girard's machines first attained on British
soil the importance they deserved by means of improvements which they underwent
in England, and of their universal application in Leeds, Dundee, and Belfast.
From this time the British linen trade rapidly extended. In 1814, 3,000 tons of
flax were imported, in 1833, nearly 19,000 tons of flax and 3,400 tons of hemp.
The export of Irish linen to Great Britain rose from 52,000,000 yards in 1800
to 55,000,000 in 1825, of which a large part was re-exported. The export of
English and Scotch woven linen goods rose from 24,000,000 yards in 1820 to
51,000,000 yards in 1833. The number of flax spinning establishments in 1835
was 347, employing 33,000 workers, of which one-half were in the South of
Scotland, more than 60 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Leeds, and its
environs, 25 in Belfast, Ireland, and the rest in Dorset and Lancashire.
Weaving is carried on in the South of Scotland, here and there in England, but
principally in Ireland.

With like success did the English turn their attention to the manufacture of
silk. Raw material was imported from Southern Europe and Asia ready spun, and
the chief labour lay in the twisting of fine threads. Until 1824 the heavy
import duty, four shillings per pound on raw material, greatly retarded the
development of the English silk industry, while only the markets of England and
the Colonies were protected for it. In that year the duty was reduced to one
penny, and the number of mills at once largely increased. In a single year the
number of throwing spindles rose from 780,000 to 1,180,000; and, although the
commercial crisis of 1825 crippled this branch of industry for the moment, yet
in 1827 more was produced than ever, the mechanical skill and experience of the
English having secured their twisting machinery the supremacy over the awkward
devices of their competitors. In 1835 the British Empire possessed 263 twisting
mills, employing 30,000 workers, located chiefly in Cheshire, in Macclesfield,
Congleton, and the surrounding districts, and in Manchester and Somersetshire.
Besides these, there are numerous mills for working up waste, from which a
peculiar article known as spun silk is manufactured, with which the English
supply even the Paris and Lyons weavers. The weaving of the silk so twisted and
spun is carried on in Paisley and elsewhere in Scotland, and in Spitalfields,
London, but also in Manchester and elsewhere.

Nor is the gigantic advance achieved in English manufacture since 1760
restricted to the production of clothing materials. The impulse, once given,
was communicated to all branches of industrial activity, and a multitude of
inventions wholly unrelated to those here cited received double importance from
the fact that they were made in the midst of the universal movement. But as
soon as the immeasurable importance of mechanical power was practically
demonstrated, every energy was concentrated in the effort to exploit this power
in all directions, and to exploit it in the interest of individual inventors
and manufacturers; and the demand for machinery, fuel, and materials called a
mass of workers and a number of trades into redoubled activity. The
steam-engine first gave importance to the broad coal-fields of England; the
production of machinery began now for the first time, and with it arose a new
interest in the iron mines which supplied raw material for it. The increased
consumption of wool stimulated English sheep breeding, and the growing
importation of wool, flax, and silk called forth an extension of the British
ocean carrying trade. Greatest of all was the growth of production of iron. The
rich iron deposits of the English hills had hitherto been little developed;
iron had always been smelted by means of charcoal, which became gradually more
expensive as agriculture improved and forests were cut away. The beginning of
the use of coke in iron smelting had been made in the last century, and in 1780
a new method was invented of converting into available wrought-iron
coke-smelted iron, which up to that time had been convertible into cast-iron
only. This process, known as "puddling", consisted in withdrawing the carbon
which had mixed with the iron during the process of smelting, and opened a
wholly new field for the production of English iron. Smelting furnaces were
built fifty times larger than before, the process of smelting was simplified by
the introduction of hot blasts, and iron could thus be produced so cheaply that
a multitude of objects which had before been made of stone or wood were now
made of iron.

In 1788, Thomas Paine, the famous democrat, built in Yorkshire the first
iron bridge, which was followed by a great number of others, so that now nearly
all bridges, especially for railroad traffic, are built of cast-iron, while in
London itself a bridge across the Thames, the Southwark bridge, has been built
of this material. Iron pillars, supports for machinery, etc., are universally
used, and since the introduction of gas-lighting and railroads, new outlets for
English iron products are opened. Nails and screws gradually came to be made by
machinery. Huntsman, a Sheffielder, discovered in 1740 a method for casting
steel, by which much labour was saved, and the production of wholly new cheap
goods rendered practicable; and through the greater purity of the material
placed at its disposal, and the more perfect tools, new machinery and minute
division of labour, the metal trade of England now first attained importance.
The population of Birmingham grew from 73,000 in 1801 to 200,000 in 1844; that
of Sheffield from 46,000 in 1801 to 110,000 in 1844, and the consumption of
coal in the latter city alone reached in 1836, 515,000 tons. In 1805 there were
exported 4,300 tons of iron products and 4,600 tons of pig-iron; in 1834,
16,200 tons of iron products and 107,000 tons of pig-iron, while the whole iron
product, reaching in 1740 but 17,000 tons, had risen in 1834 to nearly 700,000
tons. The smelting of pig-iron alone consumes yearly more than 5,000,000 tons
of coal, and the importance which coal-mining has attained in the course of the
last 60 years can scarcely be conceived. All the English and Scotch deposits
are now worked, and the mines of Northumberland and Durham alone yield annually
more than 5,000,000 tons for shipping, and employ from 40 to 50,000 men.
According to the Durham Chronicle, there were worked in these two
counties:

In 1755, 14 mines; in 1800, 40 mines; in 1836, 76 mines; in
1843, 130 mines.

Moreover, all mines are now much more energetically worked than formerly. A
similarly increased activity was applied to the working of tin, copper, and
lead, and alongside of the extension of glass manufacture arose a new branch of
industry in the production of pottery, rendered important by the efforts of
Josiah Wedgwood, about 1765. This inventor placed the whole manufacture of
stoneware on a scientific basis, introduced better taste, and founded the
potteries of North Staffordshire, a district of eight English miles square,
which, formerly a desert waste, is now sown with works and dwellings, and
supports more than 60,000 people.

Into this universal whirl of activity everything was drawn. Agriculture made
a corresponding advance. Not only did landed property pass, as we have already
seen, into the hands of new owners and cultivators, agriculture was affected in
still another way. The great holders applied capital to the improvement of the
soil, tore down needless fences, drained, manured, employed better tools, and
applied a rotation of crops. The progress of science came to their assistance
also; Sir Humphry Davy applied chemistry to agriculture with success, and the
development of mechanical science bestowed a multitude of advantages upon the
large farmer. Further, in consequence of the increase of population, the demand
for agricultural products increased in such measure that from 1760 to 1834,
6,840,540 acres of waste land were reclaimed; and, in spite of this, England
was transformed from a grain exporting to a grain importing country.

The same activity was developed in the establishment of communication. From
1818 to 1829, there were built in England and Wales, 1,000 English miles of
roadway of the width prescribed by law, 60 feet, and nearly all the old roads
were reconstructed on the new system of McAdam. In Scotland, the Department of
Public Works built since 1805 nearly 900 miles of roadway and more than 1,000
bridges, by which the population of the Highlands was suddenly placed within
reach of civilisation. The Highlanders had hitherto been chiefly poachers and
smugglers; they now became farmers and hand-workers. And, though Gaelic schools
were organised for the purpose of maintaining the Gaelic language, yet
Gaelic-Celtic customs and speech are rapidly vanishing before the approach of
English civilisation. So, too, in Ireland; between the counties of Cork,
Limerick, and Kerry, lay hitherto a wilderness wholly without passable roads,
and serving, by reason of its inaccessibility, as the refuge of all criminals
and the chief protection of the Celtic Irish nationality in the South of
Ireland. It has now been cut through by public roads, and civilisation has thus
gained admission even to this savage region. The whole British Empire, and
especially England, which, sixty years ago, had as bad roads as Germany or
France then had, is now covered by a network of the finest roadways; and these,
too, like almost everything else in England, are the work of private
enterprise, the State having done very little in this direction.

Before 1755 England possessed almost no canals. In that year a canal was
built in Lancashire from Sankey Brook to St. Helen's; and in 1759, James
Brindley built the first important one, the Duke of Bridgewater's Canal from
Manchester and the coal-mines of the district to the mouth of the Mersey
passing, near Barton, by aqueduct, over the river Irwell. From this achievement
dates the canal building of England, to which Brindley first gave importance.
Canals were now built, and rivers made navigable in all directions. In England
alone, there are 2,200 miles of canals and 1,800 miles of navigable river. In
Scotland, the Caledonian Canal was cut directly across the country, and in
Ireland several canals were built. These improvements, too, like the railroads
and roadways, are nearly all the work of private individuals and companies.

The railroads have been only recently built. The first great one was opened
from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830, since which all the great cities have
been connected by rail. London with Southampton, Brighton, Dover, Colchester,
Exeter, and Birmingham; Birmingham with Gloucester, Liverpool, Lancaster (via
Newton and Wigan, and via Manchester and Bolton); also with Leeds (via
Manchester and Halifax, and via Leicester, Derby, and Sheffield); Leeds with
Hull and Newcastle (via York). There are also many minor lines building or
projected, which will soon make it possible to travel from Edinburgh to London
in one day.

As it had transformed the means of communication by land, so did the
introduction of steam revolutionise travel by sea. The first steamboat was
launched in 1807, in the Hudson, in North America; the first in the British
Empire, in 1811, on the Clyde. Since then, more than 600 have been built in
England; and in 1836 more than 500 were plying to and from British ports.

Such, in brief, is the history of English industrial development in the past
sixty years, a history which has no counterpart in the annals of humanity.
Sixty, eighty years ago, England was a country like every other, with small
towns, few and simple industries, and a thin but proportionally large
agricultural population. Today it is a country like no other, with a
capital of two and a half million inhabitants; with vast manufacturing cities;
with an industry that supplies the world, and produces almost everything by
means of the most complex machinery; with an industrious, intelligent, dense
population, of which two-thirds are employed in trade and commerce, and
composed of classes wholly different; forming, in fact, with other customs and
other needs, a different nation from the England of those days. The industrial
revolution is of the same importance for England as the political revolution
for France, and the philosophical revolution for Germany; and the difference
between England in 1760 and in 1844 is at least as great as that between France
under the ancien régime and during the revolution of July. But the
mightiest result of this industrial transformation is the English proletariat.

We have already seen how the proletariat was called into existence by the
introduction of machinery. The rapid extension of manufacture demanded hands,
wages rose, and troops of workmen migrated from the agricultural districts to
the towns. Population multiplied enormously, and nearly all the increase took
place in the proletariat. Further, Ireland had entered upon an orderly
development only since the beginning of the eighteenth century. There, too, the
population, more than decimated by English cruelty in earlier disturbances, now
rapidly multiplied, especially after the advance in manufacture began to draw
masses of Irishmen towards England. Thus arose the great manufacturing and
commercial cities of the British Empire, in which at least three-fourths of the
population belong to the working-class, while the lower middle-class consists
only of small shop-keepers, and very very few handicraftsmen. For, though the
rising manufacture first attained importance by transforming tools into
machines, work-rooms into factories, and consequently, the toiling lower
middle-class into the toiling proletariat, and the former large merchants into
manufacturers, though the lower middle-class was thus early crushed out, and
the population reduced to the two opposing elements, workers and capitalists,
this happened outside of the domain of manufacture proper, in the province of
handicraft and retail trade as well. In the place of the former masters and
apprentices, came great capitalists and working-men who had no prospect of
rising above their class. Hand-work was carried on after the fashion of factory
work, the division of labour was strictly applied, and small employers who
could not compete with great establishments were forced down into the
proletariat. At the same time the destruction of the former organisation of
hand-work, and the disappearance of the lower middle-class deprived the
workingman of all possibility of rising into the middle-class himself. Hitherto
he had always had the prospect of establishing himself somewhere as master
artificer, perhaps employing journeymen and apprentices; but now, when master
artificers were crowded out by manufacturers, when large capital had become
necessary for carrying on work independently, the working-class became, for the
first time, an integral, permanent class of the population, whereas it had
formerly often been merely a transition leading to the bourgeoisie. Now, he who
was born to toil had no other prospect than that of remaining a toiler all his
life. Now, for the first time, therefore, the proletariat was in a position to
undertake an independent movement.

In this way were brought together those vast masses of working-men who now
fill the whole British Empire, whose social condition forces itself every day
more and more upon the attention of the civilised world.

The condition of the working-class is the condition of the vast majority of
the English people. The question: What is to become of those destitute
millions, who consume today what they earned yesterday; who have created the
greatness of England by their inventions and their toil; who become with every
passing day more conscious of their might, and demand, with daily increasing
urgency, their share of the advantages of society? -- This, since the Reform
Bill, has become the national question. All Parliamentary debates, of any
importance, may be reduced to this; and, though the English middle-class will
not as yet admit it, though they try to evade this great question, and to
represent their own particular interests as the truly national ones, their
action is utterly useless. With every session of Parliament the working-class
gains ground, the interests of the middle-class diminish in importance; and, in
spite of the fact that the middle-class is the chief, in fact, the only power
in Parliament, the last session of 1844 was a continuous debate upon subjects
affecting the working-class, the Poor Relief Bill, the Factory Act, the
Masters' and Servants' Act', and Thomas Duncombe, the representative of the
working-men in the House of Commons, was the great man of the session; while
the Liberal middle-class with its motion for repealing the Corn Laws, and the
Radical middle-class with its resolution for refusing the taxes, played
pitiable roles. Even the debates about Ireland were at bottom debates about the
Irish proletariat, and the means of coming to its assistance. It is high time,
too, for the English middle-class to make some concessions to the working-men
who no longer plead but threaten, for in a short time it may be too late.

In spite of all this, the English middle-class, especially the manufacturing
class, which is enriched directly by means of the poverty of the workers,
persists in ignoring this poverty. This class, feeling itself the mighty
representative class of the nation, is ashamed to lay the sore spot of England
bare before the eyes of the world; will not confess, even to itself, that the
workers are in distress, because it, the property-holding, manufacturing class,
must bear the moral responsibility for this distress. Hence the scornful smile
which intelligent Englishmen (and they, the middle-class, alone are known on
the Continent) assume when any one begins to speak of the condition of the
working-class; hence the utter ignorance on the part of the whole middle-class
of everything which concerns the workers; hence the ridiculous blunders which
men of this class, in and out of Parliament, make when the position of the
proletariat comes under discussion; hence the absurd freedom from anxiety, with
which the middle-class dwells upon a soil that is honeycombed, and may any day
collapse, the speedy collapse of which is as certain as a mathematical or
mechanical demonstration; hence the miracle that the English have as yet no
single book upon the condition of their workers, although they have been
examining and mending the old state of things no one knows how many years.
Hence also the deep wrath of the whole working-class, from Glasgow to London,
against the rich, by whom they are systematically plundered and mercilessly
left to their fate, a wrath which before too long a time goes by, a time almost
within the power of man to predict, must break out into a revolution in
comparison with which the French Revolution, and the year 1794, will prove to
have been child's play.

NOTES

1. According to Porter's Progress of the Nation,
London, 1856, Vol. I; 1858, Vol. II; 1843, Vol. III (official data), and
other sources, chiefly official.-- Note by Engels.
(1892). The historical outline of the industrial revolution given above
is not exact in certain details; but in 1843-44 no better sources were
available.-- Added by Engels in the German edition of 1892.

## The Industrial Proletariat

The order of our investigation of the different sections of the proletariat
follows naturally from the foregoing history of its rise. The first
proletarians were connected with manufacture, were engendered by it, and
accordingly, those employed in manufacture, in the working up of raw materials,
will first claim our attention. The production of raw materials and of fuel for
manufacture attained importance only in consequence of the industrial change,
and engendered a new proletariat, the coal and metal miners. Then, in the third
place, manufacture influenced agriculture, and in the fourth, the condition of
Ireland; and the fractions of the proletariat belonging to each, will find
their place accordingly. We shall find, too, that with the possible exception
of the Irish, the degree of intelligence of the various workers is in direct
proportion to their relation to manufacture; and that the factory-hands are
most enlightened as to their own interests, the miners somewhat less so, the
agricultural labourers scarcely at all. We shall find the same order again
among the industrial workers, and shall see how the factory-hands, eldest
children of the industrial revolution, have from the beginning to the present
day formed the nucleus of the Labour Movement, and how the others have joined
this movement just in proportion as their handicraft has been invaded by the
progress of machinery. We shall thus learn from the example which England
offers, from the equal pace which the Labour Movement has kept with the
movement of industrial development, the historical significance of manufacture.

Since, however, at the present moment, pretty much the whole industrial
proletariat is involved in the movement, and the condition of the separate
sections has much in common, because they all are industrial, we shall have
first to examine the condition of the industrial proletariat as a whole, in
order later to notice more particularly each separate division with its own
peculiarities.

It has been already suggested that manufacture centralises property in the
hands of the few. It requires large capital with which to erect the colossal
establishments that ruin the petty trading bourgeoisie and with which to press
into its service the forces of Nature, so driving the hand-labour of the
independent workman out of the market. The division of labour, the application
of water and especially steam, and the application of machinery, are the three
great levers with which manufacture, since the middle of the last century, has
been busy putting the world out of joint. Manufacture, on a small scale,
created the middle-class; on a large scale, it created the working-class, and
raised the elect of the middle-class to the throne, but only to overthrow them
the more surely when the time comes. Meanwhile, it is an undenied and easily
explained fact that the numerous petty middle-class of the "good old times" has
been annihilated by manufacture, and resolved into rich capitalists on the one
hand and poor workers on the other. [2]

The centralising tendency of manufacture does not, however, stop here.
Population becomes centralised just as capital does; and, very naturally, since
the human being, the worker, is regarded in manufacture simply as a piece of
capital for the use of which the manufacturer pays interest under the name of
wages. A manufacturing establishment requires many workers employed together in
a single building, living near each other and forming a village of themselves
in the case of a good-sized factory. They have needs for satisfying which other
people are necessary; handicraftsmen, shoemakers, tailors, bakers, carpenters,
stonemasons, settle at hand. The inhabitants of the village, especially the
younger generation, accustom themselves to factory work, grow skilful in it,
and when the first mill can no longer employ them all, wages fall, and the
immigration of fresh manufacturers is the consequence. So the village grows
into a small town, and the small town into a large one. The greater the town,
the greater its advantages. It offers roads, railroads, canals; the choice of
skilled labour increases constantly, new establishments can be built more
cheaply, because of the competition among builders and machinists who are at
hand, than in remote country districts, whither timber, machinery, builders,
and operatives must be brought; it offers a market to which buyers crowd, and
direct communication with the markets supplying raw material or demanding
finished goods. Hence the marvellously rapid growth of the great manufacturing
towns. The country, on the other hand, had the advantage that wages are usually
lower than in town, and so town and country are in constant competition; and,
if the advantage is on the side of the town today, wages sink so low in the
country tomorrow that new investments are most profitably made there. But the
centralising tendency of manufacture continues in full force, and every new
factory built in the country bears in it the germ of a manufacturing town. If
it were possible for this mad rush of manufacture to go on at this rate for
another century, every manufacturing district of England would be one great
manufacturing town, and Manchester and Liverpool would meet at Warrington or
Newton; for in commerce, too, this centralisation of the population works in
precisely the same way, and hence it is that one or two great harbours, such as
Hull and Liverpool, Bristol and London, monopolise almost the whole maritime
commerce of Great Britain.

Since commerce and manufacture attain their most complete development in
these great towns, their influence upon the proletariat is also most clearly
observable here. Here the centralisation of property has reached the highest
point; here the morals and customs of the good old times are most completely
obliterated; here it has gone so far that the name Merry Old England conveys
no meaning, for Old England itself is unknown to memory and to the tales of our
grandfathers. Hence, too, there exist here only a rich and a poor class, for
the lower middle-class vanishes more completely with every passing day. Thus
the class formerly most stable has become the most restless one. It consists
today of a few remnants of a past time, and a number of people eager to make
fortunes, industrial Micawbers and speculators of whom one may amass a fortune,
while ninety-nine become insolvent, and more than half of the ninety-nine live
by perpetually repeated failure.

But in these towns the proletarians are the infinite majority, and how they
fare, what influence the great town exercises upon them, we have now to
investigate.

NOTES

2. Compare on this point my "Outlines of a Critique of
Political Economy" in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. In this
essay "free competition" is the starting-point; but industry is only the
practice of free competition and the latter is only the principle on which
industry is based.-- Note by Engels. Return to
Text

## The Great Towns

A town, such as London, where a man may wander for hours together without
reaching the beginning of the end, without meeting the slightest hint which
could lead to the inference that there is open country within reach, is a
strange thing. This colossal centralisation, this heaping together of two and a
half millions of human beings at one point, has multiplied the power of this
two and a half millions a hundredfold; has raised London to the commercial
capital of the world, created the giant docks and assembled the thousand
vessels that continually cover the Thames. I know nothing more imposing than
the view which the Thames offers during the ascent from the sea to London
Bridge. The masses of buildings, the wharves on both sides, especially from
Woolwich upwards, the countless ships along both shores, crowding ever closer
and closer together, until, at last, only a narrow passage remains in the
middle of the river, a passage through which hundreds of steamers shoot by one
another; all this is so vast, so impressive, that a man cannot collect himself,
but is lost in the marvel of England's greatness before he sets foot upon
English soil. [3]

But the sacrifices which all this has cost become apparent later. After
roaming the streets of the capital a day or two, making headway with difficulty
through the human turmoil and the endless lines of vehicles, after visiting the
slums of the metropolis, one realises for the first time that these Londoners
have been forced to sacrifice the best qualities of their human nature, to
bring to pass all the marvels of civilisation which crowd their city; that a
hundred powers which slumbered within them have remained inactive, have been
suppressed in order that a few might be developed more fully and multiply
through union with those of others. The very turmoil of the streets has
something repulsive, something against which human nature rebels. The hundreds
of thousands of all classes and ranks crowding past each other, are they not
all human beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same interest
in being happy? And have they not, in the end, to seek happiness in the same
way, by the same means? And still they crowd by one another as though they had
nothing in common, nothing to do with one another, and their only agreement is
the tacit one, that each keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not to
delay the opposing streams of the crowd, while it occurs to no man to honour
another with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling
isolation of each in his private interest, becomes the more repellent and
offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together, within a limited
space. And, however much one may be aware that this isolation of the
individual, this narrow self-seeking, is the fundamental principle of our
society everywhere, it is nowhere so shamelessly barefaced, so self-conscious
as just here in the crowding of the great city. The dissolution of mankind into
monads, of which each one has a separate principle, the world of atoms, is here
carried out to its utmost extreme.

Hence it comes, too, that the social war, the war of each against all, is
here openly declared. Just as in Stirner's recent book [The Ego and Its Own],
people regard each other only as useful objects; each exploits the other, and
the end of it all is that the stronger treads the weaker under foot; and that
the powerful few, the capitalists, seize everything for themselves, while to
the weak many, the poor, scarcely a bare existence remains.

What is true of London, is true of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, is true of
all great towns. Everywhere barbarous indifference, hard egotism on one hand,
and nameless misery on the other, everywhere social warfare, every man's house
in a state of siege, everywhere reciprocal plundering under the protection of
the law, and all so shameless, so openly avowed that one shrinks before the
consequences of our social state as they manifest themselves here undisguised,
and can only wonder that the whole crazy fabric still hangs together.

Since capital, the direct or indirect control of the means of subsistence
and production, is the weapon with which this social warfare is carried on, it
is clear that all the disadvantages of such a state must fall upon the poor.
For him no man has the slightest concern. Cast into the whirlpool, he must
struggle through as well as he can. If he is so happy as to find work, i.e., if
the bourgeoisie does him the favour to enrich itself by means of him, wages
await him which scarcely suffice to keep body and soul together; if he can get
no work he may steal, if he is not afraid of the police, or starve, in which
case the police will take care that he does so in a quiet and inoffensive
manner. During my residence in England, at least twenty or thirty persons have
died of simple starvation under the most revolting circumstances, and a jury
has rarely been found possessed of the courage to speak the plain truth in the
matter. Let the testimony of the witnesses be never so clear and unequivocal,
the bourgeoisie, from which the jury is selected, always finds some backdoor
through which to escape the frightful verdict, death from starvation. The
bourgeoisie dare not speak the truth in these cases, for it would speak its own
condemnation. But indirectly, far more than directly, many have died of
starvation, where long-continued want of proper nourishment has called forth
fatal illness, when it has produced such debility that causes which might
otherwise have remained inoperative brought on severe illness and death. The
English working-men call this "social murder", and accuse our whole society of
perpetrating this crime perpetually. Are they wrong?

True, it is only individuals who starve, but what security has the
working-man that it may not be his turn tomorrow? Who assures him employment,
who vouches for it that, if for any reason or no reason his lord and master
discharges him tomorrow, he can struggle along with those dependent upon him,
until he may find some one else "to give him bread"? Who guarantees that
willingness to work shall suffice to obtain work, that uprightness, industry,
thrift, and the rest of the virtues recommended by the bourgeoisie, are really
his road to happiness? No one. He knows that he has something today and that it
does not depend upon himself whether he shall have something tomorrow. He knows
that every breeze that blows, every whim of his employer, every bad turn of
trade may hurl him back into the fierce whirlpool from which he has temporarily
saved himself, and in which it is hard and often impossible to keep his head
above water. He knows that, though he may have the means of living today, it is
very uncertain whether he shall tomorrow.

Meanwhile, let us proceed to a more detailed investigation of the position
in which the social war has placed the non-possessing class. Let us see what
pay for his work society does give the working-man in the form of dwelling,
clothing, food, what sort of subsistence it grants those who contribute most to
the maintenance of society; and, first, let us consider the dwellings.

Every great city has one or more slums, where the working-class is crowded
together. True, poverty often dwells in hidden alleys close to the palaces of
the rich; but, in general, a separate territory has been assigned to it, where,
removed from the sight of the happier classes, it may struggle along as it can.
These slums are pretty equally arranged in all the great towns of England, the
worst houses in the worst quarters of the towns; usually one- or two-storied
cottages in long rows, perhaps with cellars used as dwellings, almost always
irregularly built. These houses of three or four rooms and a kitchens form,
throughout England, some parts of London excepted, the general dwellings of the
working-class. The streets are generally unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with
vegetable and animal refuse, without sewers or gutters, but supplied with foul,
stagnant pools instead. Moreover, ventilation is impeded by the bad, confused
method of building of the whole quarter, and since many human beings here live
crowded into a small space, the atmosphere that prevails in these working-men's
quarters may readily be imagined. Further, the streets serve as drying grounds
in fine weather; lines are stretched across from house to house, and hung with
wet clothing.

Let us investigate some of the slums in their order. London comes first, [4] and in London the famous rookery of St.
Giles which is now, at last, about to be penetrated by a couple of broad
streets. St. Giles is in the midst of the most populous part of the town,
surrounded by broad, splendid avenues in which the gay world of London idles
about, in the immediate neighbourhood of Oxford Street, Regent Street, of
Trafalgar Square and the Strand. It is a disorderly collection of tall, three-
or four-storied houses, with narrow, crooked, filthy streets, in which there is
quite as much life as in the great thoroughfares of the town, except that,
here, people of the working-class only are to be seen. A vegetable market is
held in the street, baskets with vegetables and fruits, naturally all bad and
hardly fit to use obstruct the sidewalk still further, and from these, as well
as from the fish-dealers' stalls, arises a horrible smell. The houses are
occupied from cellar to garret, filthy within and without, and their appearance
is such that no human being could possibly wish to live in them. But all this
is nothing in comparison with the dwellings in the narrow courts and alleys
between the streets, entered by covered passages between the houses, in which
the filth and tottering ruin surpass all description. Scarcely a whole
window-pane can be found, the walls are crumbling, door-posts and window-frames
loose and broken, doors of old boards nailed together, or altogether wanting in
this thieves' quarter, where no doors are needed, there being nothing to steal.
Heaps of garbage and ashes lie in all directions, and the foul liquids emptied
before the doors gather in stinking pools. Here live the poorest of the poor,
the worst paid workers with thieves and the victims of prostitution
indiscriminately huddled together, the majority Irish, or of Irish extraction,
and those who have not yet sunk in the whirlpool of moral ruin which surrounds
them, sinking daily deeper, losing daily more and more of their power to resist
the demoralising influence of want, filth, and evil surroundings.

Nor is St. Giles the only London slum. In the immense tangle of streets,
there are hundreds and thousands of alleys and courts lined with houses too bad
for anyone to live in, who can still spend anything whatsoever upon a dwelling
fit for human beings. Close to the splendid houses of the rich such a
lurking-place of the bitterest poverty may often be found. So, a short time
ago, on the occasion of a coroner's inquest, a region close to Portman Square,
one of the very respectable squares, was characterised as an abode "of a
multitude of Irish demoralised by poverty and filth". So, too, may be found in
streets, such as Long Acre and others, which, though not fashionable, are yet
"respectable", a great number of cellar dwellings out of which puny children
and half-starved, ragged women emerge into the light of day. In the immediate
neighbourhood of Drury Lane Theatre, the second in London, are some of the
worst streets of the whole metropolis, Charles, King, and Park Streets, in
which the houses are inhabited from cellar to garret exclusively by poor
families. In the parishes of St. John and St. Margaret there lived in 1840,
according to the Journal of the Statistical Society, 5,566 working-men's
families in 5,294 "dwellings" (if they deserve the name!), men, women, and
children thrown together without distinction of age or sex, 26,850 persons all
told; and of these families three-fourths possessed but one room. In the
aristocratic parish of St. George, Hanover Square, there lived, according to
the same authority, 1,465 working-men's families, nearly 6,000 persons, under
similar conditions, and here, too, more than two-thirds of the whole number
crowded together at the rate of one family in one room. And how the poverty of
these unfortunates, among whom even thieves find nothing to steal, is exploited
by the property-holding class in lawful ways! The abominable dwellings in Drury
Lane, just mentioned, bring in the following rents: two cellar dwellings, 3s.,
one room, ground-floor, 4s.; second-storey, 4s. 6d.; third-floor, 4s.;
garret-room, 3s. weekly, so that the starving occupants of Charles Street
alone, pay the house-owners a yearly tribute of £2,000, and the 5,566 families
above mentioned in Westminster, a yearly rent of £40,000.

The most extensive working-people's district lies east of the Tower in
Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, where the greatest masses of London
working-people live. Let us hear Mr. G. Alston, preacher of St. Philip's,
Bethnal Green, on the condition of his parish. He says:

"It contains 1,400 houses, inhabited by 2,795 families,
comprising a population of 12,000. The space within which this large amount of
population are living is less than 400 yards square (1,200 feet), and it is no
uncommon thing for a man and his wife, with four or five children, and
sometimes the grandfather and grandmother, to be found living in a room from
ten to twelve feet square, and which serves them for eating and working in. I
believe that till the Bishop of London called the attention of the public to
the state of Bethnal Green, about as little was known at the West-end of the
town of this most destitute parish as the wilds of Australia or the islands of
the South Seas. If we really desire to find out the most destitute and
deserving, we must lift the latch of their doors, and find them at their scanty
meal; we must see them when suffering from sickness and want of work; and if we
do this from day to day in such a neighbourhood as Bethnal Green, we shall
become acquainted with a mass of wretchedness and misery such as a nation like
our own ought to be ashamed to permit. I was Curate of a parish near
Huddersfield during the three years of the greatest manufacturing distress; but
I never witnessed such a thorough prostration of the poor as I have seen since
I have been in Bethnal Green. There is not one father of a family in ten
throughout the entire district that possesses any clothes but his working
dress, and that too commonly in the worst tattered condition; and with many
this wretched clothing forms their only covering at night, with nothing better
than a bag of straw or shavings to lie upon."

The foregoing description furnishes an idea of the aspect of the interior of
the dwellings. But let us follow the English officials, who occasionally stray
thither, into one or two of these workingmen's homes.

On the occasion of an inquest held Nov. 16th, 1843, by Mr. Carter, coroner
for Surrey, upon the body of Ann Galway, aged 45 years, the newspapers related
the following particulars concerning the deceased: She had lived at No. 5 White
Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London, with her husband and a nineteen-
year-old son in a little room, in which neither a bedstead nor any other
furniture was to be seen. She lay dead beside her son upon a heap of feathers
which were scattered over her almost naked body, there being neither sheet nor
coverlet. The feathers stuck so fast over the whole body that the physician
could not examine the corpse until it was cleansed, and then found it starved
and scarred from the bites of vermin. Part of the floor of the room was torn
up, and the hole used by the family as a privy.

On Monday, Jan. 15th, 1844, two boys were brought before the police
magistrate because, being in a starving condition, they had stolen and
immediately devoured a half-cooked calf's foot from a shop. The magistrate felt
called upon to investigate the case further, and received the following details
from the policeman: The mother of the two boys was the widow of an ex-soldier,
afterwards policeman, and had had a very hard time since the death of her
husband, to provide for her nine children. She lived at No. 2 Pool's Place,
Quaker Court, Spitalfields, in the utmost poverty. When the policeman came to
her, he found her with six of her children literally huddled together in a
little back room, with no furniture but two old rush-bottomed chairs with the
seats gone, a small table with two legs broken, a broken cup, and a small dish.
On the hearth was scarcely a spark of fire, and in one corner lay as many old
rags as would fill a woman's apron, which served the whole family as a bed. For
bed clothing they had only their scanty day clothing. The poor woman told him
that she had been forced to sell her bedstead the year before to buy food. Her
bedding she had pawned with the victualler for food. In short, everything had
gone for food. The magistrate ordered the woman a considerable provision from
the poor-box.

In February, 1844, Theresa Bishop, a widow 60 years old, was recommended,
with her sick daughter, aged 26, to the compassion of the police magistrate in
Marlborough Street. She lived at No. 5 Brown Street, Grosvenor Square, in a
small back room no larger than a closet, in which there was not one single
piece of furniture, In one corner lay some rags upon which both slept; a chest
served as table and chair. The mother earned a little by charring. The owner of
the house said that they had lived in this way since May 1843, had gradually
sold or pawned everything that they had, and had still never paid any rent. The
magistrate assigned them £1 from the poor-box.

I am far from asserting that all London working-people live in such want as
the foregoing three families. I know very well that ten are somewhat better
off, where one is so totally trodden under foot by society; but I assert that
thousands of industrious and worthy people – far worthier and more to be
respected than the rich of London – do find themselves in a condition unworthy
of human beings; and that every proletarian, everyone, without exception, is
exposed to a similar fate without any fault of his own and in spite of every
possible effort.

But in spite of all this, they who have some kind of a shelter are
fortunate, fortunate in comparison with the utterly homeless. In London fifty
thousand human beings get up every morning, not knowing where they are to lay
their heads at night. The luckiest of this multitude, those who succeed in
keeping a penny or two until evening, enter a lodging-house, such as abound in
every great city, where they find a bed. But what a bed! These houses are
filled with beds from cellar to garret, four, five, six beds in a room; as many
as can be crowded in. Into every bed four, five, or six human beings are piled,
as many as can be packed in, sick and well, young and old, drunk and sober, men
and women, just as they come, indiscriminately. Then come strife, blows,
wounds, or, if these bedfellows agree, so much the worse; thefts are arranged
and things done which our language, grown more humane than our deeds, refuses
to record. And those who cannot pay for such a refuge? They sleep where they
find a place, in passages, arcades, in corners where the police and the owners
leave them undisturbed. A few individuals find their way to the refuges which
are managed, here and there, by private charity, others sleep on the benches in
the parks close under the windows of Queen Victoria. Let us hear the London
Times:

"It appears from the report of the proceedings at
Marlborough Street Police Court in our columns of yesterday, that there is an
average number of 50 human beings of all ages, who huddle together in the parks
every night, having no other shelter than what is supplied by the trees and a
few hollows of the embankment. Of these, the majority are young girls who have
been seduced from the country by the soldiers and turned loose on the world in
all the destitution of friendless penury, and all the recklessness of early
vice.

"This is truly horrible! Poor there must be everywhere. Indigence will
find its way and set up its hideous state in the heart of a great and luxurious
city. Amid the thousand narrow lanes and by-streets of a populous metropolis
there must always, we fear, be much suffering – much that offends the eye –
much that lurks unseen.

"But that within the precincts of wealth, gaiety, and fashion, nigh the
regal grandeur of St. James. close on the palatial splendour of Bayswater, on
the confines of the old and new aristocratic quarters, in a district where the
cautious refinement of modern design has refrained from creating one single
tenement for poverty; which seems, as it were, dedicated to the exclusive
enjoyment of wealth. that there want, and famine, and disease, and
vice should stalk in all their kindred horrors, consuming body by body, soul by
soul!

"It is indeed a monstrous state of things! Enjoyment the most absolute,
that bodily ease, intellectual excitement, or the more innocent pleasures of
sense can supply to man's craving, brought in close contact with the most
unmitigated misery! Wealth, from its bright saloons, laughing – an insolently
heedless laugh – at the unknown wounds of want! Pleasure, cruelly but
unconsciously mocking the pain that moans below! All contrary things mocking
one another – all contrary, save the vice which tempts and the vice which is
tempted!

"But let all men remember this – that within the most courtly precincts
of the richest city of God's earth, there may be found, night after night,
winter after winter, women – young in years – old in sin and suffering –
outcasts from society – ROTTING FROM FAMINE, FILTH, AND DISEASE. Let them
remember this, and learn not to theorise but to act. God knows, there is much
room for action nowadays." [5]

I have referred to the refuges for the homeless. How greatly overcrowded
these are, two examples may show. A newly erected Refuge for the Houseless in
Upper Ogle Street, that can shelter three hundred persons every night, has
received since its opening, January 27th to March 17th, 1844, 2,740 persons for
one or more nights; and, although the season was growing more favourable, the
number of applicants in this, as well as in the asylums of Whitecross Street
and Wapping, was strongly on the increase, and a crowd of the homeless had to
be sent away every night for want of room. In another refuge, the Central
Asylum in Playhouse Yard, there were supplied on an average 460 beds nightly,
during the first three months of the year 1844, 6,681 persons being sheltered,
and 96,141 portions of bread were distributed. Yet the committee of directors
declare this institution began to meet the pressure of the needy to a limited
extent only when the Eastern Asylum also was opened.

Let us leave London and examine the other great cities of the three kingdoms
in their order. Let us take Dublin first, a city the approach to which from the
sea is as charming as that of London is imposing. The Bay of Dublin is the most
beautiful of the whole British Island Kingdom, and is even compared by the
Irish with the Bay of Naples. The city, too, possesses great attractions, and
its aristocratic districts are better and more tastefully laid out than those
of any other British city. By way of compensation, however the poorer districts
of Dublin are among the most hideous and repulsive to be seen in the world.
True, the Irish character, which under some circumstances, is comfortable only
in the dirt, has some share in this; but as we find thousands of Irish in ever
great city in England and Scotland, and as every poor population must gradually
sink into the same uncleanliness, the wretchedness of Dublin is nothing
specific, nothing peculiar to Dublin, but something common to all great towns.
The poor quarters of Dublin are extremely extensive, and the filth, the
uninhabitableness of the houses and the neglect of the streets surpass all
description. Some idea of the manner in which the poor are here crowded
together may be formed from the fact that, in 1817, according to the report of
the Inspector of Workhouses,[6] 1,318
persons lived in 52 houses with 390 rooms in Barrack Street, and 1,997 persons
in 71 houses with 393 rooms in and near Church Street; that:

"foul lanes, courts, and yards, are interposed between this
and the adjoining streets .... There are many cellars which have no light but
from the door .... In some of these cellars the inhabitants sleep on the floors
which are all earthen; but in general, they have bedsteads .... Nicholson's
Court ... contains 151 persons in 28 small apartments ... their state is very
miserable, there being only two bedsteads and two blankets in the whole
court."

The poverty is so great in Dublin, that a single benevolent institution, the
Mendicity Association, gives relief to 2,500 persons or one per cent of the
population daily, receiving and feeding them for the day and dismissing them at
night.

Dr. Alison describes a similar state of things in Edinburgh, whose superb
situation, which has won it the title of the modern Athens, and whose brilliant
aristocratic quarter in the New Town, contrast strongly with the foul
wretchedness of the poor in the Old Town. Alison asserts that this extensive
quarter is as filthy and horrible as the worst districts of Dublin, while the
Mendicity Association would have as great a proportion of needy persons to
assist in Edinburgh as in the Irish capital. He asserts, indeed, that the poor
in Scotland, especially in Edinburgh and Glasgow, are worse off than in any
other region of the three kingdoms, and that the poorest are not Irish, but
Scotch. The preacher of the Old Church of Edinburgh, Dr. Lee, testified in
1836, before the Commission of Religious Instruction, that:

"I have never seen such a
concentration of misery as in this parish," where the people are without
furniture, without everything. "I frequently see the same room occupied by two
married couples. I have been in one day in seven houses where there was no bed,
in some of them not even straw. I found people of eighty years of age lying on
the boards. Many sleep in the same clothes which they wear during the day. I
may mention the case of two Scotch families living in a cellar, who had come
from the country within a few months.... Since they came they had had two
children dead, and another apparently dying. There was a little bundle of dirty
straw in one corner, for one family, and in another for the other. In the place
they inhabit it is impossible at noonday to distinguish the features of the
human face without artificial light. – It would almost make a heart of adamant
bleed to see such an accumulation of misery in a country like this."

In the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, Dr. Hennen reports a
similar state of things. From a Parliamentary Report, [7] it is evident that in the dwellings of the poor of Edinburgh a
want of cleanliness reigns, such as must be expected under these conditions. On
the bed-posts chickens roost at night, dogs and horses share the dwellings of
human beings, and the natural consequence is a shocking stench, with filth and
swarms of vermin. The prevailing construction of Edinburgh favours these
atrocious conditions as far as possible. The Old Town is built upon both slopes
of a hill, along the crest of which runs the High Street. Out of the High
Street there open downwards multitudes of narrow, crooked alleys, called wynds
from their many turnings, and these wynds form the proletarian district of the
city. The houses of the Scotch cities, in general, are five or six-storied
buildings, like those of Paris, and in contrast with England where, so far as
possible, each family has a separate house. The crowding of human beings upon a
limited area is thus intensified.

.....the house," says an English journal in an article upon
the sanitary condition of the working-people in cities, "are often so close
together, that persons may step from the window of one house to that of the
house opposite – so high, piled story after story, that the light can scarcely
penetrate to the court beneath. In this part of the town there are neither
sewers nor any private conveniences whatever belonging to the dwellings; and
hence the excrementitious and other refuse of at least 50,000 persons is,
during the night, thrown into the gutters, causing (in spite of the scavengers'
daily labours) an amount of solid filth and foetid exhalation disgusting to
both sight and smell, as well as exceedingly prejudicial to health. Can it be
wondered that, in such localities, health, morals, and common decency should be
at once neglected? No; all who know the private condition of the inhabitants
will bear testimony to the immense amount of their disease, misery, and
demoralisation. Society in these quarters has sunk to a state indescribably
vile and wretched.... The dwellings of the poorer classes are generally very
filthy, apparently never subjected to any cleaning process whatever,
consisting, in most cases, of a single room, ill-ventilated and yet cold, owing
to broken, ill-fitting windows, sometimes damp and partially underground, and
always scantily furnished and altogether comfortless, heaps of straw often
serving for beds, in which a whole family – male and female, young and old,
are huddled together in revolting confusion. The supplies of water are obtained
only from the public pumps, and the trouble of procuring it of course favours
the accumulation of all kinds of abominations."

In the other great seaport towns the prospect is no better. Liverpool, with
all its commerce, wealth, and grandeur yet treats its workers with the same
barbarity. A full fifth of the population, more than 45,000 human beings, live
in narrow, dark, damp, badly-ventilated cellar dwellings, of which there are
7,862 in the city. Besides these cellar dwellings there are 2,270 courts, small
spaces built up on all four sides and having but one entrance, a narrow,
covered passage-way, the whole ordinarily very dirty and inhabited exclusively
by proletarians. Of such courts we shall have more to say when we come to
Manchester. In Bristol, on one occasion, 2,800 families were visited, of whom
46 per cent occupied but one room each.

Precisely the same state of things prevails in the factory towns. In
Nottingham there are in all 11,000 houses, of which between 7,000 and 8,000 are
built back to back with a rear party-wall so that no through ventilation is
possible, while a single privy usually serves for several houses. During an
investigation made a short time since, many rows of houses were found to have
been built over shallow drains covered only by the boards of the ground- floor.
In Leicester, Derby, and Sheffield, it is no better. Of Birmingham, the article
above cited from the Artisan states:

"In the older parts of the town there are many inferior
streets and courts, which are dirty and neglected, filled with stagnant water
and heaps of refuse. The courts of Birmingham are very numerous in every
direction, exceeding 2,000, and comprising the residence of a large portion of
the working-classes. They are for the most part narrow, filthy, ill-ventilated.
and badly drained, containing from eight to twenty houses each, the houses
being built against some other tenement and the end of the courts being pretty
constantly occupied by ashpits, etc., the filth of which would defy
description. It is but just, however, to remark that the courts of more modern
date are built in a more rational manner, and kept tolerably respectable; and
the cottages, even in old courts, are far less crowded than in Manchester and
Liverpool, the result of which is, that the inhabitants, in epidemic seasons,
have been much less visited by death than those of Wolverhampton, Dudley, and
Bilston, at only a few miles distance. Cellar residences, also, are unknown in
Birmingham, though some few are, very improperly, used as workshops. The low
lodging-houses are pretty numerous (somewhat exceeding 400), chiefly in courts
near the centre of the town; they are almost always loathsomely filthy and
close, the resorts of beggars, trampers, thieves and prostitutes, who here,
regardless alike of decency or comfort, eat, drink, smoke and sleep in an
atmosphere unendurable by all except the degraded, besotted inmates."

Glasgow is in many respects similar to Edinburgh, possessing the same wynds,
the same tall houses. Of this city the Artisan observes:

The working-class forms here some 78 per cent of the whole
population (about 300,000), and lives in parts of the city "which, in abject
wretchedness, exceed the lowest purlieus of St. Giles' or Whitechapel, the
liberties of Dublin, or the wynds of Edinburgh. Such localities exist most
abundantly in the heart of the city – south of the Irongate and west of the
Saltmarket, as well as in the Calton, off the High Street, etc.– endless
labyrinths of narrow lanes or wynds, into which almost at every step debouche
courts or closes formed by old, ill-ventilated, towering houses crumbling to
decay, destitute of water and crowded with inhabitants, comprising three or
four families (perhaps twenty persons) on each flat, and sometimes each flat
let out in lodgings that confine – we dare not say accommodate – from fifteen
to twenty persons in a single room. These districts are occupied by the
poorest, most depraved, and most worthless portion of the population, and they
may be considered as the fruitful source of those pestilential fevers which
thence spread their destructive ravages over the whole of Glasgow."

Let us hear how J. C. Symons, Government Commissioner for the investigation
of the condition of the hand-weavers, describes these portions of the city: [8]

"I have seen human degradation in some of its worst phases,
both in England and abroad, but I did not believe until I visited the wynds of
Glasgow, that so large an amount of filth, crime, misery, and disease existed
in any civilised country. In the lower lodging-houses ten, twelve, and
sometimes twenty persons of both sexes and all ages sleep promiscuously on the
floor in different degrees of nakedness. These places are, generally, as
regards dirt, damp and decay, such as no person would stable his horse in."

And in another place:

"The wynds of Glasgow house a fluctuating population of
between 15,000 and 30,000 persons. This district is composed of many narrow
streets and square courts and in the middle of each court there is a dung-hill.
Although the outward appearance of these places was revolting, I was
nevertheless quite unprepared for the filth and misery that were to be found
inside. In some of these bedrooms we [i.e. Police Superintendent Captain Miller
and Symons] visited at night we found a whole mass of humanity stretched out on
the floor. There were often 15 to 20 men and women huddled together, some being
clothed and others naked. Their bed was a heap of musty straw mixed with rags.
There was hardly any furniture there and the only thing which gave these holes
the appearance of a dwelling was fire burning on the hearth. Thieving and
prostitution are the main sources of income of these people. No one seems to
have taken the trouble to clean out these Augean stables, this pandemonium,
this nucleus of crime, filth and pestilence in the second city of the empire. A
detailed investigation of the most wretched slums of other towns has never
revealed anything half so bad as this concentration of moral iniquity, physical
degradation and gross overcrowding.... In this part of Glasgow most of the
houses have been condemned by the Court of Guild as dilapidated and
uninhabitable – but it is just these dwellings which are filled to
overflowing, because, by law no rent can be charged on them."

The great manufacturing district in the centre of the British Islands, the
thickly peopled stretch of West Yorkshire and South Lancashire, with its
numerous factory towns, yields nothing to the other great manufacturing
centres. The wool district of the West Riding of Yorkshire is a charming
region, a beautiful green hill country, whose elevations grow more rugged
towards the west until they reach their highest point in the bold ridge of
Blackstone Edge, the watershed between the Irish Sea and the German Ocean, The
valleys of the Aire, along which stretches Leeds, and of the Calder, through
which the Manchester-Leeds railway runs, are among the most attractive in
England, and are strewn in all directions with the factories, villages, and
towns. The houses of rough grey stone look so neat and clean in comparison with
the blackened brick buildings of Lancashire, that it is a pleasure to look at
them. But on coming into the towns themselves, one finds little to rejoice
over. Leeds lies, as the Artisan describes it, and as I found
confirmed upon examination:

"on a slope running down towards the river Aire, which
meanders about a-mile-and-a-half through the town, and is liable to overflows
during thaws or after heavy rains. The higher or western districts are clean
for so large a town, but the lower parts contiguous to the river and its becks
or rivulets are dirty, confined, and, in themselves, sufficient to shorten
life, especially infant life; add to this the disgusting state of the lower
parts of the town about Kirk-gate. March-lane, Cross-street and Richmond-road,
principally owing to a general want of paving and draining, irregularity of
building, the abundance of courts and blind alleys, as well as the almost total
absence of the commonest means for promoting cleanliness, and we have then
quite sufficient data to account for the surplus mortality in these unhappy
regions of filth and misery.... In consequence of the floods from the Aire"
(which, it must be added, like all other rivers in the service of manufacture,
flows into the city at one end clear and transparent, and flows out at the
other end thick, black, and foul, smelling of all possible refuse), "the
dwelling-houses and cellars are not infrequently so inundated that the water
has to be pumped out by hand-pumps, on to the surface of the streets; and at
such times, even where there are sewers, the water rises through them into the
cellars,[9] creating miasmatic exhalations,
strongly charged with sulphuretted hydrogen, and leaving offensive refuse,
exceedingly prejudicial to human health. Indeed, during a season of inundation
in the spring of 1859, so fatal were the effects of such an engorgement of the
sewers, that the registrar of the North district made a report, that during
that quarter there were, in that neighbourhood, two births to three deaths,
whilst in all the other districts there were three to two deaths. Other
populous districts are wholly without sewers, or so inadequately provided as to
derive no advantage therefrom. "In some rows of houses, the cellar dwellings
are seldom dry"; in certain districts there are several streets covered with
soft mud a foot deep. "The inhabitants have from time to time vainly attempted
to repair these streets with shovelfuls of ashes; and soil, refuse-water, etc.,
stand in every hole, there to remain until absorbed by wind or sun.... An
ordinary cottage, in Leeds, extends over no more than about five yards square,
and consists usually of a cellar, a sitting-room, and a sleeping chamber. This
small size of the houses crammed with human beings both day and night, is
another point dangerous alike to the morals and the health of the
inhabitants."

And how greatly these cottages are crowded, the Report on the Health of the
Working-Classes, quoted above, bears testimony:

"In Leeds, brothers and sisters, and lodgers of both sexes,
are found occupying the same sleeping-room with the parents, and consequences
occur which humanity shudders to contemplate."

So, too, Bradford, which, but seven miles from Leeds at the junction of
several valleys, lies upon the banks of a small, coal-black, foul-smelling
stream. On week-days the town is enveloped in a grey cloud of coal smoke, but
on a fine Sunday it offers a superb picture, when viewed from the surrounding
heights. Yet within reigns the same filth and discomfort as in Leeds. The older
portions of the town are built upon steep hillsides, and are narrow and
irregular. In the lanes, alleys, and courts lie filth and débris in
heaps; the houses are ruinous, dirty, and miserable, and in the immediate
vicinity of the river and the valley bottom I found many a one whose
ground-floor, half-buried in the hillside, was totally abandoned. In general,
the portions of the valley bottom in which working-men's cottages have crowded
between the tall factories, are among the worst-built and dirtiest districts of
the whole town. In the newer portions of this, as of every other factory town,
the cottages are more regular, being built in rows, but they share here, too,
all the evils incident to the customary method of providing working-men's
dwellings, evils of which we shall have occasions to speak more particularly in
discussing Manchester. The same is true of the remaining towns of the West
Riding, especially of Barnsley, Halifax, and Huddersfield. The last named, the
handsomest by far of all the factory towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire by
reason of its charming situation and modern architecture, has yet its bad
quarter; for a committee appointed by a meeting of citizens to survey the town
reported August 5th, 1844:

"It is notorious that there are whole streets in the town of
Huddersfield, and many courts and alleys, which are neither flagged, paved,
sewered, nor drained; where garbage and filth of every description are left on
the surface to ferment and rot; where pools of stagnant water are almost
constant, where the dwellings adjoining are thus necessarily caused to be of an
inferior and even filthy description; thus where disease is engendered, and the
health of the whole town perilled."

If we cross Blackstone Edge or penetrate it with the railroad, we enter upon
that classic soil on which English manufacture has achieved its masterwork and
from which all labour movements emanate, namely, South Lancashire with its
central city Manchester. Again we have beautiful hill country, sloping gently
from the watershed westwards towards the Irish Sea, with the charming green
valleys of the Ribble, the Irwell, the Mersey, and their tributaries, a country
which, a hundred years ago chiefly swamp land, thinly populated, is now sown
with towns and villages, and is the most densely populated strip of country in
England. In Lancashire, and especially in Manchester, English manufacture finds
at once its starting-point and its centre. The Manchester Exchange is the
thermometer for all the fluctuations of trade. The modern art of manufacture
has reached its perfection in Manchester. In the cotton industry of South
Lancashire, the application of the forces of Nature, the superseding of
hand-labour by machinery (especially by the power-loom and the self-acting
mule), and the division of labour, are seen at the highest point; and, if we
recognise in these three elements that which is characteristic of modern
manufacture, we must confess that the cotton industry has remained in advance
of all other branches of industry from the beginning down to the present day.
The effects of modern manufacture upon the working-class must necessarily
develop here most freely and perfectly, and the manufacturing proletariat
present itself in its fullest classic perfection. The degradation to which the
application of steam-power, machinery and the division of labour reduce the
working-man, and the attempts of the proletariat to rise above this abasement,
must likewise be carried to the highest point and with the fullest
consciousness. Hence because Manchester is the classic type of a modern
manufacturing town, and because I know it as intimately as my own native town,
more intimately than most of its residents know it, we shall make a longer stay
here.

The towns surrounding Manchester vary little from the central city, so far
as the working-people's quarters are concerned, except that the working-class
forms, if possible, a larger proportion of their population. These towns are
purely industrial and conduct all their business through Manchester upon which
they are in every respect dependent, whence they are inhabited only by
working-men and petty tradesmen, while Manchester has a very considerable
commercial population, especially of commission and "respectable" retail
dealers. Hence Bolton, Preston, Wigan, Bury, Rochdale, Middleton, Heywood,
Oldham, Ashton, Stalybridge, Stockport, etc., though nearly all towns of
thirty, fifty, seventy to ninety thousand inhabitants, are almost wholly
working-people's districts, interspersed only with factories, a few
thoroughfares lined with shops, and a few lanes along which the gardens and
houses of the manufacturers are scattered like villas. The towns themselves are
badly and irregularly built with foul courts, lanes, and back alleys, reeking
of coal smoke, and especially dingy from the originally bright red brick,
turned black with time, which is here the universal building material. Cellar
dwellings are general here; wherever it is in any way possible, these
subterranean dens are constructed, and a very considerable portion of the
population dwells in them.

Among the worst of these towns after Preston and Oldham is Bolton, eleven
miles north-west of Manchester. It has, so far as I have been able to observe
in my repeated visits, but one main street, a very dirty one, Deansgate, which
serves as a market, and is even in the finest weather a dark, unattractive hole
in spite of the fact that, except for the factories, its sides are formed by
low one and two-storied houses. Here, as everywhere, the older part of the town
is especially ruinous and miserable. A dark-coloured body of water, which
leaves the beholder in doubt whether it is a brook or a long string of stagnant
puddles, flows through the town and contributes its share to the total
pollution of the air, by no means pure without it.

There is Stockport, too, which lies on the Cheshire side of the Mersey, but
belongs nevertheless to the manufacturing district of Manchester. It lies in a
narrow valley along the Mersey, so that the streets slope down a steep hill on
one side and up an equally steep one on the other, while the railway from
Manchester to Birmingham passes over a high viaduct above the city and the
whole valley. Stockport is renowned throughout the entire district as one of
the duskiest, smokiest holes, and looks, indeed, especially when viewed from
the viaduct, excessively repellent. But far more repulsive are the cottages and
cellar dwellings of the working-class, which stretch in long rows through all
parts of the town from the valley bottom to the crest of the hill. I do not
remember to have seen so many cellars used as dwellings in any other town of
this district.

A few miles north-east of Stockport is Ashton-under-Lyne, one of the newest
factory towns of this region. It stands on the slope of a hill at the foot of
which are the canal and the river Tame, and is, in general, built on the newer,
more regular plan. Five or six parallel streets stretch along the hill,
intersected at right angles by others leading down into the valley. By this
method, the factories would be excluded from the town proper, even if the
proximity of the river and the canal-way did not draw them all into the valley
where they stand thickly crowded, belching forth black smoke from their
chimneys. To this arrangement Ashton owes a much more attractive appearance
than that of most factory towns; the streets are broader and cleaner, the
cottages look new, bright red, and comfortable. But the modern system of
building cottages for working-men has its own disadvantages; every street has
its concealed back lane to which a narrow paved path leads, and which is all
the dirtier. And, although I saw no buildings, except a few on entering, which
could have been more than fifty years old, there are even in Ashton streets in
which the cottages are getting bad, where the bricks in the house-corners are
no longer firm but shift about, in which the walls have cracks and will not
hold the chalk whitewash inside; streets, whose dirty, smoke-begrimed aspect is
nowise different from that of the other towns of the district, except that in
Ashton this is the exception, not the rule.

A mile eastward lies Stalybridge, also on the Tame. In coming over the hill
from Ashton, the traveller has, at the top, both right and left, fine large
gardens with superb villa-like houses in their midst, built usually in the
Elizabethan style, which is to the Gothic precisely what the Anglican Church is
to the Apostolic Roman Catholic. A hundred paces farther and Stalybridge shows
itself in the valley, in sharp contrast with the beautiful country seats, in
sharp contrast even with the modest cottages of Ashton! Stalybridge lies in a
narrow, crooked ravine, much narrower even than the valley at Stockport, and
both sides of this ravine are occupied by an irregular group of cottages,
houses, and mills. On entering, the very first cottages are narrow,
smoke-begrimed, old and ruinous; and as the first houses, so the whole town. A
few streets lie in the narrow valley bottom, most of them run criss-cross,
pell-mell, up hill and down, and in nearly all the houses, by reason of this
sloping situation, the ground-floor is half-buried in the earth; and what
multitudes of courts, back lanes, and remote nooks arise out of this confused
way of building may be seen from the hills, whence one has the town, here and
there, in a bird's-eye view almost at one's feet. Add to this the shocking
filth, and the repulsive effect of Stalybridge, in spite of its pretty
surroundings, may be readily imagined.

But enough of these little towns. Each has its own peculiarities, but in
general, the working-people live in them just as in Manchester. Hence I have
especially sketched only their peculiar construction, and would observe that
all more general observations as to the condition of the labouring population
in Manchester are fully applicable to these surrounding towns as well.

Manchester lies at the foot of the southern slope of a range of hills, which
stretch hither from Oldham, their last peak, Kersallmoor, being at once the
race course and the Mons Sacer of Manchester. Manchester proper lies on the
left bank of the Irwell, between that stream and the two smaller ones, the Irk
and the Medlock, which here empty into the Irwell. On the right bank of the
Irwell, bounded by a sharp curve of the river, lies Salford, and farther
westward Pendleton; northward from the Irwell lie Upper and Lower Broughton;
northward of the Irk, Cheetham Hill; south of the Medlock lies Hulme; farther
east Chorlton on Medlock; still farther, pretty well to the east of Manchester,
Ardwick. The whole assemblage of buildings is commonly called Manchester, and
contains about four hundred thousand inhabitants, rather more than less. The
town itself is peculiarly built, so that a person may live in it for years, and
go in and out daily without coming into contact with a working-people's quarter
or even with workers, that is, so long as he confines himself to his business
or to pleasure walks. This arises chiefly from the fact, that by unconscious
tacit agreement, as well as with outspoken conscious determination, the
working-people's quarters are sharply separated from the sections of the city
reserved for the middle- class; or, if this does not succeed, they are
concealed with the cloak of charity. Manchester contains, at its heart, a
rather extended commercial district, perhaps half a mile long and about as
broad, and consisting almost wholly of offices and warehouses. Nearly the whole
district is abandoned by dwellers, and is lonely and deserted at night; only
watchmen and policemen traverse its narrow lanes with their dark lanterns. This
district is cut through by certain main thoroughfares upon which the vast
traffic concentrates, and in which the ground level is lined with brilliant
shops. In these streets the upper floors are occupied, here and there, and
there is a good deal of life upon them until late at night. With the exception
of this commercial district, all Manchester proper, all Salford and Hulme, a
great part of Pendleton and Chorlton, two-thirds of Ardwick, and single
stretches of Cheetham Hill and Broughton are all unmixed working-people's
quarters, stretching like a girdle, averaging a mile and a half in breadth,
around the commercial district. Outside, beyond this girdle, lives the upper
and middle bourgeoisie, the middle bourgeoisie in regularly laid out streets in
the vicinity of the working quarters, especially in Chorlton and the lower
lying portions of Cheetham Hill; the upper bourgeoisie in remoter villas with
gardens in Chorlton and Ardwick, or on the breezy heights of Cheetham Hill,
Broughton, and Pendleton, in free, wholesome country air, in fine, comfortable
homes, passed once every half or quarter hour by omnibuses going into the city.
And the finest part of the arrangement is this, that the members of this money
aristocracy can take the shortest road through the middle of all the labouring
districts to their places of business without ever seeing that they are in the
midst of the grimy misery that lurks to the right and the left. For the
thoroughfares leading from the Exchange in all directions out of the city are
lined, on both sides, with an almost unbroken series of shops, and are so kept
in the hands of the middle and lower bourgeoisie, which, out of self-interest,
cares for a decent and cleanly external appearance and can care for it. True,
these shops bear some relation to the districts which lie behind them, and are
more elegant in the commercial and residential quarters than when they hide
grimy working-men's dwellings; but they suffice to conceal from the eyes of the
wealthy men and women of strong stomachs and weak nerves the misery and grime
which form the complement of their wealth. So, for instance, Deansgate, which
leads from the Old Church directly southward, is lined first with mills and
warehouses, then with second-rate shops and alehouses; farther south, when it
leaves the commercial district, with less inviting shops, which grow dirtier
and more interrupted by beerhouses and gin-palaces the farther one goes, until
at the southern end the appearance of the shops leaves no doubt that workers
and workers only are their customers. So Market Street running south-east from
the Exchange; at first brilliant shops of the best sort, with counting-houses
or warehouses above; in the continuation, Piccadilly, immense hotels and
warehouses; in the farther continuation, London Road, in the neighbourhood of
the Medlock, factories, beerhouses, shops for the humbler bourgeoisie and the
working populations; and from this point onward, large gardens and villas of
the wealthier merchants and manufacturers. In this way any one who knows
Manchester can infer the adjoining districts from the appearance of the
thoroughfare, but one is seldom in a position to catch from the street a
glimpse of the real labouring districts. I know very well that this
hypocritical plan is more or less common to all great cities; I know, too, that
the retail dealers are forced by the nature of their business to take
possession of the great highways; I know that there are more good buildings
than bad ones upon such streets everywhere, and that the value of land is
greater near them than in remoter districts; but at the same time I have never
seen so systematic a shutting out of the working-class from the thoroughfares,
so tender a concealment of everything which might affront the eye and the
nerves of the bourgeoisie, as in Manchester. And yet, in other respects,
Manchester is less built according to a plan, after officials regulations, is
more an outgrowth of accident than any other city; and when I consider in this
connection the eager assurances of the middle-class, that the working-class is
doing famously, I cannot help feeling that the Liberal manufacturers, the "Big
Wigs" of Manchester, are not so innocent after all, in the matter of this
shameful method of construction.

I may mention just here that the mills almost all adjoin the rivers or the
different canals that ramify throughout the city, before I proceed at once to
describe the labouring quarters. First of all, there is the Old Town of
Manchester, which lies between the northern boundary of the commercial district
and the Irk. Here the streets, even the better ones, are narrow and winding, as
Todd Street, Long Millgate, Withy Grove, and Shude Hill, the
houses dirty,
old, and tumble-down, and the construction of the side streets utterly
horrible. Going from the Old Church to Long Millgate, the stroller has at once
a row of old-fashioned houses at the right, of which not one has kept its
original level; these are remnants of the old pre-manufacturing Manchester,
whose former inhabitants have removed with their descendants into better-built
districts, and have left the houses, which were not good enough for them, to a
population strongly mixed with Irish blood. Here one is in an almost
undisguised working-men's quarter, for even the shops and beerhouses hardly
take the trouble to exhibit a trifling degree of cleanliness. But all this is
nothing in comparison with the courts and lanes which lie behind, to which
access can be gained only through covered passages, in which no two human
beings can pass at the same time. Of the irregular cramming together of
dwellings in ways which defy all rational plan, of the tangle in which they are
crowded literally one upon the other, it is impossible to convey an idea. And
it is not the buildings surviving from the old times of Manchester which are to
blame for this; the confusion has only recently reached its height when every
scrap of space left by the old way of building has been filled up and patched
over until not a foot of land is left to be further occupied.

To confirm my statement I have drawn here a small section of the plan of
Manchester – not the worst spot and not one-tenth of the whole Old Town.

This drawing will suffice to characterise the irrational manner in which the
entire district was built, particularly the part near the Irk.

The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and between fifteen and thirty
feet high. On this declivitous hillside there are planted three rows of houses,
of which the lowest rise directly out of the river, while the front walls of
the highest stand on the crest of the hill in Long Millgate. Among them are
mills on the river, in short, the method of construction is as crowded and
disorderly here as in the lower part of Long Millgate. Right and left a
multitude of covered passages lead from the main street into numerous courts,
and he who turns in thither gets into a filth and disgusting grime, the equal
of which is not to be found – especially in the courts which lead down to
the Irk, and which contain unqualifiedly the most horrible dwellings which I
have yet beheld. In one of these courts there stands directly at the entrance,
at the end of the covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the
inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul
pools of stagnant urine and excrement. This is the first court on the Irk above
Ducie Bridge – in case any one should care to look into it. Below it on the
river there are several tanneries which fill the whole neighbourhood with the
stench of animal putrefaction. Below Ducie Bridge the only entrance to most of
the houses is by means of narrow, dirty stairs and over heaps of refuse and
filth. The first court below Ducie Bridge, known as Allen's Court, was in such
a state at the time of the cholera that the sanitary police ordered it
evacuated, swept, and disinfected with chloride of lime. Dr. Kay gives a
terrible description of the state of this court at that time. [10] Since then, it seems to have been
partially torn away and rebuilt; at least looking down from Ducie Bridge, the
passer-by sees several ruined walls and heaps of debris with some newer houses.
The view from this bridge, mercifully concealed from mortals of small stature
by a parapet as high as a man, is characteristic for the whole district. At the
bottom flows, or rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling
stream, full of debris and refuse, which it deposits on the shallower right
bank. In dry weather, a long string of the most disgusting, blackish-green,
slime pools are left standing on this bank, from the depths of which bubbles of
miasmatic gas constantly arise and give forth a stench unendurable even on the
bridge forty or fifty feet above the surface of the stream. But besides this,
the stream itself is checked every few paces by high weirs, behind which slime
and refuse accumulate and rot in thick masses. Above the bridge are tanneries,
bonemills, and gasworks, from which all drains and refuse find their way into
the Irk, which receives further the contents of all the neighbouring sewers and
privies. It may be easily imagined, therefore, what sort of residue the stream
deposits. Below the bridge you look upon the piles of débris, the
refuse, filth, and offal from the courts on the steep left bank; here each
house is packed close behind its neighbour and a piece of each is visible, all
black, smoky, crumbling, ancient, with broken panes and window-frames. The
background is furnished by old barrack-like factory buildings. On the lower
right bank stands a long row of houses and mills; the second house being a ruin
without a roof, piled with débris; the third stands so low that the
lowest floor is uninhabitable, and therefore without windows or doors. Here the
background embraces the pauper burial-ground, the station of the Liverpool and
Leeds railway, and, in the rear of this, the Workhouse, the "Poor-Law Bastille"
of Manchester, which, like a citadel, looks threateningly down from behind its
high walls and parapets on the hilltop, upon the working-people'a quarter
below.

Above Ducie Bridge, the left bank grows more flat and the right bank
steeper, but the condition of the dwellings on both bank grows worse rather
than better. He who turns to the left here from the main street, Long Millgate,
is lost; he wanders from one court to another, turns countless corners, passes
nothing but narrow, filthy nooks and alleys, until after a few minutes he has
lost all clue, and knows not whither to turn. Everywhere half or wholly ruined
buildings, some of them actually uninhabited, which means a great deal here;
rarely a wooden or stone floor to be seen in the houses, almost uniformly
broken, ill-fitting windows and doors, and a state of filth! Everywhere heaps
of débris, refuse, and offal; standing pools for gutters, and a stench
which alone would make it impossible for a human being in any degree civilised
to live in such a district. The newly built extension of the Leeds railway,
which crosses the Irk here, has swept away some of these courts and lanes,
laying others completely open to view. Immediately under the railway bridge
there stands a court, the filth and horrors of which surpass all the others by
far, just because it was hitherto so shut off, so secluded that the way to it
could not be found without a good deal of trouble, I should never have
discovered it myself, without the breaks made by the railway, though I thought
I knew this whole region thoroughly. Passing along a rough bank, among stakes
and washing-lines, one penetrates into this chaos of small one-storied,
one-roomed huts, in most of which there is no artificial floor; kitchen, living
and sleeping-room all in one. In such a hole, scarcely five feet long by six
broad, I found two beds – and such bedsteads and beds! – which, with a
staircase and chimney-place, exactly filled the room. In several others I found
absolutely nothing, while the door stood open, and the inhabitants leaned
against it. Everywhere before the doors refuse and offal; that any sort of
pavement lay underneath could not be seen but only felt, here and there, with
the feet. This whole collection of cattle-sheds for human beings was surrounded
on two sides by houses and a factory, and on the third by the river, and
besides the narrow stair up the bank, a narrow doorway alone led out into
another almost equally ill-built, ill-kept labyrinth of dwellings.

Enough! The whole side of the Irk is built in this way, a planless, knotted
chaos of houses, more or less on the verge of uninhabitableness, whose unclean
interiors fully correspond with their filthy external surroundings. And how
could the people be clean with no proper opportunity for satisfying the most
natural and ordinary wants? Privies are so rare here that they are either
filled up every day, or are too remote for most of the inhabitants to use. How
can people wash when they have only the dirty Irk water at hand, while pumps
and water pipes can be found in decent parts of the city alone? In truth, it
cannot be charged to the account of these helots of modern society if their
dwellings are not more cleanly than the pig-sties which are here and there to
be seen among them. The landlords are not ashamed to let dwellings like the six
or seven cellars on the quay directly below Scotland Bridge, the floors of
which stand at least two feet below the low-water level of the Irk that flows
not six feet away from them; or like the upper floor of the corner-house on the
opposite shore directly above the bridge, where the ground-floor, utterly
uninhabitable, stands deprived of all fittings for doors and windows, a case by
no means rare in this region, when this open ground-floor is used as a privy by
the whole neighbourhood for want of other facilities!

If we leave the Irk and penetrate once more on the opposite side from Long
Millgate into the midst of the working-men's dwellings, we shall come into a
somewhat newer quarter, which stretches from St. Michael's Church to Withy
Grove and Shude Hill. Here there is somewhat better order. In place of the
chaos of buildings, we find at least long straight lanes and alleys or courts,
built according to a plan and usually square. But if, in the former case, every
house was built according to caprice, here each lane and court is so built,
without reference to the situation of the adjoining ones. The lanes run now in
this direction, now in that, while every two minutes the wanderer gets into a
blind alley, or, on turning a corner, finds himself back where he started from;
certainly no one who has not lived a considerable time in this labyrinth can
find his way through it.

If I may use the word at all in speaking of this district, the ventilation
of these streets and courts is, in consequence of this confusion, quite as
imperfect as in the Irk region; and if this quarter may, nevertheless, be said
to have some advantage over that of the Irk, the houses being newer and the
streets occasionally having gutters, nearly every house has, on the other hand,
a cellar dwelling, which is rarely found in the Irk district, by reason of the
greater age and more careless construction of the houses. As for the rest, the
filth, débris, and offal heaps, and the pools in the streets are
common to both quarters, and in the district now under discussion, another
feature most injurious to the cleanliness of the inhabitants, is the multitude
of pigs walking about in all the alleys, rooting into the offal heaps, or kept
imprisoned in small pens. Here, as in most of the working-men's quarters of
Manchester, the pork-raisers rent the courts and build pig-pens in them. In
almost every court one or even several such pens may be found, into which the
inhabitants of the court throw all refuse and offal, whence the swine grow fat;
and the atmosphere, confined on all four sides, is utterly corrupted by
putrefying animal and vegetable substances. Through this quarter, a broad and
measurably decent street has been cut, Millers Street, and the background has
been pretty successfully concealed. But if any one should be led by curiosity
to pass through one of the numerous passages which lead into the courts, he
will find this piggery repeated at every twenty paces.

Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am
forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough
to convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the
defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which
characterise the construction of this single district, containing at least
twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants. And such a district exists in the heart
of the second city of England, the first manufacturing city of the world. If
any one wishes to see in how little space a human being can move, how little
air – and such air! – he can breathe, how little of civilisation he
may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither. True, this is
the Old Town, and the people of Manchester emphasise the fact whenever
any one mentions to them the frightful condition of this Hell upon Earth; but
what does that prove? Everything which here arouses horror and indignation is
of recent origin, belongs to the industrial epoch. The couple of
hundred houses, which belong to old Manchester, have been long since abandoned
by their original inhabitants; the industrial epoch alone has crammed into them
the swarms of workers whom they now shelter; the industrial epoch alone has
built up every spot between these old houses to win a covering for the masses
whom it has conjured hither from the agricultural districts and from Ireland;
the industrial epoch alone enables the owners of these cattlesheds to rent them
for high prices to human beings, to plunder the poverty of the workers, to
undermine the health of thousands, in order that they alone, the
owners, may grow rich. In the industrial epoch alone has it become possible
that the worker scarcely freed from feudal servitude could be used as mere
material, a mere chattel; that he must let himself be crowded into a dwelling
too bad for every other, which he for his hard-earned wages buys the right to
let go utterly to ruin. This manufacture has achieved, which, without these
workers, this poverty, this slavery could not have lived. True, the original
construction of this quarter was bad, little good could have been made out of
it; but, have the landowners, has the municipality done anything to improve it
when rebuilding? On the contrary, wherever a nook or corner was free, a house
has been run up; where a superfluous passage remained, it has been built up;
the value of land rose with the blossoming out of manufacture, and the more it
rose, the more madly was the work of building up carried on, without reference
to the health or comfort of the inhabitants, with sole reference to the highest
possible profit on the principle that no hole is so bad but that some poor
creature must take it who can pay for nothing better. However, it is the
Old Town, and with this reflection the bourgeoisie is comforted. Let us see,
therefore, how much better it is in the New Town.

The New Town, known also as Irish Town, stretches up a hill of
clay, beyond the Old Town, between the Irk and St. George's Road. Here all the
features of a city are lost. Single rows of houses or groups of streets stand,
here and there, like little villages on the naked, not even grass-grown clay
soil; the houses, or rather cottages, are in bad order, never repaired, filthy,
with damp, unclean, cellar dwellings; the lanes are neither paved nor supplied
with sewers, but harbour numerous colonies of swine penned in small sties or
yards, or wandering unrestrained through the neighbourhood. The mud in the
streets is so deep that there is never a chance, except in the dryest weather,
of walking without sinking into it ankle deep at every step. In the vicinity of
St. George's Road, the separate groups of buildings approach each other more
closely, ending in a continuation of lanes, blind alleys, back lanes and
courts, which grow more and more crowded and irregular the nearer they approach
the heart of the town. True, they are here oftener paved or supplied with paved
sidewalks and gutters; but the filth, the bad order of the houses, and
especially of the cellars, remain the same.

It may not be out of place to make some general observations just here as to
the customary construction of working-men's quarters in Manchester. We have
seen how in the Old Town pure accident determined the grouping of the houses in
general. Every house is built without reference to any other, and the scraps of
space between them are called courts for want of another
name. In
the somewhat newer portions of the same quarter, and in other working-men's
quarters, dating from the early days of industrial activity, a somewhat more
orderly arrangement may be found. The space between two streets is divided into
more regular, usually square courts.

These courts were built in this way from the beginning, and communicate with
the streets by means of covered passages. If the totally planless construction
is injurious to the health of the workers by preventing ventilation, this
method of shutting them up in courts surrounded on all sides by buildings is
far more so. The air simply cannot escape; the chimneys of the houses are the
sole drains for the imprisoned atmosphere of the courts, and they serve the
purpose only so long as fire is kept burning. [11] Moreover, the houses
surrounding such courts are usually built back to back, having the rear wall in
common; and this alone suffices to prevent any sufficient through ventilation.
And, as the police charged with care of the streets does not trouble itself
about the condition of these courts, as everything quietly lies where it is
thrown, there is no cause for wonder at the filth and heaps of ashes and offal
to be found here. I have been in courts, in Millers Street, at least half a
foot below the level of the thoroughfare, and without the slightest drainage
for the water that accumulates in them in rainy weather!

More recently another different method of building was adopted, and has now
become general. Working-men's cottages are almost never built singly, but
always by the dozen or score; a single contractor building up one or two
streets at a time. These are then arranged as follows: One front is formed of
cottages of the best class, so fortunate as to possess a back door and small
court, and these command the highest rent. In the rear of these cottages runs a
narrow alley, the back street, built up at both ends, into which either a
narrow roadway or a covered passage leads from one side. The cottages which
face this back street command least rent, and are most neglected. These have
their rear walls in common with the third row of cottages, which face a second
street and command less rent than the first row and more than the second. The
streets are laid out somewhat in the following
manner:

By this method of construction, comparatively good ventilation can be
obtained for the first row of cottages, and the third row is no worse off than
in the former method. The middle row, on the other hand, is at least as badly
ventilated as the houses in the courts, and the back street is always in the
same filthy, disgusting condition as they. The contractors prefer this method
because it saves them space, and furnishes the means of fleecing better-paid
workers through the higher rents of the cottages in the first and third rows.

These three different forms of cottage building are found all over
Manchester and throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire, often mixed up together,
but usually separate enough to indicate the relative age of parts of towns. The
third system, that of the back alleys, prevails largely in the great
working-men's district east of St. George's Road and Ancoats Street, and is the
one most often found in the other working-men's quarters of Manchester and its
suburbs.

In the last-mentioned broad district included under the name Ancoats, stand
the largest mills of Manchester lining the canals, colossal six and
seven-storied buildings towering with their slender chimneys far above the low
cottages of the workers. The population of the district consists, therefore,
chiefly of mill-hands, and in the worst streets, of hand-weavers. The streets
nearest the heart of the town are the oldest, and consequently the worst; they
are, however, paved, and supplied with drains. Among them I include those
nearest to and parallel with Oldham Road and Great Ancoats Street. Farther to
the north-east lie many newly built-up streets; here the cottages look neat and
cleanly, doors and windows are new and freshly painted, the rooms within newly
whitewashed; the streets themselves are better aired, the vacant building lots
between them larger and more numerous. But this can be said of a minority of
the houses only, while cellar dwellings are to be found under almost every
cottage; many streets are unpaved and without sewers; and, worse than all, this
neat appearance is all pretence, a pretence which vanishes within the first ten
years. For the construction of the cottages individually is no less to be
condemned than the plan of the streets. All such cottages look neat and
substantial at first; their massive brick walls deceive the eye, and, on
passing through a newly built working- men's street, without remembering the
back alleys and the construction of the houses themselves, one is inclined to
agree with the assertion of the Liberal manufacturers that the working
population is nowhere so well housed as in England. But on closer examination,
it becomes evident that the walls of these cottages are as thin as it is
possible to make them. The outer walls, those of the cellar, which bear the
weight of the ground-floor and roof, are one whole brick thick at most, the
bricks lying with their long sides
touching ;
but I have seen many a cottage of the same height, some in process of building,
whose outer walls were but one-half brick thick, the bricks lying not sidewise
but lengthwise, their narrow ends
touching .
The object of this is to spare material, but there is also another reason for
it; namely, the fact that the contractors never own the land but lease it,
according to the English custom, for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or
ninety-nine years, at the expiration of which time it falls, with everything
upon it, back into the possession of the original holder, who pays nothing in
return for improvements upon it. The improvements are therefore so calculated
by the lessee as to be worth as little as possible at the expiration of the
stipulated term. And as such cottages are often built but twenty or thirty
years before the expiration of the term, it may easily be imagined that the
contractors make no unnecessary expenditures upon them. Moreover, these
contractors, usually carpenters and builders, or manufacturers, spend little or
nothing in repairs, partly to avoid diminishing their rent receipts, and partly
in view of the approaching surrender of the improvement to the landowner; while
in consequence of commercial crises and the loss of work that follows them,
whole streets often stand empty, the cottages falling rapidly into ruin and
uninhabitableness. It is calculated in general that working-men's cottages last
only forty years on the average. This sounds strangely enough when one sees the
beautiful, massive walls of newly built ones, which seem to give promise of
lasting a couple of centuries; but the fact remains that the niggardliness of
the original expenditure, the neglect of all repairs, the frequent periods of
emptiness, the constant change of inhabitants, and the destruction carried on
by the dwellers during the final ten years, usually Irish families, who do not
hesitate to use the wooden portions for firewood – all this, taken together,
accomplishes the complete ruin of the cottages by the end of forty years. Hence
it comes that Ancoats, built chiefly since the sudden growth of manufacture,
chiefly indeed within the present century, contains a vast number of ruinous
houses, most of them being, in fact, in the last stages of inhabitableness. I
will not dwell upon the amount of capital thus wasted, the small additional
expenditure upon the original improvement and upon repairs which would suffice
to keep this whole district clean, decent, and inhabitable for years together.
I have to deal here with the state of the houses and their inhabitants, and it
must be admitted that no more injurious and demoralising method of housing the
workers has yet been discovered than precisely this. The working-man is
constrained to occupy such ruinous dwellings because he cannot pay for others,
and because there are no others in the vicinity of his mill; perhaps, too,
because they belong to the employer, who engages him only on condition of his
taking such a cottage. The calculation with reference to the forty years'
duration of the cottage is, of course, not always perfectly strict; for, if the
dwellings are in a thickly built-up portion of the town, and there is a good
prospect of finding steady occupants for them, while the ground-rent is high,
the contractors do a little something to keep the cottages inhabitable after
the expiration of the forty years. They never do anything more, however, than
is absolutely unavoidable, and the dwellings so repaired are the worst of all.
Occasionally when an epidemic threatens, the otherwise sleepy conscience of the
sanitary police is a little stirred, raids are made into the working-men's
districts, whole rows of cellars and cottages are closed, as happened in the
case of several lanes near Oldham Road; but this does not last long: the
condemned cottages soon find occupants again, the owners are much better off by
letting them, and the sanitary police won't come again so soon. These east and
north-east sides of Manchester are the only ones on which the bourgeoisie has
not built, because ten or eleven months of the year the west and south-west
wind drives the smoke of all the factories hither, and that the working-people
alone may breathe.

Southward from Great Ancoats Street, lies a great, straggling, working-men's
quarter, a hilly, barren stretch of land, occupied by detached, irregularly
built rows of houses or squares, between these, empty building lots, uneven,
clayey, without grass and scarcely passable in wet weather. The cottages are
all filthy and old, and recall the New Town to mind. The stretch cut through by
the Birmingham railway is the most thickly built-up and the worst. Here flows
the Medlock with countless windings through a valley, which is, in places, on a
level with the valley of the Irk. Along both sides of the stream, which is
coal-black, stagnant and foul, stretches a broad belt of factories and
working-men's dwellings, the latter all in the worst condition. The bank is
chiefly declivitous and is built over to the water's edge, just as we saw along
the Irk; while the houses are equally bad, whether built on the Manchester side
or in Ardwick, Chorlton, or Hulme. But the most horrible spot (if I should
describe all the separate spots in detail I should never come to the end) lies
on the Manchester side, immediately south-west of Oxford Road, and is known as
Little Ireland. In a rather deep hole, in a curve of the Medlock and surrounded
on all four sides by tall factories and high embankments, covered with
buildings, stand two groups of about two hundred cottages, built chiefly back
to back, in which live about four thousand human beings, most of them Irish.
The cottages are old, dirty, and of the smallest sort, the streets uneven,
fallen into ruts and in part without drains or pavement; masses of refuse,
offal and sickening filth lie among standing pools in all directions; the
atmosphere is poisoned by the effluvia from these, and laden and darkened by
the smoke of a dozen tall factory chimneys. A horde of ragged women and
children swarm about here, as filthy as the swine that thrive upon the garbage
heaps and in the puddles. In short, the whole rookery furnishes such a hateful
and repulsive spectacle as can hardly be equalled in the worst court on the
Irk. The race that lives in these ruinous cottages, behind broken windows,
mended with oilskin, sprung doors, and rotten doorposts, or in dark, wet
cellars, in measureless filth and stench, in this atmosphere penned in as if
with a purpose, this race must really have reached the lowest stage of
humanity. This is the impression and the line of thought which the exterior of
this district forces upon the beholder. But what must one think when he hears
that in each of these pens, containing at most two rooms, a garret and perhaps
a cellar, on the average twenty human beings live; that in the whole region,
for each one hundred and twenty persons, one usually inaccessible privy is
provided; and that in spite of all the preachings of the physicians, in spite
of the excitement into which the cholera epidemic plunged the sanitary police
by reason of the condition of Little Ireland, in spite of everything, in this
year of grace 1844, it is in almost the same state as in 1831! Dr. Kay asserts
that not only the cellars but the first floors of all the houses in this
district are damp; that a number of cellars once filled up with earth have now
been emptied and are occupied once more by Irish people; that in one cellar the
water constantly wells up through a hole stopped with clay, the cellar lying
below the river level, so that its occupant, a hand-loom weaver, had to bale
out the water from his dwelling every morning and pour it into the street!

Farther down, on the left side of the Medlock, lies Hulme, which properly
speaking, is one great working-people's district, the condition of which
coincides almost exactly with that of Ancoats; the more thickly built-up
regions chiefly bad and approaching ruin, the less populous of more modern
structure, but generally sunk in filth. On the other side of the Medlock, in
Manchester proper, lies a second great working-men's district which stretches
on both sides of Deansgate as far as the business quarter, and in certain parts
rivals the Old Town. Especially in the immediate vicinity of the business
quarter, between Bridge and Quay Streets, Princess and Peter Streets, the
crowded construction exceeds in places the narrowest courts of the Old Town.
Here are long narrow lanes between which run contracted, crooked courts and
passages, the entrances to which are so irregular that the explorer is caught
in a blind alley at every few steps, or comes out where he least expects to,
unless he knows every court and every alley exactly and separately. According
to Dr. Kay, the most demoralised class of all Manchester lived in these ruinous
and filthy districts, people whose occupations are thieving and prostitution
and, to all appearances, his assertion is still true at the present moment.
When the sanitary police made its expedition hither in 1831, it found the
uncleanness as great as in Little Ireland or along the Irk (that it is not much
better today, I can testify); and among other items, they found in Parliament
Street for three hundred and eighty persons, and in Parliament Passage for
thirty thickly populated houses, but a single privy.

If we cross the Irwell to Salford, we find on a peninsula formed by the
river a town of eighty thousand inhabitants, which, properly speaking, is one
large working-men's quarter, penetrated by a single wide avenue. Salford, once
more important than Manchester, was then the leading town of the surrounding
district to which it still gives its name, Salford Hundred. Hence it is that an
old and therefore very unwholesome, dirty, and ruinous locality is to be found
here, lying opposite the Old Church of Manchester, and in as bad a condition as
the Old Town on the other side of the Irwell. Farther away from the river lies
the newer portion, which is, however, already beyond the limit of its forty
years of cottage life, and therefore ruinous enough. All Salford is built in
courts or narrow lanes, so narrow, that they remind me of the narrowest I have
ever seen, the little lanes of Genoa. The average construction of Salford is in
this respect much worse than that of Manchester, and so, too, in respect to
cleanliness. If, in Manchester, the police, from time to time, every six or ten
years, makes a raid upon the working-people's districts, closes the worst
dwellings, and causes the filthiest spots in these Augean stables to be
cleansed, in Salford it seems to have done absolutely nothing. The narrow side
lanes and courts of Chapel Street, Greengate, and Gravel Lane have certainly
never been cleansed since they were built. Of late, the Liverpool railway has
been carried through the middle of them, over a high viaduct, and has abolished
many of the filthiest nooks; but what does that avail? Whoever passes over this
viaduct and looks down, sees filth and wretchedness enough; and, if any one
takes the trouble to pass through these lanes and glance through the open doors
and windows into the houses and cellars, he can convince himself afresh with
every step that the workers of Salford live in dwellings in which cleanliness
and comfort are impossible. Exactly the same state of affairs is found in the
more distant regions of Salford, in Islington, along Regent Road, and back of
the Bolton railway. The working-men's dwellings between Oldfield Road and Cross
Lane, where a mass of courts and alleys are to be found in the worst possible
state, vie with the dwellings of the Old Town in filth and overcrowding. In
this district I found a man, apparently about sixty years old, living in a
cow-stable. He had constructed a sort of chimney for his square pen, which had
neither windows, floor, nor ceiling, had obtained a bedstead and lived there,
though the rain dripped through his rotten roof. This man was too old and weak
for regular work, and supported himself by removing manure with a hand-cart;
the dung-heaps lay next door to his palace!

Such are the various working-people's quarters of Manchester as I had
occasion to observe them personally during twenty months. If we briefly
formulate the result of our wanderings, we must admit that 350,000
working-people of Manchester and its environs live, almost all of them, in
wretched, damp, filthy cottages, that the streets which surround them are
usually in the most miserable and filthy condition, laid out without the
slightest reference to ventilation, with reference solely to the profit secured
by the contractor. In a word, we must confess that in the working-men's
dwellings of Manchester, no cleanliness, no convenience, and consequently no
comfortable family life is possible; that in such dwellings only a physically
degenerate race, robbed of all humanity, degraded, reduced morally and
physically to bestiality, could feel comfortable and at home. And I am not
alone in making this assertion. We have seen that Dr. Kay gives precisely the
same description; and, though it is superfluous, I quote further the words of a
Liberal, recognised and highly valued as an authority by the manufacturers, and
a fanatical opponent of all independent movements of the workers: [12]

"But when I went through their [i.e., the Manchester
operatives'] habitations in Irish Town, and Ancoats, and Little Ireland, my
only wonder was that tolerable health could be maintained by the inmates of
such houses. These towns, for such they are in extent and population, have been
erected by small speculators with an utter disregard to everything except
immediate profit. A carpenter and a bricklayer club to buy a patch of ground
[i.e., they lease it for a number of years], and cover it with what they call
houses. In one place we saw a whole street following the course of a ditch, in
order to have deeper cellars (cellars for people, not for lumber) without the
expense of excavations. Not a house in this street escaped cholera. And
generally speaking, throughout these suburbs the streets are unpaved, with a
dung-hill or a pond in the middle; the houses built back to back, without
ventilation or drainage; and whole families occupy a corner of a cellar or of a
garret."

I have already referred to the unusual activity which the sanitary police
manifested during the cholera visitation. When the epidemic was approaching, a
universal terror seized the bourgeoisie of the city. People remembered the
unwholesome dwellings of the poor, and trembled before the certainty that each
of these slums would become a centre for the plague, whence it would spread
desolation in all directions through the houses of the propertied class. A
Health Commission was appointed at once to investigate these districts, and
report upon their condition to the Town Council. Dr. Kay, himself a member of
this Commission, who visited in person every separate police district except
one, the eleventh, quotes extracts from their reports: There were inspected, in
all, 6,951 houses – naturally in Manchester proper alone, Salford and the
other suburbs being excluded. Of these, 2,565 urgently needed whitewashing
within; 960 were out of repair, 959 had insufficient drains; 1,455 were damp;
452 were badly ventilated; 2,221 were without privies. Of the 687 streets
inspected, 248 were unpaved, 53 but partially paved, 112 ill- ventilated, 352
containing standing pools, heaps of debris, refuse, etc. To cleanse such an
Augean stable before the arrival of the cholera was, of course, out of the
question. A few of the worst nooks were therefore cleansed, and everything else
left as before. In the cleansed spots, as Little Ireland proves, the old filthy
condition was naturally restored in a couple of months. As to the internal
condition of these houses, the same Commission reports a state of things
similar to that which we have already met with in London, Edinburgh, and other
cities.

"A whole Irish family is often accommodated on a single bed,
and sometimes a heap of filthy straw and a covering of old sacking hide them in
one undistinguished heap, debased alike by penury, want of economy and
dissolute habits. Frequently the inspectors found two families crowded into one
small house, containing only two apartments, one in which they slept, and
another in which they eat; and often more than one family lived in a damp
cellar, containing only one room, in whose pestilential atmosphere from twelve
to sixteen persons were crowded. To these fertile sources of disease were
sometimes added the keeping of the pigs and other animals in the house, with
other nuisances of the most revolting character."

We must add that many families, who had but one room for themselves, receive
boarders and lodgers in it, that such lodgers of both sexes by no means rarely
sleep in the same bed with the married couple; and that the single case of a
man and his wife and his adult sister-in-law sleeping in one bed was found,
according to the "Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring
Population", six times repeated in Manchester. Common lodging-houses, too, are
very numerous; Dr. Kay gives their number in 1831 as 267 in Manchester proper,
and they must have increased greatly since then. Each of these receives from
twenty to thirty guests, so that they shelter all told, nightly, from five to
seven thousand human beings. The character of the houses and their guests is
the same as in other cities. Five to seven beds in each room lie on the floor
– without bedsteads, and on these sleep, mixed indiscriminately, as many
persons as apply. What physical and moral atmosphere reigns in these holes I
need not state. Each of these houses is a focus of crime, the scene of deeds
against which human nature revolts, which would perhaps never have been
executed but for this forced centralisation of vice. Gaskell [13] gives the number of persons living in
cellars in Manchester proper as 20,000. The Weekly Dispatch gives the
number, "according to official reports", as twelve per cent of the
working-class, which agrees with Gaskell's number; the workers being estimated
at 175,000, 21,000 would form twelve per cent of it. The cellar dwellings in
the suburbs are at least as numerous. so that the number of persons living in
cellars in Manchester – using its name in the broader sense – is not less
than forty to fifty thousand. So much for the dwellings of the workers in the
largest cities and towns. The manner in which the need of a shelter is
satisfied furnishes a standard for the manner in which all other necessities
are supplied. That in these filthy holes a ragged, ill-fed population alone can
dwell is a safe conclusion, and such is the fact. The clothing of the
working-people, in the majority of cases, is in a very bad condition. The
material used for it is not of the best adapted. Wool and linen have almost
vanished from the wardrobe of both sexes, and cotton has taken their place.
Shirts are made of bleached or coloured cotton goods; the dresses of the women
are chiefly of cotton print goods, and woollen petticoats are rarely to be seen
on the washline. The men wear chiefly trousers of fustian or other heavy cotton
goods, and jackets or coats of the same. Fustian has become the proverbial
costume of the working-men, who are called "fustian jackets", and call
themselves so in contrast to the gentlemen who wear broadcloth, which latter
words are used as characteristic for the middle-class. When Feargus O'Connor,
the Chartist leader, came to Manchester during the insurrection of 1842, he
appeared, amidst the deafening applause of the working-men, in a fustian suit
of clothing. Hats are the universal head-covering in England, even for
working-men, hats of the most diverse forms, round, high, broad-brimmed,
narrow- brimmed, or without brims – only the younger men in factory towns
wearing caps. Any one who does not own a hat folds himself a low, square paper
cap.

The whole clothing of the working-class, even assuming it to be in good
condition, is little adapted to the climate. The damp air of England, with its
sudden changes of temperature, more calculated than any other to give rise to
colds, obliges almost the whole middle-class to wear flannel next to the skin,
about the body, and flannel scarfs and shirts are in almost universal use. Not
only is the working-class deprived of this precaution, it is scarcely ever in a
position to use a thread of woollen clothing; and the heavy cotton goods,
though thicker, stiffer, and heavier than woollen clothes, afford much less
protection against cold and wet, remain damp much longer because of their
thickness and the nature of the stuff, and have nothing of the compact density
of fulled woollen cloths. And, if a working-man once buys himself a woollen
coat for Sunday, he must get it from one of the "cheap shops" where he finds
bad, so-called "Devil's-dust" cloth, manufactured for sale and not for use, and
liable to tear or grow threadbare in a fortnight, or he must buy of an old
clothes'-dealer a half-worn coat which has seen its best days, and lasts but a
few weeks. Moreover, the working-man's clothing is, in most cases, in bad
condition, and there is the oft-recurring necessity for placing the best pieces
in the pawnbroker's shop. But among very large numbers, especially among the
Irish, the prevailing clothing consists of perfect rags often beyond all
mending, or so patched that the original colour can no longer be detected. Yet
the English and Anglo-Irish go on patching, and have carried this art to a
remarkable pitch, putting wool or bagging on fustian, or the reverse – it's
all the same to them. But the true, transplanted Irish hardly ever patch except
in the extremest necessity, when the garment would otherwise fall apart.
Ordinarily the rags of the shirt protrude through the rents in the coat or
trousers. They wear, as Thomas Carlyle says, [14]

"a suit of tatters, the getting on or off which is said to
be a difficult operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides of
the calendar."

The Irish have introduced, too, the custom, previously unknown in England,
of going barefoot. In every manufacturing town there is now to be seen a
multitude of people, especially women and children, going about barefoot, and
their example is gradually being adopted by the poorer English.

As with clothing, so with food. The workers get what is too bad for the
property-holding class. In the great towns of England everything may be had of
the best, but it costs money; and the workman, who must keep house on a couple
of pence, cannot afford much expense. Moreover, he usually receives his wages
on Saturday evening, for, although a beginning has been made in the payment of
wages on Friday, this excellent arrangement is by no means universal; and so he
comes to market at five or even seven o'clock, while the buyers of the
middle-class have had the first choice during the morning, when the market
teems with the best of everything. But when the workers reach it, the best has
vanished, and, if it was still there, they would probably not be able to buy
it. The potatoes which the workers buy are usually poor, the vegetables wilted,
the cheese old and of poor quality, the bacon rancid, the meat lean, tough,
taken from old, often diseased, cattle, or such as have died a natural death,
and not fresh even then, often half decayed. The sellers are usually small
hucksters who buy up inferior goods, and can sell them cheaply by reason of
their badness. The poorest workers are forced to use still another device to
get together the things they need with their few pence. As nothing can be sold
on Sunday, and all shops must be closed at twelve o'clock on Saturday night,
such things as would not keep until Monday are sold at any price between ten
o'clock and midnight. But nine-tenths of what is sold at ten o'clock is past
using by Sunday morning, yet these are precisely the provisions which make up
the Sunday dinner of the poorest class. The meat which the workers buy is very
often past using; but having bought it, they must eat it. On the 6th of
January, 1844 (if I am not greatly mistaken), a court leet was held in
Manchester, when eleven meat-sellers were fined for having sold tainted meat.
Each of them had a whole ox or pig, or several sheep, or from fifty to sixty
pounds of meat, which were all confiscated in a tainted condition. In one case,
fifty-four stuffed Christmas geese were seized which had proved unsaleable in
Liverpool, and had been forwarded to Manchester, where they were brought to
market foul and rotten. All the particulars, with names and fines, were
published at the time in the Manchester Guardian. In the six weeks,
from July 1st to August 14th [1844], the same sheet reported three similar
cases. According to the Guardian for July 3rd, a pig, weighing 200
pounds, which had been found dead and decayed, was cut up and exposed for sale
by a butcher at Heywood, and was then seized. According to the number for July
31st, two butchers at Wigan, of whom one had previously been convicted of the
same offence, were fined £2 and £4 respectively, for exposing tainted meat for
sale; and, according to the number for August 10th, twenty-six tainted hams
seized at a dealer's in Bolton, were publicly burnt, and the dealer fined
twenty shillings. But these are by no means all the cases; they do not even
form a fair average for a period of six weeks, according to which to form an
average for the year. There are often seasons in which every number of the
semi-weekly Guardian mentions a similar case found in Manchester or
its vicinity. And when one reflects upon the many cases which must escape
detection in the extensive markets that stretch along the front of every main
street, under the slender supervision of the market inspectors – and how else
can one explain the boldness with which whole animals are exposed for sale? –
when one considers how great the temptation must be, in view of the
incomprehensibly small fines mentioned in the foregoing cases; when one
reflects what condition a piece of meat must have reached to be seized by the
inspectors, it is impossible to believe that the workers obtain good and
nourishing meat as a usual thing. But they are victimised in yet another way by
the money-greed of the middle-class. Dealers and manufacturers adulterate all
kinds of provisions in an atrocious manner, and without the slightest regard to
the health of the consumers. We have heard the Manchester Guardian
upon this subject, let us hear another organ of the middle-class – I delight
in the testimony of my opponents – let us hear the Liverpool Mercury:

"Salt butter is moulded into the form of pounds of fresh
butter, and cased over with fresh. In other instances a pound of fresh is
conspicuously placed to be tasted; but that pound is not sold; and in other
instances salt butter, washed, is moulded and sold as fresh.... Pounded rice
and other cheap materials are mixed in sugar, and sold at full monopoly price.
A chemical substance – the refuse of the soap manufactories – is also mixed
with other substances and sold as sugar.... Chicory is mixed in good coffee.
Chicory, or some similarly cheap substance, is skilfully moulded into the form
of the coffee berry, and is mixed with the bulk very liberally.... Cocoa is
extensively adulterated with fine brown earth, wrought up with mutton fat, so
as to amalgamate with portions of the real article.... The leaves of tea are
mingled with sloe levies and other abominations. Used leaves are also re-dried,
and re-coloured on hot copper plates, and sold as tea. Pepper is adulterated
with dust from husks etc.; port wine is altogether manufactured (from spirits,
dyes, etc.), it being notorious that more port wine is drunk in this country
than is made in Portugal. Nasty things of all sorts are mixed with the weed
tobacco in all its manufactured forms".

I can add that several of the most respected tobacco dealers in Manchester
announced publicly last summer, that, by reason of the universal adulteration
of tobacco, no firm could carry on business without adulteration, and that no
cigar costing less than three pence is made wholly from tobacco. These frauds
are naturally not restricted to articles of food, though I could mention a
dozen more, the villainy of mixing gypsum or chalk with flour among them. Fraud
is practised in the sale of articles of every sort: flannel, stockings, etc.,
are stretched, and shrink after the first washing; narrow cloth is sold as
being from one and a half to three inches broader than it actually is;
stoneware is so thinly glazed that the glazing is good for nothing and cracks
at once, and a hundred other rascalities, tout comme chez nous. But
the lion's share of the evil results of these frauds falls to the workers. The
rich are less deceived, because they can pay the high prices of the large shops
which have a reputation to lose, and would injure themselves more than their
customers if they kept poor or adulterated wares; the rich are spoiled, too, by
habitual good eating, and detect adulteration more easily with their sensitive
palates. But the poor, the working-people, to whom a couple of farthings are
important, who must buy many things with little money, who cannot afford to
inquire too closely into the quality of their purchases, and cannot do so in
any case because they have had no opportunity of cultivating their taste – to
their share fall all the adulterated, poisoned provisions. They must deal with
the small retailers, must buy perhaps on credit, and.these small retail dealers
who cannot sell even the same quality of goods so cheaply as the largest
retailers, because of their small capital and the large proportional expenses
of their business, must knowingly or unknowingly buy adulterated goods in order
to sell at the lower prices required, and to meet the competition of the
others. Further, a large retail dealer who has extensive capital invested in
his business is ruined with his ruined credit if detected in a fraudulent
practice; but what harm does it do a small grocer, who has customers in a
single street only, if frauds are proved against him? If no one trusts him in
Ancoats, he moves to Chorlton or Hulme, where no one knows him, and where he
continues to defraud as before; while legal penalties attach to very few
adulterations unless they involve revenue frauds. Not in the quality alone, but
in the quantity of his goods as well, is the English working-man defrauded. The
small dealers usually have false weights and measures, and an incredible number
of convictions for such offences may be read in the police reports. How
universal this form of fraud is in the manufacturing districts, a couple of
extracts from the Manchester Guardian may serve to show. They cover only a
short period, and, even here, I have not all the numbers at hand:

Guardian, June 15, 1844, Rochdale Sessions.– Four
dealers fined five to ten shillings for using light weights. Stockport
Sessions.– Two dealers fined one shilling, one of them having seven light
weights and a false scale, and both having been warned.

Guardian, June 19, Rochdale Sessions.– One dealer fined five, and two
farmers ten shillings.

Guardian, June 22, Manchester Justices of the Peace.– Nineteen
dealers fined two shillings and sixpence to two pounds.

Guardian, June 26, Ashton Sessions.– Fourteen dealers and farmers
fined two shillings and sixpence to one pound. Hyde Petty Sessions.– Nine
farmers and dealers condemned to pay costs and five shillings fines.

Guardian, July 6, Manchester.– Sixteen dealers condemned to pay costs
and fines not exceeding ten shillings.

Guardian, July 13, Manchester.– Nine dealers fined from two shillings
and sixpence to twenty shillings.

Guardian, July 24, Rochdale.– Four dealers fined ten to twenty
shillings.

Guardian, July 27, Bolton.– Twelve dealers and innkeepers condemned
to pay costs.

Guardian, August 3, Bolton.– Three dealers fined two shillings and
sixpence, and five shillings.

Guardian, August 10, Bolton.– One dealer fined five shillings.

And the same causes which make the working-class the chief sufferers from
frauds in the quality of goods make them the usual victims of frauds in the
question of quantity too.

The habitual food of the individual working-man naturally varies according
to his wages. The better-paid workers, especially those in whose families every
member is able to earn something, have good food as long as this state of
things lasts; meat daily and bacon and cheese for supper. Where wages are less,
meat is used only two or three times a week, and the proportion of bread and
potatoes increases. Descending gradually, we find the animal food reduced to a
small piece of bacon cut up with the potatoes; lower still, even this
disappears, and there remain only bread, cheese, porridge, and potatoes, until
on the lowest round of the ladder, among the Irish, potatoes form the sole
food, As an accompaniment, weak tea, with perhaps a little sugar, milk, or
spirits, is universally drunk. Tea is regarded in England, and even in Ireland,
as quite as indispensable as coffee in Germany, and where no tea is used, the
bitterest poverty reigns. But all this presupposes that the workman has work.
When he has none, he is wholly at the mercy of accident, and eats what is given
him, what he can beg or steal. And, if he gets nothing, he simply starves, as
we have seen. The quantity of food varies, of course, like its quality,
according to the rate of wages, so that among ill-paid workers, even if they
have no large families, hunger prevails in spite of full and regular work; and
the number of the ill-paid is very large. Especially in London, where the
competition of the workers rises with the increase of population, this class is
very numerous, but it is to be found in other towns as well. In these cases all
sorts of devices are used; potato parings, vegetable refuse, and rotten
vegetables [15] are eaten for want of
other food, and everything greedily gathered up which may possibly contain an
atom of nourishment. And, if the week's wages are used up before the end of the
week, it often enough happens that in the closing days the family gets only as
much food, if any, as is barely sufficient to keep off starvation. Of course
such a way of living unavoidably engenders a multitude of diseases, and when
these appear, when the father from whose work the family is chiefly supported,
whose physical exertion most demands nourishment, and who therefore first
succumbs – when the father is utterly disabled, then misery reaches its
height, and then the brutality with which society abandons its members, just
when their need is greatest, comes out fully into the light of day.

To sum up briefly the facts thus far cited. The great towns are chiefly
inhabited by working-people, since in the best case there is one bourgeois for
two workers, often for three, here and there for four; these workers have no
property whatsoever of their own, and live wholly upon wages, which usually go
from hand to mouth. Society, composed wholly of atoms, does not trouble itself
about them; leaves them to care for themselves and their families, yet supplies
them no means of doing this in an efficient and permanent manner. Every
working-man, even the best, is therefore constantly exposed to loss of work and
food, that is to death by starvation, and many perish in this way. The
dwellings of the workers are everywhere badly planned, badly built, and kept in
the worst condition, badly ventilated, damp, and unwholesome. The inhabitants
are confined to the smallest possible space, and at least one family usually
sleeps in each room. The interior arrangement of the dwellings is
poverty-stricken in various degrees, down to the utter absence of even the most
necessary furniture. The clothing of the workers, too, is generally scanty, and
that of great multitudes is in rags. The food is, in general, bad; often almost
unfit for use, and in many cases, at least at times, insufficient in quantity,
so that, in extreme cases, death by starvation results. Thus the working-class
of the great cities offers a graduated scale of conditions in life, in the best
cases a temporarily endurable existence for hard work and good wages, good and
endurable, that is, from the worker's standpoint; in the worst cases, bitter
want, reaching even homelessness and death by starvation. The average is much
nearer the worst case than the best. And this series does not fall into fixed
classes, so that one can say, this fraction of the working-class is well off,
has always been so, and remains so. If that is the case here and there, if
single branches of work have in general an advantage over others, yet the
condition of the workers in each branch is subject to such great fluctuations
that a single working-man may be so placed as to pass through the whole range
from comparative comfort to the extremest need, even to death by starvation,
while almost every English working-man can tell a tale of marked changes of
fortune. Let us examine the causes of this somewhat more closely.

NOTES

3. This applies to the time of sailing vessels. The Thames
now is a dreary collection of ugly steamers.– F. E.– Note by Engels to
the American edition of 1887

(1892) This was written nearly fifty years ago, in the days of the
picturesque sailing vessels. In so far as such ships still ply to and from
London they are now to be found only in the docks, while the river itself is
covered with ugly, sooty steamers.– Note by Engels to the German edition
of 1892.

4. The description given below had already been written when
I came across an article in the Illuminated Magazine (October 1844)
dealing with the working-class districts in London which coincides – in many
places almost literally and everywhere in general tenor – with what I had
said. The article was entitled "The Dwellings of the Poor, from the notebook of
an M.D." – Note by Engels.

5. Times, Oct. 12th, 1843.– Note by
Engels.

6. Quoted by Dr. W. P. Alison. F.R.S.E., Fellow and late
President of the Royal College of Physicians, etc., etc. Observations on
the Management of the Poor in Scotland and its Effects on the Health of Great
Towns, Edinburgh. 1840. The author is a religious Tory, brother of the
historian, Archibald Alison.– Note by Engels. Return
to Text

7. Report to the Home Secretary from the Poor-Law
Commissioner, on an Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring
Classes in Great Britain, with Appendix. Presented to both Houses of
Parliament in July, 1842, 3 vols, Folio. Assembled and arranged from medical
reports by Edwin Chadwick, Secretary of the Poor-Law Commissioners. – Note
by Engels

8. Arts and Artisans at Home and Abroad, by J. C.
Symons, Edinburgh, 1839. The author, as it seems, himself a Scotchman, is a
Liberal, and consequently fanatically opposed to every independent movement of
working-men. The passages here cited are to be found p. 116 et seq.–Note
by Engels.

9. It must be borne in mind that these cellars are not mere
storing-rooms for rubbish, but dwellings of human beings.– Note by
Engels.

10.The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working
Classes employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester. By James Ph.
Kay, M.D. 2nd Ed. 1852.

Dr. Kay confuses the working-class in general with the factory
workers, otherwise an excellent pamphlet.– Note by Engels.

11. And yet an English Liberal wiseacre asserts, in the
Report of the Children's Employment Commission, that these courts are
the masterpiece of municipal architecture, because, like a multitude of little
parks, they improve ventilation, the circulation of air! Certainly, if each
court had two or four broad open entrances facing each other, through which the
air could pour; but they never have two, rarely one, and usually only a narrow
covered passage.– Note by Engels.

12. Nassau W. Senior, Letters on the Factory Act to the
Rt. Hon., the President of the Board of Trade (Chas. Poulett Thomson,
Esq.), London, 1837, p. 24.– Note by Engels. Return
to Text

13. P. Gaskell, The Manufacturing Population of
England: its Moral, Social and Physical Condition, and the Changes which have
arisen from the Use of Steam Machinery; with an Examination of Infant Labour.
Fiat Justitia, 1855.– Depicting chiefly the state of the working-class in
Lancashire. The author is a Liberal, but wrote at a time when it was not a
feature of Liberalism to chant the happiness of the workers. He is therefore
unprejudiced, and can afford to have eyes for the evils of the present state of
things, and especially for the factory system. On the other hand, he wrote
before the Factories Enquiry Commission, and adopts from untrustworthy sources
many assertions afterwards refuted by the report of the Commission. This work,
although on the whole a valuable one, can therefore only be used with
discretion, especially as the author, like Kay, confuses the whole
working-class with the mill-hands. The history of the development of the
proletariat contained in the introduction to the present work, is chiefly taken
from this work of Gaskell's.– Note by Engels. Return
to Text

14. Thomas Carlyle, Chartism, London, 1840, p.28.
Concerning Thomas Carlyle see below.– Note by Engels.

15. Weekly Dispatch, April or May, 1844, according
to a report by Dr. Southwood Smith on the condition of the poor in London. –
Note by Engels.

## Competition

We have seen in the introduction how competition created the proletariat at
the very beginning of the industrial movement by increasing the wages of
weavers in consequence of the increased demand for woven goods, so inducing the
weaving peasants to abandon their farms and earn more money by devoting
themselves to their looms. We have seen how it crowded out the small farmers by
means of the large farm system, reduced them to the rank of proletarians, and
attracted them in part into the towns; how it further ruined the small
bourgeoisie in great measure and reduced its members also to the ranks of the
proletariat; how it centralised capital in the hands of the few, and population
in the great towns. Such are the various ways and means by which competition,
as it reached its full manifestation and free development in modern industry,
created and extended the proletariat. We shall now have to observe its
influence on the working-class already created. And here we must begin by
tracing the results of competition of single workers with one another.

Competition is the completest expression of the battle of all against all
which rules in modern civil society. This battle, a battle for life, for
existence, for everything, in case of need a battle of life and death, is
fought not between the different classes of society only, but also between the
individual members of these classes. Each is in the way of the other, and each
seeks to crowd out all who are in his way, and to put himself in their place.
The workers are in constant competition among themselves as are the members of
the bourgeoisie among themselves. The power-loom weaver is in competition with
the hand-loom weaver, the unemployed or ill-paid hand-loom weaver with him who
has work or is better paid, each trying to supplant the other. But this
competition of the workers among themselves is the worst side of the present
state of things in its effect upon the worker, the sharpest weapon against the
proletariat in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Hence the effort of the workers to
nullify this competition by associations, hence the hatred of the bourgeoisie
towards these associations, and its triumph in every defeat which befalls them.

The proletarian is helpless; left to himself, he cannot live a single day.
The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in the broadest
sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this
bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the power of the state. The
proletarian is, therefore, in law and in fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie,
which can decree his life or death. It offers him the means of living, but only
for an "equivalent", for his work. It even lets him have the appearance of
acting from a free choice, of making a contract with free, unconstrained
consent, as a responsible agent who has attained his majority.

Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of either
accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of starving, of
freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests! A fine
"equivalent" valued at pleasure by the bourgeoisie! And if one proletarian is
such a fool as to starve rather than agree to the "equitable" propositions of
the bourgeoisie, his "natural superiors", [1] another is easily found in his
place; there are proletarians enough in the world, and not all so insane as to
prefer dying to living.

Here we have the competition of the workers among themselves. If all the
proletarians announced their determination to starve rather than work for the
bourgeoisie, the latter would have to surrender its monopoly. But this is not
the case – is, indeed, a rather impossible case – so that the
bourgeoisie still thrives. To this competition of the workers there is but one
limit; no worker will work for less than he needs to subsist. If he must
starve, he will prefer to starve in idleness rather than in toil. True, this
limit is relative; one needs more than another, one is accustomed to more
comfort than another; the Englishman, who is still somewhat civilised, needs
more than the Irishman, who goes in rags, eats potatoes, and sleeps in a
pig-sty. But that does not hinder the Irishman's competing with the Englishman,
and gradually forcing the rate of wages, and with it the Englishman's level of
civilisation, down to the Irishman's level. Certain kinds of work require a
certain grade of civilisation, and to these belong almost all forms of
industrial occupation; hence the interest of the bourgeoisie requires in this
case that wages should be high enough to enable the workman to keep himself
upon the required plane.

The newly immigrated Irishman, encamped in the first stable that offers, or
turned out in the street after a week because he spends everything upon drink
and cannot pay rent, would be a poor mill-hand. The mill-hand must, therefore,
have wages enough to enable him to bring up his children to regular work; but
no more, lest he should be able to get on without the wages of his children,
and so make something else of them than mere working-men. Here, too, the limit,
the minimum wage, is relative. When every member of the family works, the
individual worker can get on with proportionately less, and the bourgeoisie has
made the most of the opportunity of employing and making profitable the labour
of women and children afforded by machine-work. Of course it is not in every
family that every member can be set to work, and those in which the case is
otherwise would be in a bad way if obliged to exist upon the minimum wage
possible to a wholly employed family. Hence the usual wages form an average
according to which a fully employed family gets on pretty well, and one which
embraces few members able to work, pretty badly. But in the worst case, every
working-man prefers surrendering the trifling luxury to which he was accustomed
to not living at all; prefers a pig-pen to no roof, wears rags in preference to
going naked, confines himself to a potato diet in preference to starvation. He
contents himself with half-pay and the hope of better times rather than be
driven into the street to perish before the eyes of the world, as so many have
done who had no work whatever. This trifle, therefore, this something more than
nothing, is the minimum of wages. And if there are more workers at hand than
the bourgeoisie thinks well to employ – if at the end of the battle of
competition there yet remain workers who find nothing to do, they must simply
starve; for the bourgeois will hardly give them work if he cannot sell the
produce of their labour at a profit.

From this it is evident what the minimum of wages is. The maximum is
determined by the competition of the bourgeoisie among themselves; for we have
seen how they, too, must compete with each other. The bourgeois can increase
his capital only in commerce and manufacture, and in both cases he needs
workers. Even if he invests his capital at interest, he needs them indirectly;
for without commerce and manufacture, no one would pay him interest upon his
capital, no one could use it. So the bourgeois certainly needs workers, not
indeed for his immediate living, for at need he could consume his capital, but
as we need an article of trade or a beast of burden – as a means of
profit. The proletarian produces the goods which the bourgeois sells with
advantage. When, therefore, the demand for these goods increases so that all
the competing working-men are employed, and a few more might perhaps be useful,
the competition among the workers falls away, and the bourgeoisie begin to
compete among themselves. The capitalist in search of workmen knows very well
that his profits increase as prices rise in consequence of the increased demand
for his goods, and pays a trifle higher wages rather than let the whole profit
escape him. He sends the butter to fetch the cheese, and getting the latter,
leaves the butter ungrudgingly to the workers. So one capitalist after another
goes in chase of workers, and wages rise; but only as high as the increasing
demand permits. If the capitalist, who willingly sacrificed a part of his
extraordinary profit, runs into danger of sacrificing any part of his ordinary
average profit, he takes very good care not to pay more than average wages.

From this we can determine the average rate of wages. Under average
circumstances, when neither workers nor capitalists have reason to compete,
especially among themselves, when there are just as many workers at hand as can
be employed in producing precisely the goods that are demanded, wages stand a
little above the minimum. How far they rise above the minimum will depend upon
the average needs and the grade of civilisation of the workers. If the workers
are accustomed to eat meat several times in the week, the capitalists must
reconcile themselves to paying wages enough to make this food attainable; not
less, because the workers are not competing among themselves and have no
occasion to content themselves with less; not more, because the capitalists, in
the absence of competition among themselves, have no occasion to attract
working-men by extraordinary favours.

This standard of the average needs and the average civilisation of the
workers has become very complicated by reason of the complications of English
industry, and is different for different sorts of workers, as has been pointed
out. Most industrial occupations demand a certain skill and regularity, and for
these qualities, which involve a certain grade of civilisation, the rate of
wages must be such as to induce the worker to acquire such skill and subject
himself to such regularity. Hence it is that the average wages of industrial
workers are higher than those of mere porters, day-labourers, etc., higher
especially than those of agricultural labourers, a fact to which the additional
cost of the necessities of life in cities contributes somewhat. In other words,
the worker is, in law and in fact, the slave of the property-holding class, so
effectually a slave that he is sold like a piece of goods, rises and falls in
value like a commodity. If the demand for workers increases, the price of
workers rises; if it falls, their price falls. If it falls so greatly that a
number of them become unsaleable, if they are left in stock, they are simply
left idle; and as they cannot live upon that, they die of starvation. For, to
speak in the words of the economists, the expense incurred in maintaining them
would not be reproduced, would be money thrown away, and to this end no man
advances capital; and, so far, Malthus was perfectly right in his theory of
population. The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is
this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for
all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner
sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead,
being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding
class. For him the matter is unchanged at bottom, and if this semblance of
liberty necessarily gives him some real freedom on the one hand, it entails on
the other the disadvantage that no one guarantees him a subsistence, he is in
danger of being repudiated at any moment by his master, the bourgeoisie, and
left to die of starvation, if the bourgeoisie ceases to have an interest in his
employment, his existence. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, is far better
off under the present arrangement than under the old slave system; it can
dismiss its employees at discretion without sacrificing invested capital, and
gets its work done much more cheaply than is possible with slave labour, as
Adam Smith comfortingly pointed out. [2]

Hence it follows, too, that Adam Smith was perfectly right in making the
assertion:

"That the demand for men, like that for any other commodity,
necessarily regulates the production of men, quickens it when it goes on too
slowly, and stops it when it advances too fast."

Just as in the case of any other commodity! If there are too few
labourers on hand, prices, i.e., wages, rise, the workers are more prosperous,
marriages multiply, more children are born and more live to grow up, until a
sufficient number of labourers has been secured. If there are too many on hand,
prices fall, want of work, poverty, and starvation, and consequent diseases
arise, and the "surplus population" is put out of the way. And Malthus, who
carried the foregoing proposition of Smith farther, was also right, in his way,
in asserting that there is always a "surplus population"; that there are always
too many people in the world; he is wrong only when he asserts that there are
more people on hand than can be maintained from the available means of
subsistence. Surplus population is engendered rather by the competition of the
workers among themselves, which forces each separate worker to labour as much
each day as his strength can possibly admit. If a manufacturer can employ ten
hands nine hours daily, he can employ nine if each works ten hours, and the
tenth goes hungry. And if a manufacturer can force the nine hands to work an
extra hour daily for the same wages by threatening to discharge them at a time
when the demand for hands is not very great, he discharges the tenth and saves
so much wages. This is the process on a small scale, which goes on in a nation
on a large one. The productiveness of each hand raised to the highest pitch by
the competition of the workers among themselves, the division of labour, the
introduction of machinery, the subjugation of the forces of Nature, deprive a
multitude of workers of bread. These starving workers are then removed from the
market, they can buy nothing, and the quantity of articles of consumption
previously required by them is no longer in demand, need no longer be produced;
the workers previously employed in producing them are therefore driven out of
work, and are also removed from the market, and so it goes on, always the same
old round, or rather, so it would go if other circumstances did not intervene.
The introduction of the industrial forces already referred to for increasing
production leads, in the course of time, to a reduction of prices of the
articles produced and to consequent increased consumption, so that a large part
of the displaced workers finally, after long suffering, find work again. If, in
addition to this, the conquest of foreign markets constantly and rapidly
increases the demand for manufactured goods, as has been the case in England
during the past sixty years, the demand for hands increases, and, in proportion
to it, the population. Thus, instead of diminishing, the population of the
British Empire has increased with extraordinary rapidity, and is still
increasing. Yet, in spite of the extension of industry, in spite of the demand
for working-men which, in general, has increased, there is, according to the
confession of all the official political parties (Tory, Whig, and Radical),
permanent surplus, superfluous population; the competition among the workers is
constantly greater than the competition to secure workers.

Whence comes this incongruity? It lies in the nature of industrial
competition and the commercial crises which arise from it. In the present
unregulated production and distribution of the means of subsistence, which is
carried on not directly for the sake of supplying needs, but for profit, in the
system under which every one works for himself to enrich himself, disturbances
inevitably arise at every moment. For example, England supplies a number of
countries with most diverse goods. Now, although the manufacturer may know how
much of each article is consumed in each country annually, he cannot know how
much is on hand at every given moment, much less can he know how much his
competitors export thither. He can only draw most uncertain inferences from the
perpetual fluctuations in prices, as to the quantities on hand and the needs of
the moment. He must trust to luck in exporting his goods. Everything is done
blindly, as guess-work, more or less at the mercy of accident. Upon the
slightest favourable report each one exports what he can, and before long such
a market is glutted, sales stop, capital remains inactive, prices fall, and
English manufacture has no further employment for its hands. In the beginning
of the development of manufacture, these checks were limited to single branches
and single markets; but the centralizing tendency of competition, which drives
the hands thrown out of one branch into such other branches as are most easily
accessible and transfers the goods which cannot be disposed of in one market to
other markets, has gradually brought the single minor crises nearer together
and united them into one periodically recurring crisis. Such a crisis usually
recurs once in five years after a brief period of activity and general
prosperity; the home market, like all foreign ones, is glutted with English
goods, which it can only slowly absorb, the industrial movement comes to a
standstill in almost every branch, the small manufacturers and merchants who
cannot survive a prolonged inactivity of their invested capital fail, the
larger ones suspend business during the worst season, close their mills or work
short time, perhaps half the day; wages fall by reason of the competition of
the unemployed, the diminution of working-time and the lack of profitable
sales; want becomes universal among the workers, the small savings, which
individuals may have made, are rapidly consumed, the philanthropic institutions
are overburdened, the poor-rates are doubled, trebled, and still insufficient,
the number of the starving increases, and the whole multitude of "surplus"
population presses in terrific numbers into the foreground. This continues for
a time; the "surplus" exist as best they may, or perish; philanthropy and the
Poor Law help many of them to a painful prolongation of their existence. Others
find scant means of subsistence here and there in such kinds of work as have
been least open to competition, are most remote from manufacture. And with how
little can a human being keep body and soul together for a time! Gradually the
state of things improves; the accumulations of goods are consumed, the general
depression among the men of commerce and manufacture prevents a too hasty
replenishing of the markets, and at last rising prices and favourable reports
from all directions restore activity. Most of the markets are distant ones;
demand increases and prices rise constantly while the first exports are
arriving; people struggle for the first goods, the first sales enliven trade
still more, the prospective ones promise still higher prices; expecting a
further rise, merchants begin to buy upon speculation, and so to withdraw from
consumption the articles intended for it, just when they are most needed.
Speculation forces prices still higher, by inspiring others to purchase, and
appropriating new importations at once. All this is reported to England,
manufacturers begin to produce with a will, new mills are built, every means is
employed to make the most of the favourable moment. Speculation arises here,
too, exerting the same influence as upon foreign markets, raising prices,
withdrawing goods from consumption, spurring manufacture in both ways to the
highest pitch of effort. Then come the daring speculators working with
fictitious capital, living upon credit, ruined if they cannot speedily sell;
they hurl themselves into this universal, disorderly race for profits, multiply
the disorder and haste by their unbridled passion, which drives prices and
production to madness. It is a frantic struggle, which carries away even the
most experienced and phlegmatic; goods are spun, woven, hammered, as if all
mankind were to be newly equipped, as though two thousand million new consumers
had been discovered in the moon. All at once the shaky speculators abroad, who
must have money, begin to sell, below market price, of course, for their need
is urgent; one sale is followed by others, prices fluctuate, speculators throw
their goods upon the market in terror, the market is disordered, credit shaken,
one house after another stops payments, bankruptcy follows bankruptcy, and the
discovery is made that three times more goods are on hand or under way than can
be consumed. The news reaches England, where production has been going on at
full speed meanwhile, panic seizes all hands, failures abroad cause others in
England, the panic crushes a number of firms, all reserves are thrown upon the
market here, too, in the moment of anxiety, and the alarm is still further
exaggerated. This is the beginning of the crisis, which then takes precisely
the same course as its predecessor, and gives place in turn to a season of
prosperity. So it goes on perpetually,– prosperity, crisis, prosperity,
crisis, and this perennial round in which English industry moves is, as has
been before observed, usually completed once in five or six years.

From this it is clear that English manufacture must have, at all times save
the brief periods of highest prosperity, an unemployed reserve army of workers,
in order to be able to produce the masses of goods required by the market in
the liveliest months. This reserve army is larger or smaller, according as the
state of the market occasions the employment of a larger or smaller proportion
of its members. And if at the moment of highest activity of the market the
agricultural districts and the branches least affected by the general
prosperity temporarily supply to manufacture a number of workers, these are a
mere minority, and these too belong to the reserve army, with the single
difference that the prosperity of the moment was required to reveal their
connection with it. When they enter upon the more active branches of work,
their former employers draw in somewhat, in order to feel the loss less, work
longer hours, employ women and younger workers, and when the wanderers
discharged at the beginning of the crisis return, they find their places filled
and themselves superfluous – at least in the majority of cases. This
reserve army, which embraces an immense multitude during the crisis and a large
number during the period which may be regarded as the average between the
highest prosperity and the crisis, is the "surplus population" of England,
which keeps body and soul together by begging, stealing, street-sweeping,
collecting manure, pushing hand-carts, driving donkeys, peddling, or performing
occasional small jobs. In every great town a multitude of such people may be
found. It is astonishing in what devices this "surplus population" takes
refuge. The London crossing-sweepers are known all over the world; but hitherto
the principal streets in all the great cities, as well as the crossings, have
been swept by people out of other work, and employed by the Poor Law guardians
or the municipal authorities for the purpose. Now, however, a machine has been
invented which rattles through the streets daily, and has spoiled this source
of income for the unemployed. Along the great highways leading into the cities,
on which there is a great deal of wagon traffic, a large number of people may
be seen with small carts, gathering fresh horse-dung at the risk of their lives
among the passing coaches and omnibuses often paying a couple of shillings a
week to the authorities for the privilege. But this occupation is forbidden in
many places, because the ordinary street-sweepings thus impoverished cannot be
sold as manure. Happy are such of the "surplus" as can obtain a push-cart and
go about with it. Happier still those to whom it is vouchsafed to possess an
ass in addition to the cart. The ass must get his own food or is given a little
gathered refuse, and can yet bring in a trifle of money.

Most of the "surplus" betake themselves to huckstering. On Saturday
afternoons, especially, when the whole working population is on the streets,
the crowd who live from huckstering and peddling may be seen. Shoe and corset
laces, braces, twine, cakes, oranges, every kind of small articles are offered
by men, women, and children; and at other times also, such peddlers are always
to be seen standing at the street corners, or going about with cakes and
ginger-beer or nettle-beer.[3] Matches and such things, sealing-wax, and patent mixtures for
lighting fires are further resources of such vendors. Others, so-called
jobbers, go about the streets seeking small jobs. Many of these succeed in
getting a day's work, many are not so fortunate.

"At the gates of each of the [London] docks," says the Rev.
W. Champneys, preacher of the East End, "hundreds of poor men may be seen
before daybreak waiting for the opening of the gates in the hope of obtaining a
day's work; and when the youngest and most able-bodied, and those best known,
have been engaged, hundreds still may be seen returning to their destitute
families with that sickness of heart which arises from hope deferred."

When these people find no work and will not rebel against society, what
remains for them but to beg? And surely no one can wonder at the great army of
beggars, most of them able-bodied men, with whom the police carries on
perpetual war. But the beggary of these men has a peculiar character. Such a
man usually goes about with his family singing a pleading song in the streets
or appealing, in a speech, to the benevolence of the passers-by. And it is a
striking fact that these beggars are seen almost exclusively in the
working-people's districts, that it is almost exclusively the gifts of the poor
from which they live. Or the family takes up its position in a busy street, and
without uttering a word, lets the mere sight of its helplessness plead for it.
In this case, too, they reckon upon the sympathy of the workers alone, who know
from experience how it feels to be hungry, and are liable to find themselves in
the same situation at any moment; for this dumb yet most moving appeal, is met
with almost solely in such streets as are frequented by working-men, and at
such hours as working men pass by; but especially on summer evenings, when the
"secrets" of the working-people's quarters are generally revealed, and the
middle-class withdraws as far as possible from the district thus polluted. And
he among the "surplus" who has courage and passion enough openly to resist
society, to reply with declared war upon the bourgeoisie to the disguised war
which the bourgeoisie wages upon him, goes forth to rob, plunder, murder, and
burn!

Of this surplus population there are, according to the reports a the Poor
Law commissioners, on an average, a million and a half in England and Wales; in
Scotland the number cannot be ascertained for want of Poor Law regulations, and
with Ireland we shall deal separately. Moreover, this million and a half
includes only those who actually apply to the parish for relief; the great
multitude who struggle on without recourse to this most hated expedient, it
does not embrace. On the other hand, a good part of the number belongs to the
agricultural districts, and does not enter into the present discussion. During
.a crisis this number naturally increases markedly, and want reaches its
highest pitch. Take, for instance, the crisis of 1842, which, being the latest,
was the most violent; for the intensity of the crisis increases with each
repetition, and the next, which may be expected not later than 1847, will
probably be still more violent and lasting. During this crisis the poor-rates
rose in every town to a hitherto unknown height. In Stockport, among other
towns, for every pound paid in house-rent, eight shillings of poor-rate had to
be paid, so that the rate alone formed forty per cent of the house-rent.
Moreover whole streets stood vacant, so that there were at least twenty
thousand fewer inhabitants than usual, and on the doors of the empty houses
might be read: "Stockport to let." In Bolton where, in ordinary years, the
rents from which rates are paid average £86,000, they sank to £36,000. The
number of the poor to be supported rose, on the other hand, to 14,000, or more
than twenty per cent of the whole number of inhabitants. In Leeds, the Poor Law
guardians had a reserve fund of £10,000. This, with a contribution of £7,000,
was wholly exhausted before the crisis reached its height. So it was
everywhere. A report drawn up in January, 1845, by a committee of the Anti-Corn
Law League, on the condition of the industrial districts in 1842, which was
based upon detailed statements of the manufacturers, asserts that the poor-rate
was, taking the average, twice as high as in 1839, and that the number of
persons requiring relief has trebled, even quintupled, since that time; that a
multitude of applicants belong to a class which had never before solicited
relief; that the working-class commands more than two-thirds less of the means
of subsistence than from 1834-1836; that the consumption of meat had been
decidedly less, in some places twenty per cent, in others reaching sixty per
cent less; that even handicraftsmen, smiths, bricklayers, and others, who
usually have full employment in the most depressed periods, now suffered
greatly from want of work and reduction of wages; and that, even now, in
January, 1845, wages are still steadily falling. And these are the reports of
manufacturers!

The starving workmen, whose mills were idle, whose employers could give them
no work, stood in the streets in all directions, begged singly or in crowds,
besieged the sidewalks in armies, and appealed to the passers-by for help; they
begged, not cringing like ordinary beggars, but threatening by their numbers,
their gestures, and their words. Such was the state of things in all the
industrial districts, from Leicester to Leeds, and from Manchester to
Birmingham. Here and there disturbances arose, as in the Staffordshire
potteries, in July. The most frightful excitement prevailed among the workers
until the general insurrection broke out throughout the manufacturing districts
in August. When I came to Manchester in November, 1842, there were crowds of
unemployed working-men at every street corner, and many mills were still
standing idle. In the following months these unwilling corner loafers gradually
vanished, and the factories came into activity once more.

To what extent want and suffering prevail among these unemployed during such
a crisis, I need not describe. The poor-rates are insufficient, vastly
insufficient; the philanthropy of the rich is a rain-drop in the ocean, lost in
the moment of falling, beggary can support but few among the crowds. If the
small dealers did not sell to the working-people on credit at such times as
long as possible – paying themselves liberally afterwards, it must be
confessed – and if the working-people did not help each other, every
crisis would remove a multitude of the surplus through death by starvation.
Since, however, the most depressed period is brief, lasting, at worst, but one,
two, or two and a half years, most of them emerge from it with their lives
after dire privations. But indirectly by disease, etc., every crisis finds a
multitude of victims, as we shall see. First, however, let us turn to another
cause of abasement to which the English worker is exposed, a cause permanently
active in forcing the whole class downwards.

NOTES

1. A favourite expression of the English
manufacturers.– Note by Engels. Return to
Text

2. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, I., McCulloch's
edition in one volume, sect. 8, p. 36: "The wear and tear of a slave, it has
been said, is at the expense of his master, but that of a free servant is at
his own expense. The wear and tear of the latter, however, is, in reality, as
much at the expense of his master as that of the former. The wages paid to
journeymen and servants of every kind, must be such as may enable them, one
with another, to continue the race of journeymen and servants, according as the
increasing, diminishing, or stationary demand of the society may happen to
require. But though the wear and tear of a free servant be equally at the
expense of his master, it generally costs him much less than that of a slave.
The fund for replacing or repairing, if I may say so, the wear and tear of the
slave, is commonly managed by the negligent master or careless overseer."
– Note by Engels.

3. Two cooling effervescent drinks, the former made of
water, sugar and some ginger, the latter of water, sugar and nettles. They are
much liked by the workers, especially the teetotallers.– Note by
Engels.

## Irish Immigration

We have already referred several times in passing to the Irish who have
immigrated into England; and we shall now have to investigate more closely
the causes and results of this immigration.

The rapid extension of English industry could not have taken place if
England had not possessed in the numerous and impoverished population of
Ireland a reserve at command. The Irish had nothing to lose at home, and
much to gain in England; and from the time when it became known in Ireland
that the east side of St. George's Channel offered steady work and good
pay for strong arms, every year has brought armies of the Irish hither.
It has been calculated that more than a million have already immigrated,
and not far from fifty thousand still come every year, nearly all of whom
enter the industrial districts, especially the great cities, and there
form the lowest class of the population. Thus there are in London, 120,000;
in Manchester, 40,000; in Liverpool, 34,000; Bristol, 24,000; Glasgow,
40,000; Edinburgh, 29,000, poor Irish people. [4]These
people having grown up almost. without civilisation, accustomed from youth
to every sort of privation, rough, intemperate, and improvident, bring
all their brutal habits with them among a class of the English population
which has, in truth, little inducement to cultivate education and morality.
Let us hear Thomas Carlyle upon this subject: [5]

"The wild Milesian [6] features,
looking false ingenuity, restlessness, unreason, misery, and mockery, salute
you on all highways and byways. The English coachman, as he whirls past,
lashes the Milesian with his whip, curses him with his tongue; the Milesian
is holding out his hat to beg. He is the sorest evil this country has to
strive with. In his rags and laughing savagery, he is there to undertake
all work that can be done by mere strength of hand and back -- for wages
that will purchase him potatoes. He needs only salt for condiment, he lodges
to his mind in any pig-hutch or dog-hutch, roosts in outhouses, and wears
a suit of tatters, the getting on and off of which is said to be a difficult
operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides of the calendar.
The Saxon-man, if he cannot work on these terms, finds no work. The uncivilised
Irishman, not by his strength, but by the opposite of strength, drives
the Saxon native out, takes possession in his room. There abides he, in
his squalor and unreason, in his falsity and drunken violence, as the ready-made
nucleus of degradation and disorder. Whoever struggles, swimming with difficulty,
may now find an example how the human being can exist not swimming, but
sunk.... That the condition of the lower multitude of English labourers
approximates more and more to that of the Irish, competing with them in
all the markets: that whatsoever labour, to which mere strength with little
skill will suffice, is to be done, will be done not at the English price,
but at an approximation to the Irish price; at a price superior as yet
to the Irish, that is, superior to scarcity of potatoes for thirty weeks
yearly; superior, yet hourly, with the arrival of every new steamboat,
sinking nearer to an equality with that."

If we except his exaggerated and one-sided condemnation of the Irish national
character, Carlyle is perfectly right. These Irishmen who migrate for fourpence
to England, on the deck of a steamship on which they are often packed like
cattle, insinuate themselves everywhere. The worst dwellings are good enough
for them; their clothing causes them little trouble, so long as it holds
together by a single thread; shoes they know not; their food consists of
potatoes and potatoes only; whatever they earn beyond these needs they
spend upon drink. What does such a race want with high wages? The worst
quarters of all the large towns are inhabited by Irishmen. Whenever a district
is distinguished for especial filth and especial ruinousness, the explorer
may safely count upon meeting chiefly those Celtic faces which one recognises
at the first glance as different from the Saxon physiognomy of the native,
and the singing, aspirate brogue which the true Irishman never loses. I
have occasionally heard the Irish-Celtic language spoken in the most thickly
populated parts of Manchester. The majority of the families who live in
cellars are almost everywhere of Irish origin. In short, the Irish have,
as Dr. Kay says, discovered the minimum of the necessities of life, and
are now making the English workers acquainted with it. Filth and drunkenness,
too, they have brought with them. The lack of cleanliness, which is not
so injurious in the country, where population is scattered, and which is
the Irishman's second nature, becomes terrifying and gravely dangerous
through its concentration here in the great cities. The Milesian deposits
all garbage and filth before his house door here, as he was accustomed
to do at home, and so accumulates the pools and dirt-heaps which disfigure
the working- people's quarters and poison the air. He builds a pig-sty
against the house wall as he did at home, and if he is prevented from doing
this, he lets the pig sleep in the room with himself. This new and unnatural
method of cattle-raising in cities is wholly of Irish origin. The Irishman
loves his pig as the Arab his horse, with the difference that he sells
it when it is fat enough to kill. Otherwise, he eats and sleeps with it,
his children play with it, ride upon it, roll in the dirt with it, as any
one may see a thousand times repeated in all the great towns of England.
The filth and comfortlessness that prevail in the houses themselves it
is impossible to describe. The Irishman is unaccustomed to the presence
of furniture; a heap of straw, a few rags, utterly beyond use as clothing,
suffice for his nightly couch. A piece of wood, a broken chair, an old
chest for a table, more he needs not; a tea-kettle, a few pots and dishes,
equip his kitchen, which is also his sleeping and living room. When he
is in want of fuel, everything combustible within his reach, chairs, door-posts,
mouldings, flooring, finds its way up the chimney. Moreover, why should
he need much room? At home in his mud-cabin there was only one room for
all domestic purposes; more than one room his family does not need in England.
So the custom of crowding many persons into a single room, now so universal,
has been chiefly implanted by the Irish immigration. And since the poor
devil must have one enjoyment, and society has shut him out of all others,
he betakes himself to the drinking of spirits. Drink is the only thing
which makes the Irishman's life worth having, drink and his cheery care-free
temperament; so he revels in drink to the point of the most bestial drunkenness.
The southern facile character of the Irishman, his crudity, which places
him but little above the savage, his contempt for all humane enjoyments,
in which his very crudeness makes him incapable of sharing, his filth and
poverty, all favour drunkenness. The temptation is great, he cannot resist
it, and so when he has money he gets rid of it down his throat. What else
should he do? How can society blame him when it places him in a position
in which he almost of necessity becomes a drunkard; when it leaves him
to himself, to his savagery?

With such a competitor the English working-man has to struggle, with
a competitor upon the lowest plane possible in a civilised country, who
for this very reason requires less wages than any other. Nothing else is
therefore possible than that, as Carlyle says, the wages of English working-man
should be forced down further and further in every branch in which the
Irish compete with him. And these branches are many. All such as demand
little or no skill are open to the Irish. For work which requires long
training or regular, pertinacious application, the dissolute, unsteady,
drunken Irishman is on too low a plane. To become a mechanic, a mill-hand,
he would have to adopt the English civilisation, the English customs, become,
in the main, an Englishman. But for all simple, less exact work, wherever
it is a question more of strength than skill, the Irishman is as good as
the Englishman. Such occupations are therefore especially overcrowded with
Irishmen: hand-weavers, bricklayers, porters, jobbers, and such workers,
count hordes of Irishmen among their number, and the pressure of this race
has done much to depress wages and lower the working-class. And even if
the Irish, who have forced their way into other occupations, should become
more civilised, enough of the old habits would cling to them to have a
strong, degrading influence upon their English companions in toil, especially
in view of the general effect of being surrounded by the Irish. For when,
in almost every great city, a fifth or a quarter of the workers are Irish,
or children of Irish parents, who have grown up among Irish filth, no one
can wonder if the life, habits, intelligence, moral status -- in short,
the whole character of the working-class assimilates a great part of the
Irish characteristics. On the contrary, it is easy to understand how the
degrading position of the English workers, engendered by our modern history,
and its immediate consequences, has been still more degraded by the presence
of Irish competition.

NOTES

4. Archibald Alison, The Principles
of Population, and their Connection with Human Happiness, two vols.,
1840. This Alison is the historian of the French Revolution, and, like
his brother, Dr. W. P. Alison, a religious Tory.-- Note by Engels.


5.Chartism, pp. 28, 31, etc.-- Note by Engels.


6. Milesian -- the name of an ancient family of Celtic
kings of Ireland.-- Note by Engels

## Results

Having now investigated, somewhat in detail, the conditions under which the
English working-class lives, it is time to draw some further inferences from
the facts presented, and then to compare our inferences with the actual state
of things. Let us see what the workers themselves have become under the given
circumstances, what sort of people they are, what their physical, mental, and
moral status.

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that
death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in
advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when
society [1] places hundreds of proletarians in such a position
that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is
quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it
deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in
which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law,
to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable
consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet
permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the
deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against
which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man
sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since
the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.
I have now to prove that society in England daily and hourly commits what the
working-men's organs, with perfect correctness, characterise as social murder,
that it has placed the workers under conditions in which they can neither
retain health nor live long; that it undermines the vital force of these
workers gradually, little by little, and so hurries them to the grave before
their time. I have further to prove that society knows how injurious such
conditions are to the health and the life of the workers, and yet does nothing
to improve these conditions. That it knows the consequences of its deeds; that
its act is, therefore, not mere manslaughter, but murder, I shall have proved,
when I cite official documents, reports of Parliament and of the Government, in
substantiation of my charge.

That a class which lives under the conditions already sketched and is so
ill-provided with the most necessary means of subsistence, cannot be healthy
and can reach no advanced age, is self-evident. Let us review the circumstances
once more with especial reference to the health of the workers. The
centralisation of population in great cities exercises of itself an
unfavourable influence; the atmosphere of London can never be so pure, so rich
in oxygen, as the air of the country; two and a half million pairs of lungs,
two hundred and fifty thousand fires, crowded upon an area three to four miles
square, consume an enormous amount of oxygen, which is replaced with
difficulty, because the method of building cities in itself impedes
ventilation. The carbonic acid gas, engendered by respiration and fire, remains
in the streets by reason of its specific gravity, and the chief air current
passes over the roofs of the city. The lungs of the inhabitants fail to receive
the due supply of oxygen, and the consequence is mental and physical lassitude
and low vitality. For this reason, the dwellers in cities are far less exposed
to acute, and especially to inflammatory, affections than rural populations,
who live in a free, normal atmosphere; but they suffer the more from chronic
affections. And if life in large cities is, in itself, injurious to health, how
great must be the harmful influence of an abnormal atmosphere in the
working-people's quarters, where, as we have seen, everything combines to
poison the air. In the country, it may, perhaps, be comparatively innoxious to
keep a dung-heap adjoining one's dwelling, because the air has free ingress
from all sides; but in the midst of a large town, among closely built lanes and
courts that shut out all movement of the atmosphere, the case is different. All
putrefying vegetable and animal substances give off gases decidedly injurious
to health, and if these gases have no free way of escape, they inevitably
poison the atmosphere. The filth and stagnant pools of the working-people's
quarters in the great cities have, therefore, the worst effect upon the public
health, because they produce precisely those gases which engender disease; so,
too, the exhalations from contaminated streams. But this is by no means all.
The manner in which the great multitude of the poor is treated by society today
is revolting. They are drawn into the large cities where they breathe a poorer
atmosphere than in the country; they are relegated to districts which, by
reason of the method of construction, are worse ventilated than any others;
they are deprived of all means of cleanliness, of water itself, since pipes are
laid only when paid for, and the rivers so polluted that they are useless for
such purposes; they are obliged to throw all offal and garbage, all dirty
water, often all disgusting drainage and excrement into the streets, being
without other means of disposing of them; they are thus compelled to infect the
region of their own dwellings. Nor is this enough. All conceivable evils are
heaped upon the heads of the poor. If the population of great cities is too
dense in general, it is they in particular who are packed into the least space.
As though the vitiated atmosphere of the streets were not enough, they are
penned in dozens into single rooms, so that the air which they breathe at night
is enough in itself to stifle them. They are given damp dwellings, cellar dens
that are not waterproof from below or garrets that leak from above. Their
houses are so built that the clammy air cannot escape. They are supplied bad,
tattered, or rotten clothing, adulterated and indigestible food. They are
exposed to the most exciting changes of mental condition, the most violent
vibrations between hope and fear; they are hunted like game, and not permitted
to attain peace of mind and quiet enjoyment of life. They are deprived of all
enjoyments except that of sexual indulgence and drunkenness, are worked every
day to the point of complete exhaustion of their mental and physical energies,
and are thus constantly spurred on to the maddest excess in the only two
enjoyments at their command. And if they surmount all this, they fall victims
to want of work in a crisis when all the little is taken from them that had
hitherto been vouchsafed them.

How is it possible, under such conditions, for the lower class to be healthy
and long lived? What else can be expected than an excessive mortality, an
unbroken series of epidemics, a progressive deterioration in the physique of
the working population? Let us see how the facts stand.

That the dwellings of the workers in the worst portions of the cities,
together with the other conditions of life of this class, engender numerous
diseases, is attested on all sides. The article already quoted from the
Artisan asserts with perfect truth, that lung diseases must be the
inevitable consequence of such conditions, and that, indeed, cases of this kind
are disproportionately frequent in this class. That the bad air of London, and
especially of the working-people's districts, is in the highest degree
favourable to the development of consumption, the hectic appearance of great
numbers of persons sufficiently indicates. If one roams the streets a little in
the early morning, when the multitudes are on their way to their work, one is
amazed at the number of persons who look wholly or half-consumptive. Even in
Manchester the people have not the same appearance; these pale, lank, narrow-
chested, hollow-eyed ghosts, whom one passes at every step, these languid,
flabby faces, incapable of the slightest energetic expression, I have seen in
such startling numbers only in London, though consumption carries off a horde
of victims annually in the factory towns of the North. In competition with
consumption stands typhus, to say nothing of scarlet fever, a disease which
brings most frightful devastation into the ranks of the working- class. Typhus,
that universally diffused affliction, is attributed by the official report on
the sanitary condition of the working- class, directly to the bad state of the
dwellings in the matters of ventilation, drainage, and cleanliness. This report
compiled, it must not be forgotten, by the leading physicians of England from
the testimony of other physicians, asserts that a single ill-ventilated court,
a single blind alley without drainage, is enough to engender fever, and usually
does engender it especially if the inhabitants are greatly crowded. This fever
has the same character almost everywhere, and develops in nearly every case
into specific typhus. It is to be found in the working-people's quarters of all
great towns and cities, and in single ill-built, ill-kept streets of smaller
places, though it naturally seeks out single victims in better districts also.
In London it has now prevailed for a considerable time; its extraordinary
violence in the year 1837 gave rise to the report already referred to.
According to the annual report of Dr. Southwood Smith on the London
Fever Hospital, the number of patients in 1843 was 1,462, or 418 more than in
any previous year. In the damp, dirty regions of the north, south, and east
districts of London, this disease raged with extraordinary violence. Many of
the patients were working-people from the country, who had endured the severest
privation while migrating, and, after their arrival, had slept hungry and
half-naked in the streets, and so fallen victims to the fever. These people
were brought into the hospital in such a state of weakness, that unusual
quantities of wine, cognac, and preparations of ammonia and other stimulants
were required for their treatment; 16½ per cent of all patients died. This
malignant fever is to be found in Manchester; in the worst quarters of the Old
Town, Ancoats, Little Ireland, etc., it is rarely extinct; though here, as in
the English towns generally, it prevails to a less extent than might be
expected. In Scotland and Ireland, on the other hand, it rages with a violence
that surpasses all conception. In Edinburgh and Glasgow it broke out in 1817,
after the famine, and in 1826 and 1837 with especial violence, after the
commercial crisis, subsiding somewhat each time after having raged about three
years. In Edinburgh about 6,000 persons were attacked by the fever during the
epidemic of 1817, and about 10,000 in that of 1837, and not only the number of
persons attacked but the violence of the disease increased with each
repetition. [2]

But the fury of the epidemic in all former periods seems to have been
child's play in comparison with its ravages after the crisis of 1842. One-sixth
of the whole indigent population of Scotland was seized by the fever, and the
infection was carried by wandering beggars with fearful rapidity from one
locality to another. It did not reach the middle and upper classes of the
population, yet in two months there were more fever cases than in twelve years
before. In Glasgow, twelve per cent of the population were seized in the year
1843; 52,000 persons, of whom thirty-two per cent perished, while this
mortality in Manchester and Liverpool does not ordinarily exceed eight per
cent. The illness reached a crisis on the seventh and fifteenth days; on the
latter, the patient usually became yellow, which our authority regards as an
indication that the cause of the malady was to be sought in mental excitement
and anxiety. [3] In Ireland, too, these fever epidemics have become
domesticated. During twenty-one months of the years 1817-1818, 39,000 fever
patients passed through the Dublin hospital; and in a more recent year,
according to Sheriff Alison, 60,000. [4] In Cork the fever hospital received
one-seventh of the population in 1817-1818, in Limerick in the same time
one-fourth, and in the bad quarter of Waterford, nineteen- twentieths of the
whole population were ill of the fever at one time. [5]

When one remembers under what conditions the working- people live, when one
thinks how crowded their dwellings are, how every nook and corner swarms with
human beings, how sick and well sleep in the same room, in the same bed, the
only wonder is that a contagious disease like this fever does not spread yet
farther. And when one reflects how little medical assistance the sick have at
command, how many are without any medical advice whatsoever, and ignorant of
the most ordinary precautionary measures, the mortality seems actually small.
Dr. Alison, who has made a careful study of this disease, attributes it
directly to the want and the wretched condition of the poor, as in the report
already quoted. He asserts that privations and the insufficient satisfaction of
vital needs are what prepare the frame for contagion and make the epidemic
widespread and terrible. He proves that a period of privation, a commercial
crisis or a bad harvest, has each time produced the typhus epidemic in Ireland
as in Scotland, and that the fury of the plague has fallen almost exclusively
on the working-class. It is a noteworthy fact, that according to his testimony,
the majority of persons who perish by typhus are fathers of families, precisely
the persons who can least be spared by those dependent upon them; and several
Irish physicians whom he quotes bear the same testimony.

Another category of diseases arises directly from the food rather than the
dwellings of the workers. The food of the labourer, indigestible enough in
itself, is utterly unfit for young children, and he has neither means nor time
to get his children more suitable food. Moreover, the custom of giving children
spirits, and even opium, is very general; and these two influences, with the
rest of the conditions of life prejudicial to bodily development, give rise to
the most diverse affections of the digestive organs, leaving life-long traces
behind them. Nearly all workers have stomachs more or less weak, and are yet
forced to adhere to the diet which is the root of the evil. How should they
know what is to blame for it? And if they knew, how could they obtain a more
suitable regimen so long as they cannot adopt a different way of living and are
not better educated? But new disease arises during childhood from impaired
digestion. Scrofula is almost universal among the working-class, and scrofulous
parents have scrofulous children, especially when the original influences
continue in full force to operate upon the inherited tendency of the children.
A second consequence of this insufficient bodily nourishment, during the years
of growth and development, is rachitis, which is extremely common among the
children of the working-class. The hardening of the bones is delayed, the
development of the skeleton in general is restricted, and deformities of the
legs and spinal column are frequent, in addition to the usual rachitic
affections. How greatly all these evils are increased by the changes to which
the workers are subject in consequence of fluctuations in trade, want of work,
and the scanty wages in time of crisis, it is not necessary to dwell upon.
Temporary want of sufficient food, to which almost every working-man is exposed
at least once in the course of his life, only contributes to intensify the
effects of his usually sufficient but bad diet. Children who are half-starved,
just when they most need ample and nutritious food – and how many such
there are during every crisis and even when trade is at its best – must
inevitably become weak, scrofulous and rachitic in a high degree. And that they
do become so, their appearance amply shows. The neglect to which the great mass
of working-men's children are condemned leaves ineradicable traces and brings
the enfeeblement of the whole race of workers with it. Add to this the
unsuitable clothing of this class, the impossibility of precautions against
colds, the necessity of toiling so long as health permits, want made more dire
when sickness appears, and the only too common lack of all medical assistance;
and we have a rough idea of the sanitary condition of the English
working-class. The injurious effects peculiar to single employments as now
conducted, I shall not deal with here.

Besides these, there are other influences which enfeeble the health of a
great number of workers, intemperance most of all. All possible temptations,
all allurements combine to bring the workers to drunkenness. Liquor is almost
their only source of pleasure, and all things conspire to make it accessible to
them. The working-man comes from his work tired, exhausted, finds his home
comfortless, damp, dirty, repulsive; he has urgent need of recreation, he must
have something to make work worth his trouble, to make the prospect of the next
day endurable. His unnerved, uncomfortable, hypochondriac state of mind and
body arising from his unhealthy condition, and especially from indigestion, is
aggravated beyond endurance by the general conditions of his life, the
uncertainty of his existence, his dependence upon all possible accidents and
chances, and his inability to do anything towards gaining an assured position.
His enfeebled frame, weakened by bad air and bad food, violently demands some
external stimulus; his social need can be gratified only in the public-house,
he has absolutely no other place where he can meet his friends. How can he be
expected to resist the temptation? It is morally and physically inevitable
that, under such circumstances, a very large number of working-men should fall
into intemperance. And apart from the chiefly physical influences which drive
the working-man into drunkenness, there is the example of the great mass, the
neglected education, the impossibility of protecting the young from temptation,
in many cases the direct influence of intemperate parents, who give their own
children liquor, the certainty of forgetting for an hour or two the
wretchedness and burden of life, and a hundred other circumstances so mighty
that the workers can, in truth, hardly be blamed for yielding to such
overwhelming pressure. Drunkenness has here ceased to be a vice, for which the
vicious can be held responsible; it becomes a phenomenon, the necessary,
inevitable effect of certain conditions upon an object possessed of no volition
in relation to those conditions. They who have degraded the working-man to a
mere object have the responsibility to bear. But as inevitably as a great
number of working-men fall a prey to drink, just so inevitably does it manifest
its ruinous influence upon the body and mind of its victims. All the tendencies
to disease arising from the conditions of life of the workers are promoted by
it, it stimulates in the highest degree the development of lung and digestive
troubles, the rise and spread of typhus epidemics.

Another source of physical mischief to the working-class lies in the
impossibility of employing skilled physicians in cases of illness. It is true
that a number of charitable institutions strive to supply this want, that the
infirmary in Manchester, for instance, receives or gives advice and medicine to
22,000 patients annually. But what is that in a city in which, according to
Gaskell's calculation, [6] three-fourths of the population need medical aid
every year? English doctors charge high fees, and working-men are not in a
position to pay them. They can therefore do nothing, or are compelled to call
in cheap charlatans, and use quack remedies, which do more harm than good. An
immense number of such quacks thrive in every English town, securing their
clientele among the poor by means of advertisements, posters, and other such
devices. Besides these, vast quantities of patent medicines are sold, for all
conceivable ailments: Morrison's Pills, Parr's Life Pills, Dr. Mainwaring's
Pills, and a thousand other pills, essences, and balsams, all of which have the
property of curing all the ills that flesh is heir to. These medicines rarely
contain actually injurious substances, but, when taken freely and often, they
affect the system prejudicially; and as the unwary purchasers are always
recommended to take as much as possible, it is not to be wondered at that they
swallow them wholesale whether wanted or not.

It is by no means unusual for the manufacturer of Parr's Life Pills to sell
twenty to twenty-five thousand boxes of these salutary pills in a week, and
they are taken for constipation by this one, for diarrhoea by that one, for
fever, weakness, and all possible ailments. As our German peasants are cupped
or bled at certain seasons, so do the English working-people now consume patent
medicines to their own injury and the great profit of the manufacturer. One of
the most injurious of these patent medicines is a drink prepared with opiates,
chiefly laudanum, under the name Godfrey's Cordial. Women who work at home, and
have their own and other people's children to take care of, give them this
drink to keep them quiet, and, as many believe, to strengthen them. They often
begin to give this medicine to newly born children, and continue, without
knowing the effects of this "heart's-ease", until the children die. The less
susceptible the child's system to the action of the opium, the greater the
quantities administered. When the cordial ceases to act, laudanum alone is
given, often to the extent of fifteen to twenty drops at a dose. The Coroner of
Nottingham testified before a Parliamentary Commission [7] that one
apothecary had, according to his own statement, used thirteen hundredweight of
treacle in one year in the preparation of Godfrey's Cordial. The effects upon
the children so treated may be readily imagined. They are pale, feeble, wilted,
and usually die before completing the second year. The use of this cordial is
very extensive in all great towns and industrial districts in the kingdom.

The result of all these influences is a general enfeeblement of the frame in
the working-class. There are few vigorous, well-built, healthy persons among
the workers, i.e. among the factory operatives, who are employed in confined
rooms, and we are here discussing these only. They are almost all weakly, of
angular but not powerful build, lean, pale, and of relaxed fibre, with the
exception of the muscles especially exercised in their work. Nearly all suffer
from indigestion, and consequently from a more or less hypochondriac,
melancholy, irritable, nervous condition. Their enfeebled constitutions are
unable to resist disease, and are therefore seized by it on every occasion.
Hence they age prematurely, and die early. On this point the mortality
statistics supply unquestionable testimony.

According to the Report of Registrar-General Graham, the annual death-rate
of all England and Wales is something less than 2 1/2 per cent. That is to say,
out of forty-five persons, one dies every year. [8] This was the average for
the year 1839-40. In 1840-41 the mortality diminished somewhat, and the
death-rate was but one in forty-six. But in the great cities the proportion is
wholly different. I have before me official tables of mortality (Manchester
Guardian, July 31st, 1844), according to which the death-rate of several
large towns is as follows: – In Manchester, including Chorlton and
Salford, one in 32.72; and excluding Chorlton and Salford, one in 50.75. In
Liverpool, including West Derby (suburb), 31.90, and excluding West Derby,
29.90; while the average of all the districts of Cheshire, Lancashire, and
Yorkshire cited, including a number of wholly or partially rural districts and
many small towns, with a total population of 2,172,506 for the whole, is one
death in 39.80 persons. How unfavourably the workers are placed in the great
cities, the mortality for Prescott in Lancashire shows: a district inhabited by
miners, and showing a lower sanitary condition than that of the agricultural
districts, mining being by no means a healthful occupation. But these miners
live in the country, and the death-rate among them is but one in 47.54, or
nearly two-and-a-half per cent better than that for all England. All these
statements are based upon the mortality tables for 1843. Still higher is the
death-rate in the Scotch cities; in Edinburgh, in 1838-39, one in 29; in 1831,
in the Old Town alone, one in 22. In Glasgow, according to Dr. Cowan, [9] the average has been, since 1830, one in 90; and in
single years, one in 22 to 24. That this enormous shortening of life falls
chiefly upon the working-class, that the general average is improved by the
smaller mortality of the upper and middle-classes, is attested upon all sides.
One of the most recent depositions is that of a physician, Dr. P. H. Holland in
Manchester, who investigated Chorlton-on-Medlock, a suburb of Manchester, under
official commission. He divided the houses and streets into three classes each,
and ascertained the following variations in the death-rate:

First class of streets.
Houses
I. class.
Mortality one in
51

" " "
"
II.
"
45

" " "
"
III.
"
36

Second class of streets.
Houses
I. class.
Mortality one in
55

" " "
"
II.
"
38

" " "
"
III.
"
35

Third class of streets.
Houses
I. class.
Wanting –

" " "
"
II.
Mortality "
35

" " "
"
III.
"
25

It is clear from other tables given by Holland that the mortality in the
streets of the second class is 18 per cent greater, and in the streets
of the third class 68 per cent greater than in those of the first class; that
the mortality in the houses of the second class is 31 per cent
greater, and in the third class 78 per cent greater than in those of the first
class; that the mortality in those bad streets which were improved, decreased
25 per cent. He closes with the remark, very frank for an English bourgeois: [10]

"When we find the rate of mortality four times as high in
some streets as in others, and twice as high in whole classes of streets as in
other classes, and further find that it is all but invariably high in those
streets which are in bad condition, and almost invariably low in those whose
condition is good, we cannot resist the conclusion that multitudes of our
fellow-creatures, hundreds of our immediate neighbours, are annually destroyed
for want of the most evident precautions."

The Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Working-Class
contains information which attests the same fact. In Liverpool, in 1840, the
average longevity of the upper classes, gentry, professional men, etc., was
thirty-five years; that of the business men and better-placed handicraftsmen,
twenty-two years; and that of the operatives, day-labourers, and serviceable
class in general, but fifteen years. The Parliamentary reports contain a mass
of similar facts.

The death-rate is kept so high chiefly by the heavy mortality among young
children in the working-class. The tender frame of a child is least able to
withstand the unfavourable influences of an inferior lot in life; the neglect
to which they are often subjected, when both parents work or one is dead,
avenges itself promptly, and no one need wonder that in Manchester, according
to the report last quoted, more than fifty-seven per cent of the children of
the working-class perish before the fifth year, while but twenty per cent of
the children of the higher classes, and not quite. thirty-two per cent of the
children of all classes in the country die under five years of age. [11] The article of the Artisan, already
several times referred to, furnishes exacter information on this point, by
comparing the city death-rate in single diseases of children with the country
death-rate, thus demonstrating that, in general, epidemics in Manchester and
Liverpool are three times more fatal than in country districts; that affections
of the nervous system are quintupled, and stomach troubles trebled, while
deaths from affections of the lungs in cities are to those in the country as 2
1/2 to 1. Fatal cases of small-pox, measles, scarlet fever, and whooping cough,
among small children, are four times more frequent; those of water on the brain
are trebled, and convulsions ten times more frequent. To quote another
acknowledged authority, I append the following table. Out of 10,000 persons
there die – [12]

<5
5-
20-
40-
60-
70-
80-
90-
100

years
19
39
59
69
79
89
99
and over

In Ruthlandshire, a healthy agricultural
district
2,865
891
1,275
1,299
1,189
1,428
938
112
3

Essex, marshy agricultural district
3,159
1,110
1,526
1,413
963
1,019
630
77
3

Town of Carlisle, 1779-1787, before
introduction of mills
4,408
911
1,006
1,201
940
826
533
153
22

Town of Carlisle, after the introduction of
mills
4,738
930
1,261
1,134
677
727
452
80
1

Preston, factory town&
4,947
1,136
1,379
1,114
553
532
298
38
3

Leeds, factory town
5,286
927
1,228
1,198
593
512
225
29
2

Apart from the diverse diseases which are the necessary consequence of the
present neglect and oppression of the poorer classes, there are other
influences which contribute to increase the mortality among small children. In
many families the wife, like the husband, has to work away from home, and the
consequence is the total neglect of the children, who are either locked up or
given out to be taken care of. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at if
hundreds of them perish through all manner of accidents. Nowhere are so many
children run over, nowhere are so many killed by falling, drowning, or burning,
as in the great cities and towns of England. Deaths from burns and scalds are
especially frequent, such a case occurring nearly every week during the winter
months in Manchester, and very frequently in London, though little mention is
made of them in the papers. I have at hand a copy of the Weekly
Dispatch of December 15th, 1844, according to which, in the week from
December 1st to December 7th inclusive, six such cases occurred. These unhappy
children, perishing in this terrible way, are victims of our social disorder,
and of the property-holding classes interested in maintaining and prolonging
this disorder. Yet one is left in doubt whether even this terribly torturing
death is not a blessing for the children in rescuing them from a long life of
toil and wretchedness, rich in suffering and poor in enjoyment. So far has it
gone in England; and the bourgeoisie reads these things every day in the
newspapers and takes no further trouble in the matter. But it cannot complain
if, after the official and non-official testimony here cited which must be
known to it, I broadly accuse it of social murder. Let the ruling class see to
it that these frightful conditions are ameliorated, or let it surrender the
administration of the common interests to the labouring-class. To the latter
course it is by no means inclined; for the former task, so long as it remains
the bourgeoisie crippled by bourgeois prejudice, it has not the needed power.
For if, at last, after hundreds of thousands of victims have perished, it
manifests some little anxiety for the future, passing a "Metropolitan Buildings
Act", under which the most unscrupulous overcrowding of dwellings is to be, at
least in some slight degree, restricted; if it points with pride to measures
which, far from attacking the root of the evil, do not by any means meet the
demands of the commonest sanitary police, it cannot thus vindicate itself from
the accusation. The English bourgeoisie has but one choice, either to continue
its rule under the unanswerable charge of murder and in spite of this charge,
or to abdicate in favour of the labouring-class. Hitherto it has chosen the
former course.

Let us turn from the physical to the mental state of the workers. Since the
bourgeoisie vouchsafes them only so much of life as is absolutely necessary, we
need not wonder that it bestows upon them only so much education as lies in the
interest of the bourgeoisie; and that, in truth, is not much. The means of
education in England are restricted out of all proportion to the population.
The few day schools at the command of the working-class are available only for
the smallest minority, and are bad besides. The teachers, worn-out workers, and
other unsuitable persons who only turn to teaching in order to live, are
usually without the indispensable elementary knowledge, without the moral
discipline so needful for the teacher, and relieved of all public supervision.
Here, too, free competition rules, and, as usual, the rich profit by it, and
the poor, for whom competition is not free, who have not the knowledge needed
to enable them to form a correct judgment, have the evil consequences to bear.
Compulsory school attendance does not exist. In the mills it is, as we shall
see, purely nominal; and when in the session of 1843 the Ministry was disposed
to make this nominal compulsion effective, the manufacturing bourgeoisie
opposed the measure with all its might, though the working-class was
outspokenly in favour of compulsory school attendance. Moreover, a mass of
children work the whole week through in the mills or at home, and therefore
cannot attend school. The evening schools, supposed to be attended by children
who are employed during the day, are almost abandoned or attended without
benefit. It is asking too much, that young workers, who have been using
themselves up twelve hours in the day, should go to school from eight to ten at
night. And those who try it usually fall asleep, as is testified by hundreds of
witnesses in the
Children's Employment Commission's Report. Sunday schools have
been founded, it is true, but they, too, are most scantily supplied with
teachers, and can be of use to those only who have already learnt something in
the day schools. The interval from one Sunday to the next is too long for an
ignorant child to remember in the second sitting what it learned in the first,
a week before. The Children's Employment Commission's Report furnishes a
hundred proofs, and the Commission itself most emphatically expresses the
opinion, that neither the week-day nor the Sunday schools, in the least degree,
meet the needs of the nation. This Report gives evidence of ignorance in the
working-class of England, such as could hardly be expected in Spain or Italy.
It cannot be otherwise; the bourgeoisie has little to hope, and much to fear,
from the education of the working-class. The Ministry, in its whole enormous
budget of £55,000,000, has only the single trifling item of £40,000 for public
education, and, but for the fanaticism of the religious sects which does at
least as much harm as good, the means of education would be yet more scanty. As
it is, the State Church manages its national schools and the various sects
their sectarian schools for the sole purpose of keeping the children of the
brethren of the faith within the congregation, and of winning away a poor
childish soul here and there from some other sect. The consequence is that
religion, and precisely the most unprofitable side of religion, polemical
discussion, is made the principal subject of instruction, and the memory of the
children overburdened with incomprehensible dogmas and theological
distinctions; that sectarian hatred and bigotry are awakened as early as
possible, and all rational mental and moral training shamefully neglected. The
working-class has repeatedly demanded of Parliament a system of strictly
secular public education, leaving religion to the ministers of the sects; but,
thus far, no Ministry has been induced to grant it. The Minister is the
obedient servant of the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie is divided into
countless sects; but each would gladly grant the workers the otherwise
dangerous education on the sole condition of their accepting, as an antidote,
the dogmas peculiar to the especial sect in question. And as these sects are
still quarrelling among themselves for supremacy, the workers remain for the
present without education. It is true that the manufacturers boast of having
enabled the majority to read, but the quality of the reading is appropriate to
the source of the instruction, as the Children's Employment Commission proves.
According to this report, he who knows his letters can read enough to satisfy
the conscience of the manufacturers. And when one reflects upon the confused
orthography of the English language which makes reading one of the arts,
learned only under long instruction, this ignorance is readily understood. Very
few working-people write readily; and writing orthographically is beyond the
powers even of many "educated" persons. The Sunday schools of the State Church,
of the Quakers, and, I think, of several other sects, do not teach writing,
"because it is too worldly an employment for Sunday". The quality of the
instruction offered the workers in other directions may be judged from a
specimen or two, taken from the Children's Employment Commission's Report,
which unfortunately does not embrace mill-work proper:

In Birmingham, says Commissioner Grainger, the children
examined by me are, as a whole, utterly wanting in all that could be in the
remotest degree called a useful education. Although in almost all the schools
religious instruction alone is furnished, the profoundest ignorance even upon
that subject prevailed.– In Wolverhampton, says Commissioner Horne, I
found, among others, the following example: A girl of eleven years who had
attended both day and Sunday school "had never learnt of another world, nor of
heaven, nor of another life". A boy, seventeen years old, "did not know how
many two and two made, nor how many farthings there were in twopence, even when
the money was placed in his hand". Several boys had never heard of London nor
of Willenhall, though the latter was but an hour's walk from their homes, and
in the closest relations with Wolverhampton. Several had never heard the name
of the Queen nor other names, such as Nelson, Wellington, Bonaparte; but it was
noteworthy that those who had never heard even of St. Paul, Moses, or Solomon,
were very well instructed as to the life, deeds, and character of Dick Turpin,
and especially of Jack Sheppard. A youth of sixteen did not know "how many
twice two make", nor "how much money four farthings make". A youth of seventeen
asserted that "ten farthings make ten halfpence"; a third, seventeen years old,
answered several very simple questions with the brief statement, that "he was
ne jedge o' nothin'." [13] These children, who are crammed
with religious doctrines for four or five years at a stretch, know as little at
the end as at the beginning. One child had "attended a Sunday school regularly
for five years; does not know who Jesus Christ was, but has heard the name.
Never heard of the twelve apostles. Never heard of Samson, nor of Moses, nor
Aaron, etc." [14] Another "attended a Sunday school regularly six
years. Knows who Jesus Christ was, he died on the cross to shed his blood, to
save our Saviour. Never heard of St. Peter or St. Paul."[15] A
third, "attended the Sunday schools of different kinds about seven years; can
read, only in the thin books, easy words of one syllable; has heard of the
apostles, does not know if St. Peter was one, nor if St. John was one, unless
it was St. John Wesley."[16] To the question who Christ was,
Horne received, among others, the following answers, "Yes, Adam," "He was an
apostle," "He was the Saviour's Lord's Son," and from a youth of sixteen:
"Jesus Christ was a king of London a long time ago." In Sheffield, Commissioner
Symons let the children from the Sunday school read aloud; they could not tell
what they had read, or what sort of people the apostles were, of whom they had
just been reading. After he had asked them all one after the other about the
apostles without securing a single correct answer, one sly-looking little
fellow, with great glee, called out: "Please sir, they were the lepers!" [17] From the pottery districts and from Lancashire the
reports are similar.

This is what the bourgeoisie and the State are doing for the
education and improvement of the working-class. Fortunately the conditions
under which this class lives are such as give it a sort of practical training,
which not only replaces school cramming, but renders harmless the confused
religious notions connected with it, and even places the workers in the
vanguard of the national movement of England. Necessity is the mother of
invention, and what is still more important, of thought and action. The English
working-man who can scarcely read and still less write, nevertheless knows very
well where his own interest and that of the nation lies. He knows, too, what
the especial interest of the bourgeoisie is, and what he has to expect of that
bourgeoisie. If he cannot write he can speak, and speak in public; if he has no
arithmetic, he can, nevertheless, reckon with the Political Economists enough
to see through a Corn-Law-repealing bourgeois, and to get the better of him in
argument; if celestial matters remain very mixed for him in spite of all the
effort of the preachers, he sees all the more clearly into terrestrial,
political, and social questions. We shall have occasion to refer again to this
point; and pass now to the moral characteristics of our workers.

It is sufficiently clear that the instruction in morals can have no better
effect than the religious teaching, with which in all English schools it is
mixed up. The simple principles which, for plain human beings, regulate the
relations of man to man, brought into the direst confusion by our social state,
our war of each against all, necessarily remain confused and foreign to the
working-man when mixed with incomprehensible dogmas, and preached in the
religious form of an arbitrary and dogmatic commandment. The schools
contribute, according to the confession of all authorities, and especially of
the Children's Employment Commission, almost nothing to the morality of the
working-class. So short-sighted, so stupidly narrow-minded is the English
bourgeoisie in its egotism, that it does not even take the trouble to impress
upon the workers the morality of the day, which the bourgeoisie has patched
together in its own interest for its own protection! Even this precautionary
measure is too great an effort for the enfeebled and sluggish bourgeoisie. A
time must come when it will repent its neglect, too late. But it has no right
to complain that the workers know nothing of its system of morals, and do not
act in accordance with it.

Thus are the workers cast out and ignored by the class in power, morally as
well as physically and mentally. The only provision made for them is the law,
which fastens upon them when they become obnoxious to the bourgeoisie. Like the
dullest of the brutes, they are treated to but one form of education, the whip,
in the shape of force, not convincing but intimidating. There is, therefore, no
cause for surprise if the workers, treated as brutes, actually become such; or
if they can maintain their consciousness of manhood only by cherishing the most
glowing hatred, the most unbroken inward rebellion against the bourgeoisie in
power. They are men so long only as they burn with wrath against the reigning
class. They become brutes the moment they bend in patience under the yoke, and
merely strive to make life endurable while abandoning the effort to break the
yoke.

This, then, is all that the bourgeoisie has done for the education of the
proletariat – and when we take into consideration all the circumstances
in which this class lives, we shall not think the worse of it for the
resentment which it cherishes against the ruling class. The moral training
which is not given to the worker in school is not supplied by the other
conditions of his life; that moral training, at least, which alone has worth in
the eyes of the bourgeoisie; his whole position and environment involves the
strongest temptation to immorality. He is poor, life offers him no charm,
almost every enjoyment is denied him, the penalties of the law have no further
terrors for him; why should he restrain his desires, why leave to the rich the
enjoyment of his birthright, why not seize a part of it for himself? What
inducement has the proletarian not to steal? It is all very pretty and very
agreeable to the ear of the bourgeois to hear the "sacredness of property"
asserted; but for him who has none, the sacredness of property dies out of
itself. Money is the God of this world; the bourgeois takes the proletarian's
money from him and so makes a practical atheist of him. No wonder, then, if the
proletarian retains his atheism and no longer respects the sacredness and power
of the earthly God. And when the poverty of the proletarian is intensified to
the point of actual lack of the barest necessaries of life, to want and hunger,
the temptation to disregard all social order does but gain power. This the
bourgeoisie for the most part recognises. Symons [18]
observes that poverty exercises the same ruinous influence upon the mind which
drunkenness exercises upon the body; and Dr. Alison explains to
property-holding readers, with the greatest exactness, what the consequences of
social oppression must be for the working-class.[19] Want
leaves the working-man the choice between starving slowly, killing himself
speedily, or taking what he needs where he finds it – in plain English,
stealing. And there is no cause for surprise that most of them prefer stealing
to starvation and suicide.

True, there are, within the working-class, numbers too moral to steal even
when reduced to the utmost extremity, and these starve or commit suicide. For
suicide, formerly the enviable privilege of the upper classes, has become
fashionable among the English workers, and numbers of the poor kill themselves
to avoid the misery from which they see no other means of escape.

But far more demoralising than his poverty in its influence upon the English
working-man is the insecurity of his position, the necessity of living upon
wages from hand to mouth, that in short which makes a proletarian of him. The
smaller peasants in Germany are usually poor, and often suffer want, but they
are less at the mercy of accident, they have at least something secure. The
proletarian, who has nothing but his two hands, who consumes today what he
earned yesterday, who is subject to every possible chance, and has not the
slightest guarantee for being able to earn the barest necessities of life, whom
every crisis, every whim of his employer may deprive of bread, this proletarian
is placed in the most revolting, inhuman position conceivable for a human
being. The slave is assured of a bare livelihood by the self-interest of his
master, the serf has at least a scrap of land on which to live; each has at
worst a guarantee for life itself. But the proletarian must depend upon himself
alone, and is yet prevented from so applying his abilities as to be able to
rely upon them. Everything that the proletarian can do to improve his position
is but a drop in the ocean compared with the floods of varying chances to which
he is exposed, over which he has not the slightest control. He is the passive
subject of all possible combinations of circumstances, and must count himself
fortunate when he has saved his life even for a short time; and his character
and way of living are naturally shaped by these conditions. Either he seeks to
keep his head above water in this whirlpool, to rescue his manhood, and this he
can do solely in rebellion[20] against the class which plunders him so
mercilessly and then abandons him to his fate, which strives to hold him in
this position so demoralising to a human being; or he gives up the struggle
against his fate as hopeless, and strives to profit, so far as he can, by the
most favourable moment. To save is unavailing, for at the utmost he cannot save
more than suffices to sustain life for a short time, while if he falls out of
work, it is for no brief period. To accumulate lasting property for himself is
impossible; and if it were not, he would only cease to be a working-man and
another would take his place. What better thing can he do, then, when he gets
high wages, than live well upon them? The English bourgeoisie is violently
scandalised at the extravagant living of the workers when wages are high; yet
it is not only very natural but very sensible of them to enjoy life when they
can, instead of laying up treasures which are of no lasting use to them, and
which in the end moth and rust (i.e., the bourgeoisie) get possession of. Yet
such a life is demoralising beyond all others. What Carlyle says of the cotton
spinners is true of all English industrial workers:[21]

"Their trade, now in plethoric prosperity, anon extenuated
into inanition and 'short time', is of the nature of gambling; they live by it
like gamblers, now in luxurious superfluity, now in starvation. Black, mutinous
discontent devours them; simply the miserablest feeling that can inhabit the
heart of man. English commerce, with its world-wide, convulsive fluctuations,
with its immeasurable Proteus Steam demon, makes all paths uncertain for them,
all life a bewilderment; sobriety, steadfastness, peaceable continuance, the
first blessings of man are not theirs.– This world is for them no home,
but a dingy prison-house, of reckless unthrift, rebellion, rancour, indignation
against themselves and against all men. Is it a green, flowery world, with
azure everlasting sky stretched over it, the work and government of a God; or a
murky, simmering Tophet, of copperas fumes, cotton fuzz, gin riot, wrath and
toil, created by a Demon, governed by a Demon?"

And elsewhere: [22]

"Injustice, infidelity to truth and fact and Nature's order,
being properly the one evil under the sun, and the feeling of injustice the one
intolerable pain under the sun, our grand question as to the condition of these
working-men would be: Is it just? And, first of all, what belief have they
themselves formed about the justice of it? The words they promulgate are
notable by way of answer; their actions are still more notable. Revolt, sullen,
revengeful humour of revolt against the upper classes, decreasing respect for
what their temporal superiors command, decreasing faith for what their
spiritual superiors teach, is more and more the universal spirit of the lower
classes. Such spirit may be blamed, may be vindicated, but all men must
recognise it as extant there, all may know that it is mournful, that unless
altered it will be fatal."

Carlyle is perfectly right as to the facts and wrong only in
censuring the wild rage of the workers against the higher classes. This rage,
this passion, is rather the proof that the workers feel the inhumanity of their
position, that they refuse to be degraded to the level of brutes, and that they
will one day free themselves from servitude to the bourgeoisie. This may be
seen in the case of those who do not share this wrath; they either bow humbly
before the fate that overtakes them, live a respectful private life as well as
they can, do not concern themselves as to the course of public affairs, help
the bourgeoisie to forge the chains of the workers yet more securely and stand
upon the plane of intellectual nullity that prevailed before the industrial
period began; or they are tossed about by fate, lose their moral hold upon
themselves as they have already lost their economic hold, live along from day
to day, drink and fall into licentiousness; and in both cases they are brutes.
The last-named class contributes chiefly to the "rapid increase of vice", at
which the bourgeoisie' is so horrified after itself setting in motion the
causes which give rise to it.

Another source of demoralisation among the workers is their being condemned
to work. As voluntary, productive activity is the highest enjoyment known to
us, so is compulsory toil the most cruel, degrading punishment. Nothing is more
terrible than being constrained to do some one thing every day from morning
until night against one's will. And the more a man the worker feels himself,
the more hateful must his work be to him, because he feels the constraint, the
aimlessness of it for himself. Why does he work? For love of work? From a
natural impulse? Not at all! He works for money, for a thing which has nothing
whatsoever to do with the work itself; and he works so long, moreover, and in
such unbroken monotony, that this alone must make his work a torture in the
first weeks if he has the least human feeling left. The division of labour has
multiplied the brutalising influences of forced work. In most branches the
worker's activity is reduced to some paltry, purely mechanical manipulation,
repeated minute after minute, unchanged year after year.[23] How
much human feeling, what abilities can a man retain in his thirtieth year, who
has made needle points or filed toothed wheels twelve hours every day from his
early childhood, living all the time under the conditions forced upon the
English proletarian? It is still the same thing since the introduction of
steam. The worker's activity is made easy, muscular effort is saved, but the
work itself becomes unmeaning and monotonous to the last degree. It offers no
field for mental activity, and claims just enough of his attention to keep him
from thinking of anything else. And a sentence to such work, to work which
takes his whole time for itself, leaving him scarcely time to eat and sleep,
none for physical exercise in the open air, or the enjoyment of Nature, much
less for mental activity, how can such a sentence help degrading a human being
to the level of a brute? Once more the worker must choose, must either
surrender himself to his fate, become a "good" workman, heed "faithfully" the
interest of the bourgeoisie, in which case he most certainly becomes a brute,
or else he must rebel, fight for his manhood to the last, and this he can only
do in the fight against the bourgeoisie.

And when all these conditions have engendered vast demoralisation among the
workers, a new influence is added to the old, to spread this degradation more
widely and carry it to the extremest point. This influence is the
centralisation of the population. The writers of the English bourgeoisie are
crying murder at the demoralising tendency of the great cities; like perverted
Jeremiahs, they sing dirges, not over the destruction, but the growth of the
cities. Sheriff Alison attributes almost everything, and Dr. Vaughan, author of
The Age of Great Cities, still more to this influence. And this is
natural, for the propertied class has too direct an interest in the other
conditions which tend to destroy the worker body and soul. If they should admit
that poverty, insecurity, overwork, forced work, are the chief ruinous
influences, they would have to draw the conclusion, then let us give the poor
property, guarantee their subsistence, make laws against overwork, and this the
bourgeoisie dare not formulate. But the great cities have grown up so
spontaneously, the population has moved into them so wholly of its own motion,
and the inference that manufacture and the middle-class which profits from it
alone have created the cities is so remote, that it is extremely convenient for
the ruling class to ascribe all the evil to this apparently unavoidable source;
whereas the great cities really only secure a more rapid and certain
development for evils already existing in the germ. Alison is humane enough to
admit this; he is no thoroughbred Liberal manufacturer, but only a half
developed Tory bourgeois, and he has, therefore, an open eye, now and then,
where the full-fledged bourgeois is still stone blind. Let us hear him.[24]

It is in the great cities that "vice has spread her
temptations, and pleasure her seductions, and folly her allurements; that guilt
is encouraged by the hope of impunity, and idleness fostered by the frequency
of example. It is to these great marts of human corruption that the base and
the profligate resort from the simplicity of country life; it is here that they
find victims whereon to practise their iniquity, and gains to reward the
dangers that attend them. Virtue is here depressed from the obscurity in which
it is involved. Guilt is matured from the difficulty of its detection;
licentiousness is rewarded by the immediate enjoyment which it promises. If any
person will walk through St. Giles's, the crowded alleys of Dublin, or the
poorer quarters of Glasgow by night, he will meet with ample proof of these
observations; he will no longer wonder at the disorderly habits and profligate
enjoyments of the lower orders; his astonishment will be, not that there is so
much, but that there is so little crime in the world. The great cause of human
corruption in these crowded situations is the contagious nature of bad example
and the extreme difficulty of avoiding the seductions of vice when they are
brought into close and daily proximity with the younger part of the people.
Whatever we may think of the strength of virtue, experience proves that the
higher orders are indebted for their exemption from atrocious crime or
disorderly habits chiefly to their fortunate removal from the scene of
temptation; and that where they are exposed to the seductions which assail
their inferiors, they are noways behind them in yielding to their influence. It
is the peculiar misfortune of the poor in great cities that they cannot fly
from these irresistible temptations, but that, turn where they will, they are
met by the alluring forms of vice, or the seductions of guilty enjoyment. It is
the experienced impossibility of concealing the attractions of vice from the
younger part of the poor in great cities which exposes them to so many causes
of demoralisation. All this proceeds not from any unwonted or extraordinary
depravity in the character of these victims of licentiousness, but from the
almost irresistible nature of the temptations to which the poor are exposed.
The rich, who censure their conduct, would in all probability yield as rapidly
as they have done to the influence of similar causes. There is a certain degree
of misery, a certain proximity to sin, which virtue is rarely able to
withstand, and which the young, in particular, are generally unable to resist.
The progress of vice in such circumstances is almost as certain and often
nearly as rapid as that of physical contagion."

And elsewhere:

"When the higher orders for their own profit have drawn the
labouring-classes in great numbers into a small space, the contagion of guilt
becomes rapid and unavoidable. The lower orders, situated as they are in so far
as regards moral or religious instruction, are frequently hardly more to be
blamed for yielding to the temptations which surround them than for falling
victims to the typhus fever."

Enough! The half-bourgeois Alison betrays to us, however narrow
his manner of expressing himself, the evil effect of the great cities upon the
moral development of the workers. Another, a bourgeois pur sang [25] a man after the heart of the Anti-Corn Law League,
Dr. Andrew Ure,[26] betrays the other side.
He tells us that life in great cities facilitates cabals among the workers and
confers power on the Plebs. If here the workers are not educated (i.e., to
obedience to the bourgeoisie), they may view matters one-sidedly, from the
standpoint of a sinister selfishness, and may readily permit themselves to be
hoodwinked by sly demagogues; nay, they might even be capable of viewing their
greatest benefactors, the frugal and enterprising capitalists, with a jealous
and hostile eye. Here proper training alone can avail, or national bankruptcy
and other horrors must follow, since a revolution of the workers could hardly
fail to occur. And our bourgeois is perfectly justified in his fears. If the
centralisation of population stimulates and develops the property-holding
class, it forces the development of the workers yet more rapidly. The workers
begin to feel as a class, as a whole; they begin to perceive that, though
feeble as individuals, they form a power united; their separation from the
bourgeoisie, the development of views peculiar to the workers and corresponding
to their position in life, is fostered, the consciousness of oppression
awakens, and the workers attain social and political importance. The great
cities are the birthplaces of labour movements; in them the workers first began
to reflect upon their own condition, and to struggle against it; in them the
opposition between proletariat and bourgeoisie first made itself manifest; from
them proceeded the Trades Unions, Chartism, and Socialism. The great cities
have transformed the disease of the social body, which appears in chronic form
in the country, into an acute one, and so made manifest its real nature and the
means of curing it. Without the great cities and their forcing influence upon
the popular intelligence, the working-class would be far less advanced than it
is. Moreover, they have destroyed the last remnant of the patriarchal relation
between working-men and employers, a result to which manufacture on a large
scale has contributed by multiplying the employees dependent upon a single
employer. The bourgeoisie deplores all this, it is true, and has good reason to
do so; for, under the old conditions, the bourgeois was comparatively secure
against a revolt on the part of his hands. He could tyrannise over them and
plunder them to his heart's content, and yet receive obedience, gratitude, and
assent from these stupid people by bestowing a trifle of patronising
friendliness which cost him nothing, and perhaps some paltry present, all
apparently out of pure, self-sacrificing, uncalled-for goodness of heart, but
really not one-tenth part of his duty. As an individual bourgeois, placed under
conditions which he had not himself created, he might do his duty at least in
part; but, as a member of the ruling class, which, by the mere fact of its
ruling, is responsible for the condition of the whole nation, he did nothing of
what his position involved. On the contrary, he plundered the whole nation for
his own individual advantage. In the patriarchal relation that hypocritically
concealed the slavery of the worker, the latter must have remained an
intellectual zero, totally ignorant of his own interest, a mere private
individual. Only when estranged from his employer, when convinced that the sole
bond between employer and employee is the bond of pecuniary profit, when the
sentimental bond between them, which stood not the slightest test, had wholly
fallen away, then only did the worker begin to recognise his own interests and
develop independently; then only did he cease to be the slave of the
bourgeoisie in his thoughts, feelings, and the expression of his will. And to
this end manufacture on a grand scale and in great cities has most largely
contributed.

Another influence of great moment in forming the character of the English
workers is the Irish immigration already referred to. On the one hand it has,
as we have seen, degraded the English workers, removed them from civilisation,
and aggravated the hardship of their lot; but, on the other hand, it has
thereby deepened the chasm between workers and bourgeoisie, and hastened the
approaching crisis. For the course of the social disease from which England is
suffering is the same as the course of a physical disease; it develops
according to certain laws, has its own crises, the last and most violent of
which determines the fate of the patient. And as the English nation cannot
succumb under the final crisis, but must go forth from it, born again,
rejuvenated, we can but rejoice over everything which accelerates the course of
the disease. And to this the Irish immigration further contributes by reason of
the passionate, mercurial Irish temperament, which it imports into England and
into the English working-class. The Irish and English are to each other much as
the French and the Germans; and the mixing of the more facile, excitable, fiery
Irish temperament with the stable, reasoning, persevering English must, in the
long run, be productive only of good for both. The rough egotism of the English
bourgeoisie would have kept its hold upon the working-class much more firmly if
the Irish nature, generous to a fault, and ruled primarily by sentiment, had
not intervened, and softened the cold, rational English character in part by a
mixture of the races, and in part by the ordinary contact of life.

In view of all this, it is not surprising that the working-class has
gradually become a race wholly apart from the English bourgeoisie. The
bourgeoisie has more in common with every other nation of the earth than with
the workers in whose midst it lives. The workers speak other dialects, have
other thoughts and ideals, other customs and moral principles, a different
religion and other politics than those of the bourgeoisie. Thus they are two
radically dissimilar nations, as unlike as difference of race could make them,
of whom we on the Continent have known but one, the bourgeoisie. Yet it is
precisely the other, the people, the proletariat, which is by far the more
important for the future of England. [28]

Of the public character of the English working-man, as it finds expression
in associations and political principles, we shall have occasion to speak
later; let us here consider the results of the influences cited above, as they
affect the private character of the worker. The workman is far more humane in
ordinary life than the bourgeois. I have already mentioned the fact that the
beggars are accustomed to turn almost exclusively to the workers, and that, in
general, more is done by the workers than by the bourgeoisie for the
maintenance of the poor. This fact, which any one may prove for himself any
day, is confirmed, among others, by Dr. Parkinson, Canon of Manchester, who
says: [29]

"The poor give more to each other than the rich give to the
poor. I am confirmed in this assertion by the testimony of one of our oldest,
most learned, and most observant physicians Dr. Bardsley, whose humanity is as
conspicuous as his learning and talent, and who has often publicly declared
that the aggregate sum given in each year by the poor to each other exceeds
that contributed by the rich in the same period."

In other ways, too, the humanity of the workers is constantly
manifesting itself pleasantly. They have experienced hard times themselves, and
can therefore feel for those in trouble, whence they are more approachable,
friendlier, and less greedy for money, though they need it far more than the
property-holding class. For them money is worth only what it will buy, whereas
for the bourgeois it has an especial inherent value, the value of a god, and
makes the bourgeois the mean, low money-grubber that he is. The working-man who
knows nothing of this feeling of reverence for money is therefore less grasping
than the bourgeois, whose whole activity is for the purpose of gain, who sees
in the accumulations of his money-bags the end and aim of life. Hence the
workman is much less prejudiced, has a clearer eye for facts as they are than
the bourgeois, and does not look at everything through the spectacles of
personal selfishness. His faulty education saves him from religious
prepossessions, he does not understand religious questions, does not trouble
himself about them, knows nothing of the fanaticism that holds the bourgeoisie
bound; and if he chances to have any religion, he has it only in name, not even
in theory. Practically he lives for this world, and strives to make himself at
home in it. All the writers of the bourgeoisie are unanimous on this point,
that the workers are not religious, and do not attend church. From the general
statement are to be excepted the Irish, a few elderly people, and the
half-bourgeois, the overlookers, foremen, and the like. But among the masses
there prevails almost universally a total indifference to religion, or at the
utmost, some trace of Deism too undeveloped to amount to more than mere words,
or a vague dread of the words infidel, atheist, etc. The clergy of all sects is
in very bad odour with the working-men, though the loss of its influence is
recent. At present, however, the mere cry: "He's a parson!" is often enough to
drive one of the clergy from the platform of a public meeting. And like the
rest of the conditions under which he lives, his want of religious and other
culture contributes to keep the working-man more unconstrained, freer from
inherited stable tenets and cut-and-dried opinions, than the bourgeois who is
saturated with the class prejudices poured into him from his earliest youth.
There is nothing to be done with the bourgeois; he is essentially conservative
in however liberal a guise, his interest is bound up with that of the
property-holding class, he is dead to all active movement; he is losing his
position in the forefront of England's historical development. The workers are
taking his place, in rightful claim first, then in fact.

All this, together with the correspondent public action of the workers, with
which we shall deal later, forms the favourable side of the character of this
class; the unfavourable one may be quite as briefly summed up, and follows
quite as naturally out of the given causes. Drunkenness, sexual irregularities,
brutality, and disregard for the rights of property are the chief points with
which the bourgeois charges them. That they drink heavily is to be expected.
Sheriff Alison asserts that in Glasgow some thirty thousand working-men get
drunk every Saturday night, and the estimate is certainly not exaggerated; and
that in that city in 1830, one house in twelve, and in 1840, one house in ten,
was a public-house; that in Scotland, in 1823, excise was paid upon 2,300,000
gallons; in 1837, upon 6,620,000 gallons; in England, in 1823, upon 1,976,000
gallons, and in 1837, upon 7,875,000 gallons of spirits.[30] The
Beer Act of 1830, which facilitated the opening of beerhouses (jerry-shops),
whose keepers are licensed to sell beer to be drunk on the premises,
facilitated the spread of intemperance by bringing a beerhouse, so to say, to
everybody's door. In nearly every street there are several such beerhouses, and
among two or three neighbouring houses in the country one is sure to be a
jerry-shop. Besides these, there are hush-shops in multitudes, i.e., secret
drinking-places which are not licensed, and quite as many secret distilleries
which product great quantities of spirits in retired spots, rarely visited by
the police, in the great cities. Gaskell estimates these secret distilleries in
Manchester alone at more than a hundred, and their product at 156,000 gallons
at the least. In Manchester there are, besides, more than a thousand public
houses selling all sorts of alcoholic drinks, or quite as many in proportion to
the number of inhabitants as in Glasgow. In all other great towns, the state of
things is the same. And when one considers, apart from the usual consequences
of intemperance, that men and women, even children, often mothers with babies
in their arms, come into contact in these places with the most degraded victims
of the bourgeois regime, with thieves, swindlers, and prostitutes; when one
reflects that many a mother gives the baby on her arm gin to drink, the
demoralising effects of frequenting such places cannot be denied.

On Saturday evenings, especially when wages are paid and work stops somewhat
earlier than usual, when the whole working-class pours from its own poor
quarters into the main thoroughfares, intemperance may be seen in all its
brutality. I have rarely come out of Manchester on such an evening without
meeting numbers of people staggering and seeing others lying in the gutter. On
Sunday evening the same scene is usually repeated, only less noisily. And when
their money is spent, the drunkards go to the nearest pawnshop, of which there
are plenty in every city – over sixty in Manchester, and ten or twelve in
a single street of Salford, Chapel Street – and pawn whatever they
possess. Furniture, Sunday clothes where such exist, kitchen utensils in masses
are fetched from the pawnbrokers on Saturday night only to wander back, almost
without fail, before the next Wednesday, until at last some accident makes the
final redemption impossible, and one article after another falls into the
clutches of the usurer, or until he refuses to give a single farthing more upon
the battered, used up pledge. When one has seen the extent of intemperance
among the workers in England, one readily believes Lord Ashley's statement[31] that this class annually expends something like
twenty-five million pounds sterling upon intoxicating liquor; and the
deterioration in external conditions, the frightful shattering of mental and
physical health, the ruin of all domestic relations which follow may readily be
imagined. True, the temperance societies have done much, but what are a few
thousand teetotallers among the millions of workers? When Father Mathew, the
Irish apostle of temperance, passes through the English cities, from thirty to
sixty thousand workers take the pledge; but most of them break it again within
a month. If one counts up the immense numbers who have taken the pledge in the
last three or four years in Manchester, the total is greater than the whole
population of the town – and still it is by no means evident that
intemperance is diminishing.

Next to intemperance in the enjoyment of intoxicating liquors, one of the
principal faults of English working-men is sexual licence. But this, too,
follows with relentless logic, with inevitable necessity out of the position of
a class left to itself, with no means of making fitting use of its freedom. The
bourgeoisie has left the working-class only these two pleasures, while imposing
upon it a multitude of labours and hardships, and the consequence is that the
working-men, in order to get something from life, concentrate their whole
energy upon these two enjoyments, carry them to excess, surrender to them in
the most unbridled manner. When people are placed under conditions which appeal
to the brute only, what remains to them but to rebel or to succumb to utter
brutality? And when, moreover, the bourgeoisie does its full share in
maintaining prostitution – and how many of the 40,000 prostitutes who
fill the streets of London every evening live upon the virtuous bourgeoisie!
How many of them owe it to the seduction of a bourgeois, that they must offer
their bodies to the passers-by in order to live? – surely it has least of
all a right to reproach the workers with their sexual brutality.

The failings of the workers in general may be traced to an unbridled thirst
for pleasure, to want of providence, and of flexibility in fitting into the
social order, to the general inability to sacrifice the pleasure of the moment
to a remoter advantage. But is that to be wondered at? When a class can
purchase few and only the most sensual pleasures by its wearying toil, must it
not give itself over blindly and madly to those pleasures? A class about whose
education no one troubles himself, which is a playball to a thousand chances,
knows no security in life – what incentives has such a class to
providence, to "respectability", to sacrifice the pleasure of the moment for a
remoter enjoyment, most uncertain precisely by reason of the perpetually
varying, shifting conditions under which the proletariat lives? A class which
bears all the disadvantages of the social order without enjoying its
advantages, one to which the social system appears in purely hostile aspects
– who can demand that such a class respect this social order? Verily that
is asking much! But the working-man cannot escape the present arrangement of
society so long as it exists, and when the individual worker resists it, the
greatest injury falls upon himself.

Thus the social order makes family life almost impossible for the worker. In
a comfortless, filthy house, hardly good enough for mere nightly shelter,
ill-furnished, often neither rain-tight nor warm, a foul atmosphere filling
rooms overcrowded with human beings, no domestic comfort is possible. The
husband works the whole day through, perhaps the wife also and the elder
children, all in different places; they meet night and morning only, all under
perpetual temptation to drink; what family life is possible under such
conditions? Yet the working-man cannot escape from the family, must live in the
family, and the consequence is a perpetual succession of family troubles,
domestic quarrels, most demoralising for parents and children alike. Neglect of
all domestic duties, neglect of the children, especially, is only too common
among the English working-people, and only too vigorously fostered by the
existing institutions of society. And children growing up in this savage way,
amidst these demoralising influences, are expected to turn out goody-goody and
moral in the end! Verily the requirements are naive, which the self-satisfied
bourgeois makes upon the working-man!

The contempt for the existing social order is most conspicuous in its
extreme form – that of offences against the law. If the influences
demoralising to the working-man act more powerfully, more concentratedly than
usual, he becomes an offender as certainly as water abandons the fluid for the
vaporous state at 80 degrees, Réaumur. Under the brutal and brutalising
treatment of the bourgeoisie, the working-man becomes precisely as much a thing
without volition as water, and is subject to the laws of Nature with precisely
the same necessity; at a certain point all freedom ceases. Hence with the
extension of the proletariat, crime has increased in England, and the British
nation has become the most criminal in the world. From the annual criminal
tables of the Home Secretary, it is evident that the increase of crime in
England has proceeded with incomprehensible rapidity. The numbers of arrests
for criminal offences reached in the years: 1805, 4,605, 1810, 5,146; 1815,
7,818; 1820, 13,710; 1825, 14,457; 1830, 18,107; 1835, 20,731; 1840, 27,187;
1841, 27,760; 1842, 31,309 in England and Wales alone. That is to say, they
increased sevenfold in thirty-seven years. Of these arrests, in 1842, 4,497
were made in Lancashire alone, or more than 14 per cent of the whole; and 4,094
in Middlesex, including London, or more than 13 per cent. So that two districts
which include great cities with large proletarian populations, produced
one-fourth of the total amount of crime, though their population is far from
forming one-fourth of the whole. Moreover, the criminal tables prove directly
that nearly all crime arises within the proletariat; for, in 1842, taking the
average, out of 100 criminals, 32.35 could neither read nor write; 58.32 read
and wrote imperfectly; 6.77 could read and write well; 0.22 had enjoyed a
higher education, while the degree of education of 2.34 could not be
ascertained. In Scotland, crime has increased yet more rapidly. There were but
89 arrests for criminal offences in 1819, and as early as 1837 the number had
risen to 3,126, and in 1842 to 4,189. In Lanarkshire, where Sheriff Alison
himself made out the official report, population has doubled once in thirty
years, and crime once in five and a half, or six times more rapidly than the
population. The offences, as in all civilised countries, are, in the great
majority of cases, against property, and have, therefore, arisen from want in
some form; for what a man has, he does not steal. The proportion of offences
against property to the population, which in the Netherlands is as 1:7,140 and
in France, as 1:1,804, was in England, when Gaskell wrote as 1:799. The
proportion of offences against persons to the population is, in the
Netherlands, 1:28,904; in France, 1:17,573; in England, 1:23,395; that of
crimes in general to the population in the agricultural districts, as 1:1,043;
in the manufacturing district as 1:840. [32] In the whole of
England today the proportion is 1:660; [33] though it is scarcely
ten years since Gaskell's book appeared!

These facts are certainly more than sufficient to bring any one, even a
bourgeois, to pause and reflect upon the consequences of such a state of
things. If demoralisation and crime multiply twenty years longer in this
proportion (and if English manufacture in these twenty years should be less
prosperous than heretofore, the progressive multiplication of crime can only
continue the more rapidly), what will the result be? Society is already in a
state of visible dissolution; it is impossible to pick up a newspaper without
seeing the most striking evidence of the giving way of all social ties. I look
at random into a heap of English journals lying before me; there is the
Manchester Guardian for October 30, 1844, which reports for three
days. It no longer takes the trouble to give exact details as to Manchester,
and merely relates the most interesting cases: that the workers in a mill have
struck for higher wages without giving notice, and been condemned by a Justice
of the Peace to resume work; that in Salford a couple of boys had been caught
stealing, and a bankrupt tradesman tried to cheat his creditors. From the
neighbouring towns the reports are more detailed: in Ashton, two thefts, one
burglary, one suicide; in Bury one theft; in Bolton, two thefts, one revenue
fraud; in Leigh, one theft; in Oldham, one strike for wages, one theft, one
fight between Irish women, one non-Union hatter assaulted by Union men, one
mother beaten by her son, one attack upon the police, one robbery of a church;
in Stockport, discontent of working-men with wages, one theft, one fraud, one
fight, one wife beaten by her husband; in Warrington, one theft, one fight; in
Wigan, one theft, and one robbery of a church. The reports of the London papers
are much worse; frauds, thefts, assaults, family quarrels crowd one another. A
Times of September 12, 1844, falls into my hand, which gives a report
of a single day, including a theft, an attack upon the police, a sentence upon
a father requiring him to support his illegitimate son, the abandonment of a
child by its parents, and the poisoning of a man by his wife. Similar reports
are to be found in all the English papers. In this country, social war is under
full headway, every one stands for himself, and fights for himself against all
comers, and whether or not he shall injure all the others who are his declared
foes, depends upon a cynical calculation as to what is most advantageous for
himself. It no longer occurs to any one to come to a peaceful understanding
with his fellow-man; all differences are settled by threats, violence, or in a
law-court. In short, every one sees in his neighbour an enemy to be got out of
the way, or, at best, a tool to be used for his own advantage. And this war
grows from year to year, as the criminal tables show, more violent, passionate,
irreconcilable. The enemies are dividing gradually into two great camps –
the bourgeoisie on the one hand, the workers on the other. This war of each
against all, of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, need cause us no
surprise, for it is only the logical sequel of the principle involved in free
competition. But it may very well surprise us that the bourgeoisie remains so
quiet and composed in the face of the rapidly gathering storm-clouds, that it
can read all these things daily in the papers without, we will not say
indignation at such a social condition, but fear of its consequences, of a
universal outburst of that which manifests itself symptomatically from day to
day in the form of crime. But then it is the bourgeoisie, and from its
standpoint cannot even see the facts, much less perceive their consequences.
One thing only is astounding, that class prejudice and preconceived opinions
can hold a whole class of human beings in such perfect, I might almost say,
such mad blindness. Meanwhile, the development of the nation goes its way
whether the bourgeoisie has eyes for it or not, and will surprise the property-
holding class one day with things not dreamed of in its philosophy.

NOTES

1. When as here and elsewhere I speak of society as a
responsible whole, having rights and duties, I mean, of course, the ruling
power of society, the class which at present holds social and political
control, and bears, therefore, the responsibility for the condition of those to
whom it grants no share in such control. This ruling class in England, as in
all other civilised countries, is the bourgeoisie. But that this society, and
especially the bourgeoisie, is charged with the duty of protecting every member
of society, at least, in his life, to see to it, for example, that no one
starves, I need not now prove to my German readers. If I were writing for the
English bourgeoisie, the case would be different.– Note by Engels to
the German edition of 1845.

And so it is now in Germany. Our German capitalists are fully up to the English
level, in this respect at least, in the year of grace, 1886.– Added
by Engels to the American edition of 1887.

(1892) How things have changed in the last fifty years! Today there are members
of the English middle-classes who recognise that society has duties to the
individual citizen – but as for the German middle-classes?!? –
Added by Engels to the German edition of 1892. Return
to Text

2. Dr. Alison, Management of the Poor in
Scotland.– Note by Engels.

3. Dr. Alison in an article read before the British
Association for the Advancement of Science. October, 1844, in York.–
Note by Engels.

4. Alison, Principles of Population, vol.
ii.– Note by Engels to the American edition of 1887.

5. Dr. Alison, Management of the Poor in
Scotland.– Note by Engels.

6. The Manufacturing Population of England, ch. 8.
– Note by Engels.

7. Report of Commission of Inquiry into the Employment
of Children and Young Persons in Mines and Collieries and in the Trades and
Manufactures in which numbers of them work together, not being included under
the terms of the Factories' Regulation Act. First and Second Reports,
Grainger's Report. Second Report, usually cited as Children's Employment
Commission's Report, is one of the best official reports of its kind and
contains an immense quantity of evidence which is both valuable and horrifying.
First Report, 1841; Second Report, 1843.– Note by Engels.

8.Fifth Annual Report of the Reg. Gen. of Births,
Deaths, and Marriages.– Note by Engels. Return to
Text

9. Dr. Cowan, Vital Statistics of Glasgow. –
Note by Engels to the American edition of 1887. Return
to Text

10. Report of Commission of Inquiry into the State of
Large Towns and Populous Districts. First Report, 1844. Appendix.–
Note by Engels.

11. Factories' Inquiry Commission's Reports, 3rd
vol. Report of Dr. Hawkins on Lancashire, in which Dr. Roberton is cited
– the "Chief Authority for Statistics in Manchester" – Note by
Engels.

12. Quoted by Dr. Wade from the Report of the Parliamentary
Factories' Commission of 1832, in his History of the Middle and
Working-Classes, London, 1835, 3rd ed. – Note by Engels to the
American edition of 1887

13. Children's Employment Commission's Report.
App. Part II. Q. 18, Nos. 216, 217, 226, 235, etc. Horne.– Note
by Engels to the American edition of 1887. Return to
Text

14. Ibid., evidence, pp. 9, 59; 155.– Note by
Engels to the American edition of 1887

15. Ibid., pp. 9, 56; 146.–Note by Engels to the
American edition of 1887.

16. Ibid., pp. 54; 158.– Note by Engels to the
American edition of 1887.

17. Symons' Rep. App. Part I, pp. E,22, et
seq.– Note by Engels to the American edition of 1887.

18. Arts and Artisans.– Note by
Engels.

19. Principles of Population, vol. ii, pp. 196,
197.– Note by Engels.

20. We shall see later how the rebellion of the
working-class against the bourgeoisie in England is legalised by the right of
coalition.– Note by Engels.

21. Chartism, p. 54, et seq.– Note by
Engels.

22. Ibid., p. 40.– Note by Engels to the American
edition of 1887.

23. Shall I call bourgeois witnesses to bear testimony for
me here, too? I select one only, whom every one may read, namely, Adam Smith,
Wealth of Nations (McCulloch's four volume edition), vol. iii, book 5,
chap. l, p. 297.– Note by Engels. Return to
Text

24. Principles of Population, vol. ii, p. 76,
et seq., p. 82, p. 155.– Note by Engels

25. Pure-blooded.– Ed.

26. Philosophy of Manufactures, London, 1855, p.
406, et seq. We shall have occasion to refer further to this reputable
work.– Note by Engels.

28. (1892) The idea that large-scale industry has split the
English into two different nations has, as is well known, been carried out
about the same time also by Disraeli in his novel, Sybil, or the two
Nations.– Note by Engels to the German edition of 1892.

29. On the Present Condition of the Labouring Poor in
Manchester, etc. By the Rev. Rd. Parkinson, Canon of Manchester, 3rd ed.,
London and Manchester, 1841. Pamphlet.– Note by Engels.

30. Principles of Population, passim.–
Note by Engels.

31. Sitting of the Lower House on Feb. 28, 1845.–
Note by Engels.

32. The Manufacturing Population of England, chap.
10.– Note by Engels.

33. The total of population, about fifteen millions,
divided by the number of convicted criminals (22,733).– Note
by Engels.

## Single Branches of Industry

### FACTORY-HANDS

In dealing now with the more important branches of the English manufacturing
proletariat, we shall begin, according to the principle already laid down, with
the factory-workers, i.e., those who are comprised under the Factory Act. This
law regulates the length of the working-day in mills in which wool, silk,
cotton, and flax are spun or woven by means of water or steam-power, and
embraces, therefore, the more important branches of English manufacture. The
class employed by them is the most intelligent and energetic of all the English
workers, and, therefore, the most restless and most hated by the bourgeoisie.
It stands as a whole, and the cotton-workers pre-eminently stand, at the head
of the labour movement, as their masters the manufacturers, especially those of
Lancashire, take the lead of the bourgeois agitation.

We have already seen in the introduction how the population employed in
working up the textile materials were first torn from their former way of life.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the progress of mechanical invention in
later years also affected precisely these workers most deeply and permanently.
The history of cotton manufacture as related by Ure, [1] Baines, [2] and others is the story of
improvements in every direction, most of which have become domesticated in the
other branches of industry as well. Hand-work is superseded by machine-work
almost universally, nearly all manipulations are conducted by the aid of steam
or water, and every year is bringing further improvements.

In a well-ordered state of society, such improvements could only be a source
of rejoicing; in a war of all against all, individuals seize the benefit for
themselves, and so deprive the majority of the means of subsistence. Every
improvement in machinery throws workers out of employment, and the greater the
advance, the more numerous the unemployed; each great improvement produces,
therefore, upon a number of workers the effect of a commercial crisis, creates
want, wretchedness, and crime. Take a few examples. The very first invention,
the jenny, worked by one man, produced at least sixfold what the spinning-wheel
had yielded in the same time; thus every new jenny threw five spinners out of
employment. The throstle, which, in turn, produced much more than the jenny,
and, like it, was worked by one man, threw still more people out of employment.
The mule, which required yet fewer hands in proportion to the product, had the
same effect, and every improvement in the mule, every multiplication of its
spindles, diminished still further the number of workers employed. But this
increase of the number of spindles in the mule is so great that whole armies of
workers have been thrown out of employment by it. For, whereas one spinner,
with a couple of children for piecers, formerly set six hundred spindles in
motion, he could now manage fourteen hundred to two thousand spindles upon two
mules, so that two adult spinners and a part of the piecers whom they employed
were thrown out. And since self- acting mules have been introduced into a very
large number of spinning-mills, the spinners’ work is wholly performed by
the machine. There lies before me a book from the pen of James Leach, [3] one of the recognised
leaders of the Chartists in Manchester. The author has worked for years in
various branches of industry, in mills and coal-mines, and is known to me
personally as an honest, trustworthy, and capable man. In consequence of his
political position, he had at command extensive detailed information as to the
different factories, collected by the workers themselves, and he publishes
tables from which it is clear that in 1841, in 35 factories, 1,083 fewer mule
spinners were employed than in 1829, though the number of spindles in these 35
factories had increased by 99,429. He cites five factories in which no spinners
whatever are employed, self-actors only being used. While the number of
spindles increased by 10 per cent, the number of spinners diminished more than
60 per cent. And Leach adds that since 1841, so many improvements have been
introduced by double-decking and other means, that in some of the factories
named, half the operatives have been discharged. In one factory alone, where
eighty spinners were employed a short time ago, there are now but twenty left;
the others having been discharged or set at children’s work for
children’s wages. Of Stockport Leach tells a similar story, that in 1835,
800 spinners were employed, and in 1843 but 140, though the manufacture of
Stockport has greatly increased during the last eight or nine years. Similar
improvements have now been made in carding-frames, by which one-half the
operatives have been thrown out of employment. In one factory improved frames
have been set up, which have thrown four hands out of eight out of work,
besides which the employer reduced the wages of the four retained from eight
shillings to seven. The same process has gone on in the weaving industry; the
power-loom has taken possession of one branch of hand-weaving after another,
and since it produces much more than the hand-loom, while one weaver can work
two looms, it has superseded a multitude of working-people. And in all sorts of
manufacture, in flax and wool-spinning, in silk-twisting, the case is the same.
The power-loom, too, is beginning to appropriate one branch after another of
wool and linen-weaving; in Rochdale alone, there are more power than hand-looms
in flannel and other wool-weaving branches. The bourgeoisie usually replies to
this, that improvements in machinery, by decreasing the cost of production,
supply finished goods at lower prices, and that these reduced prices cause such
an increase in consumption that the unemployed operatives soon find full
employment in newly founded factories. [4] The bourgeoisie is so far correct that under
certain conditions favourable for the general development of manufacture, every
reduction in price of goods in which the raw material is cheap,
greatly increases consumption, and gives rise to the building of new factories;
but every further word of the assertion is a lie. The bourgeoisie ignores the
fact that it takes years for these results of the decrease in price to follow
and for new factories to be built; it is silent upon the point that every
improvement in machinery throws the real work, the expenditure of force, more
and more upon the machine, and so transforms the work of full-grown men into
mere supervision, which a feeble woman or even a child can do quite as well,
and does for half or two-thirds wages; that, therefore, grown men are
constantly more and more supplanted and not re-employed by the
increase in manufacture; it conceals the fact that whole branches of industry
fall away, or are so changed that they must be learned afresh; and it takes
good care not to confess what it usually harps upon, whenever the question of
forbidding the work of children is broached, that factory-work must be learned
in earliest youth in order to be learned properly. It does not mention the fact
that the process of improvement goes steadily on, and that as soon as the
operative has succeeded in making himself at home in a new branch, if he
actually does succeed in so doing, this, too, is taken from him, and with it
the last remnant of security which remained to him for winning his bread. But
the bourgeoisie gets the benefit of the improvements in machinery; it has a
capital opportunity for piling up money during the first years while many old
machines are still in use, and the improvement not yet universally introduced;
and it would be too much to ask that it should have an open eye for the
disadvantages inseparable from these improvements.

The fact that improved machinery reduces wages has also been as violently
disputed by the bourgeoisie, as it is constantly reiterated by the working-men.
The bourgeoisie insists that although the price of piece-work has been reduced,
yet the total of wages for the week’s work has rather risen than fallen,
and the condition of the operatives rather improved than deteriorated. It is
hard to get to the bottom of the matter, for the operatives usually dwell upon
the price of piece-work. But it is certain that the weekly wage, also, has, in
many branches of work, been reduced by the improvement of machinery. The
so-called fine spinners (who spin fine mule yarn), for instance, do receive
high wages, thirty to forty shillings a week, because they have a powerful
association for keeping wages up, and their craft requires long training; but
the coarse spinners who have to compete against self-actors (which are not as
yet adapted for fine spinning), and whose association was broken down by the
introduction of these machines, receive very low wages. A mule spinner told me
that he does not earn more than fourteen shillings a week, and his statement
agrees with that of Leach, that in various factories the coarse spinners earn
less than sixteen shillings and sixpence a week, and that a spinner, who years
ago earned thirty shillings, can now hardly scrape up twelve and a half, and
had not earned more on an average in the past year. The wages of women and
children may perhaps have fallen less, but only because they were not high from
the beginning. I know several women, widows with children, who have trouble
enough to earn eight to nine shillings a week; and that they and their families
cannot live decently upon that sum, every one must admit who knows the price of
the barest necessaries of life in England. That wages in general have been
reduced by the improvement of machinery is the unanimous testimony of the
operatives. The bourgeois assertion that the condition of the working-class has
been improved by machinery is most vigorously proclaimed a falsehood in every
meeting of working-men in the factory districts. And even if it were true that
the relative wage, the price of piece-work only, has fallen, while the absolute
wage, the sum to be earned in the week, remained unchanged, what would follow?
That the operatives have had quietly to look on while the manufacturers filled
their purses from every improvement without giving the hands the smallest share
in the gain. The bourgeois forgets, in fighting the working-man, the most
ordinary principles of his own Political Economy. He who at other times swears
by Malthus, cries out in his anxiety before the workers: “Where could the
millions by which the population of England has increased find work, without
the improvements in machinery?” [5] As though the bourgeois did not know well enough
that without machinery and the expansion of industry which it produced, these
“millions” would never have been brought into the world and grown
up! The service which machinery has rendered the workers is simply this: that
it has brought home to their minds the necessity of a social reform by means of
which machinery shall no longer work against but for them. Let the wise
bourgeois ask the people who sweep the streets in Manchester and elsewhere
(though even this is past now, since machines for the purpose have been
invented and introduced), or sell salt, matches, oranges, and shoe-strings on
the streets, or even beg, what they were formerly, and he will see how many
will answer: Mill-hands thrown out of work by machinery. The consequences of
improvement in machinery under our present social conditions are, for the
working-man, solely injurious, and often in the highest degree oppressive.
Every new advance brings with it loss of employment, want, and suffering, and
in a country like England where, without that, there is usually a
“surplus population", to be discharged from work is the worst that can
befall the operative. And what a dispiriting, unnerving influence this
uncertainty of his position in life, consequent upon the unceasing progress of
machinery, must exercise upon the worker, whose lot is precarious enough
without it! To escape despair, there are but two ways open to him; either
inward and outward revolt against the bourgeoisie or drunkenness and general
demoralisation. And the English operatives are accustomed to take refuge in
both. The history of the English proletariat relates hundreds of uprisings
against machinery and the bourgeoisie; we have already spoken of the moral
dissolution which, in itself, is only another form of despair.

The worst situation is that of those workers who have to compete against a
machine that is making its way. The price of the goods which they produce
adapts itself to the price of the kindred product of the machine, and as the
latter works more cheaply, its human competitor has but the lowest wages. The
same thing happens to every operative employed upon an old machine in
competition with later improvements. And who else is there to bear the
hardship? The manufacturer will not throw out his old apparatus, nor will he
sustain the loss upon it; out of the dead mechanism he can make nothing, so he
fastens upon the living worker, the universal scapegoat of society. Of all the
workers in competition with machinery, the most ill-used are the hand-loom
cotton weavers. They receive the most trifling wages, and, with full work, are
not in a position to earn more than ten shillings a week. One class of woven
goods after another is annexed by the power-loom, and hand-weaving is the last
refuge of workers thrown out of employment in other branches, so that the trade
is always overcrowded. Hence it comes that, in average seasons, the hand-weaver
counts himself fortunate if he can earn six or seven shillings a week, while to
reach this sum he must sit at his loom fourteen to eighteen hours a day. Most
woven goods require moreover a damp weaving-room, to keep the weft from
snapping, and in part for this reason, in part because of their poverty, which
prevents them from paying for better dwellings, the work-rooms of these weavers
are usually without wooden or paved floors. I have been in many dwellings of
such weavers, in remote, vile courts and alleys, usually in cellars. Often
half-a-dozen of these hand-loom weavers, several of them married, live together
in a cottage with one or two work-rooms, and one large sleeping-room. Their
food consists almost exclusively of potatoes, with perhaps oatmeal porridge,
rarely milk, and scarcely ever meat. Great numbers of them are Irish or of
Irish descent. And these poor hand-loom weavers, first to suffer from every
crisis, and last to be relieved from it, must serve the bourgeoisie as a handle
in meeting attacks upon the factory system. See, cries the bourgeois,
triumphantly, see how these poor creatures must famish, while the mill
operatives are thriving, and then judge the factory system! As though
it were not precisely the factory system and the machinery belonging to it
which had so shamefully crushed the hand-loom weavers, and as though the
bourgeoisie did not know this quite as well as ourselves! But the bourgeoisie
has interests at stake, and so a falsehood or two and a bit of hypocrisy
won’t matter much.

Let us examine somewhat more closely the fact that machinery more and more
supersedes the work of men. The human labour, involved in both spinning and
weaving, consists chiefly in piecing broken threads, as the machine does all
the rest. This work requires no muscular strength, but only flexibility of
finger. Men are, therefore, not only not needed for it, but actually, by reason
of the greater muscular development of the hand, less fit for it than women and
children, and are, therefore, naturally almost superseded by them. Hence, the
more the use of the arms, the expenditure of strength, can be transferred to
steam or waterpower, the fewer men need be employed; and as women and children
work more cheaply, and in these branches better than men, they take their
places. In the spinning-mills women and girls are to be found in almost
exclusive possession of the throstles; among the mules one man, an adult
spinner (with self-actors, he, too, becomes superfluous), and several piecers
for tying the threads, usually children or women, sometimes young men of from
eighteen to twenty years, here and there an old spinner [7] thrown out of other employment. At
the power-looms women, from fifteen to twenty years, are chiefly employed, and
a few men; these, however, rarely remain at this trade after their twenty-first
year. Among the preparatory machinery, too, women alone are to be found, with
here and there a man to clean and sharpen the carding-frames. Besides all
these, the factories employ numbers of children – doffers – for
mounting and taking down bobbins, and a few men as overlookers, a mechanic and
an engineer for the steam- engines, carpenters, porters, etc.; but the actual
work of the mills is done by women and children. This the manufacturers deny.

They published last year elaborate tables to prove that machinery does not
supersede adult male operatives. According to these tables, rather more than
half of all the factory-workers employed, viz., 52 per cent, were females and
48 per cent males, and of these operatives more than half were over eighteen
years old. So far, so good. But the manufacturers are very careful not to tell
us, how many of the adults were men and how many women. And this is just the
point. Besides this, they have evidently counted the mechanics, engineers,
carpenters, all the men employed in any way in the factories, perhaps even the
clerks, and still they have not the courage to tell the whole truth. These
publications teem generally with falsehoods, perversions, crooked statements,
with calculations of averages, that prove a great deal for the uninitiated
reader and nothing for the initiated, and with suppressions of facts bearing on
the most important points; and they prove only the selfish blindness and want
of uprightness of the manufacturers concerned. Let us take some of the
statements of a speech with which Lord Ashley introduced the Ten Hours’
Bill, March 15th, 1844, into the House of Commons. Here he gives some data as
to the relations of sex and age of the operatives, not yet refuted by the
manufacturers, whose statements, as quoted above, cover moreover only a part of
the manufacturing industry of England. Of 419,590 factory operatives of the
British Empire in 1839, 192,887, or nearly half, were under eighteen years of
age, and 242,296 of the female sex, of whom 112,192 were less than eighteen
years old. There remain, therefore, 80,695 male operatives under eighteen
years, and 96,599 adult male operatives, or not one full quarter of the
whole number. In the cotton factories, 56¼ per cent; in the woolen mills,
69½ per cent; in the silk mills, 70½ per cent; in the flax-spinning mills, 70½
per cent of all operatives are of the female sex. These numbers suffice to
prove the crowding out of adult males. But you have only to go into the nearest
mill to see the fact confirmed. Hence follows of necessity that inversion of
the existing social order which, being forced upon them, has the most ruinous
consequences for the workers. The employment of women at once breaks up the
family; for when the wife spends twelve or thirteen hours every day in the
mill, and the husband works the same length of time there or elsewhere, what
becomes of the children? They grow up like wild weeds; they are put out to
nurse for a shilling or eighteenpence a week, and how they are treated may be
imagined. Hence the accidents to which little children fall victims multiply in
the factory districts to a terrible extent. The lists of the Coroner of
Manchester [8] showed for
nine months: 69 deaths from burning, 56 from drowning, 23 from falling, 67 from
other causes, or a total of 215 deaths from accidents,[9] while in non-manufacturing
Liverpool during twelve months there were but 146 fatal accidents. The mining
accidents are excluded in both cases; and since the Coroner of Manchester has
no authority in Salford, the population of both places mentioned in the
comparison is about the same. The Manchester Guardian reports one or
more deaths by burning in almost every number. That the general mortality among
young children must be increased by the employment of the mothers is
self-evident, and is placed beyond all doubt by notorious facts. Women often
return to the mill three or four days after confinement, leaving the baby, of
course; in the dinner-hour they must hurry home to feed the child and eat
something, and what sort of suckling that can be is also evident. Lord Ashley
repeats the testimony of several workwomen:

"M. H., twenty years old, has two children, the youngest a
baby that is tended by the other, a little older. The mother goes to the mill
shortly after five o’clock in the morning, and comes home at eight at
night; all day the milk pours from her breasts, so that her clothing drips with
it.” “H. W. has three children, goes away Monday morning at five
o’clock, and comes back Saturday evening; has so much to do for the
children then that she cannot get to bed before three o’clock in the
morning; often wet through to the skin, and obliged to work in that
state.” She said: “My breasts have given me the most frightful
pain, and I have been dripping wet with milk."

The use of narcotics to keep the children still is fostered by
this infamous system, and has reached a great extent in the factory districts.
Dr. Johns, Registrar in Chief for Manchester, is of opinion that this custom is
the chief source of the many deaths from convulsions. The employment of the
wife dissolves the family utterly and of necessity, and this dissolution, in
our present society, which is based upon the family, brings the most
demoralising consequences for parents as well as children. A mother who has no
time to trouble herself about her child, to perform the most ordinary loving
services for it during its first year, who scarcely indeed sees it, can be no
real mother to the child, must inevitably grow indifferent to it, treat it
unlovingly like a stranger. The children who grow up under such conditions are
utterly ruined for later family life, can never feel at home in the family
which they themselves found, because they have always been accustomed to
isolation, and they contribute therefore to the already general undermining of
the family in the working-class. A similar dissolution of the family is brought
about by the employment of the children. When they get on far enough to earn
more than they cost their parents from week to week, they begin to pay the
parents a fixed sum for board and lodging, and keep the rest for themselves.
This often happens from the fourteenth or fifteenth year. In a word, the
children emancipate themselves, and regard the paternal dwelling as a
lodging-house, which they often exchange for another, as suits them.

In many cases the family is not wholly dissolved by the employment of the
wife, but turned upside down. The wife supports the family, the husband sits at
home, tends the children, sweeps the room and cooks. This case happens very
frequently; in Manchester alone, many hundred such men could be cited,
condemned to domestic occupations. It is easy to imagine the wrath aroused
among the working-men by this reversal of all relations within the family,
while the other social conditions remain unchanged. There lies before me a
letter from an English working-man, Robert Pounder, Baron’s Buildings,
Woodhouse, Moorside, in Leeds (the bourgeoisie may hunt him up there; I give
the exact address for the purpose), written by him to Oastler.

He relates how another working-man, being on tramp, came to St. Helens, in
Lancashire, and there looked up an old friend. He found him in a miserable,
damp cellar, scarcely furnished.

"And when my poor friend went in, there sat poor Jack near
the fire, and what did he, think you? Why he sat and mended his wife’s
stockings with the bodkin; and as soon as he saw his old friend at the
door-post, he tried to hide them. But Joe, that is my friend’s name, had
seen it, and said: ’Jack, what the devil art thou doing? Where is the
missus? Why, is that thy work?’ and poor Jack was ashamed, and said:
’No, I know this is not my work, but my poor missus is i’ th’
factory; she has to leave at half-past five and works till eight at night, and
then she is so knocked up that she cannot do aught when she gets home, so I
have to do everything for her what I can, for I have no work, nor had any for
more nor three years, and I shall never have any more work while I live,”
and then he wept a big tear. Jack again said: ’There is work enough for
women folks and childer hereabouts, but none for men: thou mayest sooner find a
hundred pound on the road than work for men – but I should never have
believed that either thou or any one else would have seen me mending my
wife’s stockings, for it is bad work. But she can hardly stand on her
feet; I am afraid she will be laid up, and then I don’t know what is to
become of us, for it’s a good bit that she has been the man in the haul
and I the woman; it is bad work, Joe,” and he cried bitterly, and said,
’It has not been always so.’ ’No,’ said Joe; ’but
when thou hadn’t no work, how hast thou not shifted ’I’ll
tell thee, Joe, as well as I can, but it was bad enough; thou knowest when I
got married I had work plenty, and thou knows I was not lazy.’ ’No,
that thou wert not.’ ’And we had a good furnished house, and Mary
need not go to work. I could work for the two of us; but now the world is
upside down. Mary has to work and I have to stop at home, mind the childer,
sweep and wash, bake and mend; and, when the poor woman comes home at night,
she is knocked up. Thou knows, Joe, it’s hard for one that was used
different.’ ’Yes, boy, it is hard.’ And then Jack began to
cry again, and he wished he had never married, and that he had never been born;
but he had never thought, when he wed Mary, that it would come to this.
’I have often cried over it,’ said Jack. Now when Joe heard this,
he told me that he had cursed and damned the factories, and the masters, and
the Government, with all the curses that he had learned while be was in the
factory from a child."

Can any one imagine a more insane state of things than that
described in this letter! And yet this condition, which unsexes the man and
takes from the woman all womanliness without being able to bestow upon the man
true womanliness, or the woman true manliness – this condition which
degrades, in the most shameful way, both sexes, and, through them, Humanity, is
the last result of our much-praised civilisation, the final achievement of all
the efforts and struggles of hundreds of generations to improve their own
situation and that of their posterity. We must either despair of mankind, and
its aims and efforts, when we see all our labour and toil result in such a
mockery, or we must admit that human society has hitherto sought salvation in a
false direction; we must admit that so total a reversal of the position of the
sexes can have come to pass only because the sexes have been placed in a false
position from the beginning. If the reign of the wife over the husband, as
inevitably brought about by the factory system, is inhuman, the pristine rule
of the husband over the wife must have been inhuman too. If the wife can now
base her supremacy upon the fact that she supplies the greater part, nay, the
whole of the common possession, the necessary inference is that this community
of possession is no true and rational one, since one member of the family
boasts offensively of contributing the greater share. If the family of our
present society is being thus dissolved, this dissolution merely shows that, at
bottom, the binding tie of this family was not family affection, but private
interest lurking under the cloak of a pretended community of possessions. [10] The same relation
exists on the part of those children who support unemployed parents when they
do not directly pay board as already referred to. Dr. Hawkins testified in the
Factories’ Inquiry Commission’s Report that this relation is common
enough, and in Manchester it is notorious. In this case the children are the
masters in the house, as the wife was in the former case, and Lord Ashley gives
an example of this in his speech: A man berated his two daughters for going to
the public-house, and they answered that they were tired of being ordered
about, saying, “Damn you, we have to keep you.” Determined to keep
the proceeds of their work for themselves, they left the family dwelling, and
abandoned their parents to their fate.

The unmarried women, who have grown up in mills, are no better off than the
married ones. It is self-evident that a girl who has worked in a mill from her
ninth year is in no position to understand domestic work, whence it follows
that female operatives prove wholly inexperienced and unfit as housekeepers.
They cannot knit or sew, cook or wash, are unacquainted with the most ordinary
duties of a housekeeper, and when they have young children to take care of,
have not the vaguest idea how to set about it. The Factories’ Inquiry
Commission’s Report gives dozens of examples of this, and Dr. Hawkins,
Commissioner for Lancashire expresses his opinion as follows:

“A girl marries early and recklessly; she has had no
time, no means, no opportunities of learning the common duties of domestic
life; and even if she had acquired the knowledge she has still no time to
practise them... There is the young mother absent from her child above twelve
hours daily. Who has the charge of the infant in her absence? Usually some
little girl or aged woman, who is hired for a trifle and whose services are
equivalent to the reward. Too often the dwelling of the factory family is no
home; it sometimes is a cellar, which includes no cooking, no washing, no
making, no mending, no decencies of life, no invitations to the fireside. I
cannot help on these and on other grounds, especially for the better
preservation of infant life, expressing my hope that a period may arrive when
married women shall be rarely employed in a factory.”

But that is the least of the evil. The moral consequences of the
employment of women in factories are even worse. The collecting of persons of
both sexes and all ages in a single work-room, the inevitable contact, the
crowding into a small space of people, to whom neither mental nor moral
education has been given, is not calculated for the favourable development of
the female character. The manufacturer, if he pays any attention to the matter,
can interfere only when something scandalous actually happens; the permanent,
less conspicuous influence of persons of dissolute character upon the more
moral, and especially upon the younger ones, he cannot ascertain, and
consequently cannot prevent. But precisely this influence is the injurious. The
language used in the mills is characterised by many witnesses in the report of
1833, as "indecent", “bad", “filthy", etc. It is the same process
upon a small scale which we have already witnessed upon a large one in the
great cities. The centralisation of population has the same influence upon the
same persons, whether it affects them in a great city or a small factory. The
smaller the mill the closer the packing, and the more unavoidable the contact;
and the consequences are not wanting. A witness in Leicester said that he would
rather let his daughter beg than go into a factory; that they are perfect gates
of hell; that most of the prostitutes of the town had their employment in the
mills to thank for their present situation. Another, in Manchester, “did
not hesitate to assert that three-fourths of the young factory employees, from
fourteen to twenty years of age, were unchaste". Commissioner Cowell expresses
it as his opinion, that the morality of the factory operatives is somewhat
below the average of that of the working- class in general. And Dr. Hawkins
says:

“An estimate of sexual morality is scarcely possible
to be reduce into figures; but if I may trust my own observations, and the
general opinion of those with whom I have conversed, and the spirit of our
evidence, then a most discouraging view of the influence of the factory life
upon the morality of female youth obtrudes itself.”

It is, besides, a matter of course that factory servitude, like
any other, and to an even higher degree, confers the jus primae noctis
upon the master. In this respect also the employer is sovereign over the
persons and charms of his employees. The threat of discharge suffices to
overcome all resistance in nine cases out of ten, if not in ninety-nine out of
a hundred, in girls who, in any case, have no strong inducements to chastity.
If the master is mean enough, and the official report mentions several such
cases, his mill is also his harem; and the fact that not all manufacturers use
their power, does not in the least change the position of the girls. In the
beginning of manufacturing industry, when most of the employers were upstarts
without education or consideration for the hypocrisy of society, they let
nothing interfere with the exercise of their vested rights.

To form a correct judgment of the influence of factory-work upon the health
of the female sex, it is necessary first to consider the work of children, and
then the nature of the work itself. From the beginning of manufacturing
industry, children have been employed in mills, at first almost exclusively by
reason of the smallness of the machines, which were later enlarged. Even
children from the workhouses were employed in multitudes, being rented out for
a number of years to the manufacturers as apprentices. They were lodged, fed,
and clothed in common, and were, of course, completely the slaves of their
masters, by whom they were treated with the utmost recklessness and barbarity.
As early as 1796, the public objection to this revolting system found such
vigorous expression through Dr. Percival and Sir Robert Peel (father of the
Cabinet Minister, and himself a cotton manufacturer), that in 1802 Parliament
passed an Apprentices’ Bill, by which the most crying evils were removed.
Gradually the increasing competition of free workpeople crowded out the whole
apprentice system; factories were built in cities, machinery was constructed on
a larger scale, and work-rooms were made more airy and wholesome; gradually,
too, more work was found for adults and young persons. The number of children
in the mills diminished somewhat, and the age at which they began to work rose
a little; few children under eight or nine years were now employed. Later, as
we shall see, the power of the state intervened several times to protect them
from the money-greed of the bourgeoisie.

The great mortality among children of the working-class, and especially
among those of the factory operatives, is proof enough of the unwholesome
conditions under which they pass their first years. These influences are at
work, of course, among the children who survive, but not quite so powerfully as
upon those who succumb. The result in the most favourable case is a tendency to
disease, or some check in development, and consequent less than normal vigour
of the constitution. A nine years old child of a factory operative that has
grown up in want, privation, and changing conditions, in cold and damp, with
insufficient clothing and unwholesome dwellings, is far from having the working
force of a child brought up under healthier conditions. At nine years of age it
is sent into the mill to work 6½ hours (formerly 8, earlier still, 12 to 14,
even 16 hours) daily, until the thirteenth year; then twelve hours until the
eighteenth year. The old enfeebling influences continue, while the work is
added to them. It is not to be denied that a child of nine years, even an
operative’s child, can hold out through 6½ hours’ daily work,
without any one being able to trace visible bad results in its development
directly to this cause; but in no case can its presence in the damp, heavy air
of the factory, often at once warm and wet, contribute to good health; and, in
any case, it is unpardonable to sacrifice to the greed of an unfeeling
bourgeoisie the time of children which should be devoted solely to their
physical and mental development, withdraw them from school and the fresh air,
in order to wear them for the benefit of the manufacturers. The bourgeoisie
says: If we do not employ the children in the mills, they only remain under
conditions unfavourable to their development; and this is true on the whole.
But what does this mean if it is not a confession that the bourgeoisie first
places the children of the working-class under unfavourable conditions, and
then exploits these bad conditions for its own benefit, appeals to that which
is as much its own fault as the factory system, excuses the sin of today with
the sin of yesterday? And if the Factory Act did not in some measure fetter
their hands, how this “humane", this “benevolent”
bourgeoisie, which has built its factories solely for the good of the
working-class, would take care of the interests of these workers! Let us hear
how they acted before the factory inspector was at their heels. Their own
admitted testimony shall convict them in the Report of the Factories’
Inquiry Commission of 1833.

The report of the Central Commission relates that the manufacturers began to
employ children rarely of five years, often of six, very often of seven,
usually of eight to nine years; that the working-day often lasted fourteen to
sixteen hours, exclusive of meals and intervals; that the manufacturers
permitted overlookers to flog and maltreat children, and often took an active
part in so doing themselves. One case is related of a Scotch manufacturer, who
rode after a sixteen years old runaway, forced him to return, running after the
employer as fast as the master’s horse trotted, and beat him the whole
way with a long whip. In the large towns where the operatives resisted more
vigorously, such things naturally happened less often. But even this long
working-day failed to satisfy the greed of the capitalists. Their aim was to
make the capital invested in the building and machinery produce the highest
return, by every available means, to make it work as actively as possible.
Hence the manufacturers introduced the shameful system of night-work. Some of
them employed two sets of operatives, each numerous enough to fill the whole
mill, and let one set work the twelve hours of the day, and the other the
twelve hours of the night. It is needless to picture the effect upon the frames
of young children, and even upon the health of young persons and adults,
produced by permanent loss of sleep at night, which cannot be made good by any
amount of sleep during the day. Irritation of the whole nervous system, with
general lassitude and enfeeblement of the entire frame, were the inevitable
results, with the fostering of temptation to drunkenness and unbridled sexual
indulgence. One manufacturer testifies that during the two years in which
night-work was carried on in his factory, the number of illegitimate children
born was doubled, and such general demoralisation prevailed that he was obliged
to give up night-work. Other manufacturers were yet more barbarous, requiring
many hands to work thirty to forty hours at a stretch, several times a week,
letting them get a couple of hours sleep only, because the night-shift was not
complete, but calculated to replace a part of the operatives only.

The reports of the Commission touching this barbarism surpass everything
that is known to me in this line. Such infamies, as are here related, are
nowhere else to be found – yet we shall see that the bourgeoisie
constantly appeals to the testimony of the Commission as being in its own
favour. The consequences of these cruelties became evident quickly enough. The
Commissioners mention a crowd of cripples who appeared before them, who clearly
owed their distortion to the long working-hours. This distortion usually
consists of a curving of the spinal column and legs, and is described as
follows by Francis Sharp, M.R.C.S., of Leeds:

"Before I came to Leeds, I had never seen the peculiar
twisting of the ends of the lower part of the thigh bone. At first I considered
it might be rickets, but from the numbers which presented themselves,
particularly at an age beyond the time when rickets attack children (between 8
and 14), and finding that they had commenced since they began work at the
factory I soon began to change my opinion. I now may have seen of such cases
nearly 100, and I can most decidedly state they were the result of too much
labour. So far as I know they all belong to factories, and have attributed
their disease to this cause themselves.” “Of distortions of the
spine, which were evidently owing to the long standing at their labour, perhaps
the number of cases might not be less than 300."

Precisely similar is the testimony of Dr. Hey, for eighteen
years physician in the hospital in Leeds:

"Diseases of the spine amongst people employed in factories
presented themselves very frequently. Some were the result of pure labour;
others were the result of labour on a constitution perhaps congenitally weak,
or rendered feeble by bad food. The deformities of the limbs appear to be more
frequent than the spinal diseases... the bending in of the knees, relaxation of
the ligaments of the ankles was very frequent, and the bending of the large
bones. The heads of the large bones have especially been increased and twisted
to a considerable extent; and these cases I have found to have come from those
mills and factories where long hours have been said to be common."

Surgeons Beaumont and Sharp, of Bradford, bear the same
testimony. The reports of Drinkwater, Power, and Dr. Loudon contain a multitude
of examples of such distortions, and those of Tufnell and Sir David Barry,
which are less directed to this point, give single examples. The Commissioners
for Lancashire, Cowell, Tufnell, and Hawkins, have almost wholly neglected this
aspect of the physiological results of the factory system, though this district
rivals Yorkshire in the number of cripples. I have seldom traversed Manchester
without meeting three or four of them, suffering from precisely the same
distortions of the spinal columns and legs as that described, and I have often
been able to observe them closely. I know one personally who corresponds
exactly with the foregoing description of Dr. Hey, and who got into this
condition in Mr. Douglas’ factory in Pendleton, an establishment which
enjoys an unenviable notoriety among the operatives by reason of the former
long working periods continued night after night. It is evident, at a glance,
whence the distortions of these cripples come; they all look exactly alike. The
knees are bent inward and backwards, the ankles deformed and thick, and the
spinal column often bent forwards or to one side. But the crown belongs to the
philanthropic manufacturers of the Macclesfield silk district. They employed
the youngest children of all, even from five to six years of age. In the
supplementary testimony of Commissioner Tufnell, I find the statement of a
certain factory manager Wright, both of whose sisters were most shamefully
crippled, and who had once counted the cripples in several streets, some of
them the cleanest and neatest streets of Macclesfield. He found in Townley
Street ten, George Street five, Charlotte Street four, Watercots fifteen, Bank
Top three, Lord Street seven, Mill Lane twelve, Great George Street two, in the
workhouse two, Park Green one, Peckford Street two, whose families all
unanimously declared that the cripples had become such in consequence of
overwork in the silk-twisting mills. One boy is mentioned so crippled as not to
be able to go upstairs, and girls deformed in back and hips.

Other deformities also have proceeded from this overwork, especially
flattening of the foot, which Sir D. Barry frequently observed, as did the
physicians and surgeons in Leeds. In cases, in which a stronger constitution,
better food, and other more favourable circumstances enabled the young
operative to resist this effect of a barbarous exploitation, we find, at least,
pain in the back, hips, and legs, swollen joints, varicose veins, and large,
persistent ulcers in the thighs and calves. These affections are almost
universal among the operatives. The reports of Stuart, Mackintosh, and Sir D.
Barry contain hundreds of examples; indeed, they know almost no operative who
did not suffer from some of these affections; and in the remaining reports, the
occurrence of the same phenomena is attested by many physicians.

The reports covering Scotland place it beyond all doubt, that a
working-day of thirteen hours, even for men and women from eighteen to
twenty-two years of age, produces at least these consequences, both in the
flax-spinning mills of Dundee and Dunfermline, and in the cotton mills of
Glasgow and Lanark.

All these affections are easily explained by the nature of factory-work,
which is, as the manufacturers say, very “light", and precisely by reason
of its lightness, more enervating than any other. The operatives have little to
do, but must stand the whole time. Any one who sits down, say upon a
window-ledge or a basket, is fined, and this perpetual upright position, this
constant mechanical pressure of the upper portions of the body upon spinal
column, hips, and legs, inevitably produces the results mentioned. This
standing is not required by the work itself, and at Nottingham chairs have been
introduced, with the result that these affections disappeared, and the
operatives ceased to object to the length of the working-day. But in a factory
where the operative works solely for the bourgeois, and has small interest in
doing his work well, he would probably use the seats more than would be
agreeable and profitable to the manufacturer; and in order that somewhat less
raw material may be spoiled for the bourgeois, the operative must sacrifice
health and strength. This long protracted upright position, with the bad
atmosphere prevalent in the mills, entails, besides the deformities mentioned,
a marked relaxation of all vital energies, and, in consequence, all sorts of
other affections general rather than local. The atmosphere of the factories is,
as a rule, at once damp and warm, usually warmer than is necessary, and, when
the ventilation is not very good, impure, heavy, deficient in oxygen,
filled with dust and the smell of the machine oil, which almost everywhere
smears the floor, sinks into it, and becomes rancid. The operatives are lightly
clad by reason of the warmth, and would readily take cold in case of
irregularity of the temperature; a draught is distasteful to them, the general
enervation which gradually takes possession of all the physical functions
diminishes the animal warmth: this must be replaced from without, and nothing
is therefore more agreeable to the operative than to have all the doors and
windows closed, and to stay in his warm factory air. Then comes the sudden
change of temperature on going out into the cold and wet or frosty atmosphere,
without the means of protection from the rain, or of changing wet clothing for
dry, a circumstance which perpetually produces colds. And when one reflects
that, with all this, not one single muscle of the body is really exercised,
really called into activity, except perhaps those of the legs; that nothing
whatsoever counteracts the enervating, relaxing tendency of all these
conditions; that every influence is wanting which might give the muscles
strength, the fibres elasticity and consistency; that from youth up, the
operative is deprived of all fresh-air recreation, it is impossible to wonder
at the almost unanimous testimony of the physicians in the Factories’
Report, that they find a great lack of ability to resist disease, a general
depression in vital activity, a constant relaxation of the mental and physical
powers. Let us hear Sir D. Barry first:

The unfavourable influences of mill-work upon the hands are
the following: “(1) The indispensable necessity of forcing both their
mental and bodily exertions to keep exact pace with the motions of machinery
propelled by an unvarying, unceasing power. (2) The continuance of an erect
posture for periods unnaturally prolonged and too quickly repeated. (3) The
privation of sleep" (in consequence of too long working-hours, pain in the
legs, and general physical derangement). “To these causes are often added
low, crowded, dusty, or damp rooms; impure air, heated atmospheres, constant
perspiration. Hence it is that male children particularly, after they have
worked some time in mills lose – with very few exceptions indeed –
the rosy chubbiness of boyhood, and become paler and thinner than boys not so
employed generally are. Even the draw-boy who stands with his bare feet on the
earthen floor of his master’s shop preserves his appearance much better
than the mill-boys,” because he occasionally goes into the fresh air for
a time. “But the mill-worker never has a moment’s respite except at
meals, and never gets into the open air except when he is going to look for
them. All the adult male spinners are pale and thin; they are subject to
capricious appetite and dyspepsia; all the spinners have been brought up in the
mills from their very childhood, it is fair to conclude that their mode of life
is not favourable to the development of the manly forms, seeing that few, or
none of them are tall athletic men. Females are much less deteriorated in their
appearance by mill-work than males.” (Very naturally. But we shall see
that they have their own diseases.)

So, too, Power:

"I can have no hesitation in stating my belief that a large
mass of deformity has been produced at Bradford by the factory system.... The
effect of long and continuous work upon the frame and limbs is not indicated by
actual deformity alone; a more common indication of it is found in a stunted
growth, relaxed muscles, and slender conformation."

So, too, F. Sharp, in Leeds, the surgeon [11] already quoted:

When I moved from Scarborough to Leeds, “the general
appearance of the children in Leeds immediately struck me as much more pallid,
and also the firmness of the fibre as much inferior as what I had seen in
Scarborough and the adjacent country. Observed also many to be more diminutive
for their age.... Innumerable cases of scrofula, affections of the lungs,
mesenteric diseases, and dyspepsia, have also occurred, which I have no doubt,
as a professional man, were owing to the same cause", the mill-work. “The
nervous energy of the body I consider to be weakened by the very long hours,
and a foundation laid for many diseases. Were it not for the individuals who
join the mills from the country, the factory people would soon be
deteriorated."

So, too, Beaumont, surgeon in Bradford:

“I also consider the system of working in the
factories in and around here induces for the most part a peculiar laxity of the
whole system, rendering the children highly susceptible of either prevailing
epidemics or casual medical disorders.... I certainly consider the want of
wholesome regulations in the most of the factories, whether as to ventilation
or cleanliness, to be productive in a great measure of that peculiar tendency
or susceptibility of morbid affections of which my own practice affords ample
experience."

Similar testimony is borne by Dr. Hey[Not Hey, but William Sharp
Jr (per "Factories Inquiry Commission", Second Report, 1833, C. 3, p. 23)]:

(1) “I have had an opportunity of observing the effect
of the factory system in the health of children under the most advantageous
circumstances” (in Wood’s mill, in Bradford, the best arranged of
the district, in which he was factory surgeon). (2) “This effect is
decidedly. and, to a great extent, injurious, even under those favourable
circumstances. (3) During the year 1832, three-fifths of all the children
employed in Wood’s mill had medical assistance from me; (4) The most
injurious effect is not in the prevalency of deformed bodies, but debilitated
and diseased constitutions,” (3) All this is greatly improved since the
working-hours of children have been reduced at Wood’s to ten.

The Commissioner, Dr. Loudon himself, who sites these witnesses,
says:

"I think it has been clearly proved that children have been
worked a most unreasonable and cruel length of time daily, and that even adults
have been expected to do a certain quantity of labour which scarcely any human
being is able to endure. The result of this has been, that many have met with a
premature death; many have been affected constitutionally for life; and the
idea of a posterity being injured from the shattered frames of the survivors
is, physiologically speaking, but too well founded."

And, finally, Dr. Hawkins, in speaking of Manchester:

"I believe that most travellers are struck by the lowness of
stature, the leanness, and the paleness which present themselves so commonly to
the eye at Manchester, and above all, among the factory classes. I have never
been in any town in Great Britain nor in Europe in which degeneracy of form and
colour from the national standard has been so obvious. The married women fall
remarkably short of the usual characteristics of the English wife.... I cannot
help remarking, that the boys and girls whom I examined from the Manchester
factories very generally exhibited a depressed look, and a pallid complexion;
none of the alacrity, activity, and hilarity of early life shone on their
countenances and gestures. A large number of both, in reply to my questions,
declared that they had no wish to play about on the Saturday afternoon and on
the Sunday, but that they preferred remaining quiet."

I add, at once, another passage of Hawkins’ report, which
only half belongs here, but may be quoted here as well as anywhere else:

"Intemperance, debauchery and improvidence are the chief
blemishes on the character of the factory workpeople, and those evils may
easily be traced to habits formed under the present system, and springing from
it almost inevitably. On all sides it is admitted that indigestion,
hypochondriasis and languor affect this class of the population very widely.
After twelve hours of monotonous labour, it is but too natural to seek for
stimulants of one kind or another; but when we superadd the morbid states above
alluded to, the transition to spirits is rapid and perpetual."

For all this testimony of the physicians and commissioners, the
report itself offers hundreds of cases of proof. That the growth of young
operatives is stunted, by their work, hundreds of statements testify; among
others, Cowell gives the weight of 46 youths of 17 years of age, from one
Sunday school, of whom 26 employed in mills, averaged 104.5 pounds, and 20 not
employed in mills, 117.7 pounds. One of the largest manufacturers of
Manchester, leader of the opposition against the working-men, I think Robert
Hyde Greg himself, said, on one occasion, that if things went on as at present,
the operatives of Lancashire would soon be a race of pygmies. A recruiting
officer testified that operatives are little adapted for military service,
looked thin and nervous, and were frequently rejected by the surgeons as unfit.
In Manchester he could hardly get men of five feet eight inches; they were
usually only five feet six to seven, whereas in the agricultural districts,
most of the recruits were five feet eight.

The men wear out very early in consequence of the conditions under which
they live and work. Most of them are unfit for work at forty years, a few hold
out to forty-five, almost none to fifty years of age. This is caused not only
by the general enfeeblement of the frame, but also very often by a failure of
the sight, which is a result of mule-spinning, in which the operative is
obliged to fix his gaze upon a long row of fine, parallel threads, and so
greatly to, strain the sight.

Of 1,600 operatives employed in several factories in Harpur and Lanark, but
10 were over 45 years of age; of 22,094 operatives in diverse factories in
Stockport and Manchester, but 145 were over 45 years old. Of these 143, 16 were
retained as a special favour, and one was doing the work of a child. A list of
131 spinners contained but seven over 45 years, and yet the whole 131 were
rejected by the manufacturers, to whom they applied for work, as “too
old",’ and were without means of support by reason of old age! Mr.
Ashworth, a large manufacturer, admits in a letter to Lord Ashley, that,
towards the fortieth year, the spinners can no longer prepare the required
quantity of yarn, and are therefore ’sometimes” discharged; he
calls operatives forty years of age “old people"! Commissioner Mackintosh
expresses himself in the same way in the report of 1833:

“Although prepared by seeing childhood occupied in
such a manner, it is very difficult to believe the age of the men advanced in
years as given by themselves, so complete is their premature old age."

Surgeon Smellie of Glasgow, who treated operatives chiefly, says
hat forty years is old age for them. And similar evidence may be found
elsewhere. In Manchester, this premature old age among the operatives is so
universal that almost every man of forty would be taken for ten to fifteen
years older, while the prosperous classes, men as well as women, preserve their
appearance exceedingly well if they do not drink too heavily.

The influence of factory-work upon the female physique also is marked and
peculiar. The deformities entailed by long hours of work are much more serious
among women. Protracted work frequently causes deformities of the pelvis,
partly in the shape of abnormal position and development of the hip bones,
partly of malformation of the lower portion of the spinal column,

"Although,” says Dr. Loudon in his report, “no
cases presented themselves of deformed pelvis, and some others of the diseases
which have been described, yet their ailments are such as every medical man
must expect to be the probable consequences” of such working-hours for
young people, “and they are recorded by men of the highest professional
and moral character".

That factory operatives undergo more difficult confinement than
other women is testified to by several midwives and accoucheurs, and also that
they are more liable to miscarriage. Moreover, they suffer from the general
enfeeblement common to all operatives, and, when pregnant, continue to work in
the factory up to the hour of delivery, because otherwise they lose their wages
and are made to fear that they may be replaced if they stop away too soon. It
frequently happens that women are at work one evening and delivered the next
morning, and the case is none too rare of their being delivered in the factory
among the machinery. And if the gentlemen of the bourgeoisie find nothing
particularly shocking in this, their wives will perhaps admit that it is a
piece of cruelty, an infamous act of barbarism, indirectly to force a pregnant
woman to work twelve or thirteen hours daily (formerly still longer), up to the
day of her delivery; in a standing position, with frequent stoopings. But this
is not all. If these women are not obliged to resume work within two weeks,
they are thankful, and count themselves fortunate. Many come back to the
factory after eight, and even after three to four days, to resume full work. I
once heard a manufacturer ask an overlooker; “Is so and so not back
yet?” “No.” “How long since she was confined.”
“A week." "She might surely have been back long ago. That one over there
only stays three days.” Naturally, fear of being discharged, dread of
starvation drives her to the factory in spite of her weakness, in defiance of
her pain. The interest of the manufacturer will not brook that his employees
stay at home by reason of illness; they must not be ill, they must not venture
to lie still through a long confinement, or he must stop his machinery or
trouble his supreme head with a temporary change of arrangements; and rather
than do this, he discharges his people when they begin to be ill. Listen:

A girl feels very ill, can scarcely do her work. “Why
don’t you ask for leave to stay away?” “Well, sir, the master
is queer at letting us off; if we are off a quarter of a day we stand a chance
of being turned away."

Or Sir D. Barry:

Thomas McDurt, workman, has slight fever. “Cannot
venture to be off work more than four days, for fear of losing his work."

And so it goes on in almost all the factories. The employment of young girls
produces all sorts of irregularities during the period of development. In some,
especially those who are better fed, the heat of the factories hastens this
process, so that in single cases, girls of thirteen and fourteen are wholly
mature. Roberton, whom I have already cited (mentioned in the Factories’
Inquiry Commission’s Report as the “eminent” gynaecologist of
Manchester), relates in the North of England Medical and Surgical
Journal, that he had seen a girl of eleven years who was not only a wholly
developed woman, but pregnant, and that it was by no means rare in Manchester
for women to be confined at fifteen years of age). In such cases, the influence
of the warmth of the factories is the same as that of a tropical climate, and,
as in such climates, the abnormally early development revenges itself by
correspondingly premature age and debility. On the other hand, retarded
development of the female constitution occurs, the breasts mature late or not
at all. Menstruation first appears in the seventeenth or eighteenth, sometimes
in the twentieth year, and is often wholly wanting. Irregular menstruation,
coupled with great pain and numerous affections, especially with anaemia, is
very frequent, as the medical reports unanimously state.

Children of such mothers, particularly of those who are obliged to work
during pregnancy, cannot be vigorous. They are, on the contrary, described in
the report, especially in Manchester, as very feeble; and Barry alone asserts
that they are healthy, but says further, that in Scotland, where his inspection
lay, almost no married women worked in factories. Moreover, most of the
factories there are in the country (with the exception of Glasgow), a
circumstance which contributes greatly to the invigoration of the children. The
operatives’ children in the neighbourhood of Manchester are nearly all
thriving and rosy, while those within the city look pale and scrofulous; but
with the ninth year the colour vanishes suddenly, because all are then sent
into the factories, when it soon becomes impossible to distinguish the country
from the city children.

But besides all this, there are some branches of factory-work which have an
especially injurious effect. In many rooms of the cotton and flax-spinning
mills, the air is filled with fibrous dust, which produces chest affections,
especially among workers in the carding and combing-rooms. Some constitutions
can bear it, some cannot; but the operative has no choice. He must take the
room in which he finds work, whether his chest is sound or not. The most common
effects of this breathing of dust are blood-spitting, hard, noisy breathing,
pains in the chest, coughs, sleeplessness – in short, all the symptoms of
asthma ending in the worst cases in consumption. Especially unwholesome is the
wet spinning of linen-yarn which is carried on by young girls and boys. The
water spurts over them from the spindle, so that the front of their clothing is
constantly wet through to the skin; and there is always water standing on the
floor. This is the case to a less degree in the doubling-rooms of the cotton
mills, and the result is a constant succession of colds and affections of the
chest. A hoarse, rough voice is common to all operatives, but especially to wet
spinners and doublers. Stuart, Mackintosh, and Sir D. Barry express themselves
in the most vigorous terms as to the unwholesomeness of this work, and the
small consideration shown by most of the manufacturers for the health of the
girls who do it. Another effect of flax-spinning is a peculiar deformity of the
shoulder, especially a projection of the right shoulder-blade, consequent upon
the nature of the work. This sort of spinning and the throstle-spinning of
cotton frequently produce diseases of the knee-pan, which is used to check the
spindle during the joining of broken threads. The frequent stooping and the
bending to the low machines common to both these branches of work have, in
general, a stunting effect upon the growth of the operative. In the
throstle-room of the cotton mill at Manchester, in which I was employed, I do
not remember to have seen one single tall, well-built girl; they were all
short, dumpy, and badly-formed, decidedly ugly in the whole development of the
figure. But apart from all these diseases and malformations, the limbs of the
operatives suffer in still another way. The work between the machinery gives
rise to multitudes of accidents of more or less serious nature, which have for
the operative the secondary effect of unfitting him for his work more or less
completely. The most common accident is the squeezing off of a single joint of
a finger, somewhat less common the loss of the whole finger, half or a whole
hand, an arm, etc., in the machinery. Lockjaw very often follows, even upon the
lesser among these injuries, and brings death with it. Besides the deformed
persons, a great number of maimed ones may be seen going about in Manchester;
this one has lost an arm or a part of one, that one a foot, the third half a
leg; it is like living in the midst of an army just returned from a campaign.
But the most dangerous portion of the machinery is the strapping which conveys
motive power from the shaft to the separate machines, especially if it contains
buckles, which, however, are rarely used now. Whoever is seized by the strap is
carried up with lightning speed, thrown against the ceiling above and floor
below with such force that there is rarely a whole bone left in the body, and
death follows instantly. Between June 12th and August 3rd, 1844, the
Manchester Guardian reported the following serious accidents (the
trifling ones it does not notice): June 12th, a boy died in Manchester of
lockjaw, caused by his hand being crushed between wheels. June 15th, a youth in
Saddleworth seized by a wheel and carried away with it; died, utterly mangled.
June 29th, a young man at Green Acres Moor, near Manchester, at work in a
machine shop, fell under the grindstone, which broke two of his ribs and
lacerated him terribly. July 24th, a girl in Oldham died, carried around fifty
times by a strap; no bone unbroken. July 27th, a girl in Manchester seized by
the blower (the first machine that receives the raw cotton), and died of
injuries received. August 3rd, a bobbins turner died in Dukenfield, caught in a
strap, every rib broken. In the year 1842, the Manchester Infirmary treated 962
cases of wounds and mutilations caused by machinery, while the number of all
other accidents within the district of the hospital was 2,426, so that for five
accidents from all other causes, two were caused by machinery. The accidents
which happened in Salford are not included here, nor those treated by surgeons
in private practice. In such cases, whether or not the accident unfits the
victim for further work, the employer, at best, pays the doctor, or, in very
exceptional cases, he may pay wages during treatment; what becomes of the
operative afterwards, in case he cannot work, is no concern of the employer.

The Factory Report says on this subject, that employers must be made
responsible for all cases, since children cannot take care, and adults will
take care in their own interest. But the gentlemen who write the report are
bourgeois, and so they must contradict themselves and bring up later all sorts
of bosh on the subject of the culpable temerity of the operatives.

The state of the case is this: If children cannot take care, the employment
of children must be forbidden. If adults are reckless, they must be mere
overgrown children on a plane of intelligence which does not enable them to
appreciate the danger in its full scope; and who is to blame for this but the
bourgeoisie which keeps them in a condition in which their intelligence cannot
develop? Or the machinery is ill-arranged, and must be surrounded with fencing,
to supply which falls to the share of the bourgeoisie. Or the operative is
under inducements which outweigh the threatened danger; he must work rapidly to
earn his wages, has no time to take care, and for this, too, the bourgeoisie is
to blame. Many accidents happen, for instance, while the operatives are
cleaning machinery in motion. Why? Because the bourgeois would otherwise oblige
the worker to clean the machinery during the free hours while it is not going,
and the worker naturally is not disposed to sacrifice any part of his free
time. Every free hour is so precious to the worker that he often risks his life
twice a week rather than sacrifice one of them to the bourgeois. Let the
employer take from working-hours the time required for cleaning the machinery,
and it will never again occur to an operative to clean machinery in motion. In
short, from whatever point of view, the blame falls ultimately on the
manufacturer, and of him should be required, at the very least, life-long
support of the incapacitated operative, and support of the victim’s
family in case death follows the accident. In the earliest period of
manufacture, the accidents were much more numerous in proportion than now, for
the machinery was inferior, smaller, more crowded, and almost never fenced. But
the number is still large enough, as the foregoing cases prove, to arouse the
grave question as to a state of things which permits so many deformities and
mutilations for the benefit of a single class, and plunges so many industrious
working-people into want and starvation by reason of injuries undergone in the
service and through the fault of the bourgeoisie.

A pretty list of diseases engendered purely by the hateful money-greed of
the manufacturers! Women made unfit for child-bearing, children deformed, men
enfeebled, limbs crushed, whole generations wrecked, afflicted with disease and
infirmity, purely to fill the purses of the bourgeoisie. And when one reads of
the barbarism of single cases, how children are seized naked in bed by the
overlookers, and driven with blows and kicks to the factory, their clothing
over their arms, how their sleepiness is driven off with blows, how they fall
asleep over their work nevertheless, how one poor child sprang up, still
asleep, at the call of the overlooker, and mechanically went through the
operations of its work after its machine was stopped; when one reads how
children, too tired to go home, hide away in the wool in the drying-room to
sleep there, and could only be driven out of the factory with straps; how many
hundreds came home so tired every night, that they could eat no supper for
sleepiness and want of appetite, that their parents found them kneeling by the
bedside, where they had fallen asleep during their prayers; when one reads all
this and a hundred other villainies and infamies in this one report, all
testified to on oath, confirmed by several witnesses, deposed by men whom the
commissioners themselves declare trustworthy; when one reflects that this is a
Liberal report, a bourgeois report, made for the purpose of reversing the
previous Tory report, and rehabilitating the pureness of heart of the
manufacturers, that the commissioners themselves are on the side of the
bourgeoisie, and report all these things against their own will, how can one be
otherwise than filled with wrath and resentment against a class which boasts of
philanthropy and self-sacrifice, while its one object is to fill its purse
a tout prix? Meanwhile, let us listen to the bourgeoisie speaking
through the mouth of its chosen apostle, Dr. Ure, who relates in his
Philosophy of Manufactures that the workers have been told that their
wages bore no proportion to their sacrifices, the good understanding between
masters and men being thus disturbed. Instead of this, the working-men should
have striven to recommend themselves by attention and industry, and should have
rejoiced in the prosperity of their masters. They would then become overseers,
superintendents, and finally partners, and would thus – (Oh! Wisdom, thou
speakest as the dove!) – “have increased at the same time the
demand for their companions’ labour in the market!"

"Had it not been for the violent collisions and
interruptions resulting from erroneous views among the operatives, the factory
system would have been developed still more rapidly and beneficially."

Hereupon follows a long Jeremiad upon the spirit of resistance
of the operatives, and on the occasion of a strike of the best-paid workers,
the fine spinners, the following naive observation:

"In fact, it was their high wages which enabled them to
maintain a stipendiary committee in affluence, and to pamper themselves into
nervous ailments, by a diet too rich and exciting for their indoor
employments."

Let us hear how the bourgeois describes the work of children:

"I have visited many factories, both in Manchester and in
the surrounding districts, during a period of several months, entering the
spinning-rooms unexpectedly, and often alone, at different times of the day,
and I never saw a single instance of corporal chastisement inflicted on a
child; nor, indeed, did I ever see children in ill-humour. They seemed to be
always cheerful and alert; taking pleasure in the light play of their muscles,
enjoying the mobility natural to their age. The scene of industry, so far from
exciting sad emotions, in my mind, was always exhilarating. It was delightful
to observe the nimbleness with which they pieced broken ends, as the mule
carriage began to recede from the fixed roller beam, and to see them at
leisure, after a few seconds’ exercise of their tiny fingers, to amuse
themselves in any attitude they chose, till the stretch and winding on were
once more completed. The work of these lively elves seemed to resemble a sport,
in which habit gave them a pleasing dexterity. Conscious of their skill, they
were delighted to show it off to any stranger. As to exhaustion by the
day’s work, they evinced no trace of it on emerging from the mill in the
evening; for they immediately began to skip about any neighbouring play-ground,
and to commence their little games with the same alacrity as boys issuing from
a school."

Naturally! As though the immediate movement of every muscle were
not an urgent necessity for frames grown at once stiff and relaxed! But Ure
should have waited to see whether this momentary excitement had not subsided
after a couple of minutes. And besides, Ure could see this whole performance
only in the afternoon after five or six hours’ work, but not in the
evening! As to the health of the operatives, the bourgeois has the boundless
impudence to cite the report of 1833 just quoted in a thousand places, as
testimony for the excellent health of these people; to try to prove by detached
and garbled quotations that no trace of scrofula can be found among them, and,
what is quite true, that the factory system frees them from all acute diseases
(that they have every variety of chronic affection instead he naturally
conceals). To explain the impudence with which our friend Ure palms off the
grossest falsehoods upon the English public, it must be known that the report
consists of three large folio volumes, which it never occurs to a well-fed
English bourgeois to study through. Let us hear further how he expresses
himself as to the Factory Act of 1833, passed by the Liberal bourgeoisie, and
imposing only the most meagre limitations upon the manufacturers, as we shall
see. This law, especially its compulsory education clause, he calls an absurd
and despotic measure directed against the manufacturers, through which all
children under twelve years of age have been thrown out of employment; and with
what results? The children thus discharged from their light and useful
occupation receive no education whatsoever; cast out from the warm
spinning-room into a cold world, they subsist only by begging and stealing, a
life in sad contrast with their steadily improving condition in the factory and
in Sunday school. Under the mask of philanthropy, this law intensifies the
sufferings of the poor, and will greatly restrict the conscientious
manufacturer in his useful work, if, indeed, it does not wholly stop him.

The ruinous influence of the factory system began at an early day to attract
general attention. We have already alluded to the Apprentices’ Act of
1802. Later, towards 1817, Robert Owen, then a manufacturer in New Lanark, in
Scotland, afterwards founder of English Socialism, began to call the attention
of the Government, by memorials and petitions, to the necessity of legislative
guarantees for the health of the operatives, and especially of children. The
late Sir Robert Peel and other philanthropists united with him, and gradually
secured the Factory Acts of 1819, 1825, and 1831, of which the first two were
never enforced, and the last only here and there. This law of 1831, based upon
the motion of Sir J. C. Hobhouse, provided that in cotton mills no one under
twenty-one should be employed between half-past seven at night and half-past
five in the morning; and that in all factories young persons under eighteen
should work no longer than twelve hours daily, and nine hours on Saturday. But
since operatives could not testify against their masters without being
discharged, this law helped matters very little. In the great cities, where the
operatives were more restive, the larger manufacturers came to an agreement
among themselves to obey the law; but even there, there were many who, like the
employers in the country, did not trouble themselves about it. Meanwhile, the
demand for a ten hours’ law had become lively among the operatives; that
is, for a law which should forbid all operatives under eighteen years of age to
work longer than ten hours daily; the Trades Unions, by their agitation, made
this demand general throughout the manufacturing population; the philanthropic
section of the Tory party, then led by Michael Sadler, seized upon the plan,
and brought it before Parliament. Sadler obtained a parliamentary committee for
the investigation of the factory system, and this committee reported in 1832.
Its report was emphatically partisan, composed by strong enemies of the factory
system, for party ends. Sadler permitted himself to be betrayed by his noble
enthusiasm into the most distorted and erroneous statements, drew from his
witnesses by the very form of his questions, answers which contained the truth,
but truth in a perverted form. The manufacturers themselves, incensed at a
report which represented them as monsters, now demanded an official
investigation; they knew that an exact report must, in this case, be
advantageous to them; they knew that Whigs, genuine bourgeois, were at the
helm, with whom they were upon good terms, whose principles were opposed to any
restriction upon manufacture. They obtained a commission, in due order,
composed of Liberal bourgeois, whose report I have so often cited. This comes
somewhat nearer the truth than Sadler’s, but its deviations therefrom are
in the opposite direction. On every page it betrays sympathy with the
manufacturers, distrust of the Sadler report, repugnance to the working-men
agitating independently and the supporters of the Ten Hours’ Bill. It
nowhere recognises the right of the working-man to a life worthy of a human
being, to independent activity, and opinions of his own. It reproaches the
operatives that in sustaining the Ten Hours’ Bill they thought, not of
the children only, but of themselves as well; it calls the working-men engaged
in the agitation demagogues, ill-intentioned, malicious, etc., is written, in
short, on the side of the bourgeoisie; and still it cannot whitewash the
manufacturers, and still it leaves such a mass of infamies upon the shoulders
of the employers, that even after this report, the agitation for the Ten
Hours’ Bill, the hatred against the manufacturers, and the
committee’s severest epithets applied to them are all fully justified.
But there was the one difference, that whereas the Sadler report accuses the
manufacturers of open, undisguised brutality, it now became evident that this
brutality was chiefly carried on under the mask of civilisation and humanity.
Yet Dr. Hawkins, the medical commissioner for Lancashire, expresses himself
decidedly in favour of the Ten Hours’ Bill in the opening lines of his
report, and Commissioner Mackintosh explains that his own report does not
contain the whole truth, because it is very difficult to induce the operatives
to testify against their employers, and because the manufacturers, besides
being forced into greater concessions towards their operatives by the
excitement among the latter, are often prepared for the inspection of the
factories, have them swept, the speed of the machinery reduced, etc. In
Lancashire especially they resorted to the device of bringing the overlookers
of work-rooms before the commissioners, and letting them testify as working-men
to the humanity of the employers, the wholesome effects of the work, and the
indifference, if not the hostility of the operatives, towards the Ten
Hours’ Bill. But these are not genuine working-men; they are deserters
from their class, who have entered the service of the bourgeoisie for better
pay, and fight in the interests of the capitalists against the workers. Their
interest is that of the capitalists, and they are, therefore, almost more hated
by the workers than the manufacturers themselves.

And yet this report suffices wholly to exhibit the most shameful
recklessness of the manufacturing bourgeoisie towards its employees, the whole
infamy of the industrial exploiting system in its full inhumanity. Nothing is
more revolting than to compare the long register of diseases and deformities
engendered by overwork, in this report, with the cold, calculating political
economy of the manufacturers, by which they try to prove that they, and with
them all England, must go to ruin, if they should be forbidden to cripple so
and so many children every year. The language of Dr. Ure alone, which I have
quoted, would be yet more revolting if it were not so preposterous.

The result of this report was the Factory Act of 1833, which forbade the
employment of children under nine years of age (except in silk mills), limited
the working-hours of children between 9-13 years to 48 per week, or 9 hours in
any one day at the utmost; that of young persons from 14-18 years of age to 69
per week, or 12 on any one day as the maximum, provided for an hour and a half
as the minimum interval for meals, and repeated the total prohibition of
night-work for persons under eighteen years of age. Compulsory school
attendance two hours daily was prescribed for all children under fourteen
years, and the manufacturer declared punishable in case of employing children
without a certificate of age from the factory surgeon, and a certificate of
school attendance from the teacher. As recompense, the employer was permitted
to withdraw one penny from the child’s weekly earnings to pay the
teacher. Further, surgeons and inspectors were appointed to visit the factories
at all times, take testimony of operatives on oath, and enforce the law by
prosecution before a Justice of the Peace. This is the law against which Dr.
Ure inveighs in such unmeasured terms!

The consequence of this law, and especially of the appointment of
inspectors, was the reduction of working-hours to an average of twelve to
thirteen, and the superseding of children as far as possible. Hereupon some of
the most crying evils disappeared almost wholly. Deformities arose now only in
cases of weak constitution, and the effects of overwork became much less
conspicuous. Nevertheless, enough testimony remains to be found in the Factory
Report, that the lesser evils, swelling of the ankles, weakness and pain in the
legs, hips, and back, varicose veins, ulcers on the lower extremities, general
weakness, especially of the pelvic region, nausea, want of appetite alternating
with unnatural hunger, indigestion, hypochondria, affections of the chest in
consequence of the dust and foul atmosphere of the factories, etc., etc., all
occur among employees subject to the provisions of Sir J. C. Hobhouse’s
Law (of 1831), which prescribes twelve to thirteen hours as the maximum. The
reports from Glasgow and Manchester are especially worthy of attention in this
respect. These evils remained too, after the law of 1833, and continue to
undermine the health of the working-class to this day. Care has been taken to
give the brutal profit-greed of the bourgeoisie a hypocritical, civilised form,
to restrain the manufacturers through the arm of the law from too conspicuous
villainies, and thus to give them a pretext for self-complacently parading
their sham philanthropy. That is all. If a new commission were appointed today,
it would find things pretty much as before. As to the extemporised compulsory
attendance at school, it remained wholly a dead letter, since the Government
failed to provide good schools. The manufacturers employed as teachers worn-out
operatives, to whom they sent the children two hours daily, thus complying with
the letter of the law; but the children learned nothing. And even the reports
of the factory inspectors, which are limited to the scope of the
inspector’s duties, i.e., the enforcement of the Factory Act, give data
enough to justify the conclusion that the old evils inevitably remain.
Inspectors Horner and Saunders, in their reports for October and December,
1843, state that, in a number of branches in which the employment of children
can be dispensed with or superseded by that of adults, the working-day is still
fourteen to sixteen hours, or even longer. Among the operatives in these
branches they found numbers of young people who had just outgrown the
provisions of the law. Many employers disregard the law, shorten the meal
times, work children longer than is permitted, and risk prosecution, knowing
that the possible fines are trifling in comparison with the certain profits
derivable from the offence. Just at present especially, while business is
exceptionally brisk, they are under great temptation in this respect.

Meanwhile the agitation for the Ten Hours’ Bill by no means died out
among the operatives; in 1839 it was under full headway once more, and
Sadler’s place, he having died, was filled in the House of Commons by
Lord Ashley and Richard Oastler, both Tories. Oastler especially, who carried
on a constant agitation in the factory districts, and had been active in the
same way during Sadler’s life, was the particular favourite of the
working-men. They called him their “good old king", “the king of
the factory children", and there is not a child in the factory districts that
does not know and revere him, that does not join the procession which moves to
welcome him when he enters a town. Oastler vigorously opposed the New Poor Law
also, and was therefore imprisoned for debt by a Mr. Thornhill, on whose estate
he was employed as agent, and to whom he owed money. The Whigs offered
repeatedly to pay his debt and confer other favours upon him if he would only
give up his agitation against the Poor Law. But in vain; he remained in prison,
whence he published his Fleet Papers against the factory system and the Poor
Law.

The Tory Government of 1841 turned its attention once more to the Factory
Acts. The Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, proposed, in 1845, a bill
restricting the working-hours of children to six and one-half, and making the
enactments for compulsory school attendance more effective, the principal point
in this connection being a provision for better schools. This bill was,
however, wrecked by the jealousy of the dissenters; for, although compulsory
religious instruction was not extended to the children of dissenters, the
schools provided for were to be placed under the general supervision of the
Established Church, and the Bible made the general reading-book, religion being
thus made the foundation of all instruction, whence the dissenters felt
themselves threatened. The manufacturers and the Liberals generally united with
them, the working-men were divided by the Church question, and therefore
inactive. The opponents of the bill, though outweighed in the great
manufacturing towns, such as Salford and Stockport, and able in others, such as
Manchester, to attack certain of its points only, for fear of the working-men,
collected nevertheless nearly two million signatures for a petition against it,
and Graham allowed himself to be so far intimidated as to withdraw the whole
bill. The next year he omitted the school clauses, and proposed that, instead
of the previous provisions, children between eight and thirteen years should be
restricted to six and one-half hours, and so employed as to have either the
whole morning or the whole afternoon free; that young people between thirteen
and eighteen years, and all females, should be limited to twelve hours; and
that the hitherto frequent evasions of the law should be prevented. Hardly had
he proposed this bill, when the ten hours’ agitation was begun again more
vigorously than ever. Oastler had just then regained his liberty; a number of
his friends and a collection among the workers had paid his debt, and he threw
himself into the movement with all his might. The defenders of the Ten
Hours’ Bill in the House of Commons had increased in numbers, the masses
of petitions supporting it which poured in from all sides brought them allies,
and on March 19th, 1844, Lord Ashley carried, with a majority of 179 to 170, a
resolution that the word “Night” in the Factory Act should express
the time from six at night to six in the morning, whereby the prohibition of
night-work came to mean the limitation of working-hours to twelve, including
free hours, or ten hours of actual work a day. But the Ministry did not agree
to this. Sir James Graham began to threaten resignation from the Cabinet, and
at the next vote on the bill the House rejected by a small majority both ten
and twelve hours. Graham and Peel now announced that they should introduce a
new bill, and that if this failed to pass they should resign. The new bill was
exactly the old Twelve Hours’ Bill with some changes of form, and the
same House of Commons which had rejected the principal points of this bill in
March, now swallowed it whole. The reason of this was that most of the
supporters of the Ten Hours’ Bill were Tories who let fall the bill
rather than the Ministry; but be the motives what they may, the House of
Commons by its votes upon this subject, each vote reversing the last, has
brought itself into the greatest contempt among all the workers, and proved
most brilliantly the Chartists’ assertion of the necessity of its reform.
Three members, who had formerly voted against the Ministry, afterwards voted
for it and rescued it. In all the divisions, the bulk of the opposition voted
for and the bulk of its own party against the Ministry. The
foregoing propositions of Graham touching the employment of children six and
one-half and of all other operatives twelve hours’ are now legislative
provisions, and by them and by the limitation of overwork for making up time
lost through breakdown of machinery or insufficient water-power by reason of
frost or drought, a working-day of more than twelve hours has been made
well-nigh impossible. There remains, however, no doubt that, in a very short
time, the Ten Hours’ Bill will really be adopted. The manufacturers are
naturally all against it; there are perhaps not ten who are for it; they have
used every honourable and dishonourable means against this dreaded measure, but
with no other result than that of drawing down upon them the ever-deepening
hatred of the working-men. The bill will pass. What the working-men will do
they can do, and that they will have this bill they proved last spring. The
economic arguments of the manufacturers that a Ten Hours’ Bill would
increase the cost of production and incapacitate the English producers for
competition in foreign markets, and that wages must fall, are all half
true; but they prove nothing except this, that the industrial greatness of
England can be maintained only through the barbarous treatment of the
operatives, the destruction of their health, the social, physical, and mental
decay of whole generations. Naturally, if the Ten Hours’ Bill were a
final measure, it must ruin England; but since it must inevitably bring with it
other measures which must draw England into a path wholly different from that
hitherto followed, it can only prove an advance.

Let us turn to another side of the factory system which cannot be remedied
by legislative provisions so easily as the diseases now engendered by it. We
have already alluded in a general way to the nature of the employment, and
enough in detail to be able to draw certain inferences from the facts given.
The supervision of machinery, the joining of broken threads, is no activity
which claims the operative’s thinking powers, yet it is of a sort which
prevents him from occupying his mind with other things. We have seen, too, that
this work affords the muscles no opportunity for physical activity. Thus it is,
properly speaking, not work, but tedium, the most deadening, wearing process
conceivable. The operative is condemned to let his physical and mental powers
decay in this utter monotony, it is his mission to be bored every day and all
day long from his eighth year. Moreover, he must not take a moment’s
rest; the engine moves unceasingly; the wheels, the straps, the spindles hum
and rattle in his ears without a pause, and if he tries to snatch one instant,
there is the overlooker at his back with the book of fines. This condemnation
to be buried alive in the mill, to give constant attention to the tireless
machine is felt as the keenest torture by the operatives, and its action upon
mind and body is in the long run stunting in the highest degree. There is no
better means of inducing stupefaction than a period of factory-work, and if the
operatives have, nevertheless, not only rescued their intelligence, but
cultivated and sharpened it more than other working-men, they have found this
possible only in rebellion against their fate and against the bourgeoisie, the
sole subject on which under all circumstances they can think and feel while at
work. Or, if this indignation against the bourgeoisie does not become the
supreme passion of the working-man, the inevitable consequence is drunkenness
and all that is generally called demoralisation. The physical enervation and
the sickness, universal in consequence of the factory system, were enough to
induce Commissioner Hawkins to attribute this demoralisation thereto as
inevitable; how much more when mental lassitude is added to them, and when the
influences already mentioned which tempt every working-man to demoralisation,
make themselves felt here too! There is no cause for surprise, therefore, that
in the manufacturing towns especially, drunkenness and sexual excesses have
reached the pitch which I have already described. [12]

Further, the slavery in which the bourgeoisie holds the proletariat chained,
is nowhere more conspicuous than in the factory system. Here ends all freedom
in law and in fact. The operative must be in the mill at half-past five in the
morning; if he comes a couple of minutes too late, he is fined; if he comes ten
minutes too late, he is not let in until breakfast is over, and a quarter of
the day’s wages is withheld, though he loses only two and one-half
hours’ work out of twelve. He must eat, drink, and sleep at command. For
satisfying the most imperative needs, he is vouchsafed the least possible time
absolutely required by them. Whether his dwelling is a half-hour or a whole one
removed from the factory does not concern his employer. The despotic bell calls
him from his bed, his breakfast, his dinner.

What a time he has of it, too, inside the factory! Here the employer is
absolute law-giver; he makes regulations at will, changes and adds to his codex
at pleasure, and even, if he inserts the craziest stuff, the courts say to the
working-man:

"You were your own master, no one forced you to agree to
such a contract if you did not wish to; but now, when you have freely entered
into it, you must be bound by it."

And so the working-man only gets into the bargain the mockery of
the Justice of the Peace who is a bourgeois himself, and of the law which is
made by the bourgeoisie. Such decisions have been given often enough. In
October, 1844, the operatives of Kennedy’s mill, in Manchester, struck.
Kennedy prosecuted them on the strength of a regulation placarded in the mill,
that at no time more than two operatives in one room may quit work at once. And
the court decided in his favour, giving the working-men the explanation cited
above. And such rules as these usually are! For instance: 1. The doors are
closed ten minutes after work begins, and thereafter no one is admitted until
the breakfast hour; whoever is absent during this time forfeits 3d. per loom.
2. Every power-loom weaver detected absenting himself at another time, while
the machinery is in motion, forfeits for each hour and each loom, 3d. Every
person who leaves the room during working- hours, without obtaining permission
from the overlooker, forfeits 3d. 3. Weavers who fail to supply themselves with
scissors forfeit, per day, 1d. 4. All broken shuttles, brushes, oil-cans,
wheels, window-panes, etc., must be paid for by the weaver. 5. No weaver to
stop work without giving a week’s notice. The manufacturer may dismiss
any employee without notice for bad work or improper behaviour. 6. Every
operative detected speaking to another, singing or whistling, will be fined
6d.; for leaving his place during working-hours, 6d. Another copy of factory
regulations lies before me, according to which every operative who comes three
minutes too late, forfeits the wages for a quarter of an hour, and every one
who comes twenty minutes too late, for a quarter of a day. Every one who
remains absent until breakfast forfeits a shilling on Monday, and sixpence
every other day of the week, etc., etc. This last is the regulation of the
Phoenix Works in Jersey Street, Manchester. It may be said that such rules are
necessary in a great, complicated factory, in order to insure the harmonious
working of the different parts; it may be asserted that such a severe
discipline is as necessary here as in an army. This may be so, but what sort of
a social order is it which cannot be maintained without such shameful tyranny?
Either the end sanctifies the means, or the inference of the badness of the end
from the badness of the means is justified. Every one who has served as a
soldier knows what it is to be subjected even for a short time to military
discipline. But these operatives are condemned from their ninth year to their
death to live under the sword, physically and mentally. They are worse slaves
than the Negroes in America, for they are more sharply watched, and yet it is
demanded of them that they shall live like human beings, shall think and feel
like men! Verily, this they can do only under glowing hatred towards their
oppressors, and towards that order of things which places them in such a
position, which degrades them to machines. But it is far more shameful yet,
that according to the universal testimony of the operatives, numbers of
manufacturers collect the fines imposed upon the operatives with the most
heartless severity, and for the purpose of piling up extra profits out of the
farthings thus extorted from the impoverished proletarians. Leach asserts, too,
that the operatives often find the factory clock moved forward a quarter of an
hour and the doors shut, while the clerk moves about with the fines-book
inside, noting the many names of the absentees. Leach claims to have counted
ninety-five operatives thus shut out, standing before a factory, whose clock
was a quarter of an hour slower than the town clocks at night, and a quarter of
an hour faster in the morning. The Factory Report relates similar facts. In one
factory the clock was set back during working-hours, so that the operatives
worked overtime without extra pay; in another, a whole quarter of an hour
overtime was worked; in a third, there were two clocks, an ordinary one and a
machine clock, which registered the revolutions of the main shaft; if the
machinery went slowly, working-hours were measured by the machine clock until
the number of revolutions due in twelve hours was reached; if work went well,
so that the number was reached before the usual working-hours were ended, the
operatives were forced to toil on to the end of the twelfth hour. The witness
adds that he had known girls who had good work, and who had worked overtime,
who, nevertheless, betook themselves to a life of prostitution rather than
submit to this tyranny. To return to the fines, Leach relates having repeatedly
seen women in the last period of pregnancy fined 6d. for the offence of sitting
down a moment to rest. Fines for bad work are wholly arbitrary; the goods are
examined in the wareroom, and the supervisor charges the fines upon a list
without even summoning the operative, who only learns that he has been fined
when the overlooker pays his wages, and the goods have perhaps been sold, or
certainly been placed beyond his reach. Leach has in his possession such a
fines list, ten feet long, and amounting to £35 17s. 10d. He relates that in
the factory where this list was made, a new supervisor was dismissed for fining
too little, and so bringing in five pounds too little weekly. And I repeat that
I know Leach to be a thoroughly trustworthy man incapable of a falsehood.

But the operative is his employer’s slave in still other respects. If
his wife or daughter finds favour in the eyes of the master, a command, a hint
suffices, and she must place herself at his disposal. When the employer wishes
to supply with signatures a petition in favour of bourgeois interests, he need
only send it to his mill. If he wishes to decide a Parliamentary election, he
sends his enfranchised operatives in rank and file to the polls, and they vote
for the bourgeois candidate whether they will or no. If he desires a majority
in a public meeting, he dismisses them half-an- hour earlier than usual, and
secures them places close to the platform, where he can watch them to his
satisfaction.

Two further arrangements contribute especially to force the operative under
the dominion of the manufacturer; the Truck system and the Cottage system. The
truck system, the payment of the operatives in goods, was formerly universal in
England. The manufacturer opens a shop, “for the convenience of the
operatives, and to protect them from the high prices of the petty dealers".
Here goods of all sorts are sold to them on credit, and to keep the operatives
from going to the shops where they could get their goods more cheaply –
the “Tommy shops” usually charging twenty-five to thirty per cent
more than others – wages are paid in requisitions on the shop instead of
money. The general indignation against this infamous system led to the passage
of the Truck Act in 1831, by which, for most employees, payment in truck orders
was declared void and illegal, and was made punishable by fine; but, like most
other English laws, this has been enforced only here and there. In the towns it
is carried out comparatively efficiently; but in the country, the truck system,
disguised or undisguised, flourishes. In the town of Leicester, too, it is very
common. There lie before me nearly a dozen convictions for this offence, dating
from the period between November, 1843, and June, 1844, and reported, in part,
in the Manchester Guardian and, in part, in the Northern
Star. The system is, of course, less openly carried on at present; wages
are usually paid in cash, but the employer still has means enough at command to
force him to purchase his wares in the truck shop and nowhere else. Hence it is
difficult to combat the truck system, because it can now be carried on under
cover of the law, provided only that the operative receives his wages in money.
The Northern Star of April 27th, 1844, publishes a letter from an
operative of Holmfirth, near Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, which refers to a
manufacturer of the name of Bowers, as follows:

"It is almost strainge to see that the accursed truck sistim
should exist to the enormoust extent that it dose in Holmfirth, and no one to
be found to have the moral courage to attempt to put a stop to it. Thaire are a
greate many honest handloome weavers that is suffering by that accursed sistim.
This is one specimen. Out of the many of that precious freetraid crew, thaire
is one manufacturer that as the curse of the whole neighbourhood upon im, for
is baseness towards is weavers. When they finnish a warp, which comes to £1
14s, or £1 16s, he gives them £l, and the rest in goods, wearing apparel, at 40
or 50 per sent dearer then at the regular shopkeeppers, and many a time the
goods are rotton. But as the Free-Trade Mercury says by the factory labour,
’they are not bound to take it; its quite optional’. O, yes; but
thay must eather take it or starve. If thay whant any more than the £1 0s 0d,
thay must wait of a warp a week or a fortnight; but if thay take the £1, 0s 0d
and the goods, thaire is always a warp for them. This is free traidism. Lord
Brougham says ‘we should lay something by in our young days, that we may
be independent in our old age of parochial relief.’ Must we lay by these
rotton goods? If this did not come from a lord, thay would think is brains wear
as rotton as the goods wee got for our labour. When the unstampt newspapers
wear in circulation thaire wear no lack of informers in Holmfirth. Thaire wear
the Blyths, the Estwoods, &, but wear are they now? O, but this is quite
different. Our truckster is one of the free trading pious crew. He goes to the
church twise every Sunday, and repeats after the parson very fervently:
‘we have left undone those things wich we hought to have done; we have
done those things wich we hought not to have done; and thaire is no help in us;
but spare us, good Lord.’ -Yes, spare us wile morning, and we will pay
our weavers wages in rotton goods again.”

The Cottage system looks much more innocent and arose in a much
more harmless way, though it has the same enslaving influence upon the
employee. In the neighbourhood of the mills in the country, there is often a
lack of dwelling accommodation for the operatives. The manufacturer is
frequently obliged to build such dwellings and does so gladly, as they yield
great advantages, besides the interest upon the capital invested. If any owner
of working-men’s dwellings averages about six per cent on his invested
capital, it is safe to calculate that the manufacturer’s cottages yield
twice this rate; for so long as his factory does not stand perfectly idle he is
sure of occupants, and of occupants who pay punctually. He is therefore spared
the two chief disadvantages under which other house-owners labour; his cottages
never stand empty, and he runs no risk. But the rent of the cottages is as high
as though these disadvantages were in full force, and by obtaining the same
rent as the ordinary house-owner, the manufacturer, at cost of the operatives,
makes a brilliant investment at twelve to fourteen per cent. For it is clearly
unjust that he should make twice as much profit as other competing
house-owners, who at the same time are excluded from competing with him. But it
implies a double wrong, when he draws his fixed profit from the pockets of the
non-possessing class, which must consider the expenditure of every penny. He is
used to that, however, he whose whole wealth is gained at the cost of his
employees. But this injustice becomes an infamy when the manufacturer, as often
happens, forces his operatives, who must occupy his houses on pain of
dismissal, to pay a higher rent than the ordinary one, or even to pay rent for
houses in which they do not live! The Halifax Guardian, quoted by the
Liberal Sun, asserts that hundreds of operatives in Ashton-
under-Lyne, Oldham, and Rochdale, etc., are forced by their employers to pay
house-rent whether they occupy the house or not. The cottage system is
universal in the country districts; it has created whole villages, and the
manufacturer usually has little or no competition against his houses, so that
he can fix his price regardless of any market rate, indeed at his pleasure. And
what power does the cottage system give the employer over his operatives in
disagreements between master and men? If the latter strike, he need only give
them notice to quit his premises, and the notice need only be a week; after
that time the operative is not only without bread but without a shelter, a
vagabond at the mercy of the law which sends him, without fail, to the
treadmill.

Such is the factory system sketched as fully as my space permits, and with
as little partisan spirit as the heroic deeds of the bourgeoisie against the
defenceless workers permit – deeds towards which it is impossible to
remain indifferent, towards which indifference were a crime. Let us compare the
condition of the free Englishman of 1845 with the Saxon serf under the lash of
the Norman barons of 1145. The serf was glebae adscriptus, bound to
the soil, so is the free working-man through the cottage system. The serf owed
his master the jus primae noctis, the right of the first night –
the free working-man must, on demand, surrender to his master not only that,
but the right of every night. The serf could acquire no property;
everything that he gained, his master could take from him; the free working-man
has no property, can gain none by reason of the pressure of competition, and
what even the Norman baron did not do, the modern manufacturer does. Through
the truck system, he assumes every day the administration in detail of the
things which the worker requires for his immediate necessities. The relation of
the lord of the soil to the serf was regulated by the prevailing customs and by
laws which were obeyed, because they corresponded to them. The free
working-man’s relation to his master is regulated by laws which are not
obeyed, because they correspond neither with the interests of the employer nor
with the prevailing customs. The lord of the soil could not separate the serf
from the land, nor sell him apart from it, and since almost all the land was
fief and there was no capital, practically could not sell him at all. The
modern bourgeois forces the working-man to sell himself. The serf was the slave
of the piece of land on which he was born, the working-man is the slave of his
own necessaries of life and of the money with which he has to buy them –
both are slaves of a thing. The serf had a guarantee for the means of
subsistence in the feudal order of society in which every member had his own
place. The free working-man has no guarantee whatsoever,
because he has a place in society only when the bourgeoisie can make use of
him; in all other cases he is ignored, treated as non-existent. The serf
sacrificed himself for his master in war, the factory operative in peace. The
lord of the serf was a barbarian who regarded his villain as a head of cattle;
the employer of operatives is civilised and regards his “hand” as a
machine. In short, the position of the two is not far from equal, and if either
is at a disadvantage, it is the free working-man. Slaves they both are, with
the single difference that the slavery of the one is undissembled, open,
honest; that of the other cunning, sly, disguised, deceitfully concealed from
himself and every one else, a hypocritical servitude worse than the old. The
philanthropic Tories were right when they gave the operatives the name white
slaves. But the hypocritical disguised slavery recognises the right to freedom,
at least in outward form; bows before a freedom-loving public opinion, and
herein lies the historic progress as compared with the old servitude, that the
principle of freedom is affirmed, and the oppressed will one day see
to it that this principle is carried out.

At the close a few stanzas of a poem which voices the sentiments of the
workers themselves about the factory system. Written by Edward P. Mead of
Birmingham, it is a correct expression of the views prevailing among them.

There is a King, and a ruthless King; Not a King of the
poet’s dream; But a tyrant fell, white slaves know well, And that
ruthless King is Steam.

He hath an arm, an iron arm, And tho’ he hath but one,
In that mighty arm there is a charm, That millions hath undone.

Like the ancient Moloch grim, his sire In Himmon’s
vale that stood, His bowels are of living fire, And children are his food.

His priesthood are a hungry band, Blood-thirsty, proud, and
bold; ’Tis they direct his giant hand, In turning blood to gold.

For filthy gain in their servile chain All nature’s
rights they bind; They mock at lovely woman’s pain, And to manly tears
are blind.

The sighs and groans of Labour’s sons Are music in
their ear, And the skeleton shades, of lads and maids, In the Steam
King’s hell appear.

Those hells upon earth, since the Steam King’s birth,
Have scatter’d around despair; For the human mind for Heav’n
design’d, With the body, is murdered there.

Then down with the King, the Moloch King, Ye working
millions all; O chain his hand, or our native land Is destin’d by him to
fall.

And his Satraps abhor’d, each proud Mill Lord, Now
gorg’d with gold and blood, Must be put down by the nation’s frown,
As well as their monster God.

I have neither time nor room to deal in detail with the replies
of the manufacturers to the charges made against them for twelve years past.
These men will not learn because their supposed interest blinds them. As,
moreover, many of their objections have been met in the foregoing, the
following is all that it is necessary for me to add:

You come to Manchester, you wish to make yourself acquainted with the state
of affairs in England. You naturally have good introductions to respectable
people. You drop a remark or two as to the condition of the workers. You are
made acquainted with a couple of the first Liberal manufacturers, Robert Hyde
Greg, perhaps, Edmund Ashworth, Thomas Ashton, or others. They are told of your
wishes. The manufacturer understands you, knows what he has to do. He
accompanies you to his factory in the country; Mr. Greg to Quarrybank in
Cheshire, Mr. Ashworth to Turton near Bolton, Mr. Ashton to Hyde. He leads you
through a superb, admirably arranged building, perhaps supplied with
ventilators, he calls your attention to the lofty, airy rooms, the fine
machinery, here and there a healthy-looking operative. He gives you an
excellent lunch, and proposes to you to visit the operatives’ homes; he
conducts you to the cottages, which look new, clean and neat, and goes with you
into this one and that one, naturally only to overlookers, mechanics, etc., so
that you may see -“families who live wholly from the factory”.
Among other families you might find that only wife and children work, and the
husband darns stockings. The presence of the employer keeps you from asking
indiscreet questions; you find every one well-paid, comfortable, comparatively
healthy by reason of the country air; you begin to be converted from your
exaggerated ideas of misery and starvation. But, that the cottage system makes
slaves of the operatives, that there may be a truck shop in the neighbourhood,
that the people hate the manufacturer, this they do not point out to you,
because he is present. He has built a school, church, reading-room, etc. That
he uses the school to train children to subordination, that he tolerates in the
reading-room such prints only as represent the interests of the bourgeoisie,
that he dismisses his employees if they read Chartist or Socialist papers or
books, this is all concealed from you. You see an easy, patriarchal relation,
you see the life of the overlookers, you see what the bourgeoisie promises the
workers if they become its slaves, mentally and morally. This “country
manufacture” has always been what the employers like to show, because in
it the disadvantages of the factory system, especially from the point of view
of health, are, in part, done away with by the free air and surroundings, and
because the patriarchal servitude of the workers can here be longest
maintained. Dr. Ure sings a dithyramb upon the theme. But woe to the operatives
to whom it occurs to think for themselves and become Chartists! For them the
paternal affection of the manufacturer comes to a sudden end. Further, if you
should wish to be accompanied through the working-people’s quarters of
Manchester, if you should desire to see the development of the factory system
in a factory town, you may wait long before these rich bourgeoisie will help
you! These gentlemen do not know in what condition their employees are nor what
they want, and they dare not know things which would make them uneasy or even
oblige them to act in opposition to their own interests. But, fortunately, that
is of no consequence: what the working-men have to carry out, they carry out
for themselves.

NOTES

1. The Cotton Manufacture of Great
Britain, by Dr. A. Ure, 1856.– Note by Engels.

2. History of the Cotton Manufacture of
Great Britain by E. Baines, Esq.– Note by Engels.

3. Stubborn Facts from the Factories by a
Manchester Operative. Published and dedicated to the working-classes. by
Wm. Rashleigh, M. P., London, Ollivier, 1844. p. 28, et seq.--
Note by Engels.

4. Compare Factories’ Inquiry
Commission’s Report.– Note by Engels to the American edition of
1887.

5. This is the question posed by J. C. Symons,
in Arts and Artisans.– Note by Engels.

7. Report of Factory Inspector, L. Horner.
October, 1845: “There is at present a very anomalous state of things in
regard to wages in some departments of cotton mills in Lancashire; for there
are hundreds of young men, between 20 and 30 years of age, employed as piecers
and otherwise, who are receiving not more than eight or nine shillings a week;
while under the same roof, children of 13 years of age are getting five
shillings, and young women between 16 and 20 are getting from ten to twelve
shillings a week.” – Note by Engels.

8. Report of Factories’ Inquiry
Commission. Testimony of Dr. Hawkins, p. 3.– Note by Engels to the
American edition of 1887.

9. In 1842, among the accidents brought to the
Infirmary in Manchester, one hundred and eighty-nine were from burning. How
many were fatal is not stated. Note by Engels.

10. How numerous married women are in the
factories is seen from information furnished by a manufacturer. In 412
factories in Lancashire, 10,721 of them were employed; of the husbands of these
women, but 5,314 were also employed in the factories, 3.927 were otherwise
employed, 821 were unemployed, and information was wanting as to 659; or two,
if not three men for each factory, are supported by the work of their wives.
– Note by Engels.

11 The surgeons in England are scientifically
educated as well as the physicians and have, in general, medical as well as
surgical practice. They are, in general, for various reasons, preferred to the
physicians. – Note by Engels..

12. Let us hear another competent judge:
“When this example [i.e., of the Irish] is considered in connexion with
the unremitted labour of the whole population engaged in the various branches
of the cotton manufacture, our wonder will be less excited by their fatal
demoralisation. Prolonged and exhausting labour, continued from day to day, and
from year to year, is not calculated to develop the intellectual or moral
faculties of man. The dull routine of a ceaseless drudgery, in which the same
mechanical process is incessantly repeated, resembles the torment of Sisyphus
– the toil, like the rock, recoils perpetually on the wearied operative.
The mind gathers neither stores nor strength from the constant extension and
retraction of the same muscles. The intellect slumbers in supine inertness; but
the grosser parts of our nature attain a rank development. To condemn man to
such severity of toil is, in some measure, to cultivate in him the habits of an
animal. He becomes reckless. He disregards the distinguishing appetites and
habits of his species. He neglects the comforts and delicacies of life. He
lives in squalid wretchedness, on meagre food, and expounds his superfluous
gains in debauchery.” – Dr. J. Kay.– Note by Engels.

## The Remaining Branches of Industry

We were compelled to deal with the factory system somewhat at length, as it
is an entirely novel creation of the industrial period; we shall be able to
treat the other workers the more briefly, because what has been said either of
the industrial proletariat in general, or of the factory system in particular,
will wholly, or in part, apply to them. We shall, therefore, merely have to
record how far the factory system has succeeded in forcing its way into each
branch of industry, and what other peculiarities these may reveal.

The four branches comprised under the Factory Act are engaged in the
production of clothing stuffs. We shall do best if we deal next with those
workers who receive their materials from these factories; and, first of all,
with the stocking weavers of Nottingham, Derby, and Leicester. Touching these
workers, the Children's Employment Commission reports that the long
working-hours, imposed by low wages, with a sedentary life and the strain upon
the eyes involved in the nature of the employment, usually enfeeble the whole
frame, and especially the eyes. Work at night is impossible without a very
powerful light produced by concentrating the rays of the lamp, making them pass
through glass globes, which is most injurious to the sight. At forty years of
age, nearly all wear spectacles. The children employed at spooling and hemming
usually suffer grave injuries to the health and constitution. They work from
the sixth, seventh, or eighth year ten to twelve hours daily in small, close
rooms. It is not uncommon for them to faint at their work, to become too feeble
for the most ordinary household occupation, and so near-sighted as to be
obliged to wear glasses during childhood. Many were found by the commissioners
to exhibit all the symptoms of a scrofulous constitution, and the manufacturers
usually refuse to employ girls who have worked in this way as being too weak.
The condition of these children is characterised as "a disgrace to a Christian
country", and the wish expressed for legislative interference. The Factory
Report adds that the stocking weavers are the worst paid workers in Leicester,
earning six, or with great effort, seven shillings a week, for sixteen to
eighteen hours' daily work. Formerly they earned twenty to twenty-one
shillings, but the introduction of enlarged frames has ruined their business;
the great majority still work with old, small, single frames, and compete with
difficulty with the progress of machinery. Here, too, every progress is a
disadvantage for the workers. Nevertheless, Commissioner Power speaks of the
pride of the stocking weavers that they are free, and have no factory bell to
measure out the time for their eating, sleeping, and working. Their position
today is no better than in 1833, when the Factory Commission made the foregoing
statements; the competition of the Saxon stocking weavers, who have scarcely
anything to eat, takes care of that. This competition is too strong for the
English in nearly all foreign markets, and for the lower qualities of goods
even in the English market. It must be a source of rejoicing for the patriotic
German stocking weaver that his starvation wages force his English brother to
starve too! And, verily, will he not starve on, proud and happy, for the
greater glory of German industry, since the honour of the Fatherland demands
that his table should be bare, his dish half-empty? Ah! it is a noble thing
this competition, this "race of the nations". In the Morning
Chronicle, another Liberal sheet, the organ of the bourgeoisie par
excellence, there were published some letters from a stocking weaver in
Hinckley, describing the condition of his fellow-workers. Among other things,
he reports 50 families, 321 persons, who were supported by 109 frames; each
frame yielded on an average 5½, shillings; each family earned an average of
11s. 4d. weekly. Out of this there was required for house rent, frame rent,
fuel, light, soap, and needles, together 5s. 10d., so that there remained for
food, per head daily, 1½d., and for clothing nothing.

"Eye hath not seen," says the stocking weaver, "ear hath not
heard, the heart cannot conceive the half of the suffering endured by this
poverty-stricken people."

Beds were wanting either wholly or in part, the children ran
about ragged and barefoot; the men said, with tears in their eyes: "We never
tasted meat this many a day" – "We have almost forgotten its taste"; and,
finally, some of them worked on Sunday, though public opinion pardons anything
else more readily than this, and the rattling noise of the frame is audible
throughout the neighbourhood.

"Look at my children," said one of them, "and ask no more. It is because my
poverty compels me; I cannot and will not hear my children cry for bread
without taking the only means honestly to get it. Last Monday morning I rose at
two o'clock and worked till near midnight. I rose at six o'clock each
succeeding morning and worked until between eleven and twelve each night. I
cannot do it longer. I shall go to an untimely grave if I do; I will therefore
end my labours at ten o'clock each night and make up the time lost by labouring
on the Sunday."

Neither in Leicester, Nottingham, nor Derby have wages risen
since 1833; and the worst of it is that in Leicester the truck system prevails
to a great extent, as I have mentioned. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at
that the weavers of this region take a very active part in all working-men's
movements, the more active and effective because the frames are worked chiefly
by men.

In this stocking weavers' district the lace industry also has its
headquarters. In the three counties mentioned there are in all 2,760 lace
frames in use, while in all the rest of England there are but 787. The
manufacture of lace is greatly complicated by a rigid division of labour, and
embraces a multitude of branches. The yarn is first spooled by girls fourteen
years of age and upwards, winders; then the spools are set up on the frames by
boys, eight years old and upwards, threaders, who pass the thread through fine
openings, of which each machine has an average of 1,800, and bring it towards
its destination; then the weaver weaves the lace which comes out of the machine
like a broad piece of cloth and is taken apart by very little children who draw
out the connecting threads. This is called running or drawing lace, and the
children themselves lace-runners. The lace is then made ready for sale. The
winders, like the threaders, have no specified working-time, being called upon
whenever the spools on a frame are empty, and are liable, since the weavers
work at night, to be required at any time in the factory or work-room. This
irregularity, the frequent night-work, the disorderly way of living consequent
upon it, engender a multitude of physical and moral ills, especially early and
unbridled sexual licence, upon which point all witnesses are unanimous. The
work is very bad for the eyes, and although a permanent injury in the case of
the threaders is not universally observable, inflammations of the eye, pain,
tears, and momentary uncertainty of vision during the act of threading are
engendered. For the winders, however, it is certain that their work seriously
affects the eye, and produces, besides the frequent inflammations of the
cornea, many cases of amaurosis and cataract. The work of the weavers
themselves is very difficult, as the frames have constantly been made wider,
until those now in use are almost all worked by three men in turn, each working
eight hours, and the frame being kept in use the whole twenty-four. Hence it is
that the winders and threaders are so often called upon during the night, and
must work to prevent the frame from standing idle. The filling in of 1,800
openings with thread occupies three children at least two hours. Many frames
are moved by steam-power, and the work of men thus superseded; and, as the

Children's Employment Commission's Report mentions only lace factories to which
the children are summoned, it seems to follow either that the work of the
weavers has been removed to great factory rooms of late, or that steam-weaving
has become pretty general; a forward movement of the factory system in either
case. Most unwholesome of all is the work of the runners, who are usually
children of seven, and even of five and four, years old. Commissioner Grainger
actually found one child of two years old employed at this work. Following a
thread which is to be withdrawn by a needle from an intricate texture, is very
bad for the eyes, especially when, as is usually the case, the work is
continued fourteen to sixteen hours. In the least unfavourable case, aggravated
near-sightedness follows; in the worst case, which is frequent enough,
incurable blindness from amaurosis. But, apart from that, the children, in
consequence of sitting perpetually bent up, become feeble, narrow-chested, and
scrofulous from bad digestion. Disordered functions of the uterus are almost
universal among the girls, and curvature of the spine also, so that "all the
runners may be recognised from their gait". The same consequences for the eyes
and the whole constitution are produced by the embroidery of lace. Medical
witnesses are unanimously of the opinion that the health of all children
employed in the production of lace suffers seriously, that they are pale, weak,
delicate, undersized, and much less able than other children to resist disease.
The affections from which they usually suffer are general debility, frequent
fainting, pains in the head, sides, back, and hips, palpitation of the heart,
nausea, vomiting and want of appetite, curvature of the spine, scrofula, and
consumption. The health of the female lace-makers especially, is constantly and
deeply undermined; complaints are universal of anaemia, difficult child-birth,
and miscarriage. The same subordinate official of the Children's Employment
Commission reports further that the children are very often ill-clothed and
ragged, and receive insufficient food, usually only bread and tea, often no
meat for months together. As to their moral condition, he reports:

"In the town of Nottingham all parties, police, clergy,
manufacturers, work- people, and parents of the children agree that the present
system of labour is a most fertile source of immorality. The threaders, who are
usually boys, and the winders, who are generally girls, are called out of their
parents' houses at all hours of the night, and as it is quite uncertain how
long they may be required, a ready and unanswerable excuse for staying out is
furnished and they have every facility for forming improper connections. This
must have contributed, in no slight degree, to the immorality which, according
to the opinion universally expressed, prevails to a most awful extent in
Nottingham. In addition to the immediate evils to the children themselves, the
domestic peace and comfort of the families to which they are members are
sacrificed to this most unnatural state of things."

Another branch of lace-making, bobbin-lacework, is carried on in
the agricultural shires of Northampton, Oxford, and Bedford, chiefly by
children and young persons, who complain universally of bad food, and rarely
taste meat. The employment itself is most unwholesome. The children work in
small, ill-ventilated, damp rooms, sitting always bent over the lace cushion.
To support the body in this wearying position, the girls wear stays with a
wooden busk, which, at the tender age of most of them, when the bones are still
very soft, wholly displace the ribs, and make narrow chests universal. They
usually die of consumption after suffering the severest forms of digestive
disorders, brought on by sedentary work in a bad atmosphere. They are almost
wholly without education, least of all do they receive moral training. They
love finery, and in consequence of these two influences their moral condition
is most deplorable, and prostitution almost epidemic among them.

This is the price at which society purchases for the fine ladies of the
bourgeoisie the pleasure of wearing lace; a reasonable price truly! Only a few
thousand blind working-men, some consumptive labourers' daughters, a sickly
generation of the vile multitude bequeathing its debility to its equally "vile"
children and children's children. But what does that come to? Nothing, nothing
whatsoever! Our English bourgeoisie will lay the report of the Government
Commission aside indifferently, and wives and daughters will deck themselves
with lace as before. It is a beautiful thing, the composure of an English
bourgeois.

A great number of operatives are employed in the cotton-printing
establishments of Lancashire, Derbyshire, and the West of Scotland. In no
branch of English industry has mechanical ingenuity produced such brilliant
results as here, but in no other has it so crushed the workers. The application
of engraved cylinders driven by steam-power, and the discovery of a method of
printing four to six colours at once with such cylinders, has as completely
superseded hand-work as did the application of machinery to the spinning and
weaving of cotton, and these new arrangements in the printing-works have
superseded the hand- workers much more than was the case in the production of
the fabrics. One man, with the assistance of one child, now does with a machine
the work done formerly by 200 block printers; a single machine yields 28 yards
of printed cloth per minute. The calico printers are in a very bad way in
consequence; the shires of Lancaster, Derby, and Chester produced (according to
a petition of the printers to the House of Commons), in the year 1842,
11,000,000 pieces of printed cotton goods: of these, 100,000 were printed by
hand exclusively, 900,000 in part with machinery and in part by hand, and
10,000,000 by machinery alone, with four to six colours. As the machinery is
chiefly new and undergoes constant improvement, the number of hand-printers is
far too great for the available quantity of work, and many of them are
therefore starving; the petition puts the number at one-quarter of the whole,
while the rest are employed but one or two, in the best case three days in the
week, and are ill-paid. Leach asserts of one print-works (Deeply Dale, near
Bury, in Lancashire), that the hand-printers did not earn on an average more
than five shillings, though he knows that the machine-printers were pretty well
paid. The print-works are thus wholly affiliated with the factory system, but
without being subject to the legislative restrictions placed upon it. They
produce an article subject to fashion, and have therefore no regular work. If
they have small orders, they work half-time; if they make a hit with a pattern,
and business is brisk, they work twelve hours, perhaps all night. In the
neighbourhood of my home, near Manchester, there was a print-works that was
often lighted when I returned late at night; and I have heard that the children
were obliged at times to work so long there, that they would try to catch a
moment's rest and sleep on the stone steps and in the corners of the lobby. I
have no legal proof of the truth of the statement, or I should name the firm.
The Report of the Children's Employment Commission is very cursory upon this
subject, stating merely that in England, at least, the children are mostly
pretty well clothed and fed (relatively, according to the wages of the
parents), that they receive no education whatsoever, and are morally on a low
plane. It is only necessary to remember that these children are subject to the
factory system, and then, referring the reader to what has already been said of
that, we can pass on.

Of the remaining workers employed in the manufacture of clothing stuffs
little remains to be said; the bleachers' work is very unwholesome, obliging
them to breathe chlorine, a gas injurious to the lungs. The work of the dyers
is in many cases very healthful, since it requires the exertion of the whole
body; how these workers are paid is little known, and this is ground enough for
the inference that they do not receive less than the average wages, otherwise
they would make complaint. The fustian cutters, who, in consequence of the
large consumption of cotton velvet, are comparatively numerous, being estimated
at from 3,000 to 4,000, have suffered very severely, indirectly, from the
influence of the factory system. The goods formerly woven with hand-looms, were
not perfectly uniform, and required a practised hand in cutting the single rows
of threads. Since power-looms have been used, the rows run regularly; each
thread of the weft is exactly parallel with the preceding one, and cutting is
no longer an art. The workers thrown out of employment by the introduction of
machinery turn to fustian cutting, and force down wages by their competition;
the manufacturers discovered that they could employ women and children, and the
wages sank to the rate paid them, while hundreds of men were thrown out of
employment. The manufacturers found that they could get the work done in the
factory itself more cheaply than in the cutters' work-room, for which they
indirectly paid the rent. Since this discovery, the low upper-storey cutters'
rooms stand empty in many a cottage, or are let for dwellings, while the cutter
has lost his freedom of choice of his working-hours, and is brought under the
dominion of the factory bell. A cutter of perhaps forty-five years of age told
me that he could remember a time when he had received 8d. a yard for work, for
which he now received ld.; true, he can cut the more regular texture more
quickly than the old, but he can by no means do twice as much in an hour as
formerly, so that his wages have sunk to less than a quarter of what they were.
Leachy gives a list of wages paid in 1827 and in 1843 for various goods, from
which it appears that articles paid in 1827 at the rate of 4d., 2½d., 2¾d., and
1d. per yard, were paid in 1843 at the rate of 1½d., 1d., ¾d., and 3/8d. per
yard, cutters' wages. The average weekly wage, according to Leach, was as
follows: 1827, £1 6s. 6d.; £l 2s. 6d.; £1; £1 6s. 6d.; and for the same goods
in 1843, 10s.; 7s.; 6s. 8d.; 10s.; while there are hundreds of workers who
cannot find employment even at these last-named rates. Of the hand-weavers of
the cotton industry we have already spoken; the other woven fabrics are almost
exclusively produced on hand-looms. Here most of the workers have suffered as
the weavers have done from the crowding in of competitors displaced by
machinery, and are, moreover, subject like the factory operatives to a severe
fine system for bad work. Take, for instance, the silk weavers. Mr.
Brocklehurst, one of the largest silk manufacturers in all England, laid before
a committee of Members of Parliament lists taken from his books, from which it
appears that for goods for which he paid wages in 1821 at the rate of 30s.,
14s.; 3½s., ¾s., 1 1/10s, 10s.; he paid in 1831 but 9s., 7½s., 2 ¼s., 1/3s.,
½s., 6¼s., while in this case no improvement in the machinery has taken place.
But what Mr. Brocklehurst does may very well be taken as a standard for all.
From the same lists it appears that the average weekly wage of his weavers,
after all deductions, was, in 1821, 16½s., and, in 1831, but 6s. Since that
time wages have fallen still further. Goods which brought in 4d. weavers' wages
in 1831, bring in but 2½d. in 1845 (single sarsnets), and a great number of
weavers in the country can get work only when they undertake these goods at 1½
d.-2d. Moreover, they are subject to arbitrary deductions from their wages.
Every weaver who receives materials is given a card, on which is usually to be
read that the work is to be returned at a specified hour of the day; that a
weaver who cannot work by reason of illness must make the fact known at the
office within three days, or sickness will not be regarded as an excuse; that
it will not be regarded as a sufficient excuse if the weaver claims to have
been obliged to wait for yarn; that for certain faults in the work (if, for
example, more weft-threads are found within a given space than are prescribed),
not less than half the wages will be deducted; and that if the goods should not
be ready at the time specified, one penny will be deducted for every yard
returned. The deductions in accordance with these cards are so considerable
that, for instance, a man who comes twice a week to Leigh, in Lancashire, to
gather up woven goods, brings his employer at least £15 fines every time. He
asserts this himself, and he is regarded as one of the most lenient. Such
things were formerly settled by arbitration; but as the workers were usually
dismissed if they insisted upon that, the custom has been almost wholly
abandoned, and the manufacturer acts arbitrarily as prosecutor, witness, judge,
law-giver, and executive in one person. And if the workman goes to a Justice of
the Peace, the answer is: "When you accepted your card you entered upon a
contract, and you must abide by it." The case is the same as that of the
factory operatives. Besides, the employer obliges the workman to sign a
document in which he declares that he agrees to the deductions made. And if a
workman rebels, all the manufacturers in the town know at once that he is a man
who, as Leach says,

"is an enemy to all ticket-made law and social order and has
the impudence to dispute the wisdom of those whom he ought to know are his
superiors in society."

Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does
not force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them what
Leach translates into plain English with the words:

"If you don't like to be frizzled in my frying-pan, you can
take a walk into the fire."

The silk weavers of London, and especially of Spitalfields, have
lived in periodic distress for a long time, and that they still have no cause
to be satisfied with their lot is proved by their taking a most active part in
English labour movements in general, and in London ones in particular. The
distress prevailing among them gave rise to the fever which broke out in East
London, and called forth the Commission for Investigating the Sanitary
Condition of the Labouring Class. But the last report of the London Fever
Hospital shows that this disease is still raging.

After the textile fabrics, by far the most important products of English
industry are the metal-wares. This trade has its headquarters at Birmingham,
where the finer metal goods of all sorts are produced, at Sheffield for
cutlery, and in Staffordshire, especially at Wolverhampton, where the coarser
articles, locks, nails, etc., are manufactured. In describing the position of
the workers employed in these trades, let us begin with Birmingham. The
disposition of the work has retained in Birmingham, as in most places where
metals are wrought, something of the old handicraft character; the small
employers are still to be found, who work with their apprentices in the shop at
home, or when they need steam-power, in great factory buildings which are
divided into little shops, each rented to a small employer, and supplied with a
shaft moved by the engine, and furnishing motive power for the machinery. Leon
Faucher, author of a series of articles in the Revue des deux Mondes,
which at least betray study, and are better than what has hitherto been written
upon the subject by Englishmen or Germans, characterises this relation in
contrast with the manufacture of Lancashire as Democratie
industrielle, and observes that it produces no very favourable results for
master or men. This observation is perfectly correct, for the many small
employers cannot well subsist on the profit divided amongst them, determined by
competition, a profit under other circumstances absorbed by a single
manufacturer. The centralising tendency of capital holds them down. For one who
grows rich ten are ruined, and a hundred placed at greater disadvantage than
ever, by the pressure of the one upstart who can afford to sell more cheaply
than they. And in the cases where they have to compete from the beginning
against great capitalists, it is self-evident that they can only toil along
with the greatest difficulty. The apprentices are, as we shall see, quite as
badly off under the small employers as under the manufacturers, with the single
difference that they, in turn, may become small employers, and so attain a
certain independence – that is to say, they are at best less directly
exploited by the bourgeoisie than under the factory system. Thus these small
employers are neither genuine proletarians, since they live in part upon the
work of their apprentices, nor genuine bourgeois, since their principal means
of support is their own work. This peculiar midway position of the Birmingham
iron-workers is to blame for their having so rarely joined wholly and
unreservedly in the English labour movements. Birmingham is a politically
radical, but not a Chartist, town. There are, however, numerous larger
factories belonging to capitalists; and in these the factory system reigns
supreme. The division of labour, which is here carried out to the last detail
(in the needle industry, for example), and the use of steam-power, admit of the
employment of a great multitude of women and children, and we find here [1] precisely the same
features reappearing which the Factories' Report presented, – the work of
women up to the hour of confinement, incapacity as housekeepers, neglect of
home and children, indifference, actual dislike to family life, and
demoralisation; further, the crowding out of men from employment, the constant
improvement of machinery, early emancipation of children, husbands supported by
their wives and children, etc., etc. The children are described as half-starved
and ragged, the half of them are said not to know what it is to have enough to
eat, many of them get nothing to eat before the midday meal, or even live the
whole day upon a pennyworth' of bread for a noonday meal – there were
actually cases in which children received no food from eight in the morning
until seven at night. Their clothing is very often scarcely sufficient to cover
their nakedness, many are barefoot even in winter. Hence they are all small and
weak for their age, and rarely develop with any degree of vigour. And when we
reflect that with these insufficient means of reproducing the physical forces,
hard and protracted work in close rooms is required of them, we cannot wonder
that there are few adults in Birmingham fit for military service.

The working-men, says a recruiting surgeon, "are shorter,
more puny, and altogether inferior in their physical powers. Many of the men
presented for examinations, are distorted in the spine and chest."

According to the assertion of a recruiting sergeant, the people
of Birmingham are smaller than those anywhere else, being usually 5 feet 4 to 5
inches tall; out of 613 recruits, but 238 were found fit for service. As to
education, a series of depositions and specimens taken from the metal districts
have already been given, to which the reader is referred. It appears further,
from the Children's Employment Commission's Report, that in Birmingham more
than half the children, between five and fifteen years attend no school
whatsoever, that those who do are constantly changing, so that it is impossible
to give them any training of an enduring kind, and that they are all withdrawn
from school very early and set to work. The report makes it clear what sort of
teachers are employed. One teacher, in answer to the question whether she gave
moral instruction, said, No, for threepence a week school fees that was too
much to require, but that she took a great deal of trouble to instill good
principles into the children. (And she made a decided slip in her English in
saying it.) In the schools the commissioner found constant noise and disorder.
The moral state of the children is in the highest degree deplorable. Half of
all the criminals are children under fifteen, and in a single year ninety
ten-years'-old offenders, among them forty-four serious criminal cases, were
sentenced. Unbridled sexual intercourse seems, according to the opinion of the
commissioner, almost universal, and that at a very early age.

In the iron district of Staffordshire the state of things is still worse.
For the coarse wares made here neither much division of labour (with certain
exceptions) nor steam-power or machinery can be applied. In Wolverhampton,
Willenhall, Bilston, Sedgeley, Wednesfield, Darlaston, Dudley, Walsall,
Wednesbury, etc., there are, therefore, fewer factories. But chiefly single
forges, where the small masters work alone, or with one or more apprentices,
who serve them until reaching the twenty-first year. The small employers are in
about the same situation as those of Birmingham; but the apprentices, as a
rule, are much worse off. They get almost exclusively meat from diseased
animals or such as have died a natural death, or tainted meat, or fish to eat,
with veal from calves killed too young, and pork from swine smothered during
transportation, and such food is furnished not by small employers only, but by
large manufacturers, who employ from thirty to forty apprentices. The custom
seems to be universal in Wolverhampton, and its natural consequence is frequent
bowel complaints and other diseases. Moreover, the children usually do not get
enough to eat, and have rarely other clothing than their working rags, for
which reason, if for no other, they cannot go to Sunday school. The dwellings
are bad and filthy, often so much so that they give rise to disease; and in
spite of the not materially unhealthy work, the children are puny, weak, and,
in many cases, severely crippled. In Willenhall, for instance, there are
countless persons who have, from perpetually filing at the lathe, crooked backs
and one leg crooked, "hind-leg" as they call it, so that the two legs have the
form of a K; while it is said that more than one-third of the working-men there
are ruptured. Here, as well as in Wolverhampton, numberless cases were found of
retarded puberty among girls (for girls, too, work at the forges), as well as
among boys, extending even to the nineteenth year. In Sedgeley and its
surrounding district, where nails form almost the sole product, the nailers
live and work in the most wretched stable-like huts, which for filth can
scarcely be equalled. Girls and boys work from the tenth or twelfth year, and
are accounted fully skilled only when they make a thousand nails a day. For
twelve hundred nails the pay is 5¾d. Every nail receives twelve blows, and
since the hammer weighs 1¼ pounds, the nailer must lift 18,000 pounds to earn
this miserable pay. With this hard work and insufficient food, the children
inevitably develop ill-formed, undersized frames, and the commissioners'
depositions confirm this. As to the state of education in this district, data
have already been furnished in the foregoing chapters. It is upon an incredibly
low plane; half the children do not even go to Sunday school, and the other
half go irregularly; very few, in comparison with the other districts, can
read, and in the matter of writing the case is much worse. Naturally, for
between the seventh and tenth years, just when they are beginning to get some
good out of going to school, they are set to work, and the Sunday school
teachers, smiths or miners, frequently cannot read, and write their names with
difficulty. The prevailing morals correspond with these means of education. In
Willenhall, Commissioner Horne asserts, and supplies ample proofs of his
assertion, that there exists absolutely no moral sense among the workers. In
general, he found that the children neither recognised duties to their parents
nor felt any affection for them. They were so little capable of thinking of
what they said, so stolid, so hopelessly stupid, that they often asserted that
they were well treated, were coming on famously, when they were forced to work
twelve to fourteen hours, were clad in rags, did not get enough to eat, and
were beaten so that they felt it several days afterwards. They knew nothing of
a different kind of life than that in which they toil from morning until they
are allowed to stop at night, and did not even understand the question never
heard before, whether they were tired.

In Sheffield wages are better, and the external state of the workers also.
On the other hand, certain branches of work are to be noticed here, because of
their extraordinarily injurious influence upon health. Certain operations
require the constant pressure of tools against the chest, and engender
consumption in many cases; others, file-cutting among them, retard the general
development of the body and produce digestive disorders; bone- cutting for
knife handles brings with it headache, biliousness, and among girls, of whom
many are employed, anaemia. By far the most unwholesome work is the grinding of
knife-blades and forks, which, especially when done with a dry stone, entails
certain early death. The unwholesomeness of this work lies in part in the bent
posture, in which chest and stomach are cramped; but especially in the quantity
of sharp-edged metal dust particles freed in the cutting, which fill the
atmosphere, and are necessarily inhaled. The dry grinders' average life is
hardly thirty-five years, 'the wet grinders' rarely exceeds forty-five. Dr.
Knight, in Sheffield, says:

I can convey some idea of the injuriousness of this
occupation only by asserting that "the greatest drinkers among the grinders are
sometimes the longest lived, owing to their more frequent absence from their
work". Altogether the grinders in Sheffield "amount to about two thousand five
hundred, of this number about one hundred and fifty, viz. eighty men and
seventy boys, are fork grinders – these die from twenty-eight to
thirty-two years of age. The razor grinders, grind both wet, and dry, and they
die from forty to forty-five years of age. The table-knife grinders work on wet
stones, and they live to betwixt forty and fifty years of age."

The same physician gives the following description of the course
of the disease called grinders' asthma:

"Those who are to be brought up grinders, usually begin to
work when they are about fourteen years old. Grinders, who have good
constitutions seldom experience much inconvenience from their trade until they
arrive at about twenty years of age: about that time the symptoms of their
peculiar complaint begin to steal upon them, their breathing becomes more than
usually embarrassed on slight exertions, particularly on going upstairs or
ascending a hill; their shoulders are elevated in order to relieve their
constant and increasing dyspnoea; they stoop forward, and appear to breathe the
most comfortably in that posture in which they are accustomed to sit at their
work. Their complexions assume a muddy, dirty appearance; their countenance
indicates anxiety; they complain of a sense of tightness across the chest;
their voice is rough, and hoarse; their cough loud, and as if the air were
drawn through wooden tubes; they occasionally expectorate considerable
quantities of dust, sometimes mixed up with mucus, at other times in globular
or cylindrical masses enveloped in a thin film of mucus. Haemoptysis, inability
to lie down, night sweats, colignative diarrhoea, extreme emaciation, together
with all the usual symptoms of pulmonary consumption at length carry them off;
but not until they have lingered through months, and even years of suffering,
incapable of working so as to support either themselves or their families." I
must add that "all the attempts which have hitherto been made, to prevent or to
cure the grinders' asthma, have utterly failed."

All this Knight wrote ten years ago; since then the number of
grinders and the violence of the disease have increased, though attempts have
been made to prevent it by covered grindstones and carrying off the dust by
artificial draught. These methods have been at least partially successful, but
the grinders do not desire their adoption, and have even destroyed the
contrivance here and there, in the belief that more workers may be attracted to
the business and wages thus reduced; they are for a short life and a merry one.
Dr. Knight has often told grinders who came to him with the first symptoms of
asthma that a return to grinding means certain death, but with no avail. He who
is once a grinder falls into despair, as though he had sold himself to the
devil. Education in Sheffield is upon a very low plane; a clergyman, who had
occupied himself largely with the statistics of education, was of the opinion
that of 16,500 children of the working-class who are in a position to attend
school, scarcely 6,500 can read. This comes of the fact that the children are
taken from school in the seventh, and, at the very latest, in the twelfth year,
and that the teachers are good for nothing; one was a convicted thief who found
no other way of supporting himself after being released from jail than teaching
school! Immorality among young people seems to be more prevalent in Sheffield
than anywhere else. It is hard to tell which town ought to have the prize, and
in reading the report one believes of each one that this certainly deserves it!
The younger generation spend the whole of Sunday lying in the street tossing
coins or fighting dogs, go regularly to the gin palace, where they sit with
their sweethearts until late at night, when they take walks in solitary
couples. In an ale-house which the commissioner visited, there sat forty to
fifty young people of both sexes, nearly all under seventeen years of age, and
each lad beside his lass. Here and there cards were played, at other places
dancing was going on, and everywhere drinking. Among the company were openly
avowed professional prostitutes. No wonder, then, that, as all the witnesses
testify, early, unbridled sexual intercourse, youthful prostitution, beginning
with persons of fourteen to fifteen years, is extraordinarily frequent in
Sheffield. Crimes of a savage and desperate sort are of common occurrence; one
year before the commissioner's visit, a band, consisting chiefly of young
persons, was arrested when about to set fire to the town, being fully equipped
with lances and inflammable substances. We shall see later that the labour
movement in Sheffield has this same savage character.

Besides these two main centres of the metal industry, there are needle
factories in Warrington, Lancashire, where great want, immorality, and
ignorance prevail among the workers, and especially among the children; and a
number of nail forges in the neighbourhood of Wigan, in Lancashire, and in the
east of Scotland. The reports from these latter districts tell almost precisely
the same story as those of Staffordshire. There is one more branch of this
industry carried on in the factory districts, especially in Lancashire, the
essential peculiarity of which is the production of machinery by machinery,
whereby the workers, crowded out elsewhere, are deprived of their last refuge,
the creation of the very enemy which supersedes them. Machinery for planing and
boring, cutting screws, wheels, nuts, etc., with power lathes, has thrown out
of employment a multitude of men who formerly found regular work at good wages;
and whoever wishes to do so may see crowds of them in Manchester.

North of the iron district of Staffordshire lies an industrial region to
which we shall now turn our attention, the Potteries, whose headquarters are in
the borough of Stoke, embracing Henley, Burslem, Lane End, Lane Delph, Etruria,
Coleridge, Langport, Tunstall, and Golden Hill, containing together 70,000
inhabitants. The Children's Employment Commission reports upon this subject
that in some branches of this industry, in the production of stoneware, the
children have light employment in warm, airy rooms; in others, on the contrary,
hard, wearing labour is required, while they receive neither sufficient food
nor good clothing. Many children complain: "Don't get enough to eat, get mostly
potatoes with salt, never meat, never bread, don't go to school, haven't got no
clothes." "Haven't got nothin' to eat today for dinner, don't never have dinner
at home, get mostly potatoes and salt, sometimes bread." "This is all the
clothes I have, no Sunday suit at home." Among the children whose work is
especially injurious are the mould-runners, who have to carry the moulded
article with the form to the drying-room, and afterwards bring back the empty
form, when the article is properly dried. Thus they must go to and fro the
whole day, carrying burdens heavy in proportion to their age, while the high
temperature in which they have to do this increases very considerably the
exhaustiveness of the work. These children, with scarcely a single exception,
are lean, pale, feeble, stunted; nearly all suffer from stomach troubles,
nausea, want of appetite, and many of them die of consumption. Almost as
delicate are the boys called "jiggers", from the "jigger" wheel which they
turn. But by far the most injurious is the work of those who dip the finished
article into a fluid containing great quantities of lead, and often of arsenic,
or have to take the freshly dipped article up with the hand. The hands and
clothing of these workers, adults and children, are always wet with this fluid,
the skin softens and falls off under the constant contact with rough objects,
so that the fingers often bleed, and are constantly in a state most favourable
for the absorption of this dangerous substance. The consequence is violent
pain, and serious disease of the stomach and intestines, obstinate
constipation, colic, sometimes consumption, and, most common of all, epilepsy
among children. Among men, partial paralysis of the hand muscles, colica
pictorum, and paralysis of whole limbs are ordinary phenomena. One witness
relates that two children who worked with him died of convulsions at their
work; another who had helped with the dipping two years while a boy, relates
that he had violent pains in the bowels at first, then convulsions, in
consequence of which he was confined to his bed two months, since when the
attacks of convulsions have increased in frequency, are now daily, accompanied
often by ten to twenty epileptic fits, his right arm is paralysed, and the
physicians tell him that he can never regain the use of his limbs. In one
factory were found in the dipping-house four men, all epileptic and afflicted
with severe colic, and eleven boys, several of whom were already epileptic. In
short, this frightful disease follows this occupation universally: and that,
too, to the greater pecuniary profit of the bourgeoisie! In the rooms in which
the stoneware is scoured, the atmosphere is filled with pulverised flint, the
breathing of which is as injurious as that of the steel dust among the
Sheffield grinders. The workers lose breath, cannot lie down, suffer from sore
throat and violent coughing, and come to have so feeble a voice that they can
scarcely be heard. They, too, all die of consumption. In the Potteries
district, the schools are said to be comparatively numerous, and to offer the
children opportunities for instruction; but as the latter are so early set to
work for twelve hours and often more per day, they are not in a position to
avail themselves of the schools, so that three-fourths of the children examined
by the commissioner could neither read nor write, while the whole district is
plunged in the deepest ignorance. Children who have attended Sunday school for
years could not tell one letter from another, and the moral and religious
education, as well as the intellectual, is on a very low plane.

In the manufacture of glass, too, work occurs which seems little injurious
to men, but cannot be endured by children. The hard labour, the irregularity of
the hours, the frequent night-work, and especially the great heat of the
working place (100 to 130 Fahrenheit), engender in children general debility
and disease, stunted growth, and especially affections of the eye, bowel
complaint, and rheumatic and bronchial affections. Many of the children are
pale, have red eyes, often blind for weeks at a time, suffer from violent
nausea, vomiting, coughs, colds, and rheumatism. When the glass is withdrawn
from the fire, the children must often go into such heat that the boards on
which they stand catch fire under their feet. The glass-blowers usually die
young of debility and chest affections.

As a whole, this report testifies to the gradual but sure introduction of
the factory system into all branches of industry, recognisable especially by
the employment of women and children. I have not thought it necessary to trace
in every case the progress of machinery and the superseding of men as workers.
Every one who is in any degree acquainted with the nature of manufacture can
fill this out for himself, while space fails me to describe in detail an aspect
of our present system of production, the result of which I have already
sketched in dealing with the factory system. In all directions machinery is
being introduced, and the last trace of the working-man's independence thus
destroyed. In all directions the family is being dissolved by the labour of
wife and children, or inverted by the husband's being thrown out of employment
and made dependent upon them for bread; everywhere inevitable machinery bestows
upon the great capitalist command of trade and of the workers with it. The
centralisation of capital strides forward without interruption, the division of
society into great capitalists and non-possessing workers is sharper every day,
the industrial development of the nation advances with giant strides towards
the inevitable crisis.

I have already stated that in the handicrafts the power of capital, and in
some cases the division of labour too, has produced the same results, crushed
the small tradesmen, and put great capitalists and non-possessing workers in
their place. As to these handicraftsmen there is little to be said, since all
that relates to them has already found its place where the proletariat in
general was under discussion. There has been but little change here in the
nature of the work and its influence upon health since the beginning of the
industrial movement. But the constant contact with the factory operatives, the
pressure of the great capitalists, which is much more felt than that of the
small employer to whom the apprentice still stood in a more or less personal
relation, the influences of life in towns, and the fall of wages, have made
nearly all the handicraftsmen active participators in labour movements. We
shall soon have more to say on this point, and turn meanwhile to one section of
workers in London who deserve our attention by reason of the extraordinary
barbarity with which they are exploited by the money-greed of the bourgeoisie.
I mean the dress-makers and sewing-women.

It is a curious fact that the production of precisely those articles which
serve the personal adornment of the ladies of the bourgeoisie involves the
saddest consequences for the health of the workers. We have already seen this
in the case of the lace-makers, and come now to the dress-making establishments
of London for further proof. They employ a mass of young girls – there
are said to be 15,000 of them in all – who sleep and eat on the premises,
come usually from the country, and are therefore absolutely the slaves of their
employers. During the fashionable season, which lasts some four months,
working-hours, even in the best establishments, are fifteen, and, in very
pressing cases, eighteen a day; but in most shops work goes on at these times
without any set regulation, so that the girls never have more than six, often
not more than three or four, sometimes, indeed, not more than two hours in the
twenty-four, for rest and sleep, working nineteen to twenty-two hours, if not
the whole night through, as frequently happens! The only limit set to their
work is the absolute physical inability to hold the needle another minute.
Cases have occurred in which these helpless creatures did not undress during
nine consecutive days and nights, and could only rest a moment or two here and
there upon a mattress, where food was served them ready cut up in order to
require the least possible time for swallowing. In short, these unfortunate
girls are kept by means of the moral whip of the modern slave-driver, the
threat of discharge, to such long and unbroken toil as no strong man, much less
a delicate girl of fourteen to twenty years, can endure. In addition to this,
the foul air of the work-room and sleeping-places, the bent posture, the often
bad and indigestible food, all these causes, combined with almost total
exclusion from fresh air, entail the saddest consequences for the health of the
girls. Enervation, exhaustion, debility, loss of appetite, pains in the
shoulders, back, and hips, but especially headache, begin very soon; then
follow curvatures of the spine, high, deformed shoulders, leanness, swelled,
weeping, and smarting eyes, which soon become short-sighted; coughs, narrow
chests, and shortness of breath, and all manner of disorders in the development
of the female organism. In many cases the eyes suffer so severely that
incurable blindness follows; but if the sight remains strong enough to make
continued work possible, consumption usually soon ends the sad life of these
milliners and dress-makers. Even those who leave this work at an early age
retain permanently injured health, a broken constitution; and, when married,
bring feeble and sickly children into the world. All the medical men
interrogated by the commissioners agreed that no method of life could be
invented better calculated to destroy health and induce early death.

With the same cruelty, though somewhat more indirectly, the rest of the
needle-women of London are exploited. The girls employed in stay-making have a
hard, wearing occupation, trying to the eyes. And what wages do they get? I do
not know; but this I know, that the middleman who has to give security for the
material delivered, and who distributes the work among the needle-women,
receives 1½d. per piece. From this he deducts his own pay, at least ½d., so
that 1d. at most reaches the pocket of the girl. The girls who sew neckties
must bind themselves to work sixteen hours a day, and receive 4½s. a week. But
the shirt- makers' lot is the worst. They receive for an ordinary shirt 1 ½d.,
formerly 2d.-3d.; but since the workhouse of St. Pancras, which is administered
by a Radical board of guardians, began to undertake work at 1½d., the poor
women outside have been compelled to do the same. For fine, fancy shirts, which
can be made in one day of eighteen hours, 6d. is paid. The weekly wage of these
sewing- women according to this and according to testimony from many sides,
including both needle-women and employers, is 2s. 6d. to 3s. for most strained
work continued far into the night. And what crowns this shameful barbarism is
the fact that the women must give a money deposit for a part of the materials
entrusted to them, which they naturally cannot do unless they pawn a part of
them (as the employers very well know), redeeming them at a loss; or if they
cannot redeem the materials, they must appear before a Justice of the Peace, as
happened to a sewing-woman in November, 1843. A poor girl who got into this
strait and did not know what to do next, drowned herself in a canal in 1844.
These women usually live in little garret rooms in the utmost distress, where
as many crowd together as the space can possibly admit, and where, in winter,
the animal warmth of the workers is the only heat obtainable. Here they sit
bent over their work, sewing from four or five in the morning until midnight,
destroying their health in a year or two and ending in an early grave; without
being able to obtain the poorest necessities of life meanwhile. [2] And below them roll the brilliant
equipages of the upper bourgeoisie, and perhaps ten steps away some pitiable
dandy loses more money in one evening at faro than they can earn in a year.

______

Such is the condition of the English manufacturing proletariat.
In all directions, whithersoever we may turn, we find want and disease
permanent or temporary, and demoralisation arising from the condition of the
workers; in all directions slow but sure undermining, and final destruction of
the human being physically as well as mentally. Is this a state of things which
can last? It cannot and will not last. The workers, the great majority of the
nation, will not endure it. Let us see what they say of it.

NOTES

1. The German editions of 1845 and 1892 have
here: "and sell not the labour itself, but the ready product." Mention of the
sale of labour was perhaps omitted in the American edition of 1887 and the
English edition of 1892 in connection with the later opinion of Marxist
political economy that the worker sells his labour-power, and not his labour,
to the capitalist.

2. Thomas Hood, the most talented of all the English
humorists now living, and, like all humorists, full of human feeling, but
wanting in mental energy, published at the beginning of 1844 a beautiful poem,
The Song of the Shirt, which drew sympathetic but unavailing tears
from the eyes of the daughters of the bourgeoisie. Originally published in
Punch, it made the round of all the papers. As discussions of the
condition of the sewing-women filled all the papers at the time, special
extracts are needless.– Note by Engels.

## Labour Movements

It must be admitted, even if I had not proved it so often in detail, that
the English workers cannot feel happy in this condition; that theirs is not a
state in which a man or a whole class of men can think, feel, and live as human
beings. The workers must therefore strive to escape from this brutalising
condition, to secure for themselves a better, more human position; and this
they cannot do without attacking the interest of the bourgeoisie which consists
in exploiting them. But the bourgeoisie defends its interests with all the
power placed at its disposal by wealth and the might of the State. In
proportion as the working-man determines to alter the present state of things,
the bourgeois becomes his avowed enemy.

Moreover, the working-man is made to feel at every moment that the
bourgeoisie treats him as a chattel, as its property, and for this reason, if
for no other, he must come forward as its enemy. I have shown in a hundred ways
in the foregoing pages, and could have shown in a hundred others, that, in our
present society, he can save his manhood only in hatred and rebellion against
the bourgeoisie. And he can protest with most violent passion against the
tyranny of the propertied class, thanks to his education, or rather want of
education, and to the abundance of hot Irish blood that flows in the veins of
the English working-class. The English working-man is no Englishman nowadays;
no calculating money-grubber like his wealthy neighbour. He possesses more
fully developed feelings, his native northern coldness is overborne by the
unrestrained development of his passions and their control over him. The
cultivation of the understanding which so greatly strengthens the selfish
tendency of the English bourgeois, which has made selfishness his predominant
trait and concentrated all his emotional power upon the single point of
money-greed, is wanting in the working-man, whose passions are therefore strong
and mighty as those of the foreigner. English nationality is annihilated in the
working-man.

Since, as we have seen, no single field for the exercise of his manhood is
left him, save his opposition to the whole conditions of his life, it is
natural that exactly in this opposition he should be most manly, noblest, most
worthy of sympathy. We shall see that all the energy, all the activity of the
working-men is directed to this point, and that even their attempts to attain
general education all stand in direct connection with this. True, we shall have
single acts of violence and even of brutality to report, but it must always be
kept in mind that the social war is avowedly raging in England; and that,
whereas it is in the interest of the bourgeoisie to conduct this war
hypocritically, under the disguise of peace and even of philanthropy, the only
help for the working-men consists in laying bare the true state of things and
destroying this hypocrisy; that the most violent attacks of the workers upon
the bourgeoisie and its servants are only the open, undisguised expression of
that which the bourgeoisie perpetrates secretly, treacherously against the
workers.

The revolt of the workers began soon after the first industrial development,
and has passed through several phases. The investigation of their importance in
the history of the English people I must reserve for separate treatment,
limiting myself meanwhile to such bare facts as serve to characterise the
condition of the English proletariat.

The earliest, crudest, and least fruitful form of this rebellion was that of
crime. The working-man lived in poverty and want, and saw that others were
better off than he. It was not clear to his mind why he, who did more for
society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under these
conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the sacredness of
property, and he stole. We have seen how crime increased with the extension of
manufacture; how the yearly number of arrests bore a constant relation to the
number of bales of cotton annually consumed.

The workers soon realised that crime did not help matters. The criminal
could protest against the existing order of society only singly, as one
individual; the whole might of society was brought to bear upon each criminal,
and crushed him with its immense superiority. Besides, theft was the most
primitive form of protest, and for this reason, if for no other, it never
became the universal expression of the public opinion of the working-men,
however much they might approve of it in silence. As a class, they first
manifested opposition to the bourgeoisie when they resisted the introduction of
machinery at the very beginning of the industrial .period. The first inventors,
Arkwright and others, were persecuted in this way and their machines destroyed.
Later, there took place a number of revolts against machinery, in which the
occurrences were almost precisely the same as those of the printers'
disturbances in Bohemia in 1844; factories were demolished and machinery
destroyed.

This form of opposition also was isolated, restricted to certain localities,
and directed against one feature only of our present social arrangements. When
the momentary end was attained, the whole weight of social power fell upon the
unprotected evil-doers and punished them to its heart's content, while the
machinery was introduced none the less. A new form of opposition had to be
found.

At this point help came in the shape of a law enacted by the old,
unreformed, oligarchic-Tory Parliament, a law which never could have passed the
House of Commons later, when the Reform Bill had legally sanctioned the
distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat, and made the bourgeoisie the
ruling class. This was enacted in 1824, and repealed all laws by which
coalitions between working-men for labour purposes had hitherto been forbidden.
The working-men obtained a right previously restricted to the aristocracy and
bourgeoisie, the right of free association. Secret coalitions had, it is true,
previously existed, but could never achieve great results. In Glasgow as Symons
relates, a general strike of weavers had taken place in 1812, which was brought
about by a secret association. It was repeated in 1822, and on this occasion
vitriol was thrown into the faces of the two working-men who would not join the
association, and were therefore regarded by the members as traitors to their
class. Both the assaulted lost the use of their eyes in consequence of the
injury. So, too, in 1818, the association of Scottish miners was powerful
enough to carry on a general strike. These associations required their members
to take an oath of fidelity and secrecy, had regular lists, treasurers,
book-keepers, and local branches. But the secrecy with which everything was
conducted crippled their growth. When, on the other hand, the working-men
received in 1824 the right of free association, these combinations were very
soon spread over all England and attained great power. In all branches of
industry Trades Unions were formed with the outspoken intention of protecting
the single working-man against the tyranny and neglect of the bourgeoisie.
Their objects were to deal, en masse, as a power, with the employers;
to regulate the rate of wages according to the profit of the latter, to raise
it when opportunity offered, and to keep it uniform in each trade throughout
the country. Hence they tried to settle with the capitalists a scale of wages
to be universally adhered to, and ordered out on strike the employees of such
individuals as refused to accept the scale. They aimed further to keep up the
demand for labour by limiting the number of apprentices, and so to keep wages
high; to counteract, as far as possible, the indirect wage reductions which the
manufacturers brought about by means of new tools and machinery; and finally,
to assist unemployed working-men financially. This they do either directly or
by means of a card to legitimate the bearer as a “society man,” and
with which the working-man wanders from place to place, supported by his
fellow-workers, and instructed as to the best opportunity for finding
employment. This is tramping, and the wanderer a tramp. To attain these ends, a
President and Secretary are engaged at a salary (since it is to be expected
that no manufacturer will employ such persons), and a committee collects the
weekly contributions and watches over their expenditure for the purposes of the
association. When it proved possible and advantageous, the various trades of
single districts united in a federation and held delegate conventions at set
times. The attempt has been made in single cases to unite the workers of one
branch over all England in one great Union; and several times (in 1830 for the
first time) to form one universal trades association for the whole United
Kingdom, with a separate organisation for each trade. These associations,
however, never held together long, and were seldom realised even for the
moment, since an exceptionally universal excitement is necessary to make such a
federation possible and effective.

The means usually employed by these Unions for attaining their ends are the
following: If one or more employers refuse to pay the wage specified by the
Union, a deputation is sent or a petition forwarded (the working-men, you see,
know how to recognise the absolute power of the lord of the factory in his
little State); if this proves unavailing, the Union commands the employees to
stop work, and all hands go home. This strike is either partial when one or
several, or general when all employers in the trade refuse to regulate wages
according to the proposals of the Union. So far go the lawful means of the
Union, assuming the strike to take effect after the expiration of the legal
notice, which is not always the case. But these lawful means are very weak when
there are workers outside the Union, or when members separate from it for the
sake of the momentary advantage offered by the bourgeoisie. Especially in the
case of partial strikes can the manufacturer readily secure recruits from these
black sheep (who are known as knobsticks), and render fruitless the efforts of
the united workers. Knobsticks are usually threatened, insulted, beaten, or
otherwise maltreated by the members of the Union; intimidated, in short, in
every way. Prosecution follows, and as the law-abiding bourgeoisie has the
power in its own hands, the force of the Union is broken almost every time by
the first unlawful act, the first judicial procedure against its members.

The history of these Unions is a long series of defeats of the working-men,
interrupted by a few isolated victories. All these efforts naturally cannot
alter the economic law according to which wages are determined by the relation
between supply and demand in the labour market. Hence the Unions remain
powerless against all great forces which influence this relation. In a
commercial crisis the Union itself must reduce wages or dissolve wholly; and in
a time of considerable increase in the demand for labour, it cannot fix the
rate of wages higher than would be reached spontaneously by the competition of
the capitalists among themselves. But in dealing with minor, single influences
they are powerful. If the employer had no concentrated, collective opposition
to expect, he would in his own interest gradually reduce wages to a lower and
lower point; indeed, the battle of competition which he has to wage against his
fellow-manufacturers would force him to do so, and wages would soon reach the
minimum. But this competition of the manufacturers among themselves is, under
average conditions, somewhat restricted by the opposition of the
working-men.

Every manufacturer knows that the consequence of a reduction not justified
by conditions to which his competitors also are subjected, would be a strike,
which would most certainly injure him, because his capital would be idle as
long as the strike lasted, and his machinery would be rusting, whereas it is
very doubtful whether he could, in such a case, enforce his reduction. Then he
has the certainty that if he should succeed, his competitors would follow him,
reducing the price of the goods so produced, and thus depriving him of the
benefit of his policy. Then, too, the Unions often bring about a more rapid
increase of wages after a crisis than would otherwise follow. For the
manufacturer's interest is to delay raising wages until forced by competition,
but now the working-men demand an increased wage as soon as the market
improves, and they can carry their point by reason of the smaller supply of
workers at his command under such circumstances. But, for resistance to more
considerable forces which influence the labour market, the Unions are
powerless. In such cases hunger gradually drives the strikers to resume work on
any terms, and when once a few have begun, the force of the Union is broken,
because these few knobsticks, with the reserve supplies of goods in the market,
enable the bourgeoisie to overcome the worst effects of the interruption of
business. The funds of the Union are soon exhausted by the great numbers
requiring relief, the credit which the shopkeepers give at high interest is
withdrawn after a time, and want compels the working-man to place himself once
more under the yoke of the bourgeoisie. But strikes end disastrously for the
workers mostly, because the manufacturers, in their own interest (which has, be
it said, become their interest only through the resistance of the workers), are
obliged to avoid all useless reductions, while the workers feel in every
reduction imposed by the state of trade a deterioration of their condition,
against which they must defend themselves as far as in them lies.

It will be asked, “Why, then, do the workers strike in such cases,
when the uselessness of such measures is so evident?” Simply because they
must protest against every reduction, even if dictated by necessity; because
they feel bound to proclaim that they, as human beings, shall not be made to
bow to social circumstances, but social conditions ought to yield to them as
human beings; because silence on their part would be a recognition of these
social conditions, an admission of the right of the bourgeoisie to exploit the
workers in good times and let them starve in bad ones. Against this the
working-men must rebel so long as they have not lost all human feeling, and
that they protest in this way and no other, comes of their 'being practical
English people, who express themselves in action, and do not, like German
theorists, go to sleep as soon as their protest is properly registered and
placed ad acta, there to sleep as quietly as the protesters
themselves. The active resistance of the English working-men has its effect in
holding the money-greed of the bourgeoisie within certain limits, and keeping
alive the opposition of the workers to the social and political omnipotence of
the bourgeoisie, while it compels the admission that something more is needed
than Trades Unions and strikes to break the power of the ruling class. But what
gives these Unions and the strikes arising from them their real importance is
this, that they are the first attempt of the workers to abolish competition.
They imply the recognition of the fact that the supremacy of the bourgeoisie is
based wholly upon the competition of the workers among themselves; i.e., upon
their want of cohesion. And precisely because the Unions direct themselves
against the vital nerve of the present social order, however one-sidedly, in
however narrow a way, are they so dangerous to this social order. The working-
men cannot attack the bourgeoisie, and with it the whole existing order of
society, at any sorer point than this. If the competition of the workers among
themselves is destroyed, if all determine not to be further exploited by the
bourgeoisie, the rule of property is at an end. Wages depend upon the relation
of demand to supply, upon the accidental state of the labour market, simply
because the workers have hitherto been content to be treated as chattels, to be
bought and sold. The moment the workers resolve to be bought and sold no
longer, when, in the determination of the value of labour, they take the part
of men possessed of a will as well as of working-power, at that moment the
whole Political Economy of today is at an end.

The laws determining the rate of wages would, indeed, come into force again
in the long run, if the working-men did not go beyond this step of abolishing
competition among themselves. But they must go beyond that unless they are
prepared to recede again and to allow competition among themselves to reappear.
Thus once advanced so far, necessity compels them to go farther; to abolish not
only one kind of competition, but competition itself altogether, and that they
will do.

The workers are coming to perceive more clearly with every day how
competition affects them; they see far more clearly than the bourgeois that
competition of the capitalists among themselves presses upon the workers too,
by bringing on commercial crises, and that this kind of competition, too, must
be abolished. They will soon learn how they have to go about it.

That these Unions contribute greatly to nourish the bitter hatred of the
workers against the property-holding class need hardly be said. From them
proceed, therefore, with or without the connivance of the leading members, in
times of unusual excitement, individual actions which can be explained only by
hatred wrought to the pitch of despair, by a wild passion overwhelming all
restraints. Of this sort are the attacks with vitriol mentioned in the
foregoing pages, and a series of others, of which I shall cite several. In
1831, during a violent labour movement, young Ashton, a manufacturer in Hyde,
near Manchester, was shot one evening when crossing a field, and no trace of
the assassin discovered. There is no doubt that this was a deed of vengeance of
the working-men. Incendiarisms and attempted explosions are very common. On
Friday, September 29th, 1845, an attempt was made to blow up the saw-works of
Padgin, in Howard Street, Sheffield. A closed iron tube filled with powder was
the means employed, and the damage was considerable. On the following day, a
similar attempt was made in Ibbetson's knife and file works at Shales Moor,
near Sheffield. Mr. Ibbetson had made himself obnoxious by an active
participation in bourgeois movements, by low wages, the exclusive employment of
knobsticks, and the exploitation of the Poor Law for his own benefit. He had
reported, during the crisis of 1842, such operatives as refused to accept
reduced wages, as persons who could find work but would not take it, and were,
therefore, not deserving of relief, so compelling the acceptance of a
reduction. Considerable damage was inflicted by the explosion, and all the
working-men who came to view it regretted only “that the whole concern
was not blown into the air.” On Friday, October 6th, 1843, an attempt to
set fire to the factory of Ainsworth and Crompton, at Bolton, did no damage; it
was the third or fourth attempt in the same factory within a very short time.
In the meeting of the Town Council of Sheffield, on Wednesday, January 10th,
1844, the Commissioner of Police exhibited a cast-iron machine, made for the
express purpose of producing an explosion, and found filled with four pounds of
powder, and a fuse which had been lighted but had not taken effect, in the
works of Mr. Kitchen, Earl Street, Sheffield. On Sunday, January 21st, 1844, an
explosion caused by a package of powder took place in the sawmill of Bentley
& White, at Bury, in Lancashire, and produced considerable damage. On
Thursday, February 1st, 1844, the Soho Wheel Works, in Sheffield, were set on
fire and burnt up.

Here are six such cases in four months, all of which have their sole origin
in the embitterment of the working-men against the employers. What sort of a
social state it must be in which such things are possible I need hardly say.
These facts are proof enough that in England, even in good business years, such
as 1843, the social war is avowed and openly carried on, and still the English
bourgeoisie does not stop to reflect! But the case which speaks most loudly is
that of the Glasgow Thugs, which came up before the Assizes from the 3rd to the
11th of January, 1838. It appears from the proceedings that the
Cotton-Spinners' Union, which existed here from the year 1816, possessed rare
organisation and power. The members were bound by an oath to adhere to the
decision of the majority, and had during every turnout a secret committee which
was unknown to the mass of the members, and controlled the funds of the Union
absolutely. This committee fixed a price upon the heads of knobsticks and
obnoxious manufacturers and upon incendiarisms in mills. A mill was thus set on
fire in which female knobsticks were employed in spinning in the place of men;
a Mrs. M'Pherson, mother of one of these girls, was murdered, and both
murderers sent to America at the expense of the association. As early as 1820,
a knobstick named M'Quarry was shot at and wounded, for which deed the doer
received twenty pounds from the Union, but was discovered and transported for
life. Finally, in 1837, in May, disturbances occurred in consequence of a
turnout in the Oatbank and Mile End factories, in which perhaps a dozen
knobsticks were maltreated. In July, of the same year, the disturbances still
continued, and a certain Smith, a knobstick, was so maltreated that he died.
The committee was now arrested, an investigation begun, and the leading members
found guilty of participation in conspiracies, maltreatment of knobsticks, and
incendiarism in the mill of James and Francis Wood, and they were transported
for seven years. What do our good Germans say to this story? [1]

The property-holding class, and especially the manufacturing portion of it
which comes into direct contact with the working-men, declaims with the
greatest violence against these Unions, and is constantly trying to prove their
uselessness to the working-men upon grounds which are economically perfectly
correct, but for that very reason partially mistaken, and for the working-man's
understanding totally without effect. The very zeal of the bourgeoisie shows
that it is not disinterested in the matter; and apart from the direct loss
involved in a turnout, the state of the case is such that whatever goes into
the pockets of the manufacturers comes of necessity out of those of the worker.
So that even if the working-men did not know that the Unions hold the emulation
of their masters in the reduction of wages, at least in a measure, in check,
they would still stand by the Unions, simply to the injury of their enemies,
the manufacturers. In war the injury of one party is the benefit of the other,
and since the working- men are on a war footing towards their employers, they
do merely what the great potentates do when they get into a quarrel. Beyond all
other bourgeois is our friend Dr. Ure, the most furious enemy of the Unions. He
foams with indignation at the “secret tribunals” of the
cotton-spinners, the most powerful section of the workers, tribunals which
boast their ability to paralyse every disobedient manufacturer, “and so
bring ruin on the man who had given them profitable employment for many a
year.” He speaks of a time “when the inventive head and the
sustaining heart of trade were held in bondage by the unruly lower
members.” A pity that the English working-men will not let themselves be
pacified so easily with thy fable as the Roman Plebs, thou modern Menenius
Agrippa! Finally, he relates the following: At one time the coarse
mule-spinners had misused their power beyond all endurance. High wages, instead
of awakening thankfulness towards the manufacturers and leading to intellectual
improvement (in harmless study of sciences useful to the bourgeoisie, of
course), in many cases produced. pride and supplied funds for supporting
rebellious spirits in strikes, with which a number of manufacturers were
visited one after the other in a purely arbitrary manner. During an unhappy
disturbance of this sort in Hyde, Dukinfield, and the surrounding
neighbourhood, the manufacturers of the district, anxious lest they should be
driven from the market by the French, Belgians, and Americans, addressed
themselves to the machine-works of Sharp, Roberts & Co., and requested Mr.
Sharp to turn his inventive mind to the construction of an automatic mule in
order “to emancipate the trade from galling slavery and impending
ruin.”

“He produced in the course of a few months, a machine
apparently instinct with the thought, feeling, and tact of the experienced
workman – which even in its infancy displayed a new principle of
regulation, ready in its mature state to fulfil the functions of a finished
spinner. Thus, the Iron Man, as the operatives fitly call it, sprang out of the
hands of our modern Prometheus at the bidding of Minerva – a creation
destined to restore order among the industrious classes, and to confirm to
Great Britain the empire of art. The news of this Herculean prodigy spread
dismay through the Union, and even long before it left its cradle, so to speak,
it strangled the Hydra of misrule.”

Ure proves further that the invention of the machine, with which
four and five colours are printed at once, was a result of the disturbances
among the calico printers; that the refractoriness of the yarn-dressers in the
power-loom weaving mills gave rise to a new and perfected machine for
warp-dressing, and mentions several other such cases. A few pages earlier this
same Ure gives himself a great deal of trouble to prove in detail that
machinery is beneficial to the workers! But Ure is not the only one; in the
Factory Report, Mr. Ashworth, the manufacturer, and many another, lose no
opportunity to express their wrath against the Unions. These wise bourgeois,
like certain governments, trace every movement which they do not understand to
the influence of ill-intentioned agitators, demagogues, traitors, spouting
idiots, and ill-balanced youth. They declare that the paid agents of the Unions
are interested in the agitation because they live upon it, as though the
necessity for this payment were not forced upon them by the bourgeois, who will
give such men no employment!

The incredible frequency of these strikes proves best of all to what extent
the social war has broken out all over England. No week passes, scarcely a day,
indeed, in which there is not a strike in some direction, now against a
reduction, then against a refusal to raise the rate of wages, again by reason
of the employment of knobsticks or the continuance of abuses, sometimes against
new machinery, or for a hundred other reasons. These strikes, at first
skirmishes, sometimes result in weighty struggles; they decide nothing, it is
true, but they are the strongest proof that the decisive battle between
bourgeoisie and proletariat is approaching. They are the military school of the
working-men in which they prepare themselves for the great struggle which
cannot be avoided; they are the pronunciamentos of single branches of industry
that these too have joined the labour movement. And when one examines a year's
file of the Northern Star, the only sheet which reports all the
movements of the proletariat, one finds that all the proletarians of the towns
and of country manufacture have united in associations, and have protested from
time to time, by means of a general strike, against the supremacy of the
bourgeoisie. And as schools of war, the Unions are unexcelled. In them is
developed the peculiar courage of the English. It is said on the Continent that
the English, and especially the working-men, are cowardly, that they cannot
carry out a revolution because, unlike the French, they do not riot at
intervals, because they apparently accept the bourgeois regime so quietly. This
is a complete mistake. The English working-men are second to none in courage;
they are quite as restless as the French, but they fight differently. The
French, who are by nature political, struggle against social evils with
political weapons; the English, for whom politics exist only as a matter of
interest, solely in the interest of bourgeois society, fight, not against the
Government, but directly against the bourgeoisie; and for the time, this can be
done only in a peaceful manner. Stagnation in business, and the want consequent
upon it, engendered the revolt at Lyons, in 1834, in favour of the Republic: in
1842, at Manchester, a similar cause gave rise to a universal turnout for the
Charter and higher wages. That courage is required for a turnout, often indeed
much loftier courage, much bolder, firmer determination than for an
insurrection, is self-evident. It is, in truth, no trifle for a working-man who
knows want from experience, to face it with wife and children, to endure hunger
and wretchedness for months together, and stand firm and unshaken through it
all. What is death, what the galleys which await the French revolutionist, in
comparison with gradual starvation, with the daily sight of a starving family,
with the certainty of future revenge on the part of the bourgeoisie, all of
which the English working-man chooses in preference to subjection under the
yoke of the property-holding class? We shall meet later an example of this
obstinate, unconquerable courage of men who surrender to force only when all
resistance would be aimless and unmeaning. And precisely in this quiet
perseverance, in this lasting determination which undergoes a hundred tests
every day, the English working-man develops that side of his character which
commands most respect. People who endure so much to bend one single bourgeois
will be able to break the power of the whole bourgeoisie.

But apart from that, the English working-man has proved his courage often
enough. That the turnout of 1842 had no further results came from the fact that
the men were in part forced into it by the bourgeoisie, in part neither clear
nor united as to its object. But aside from this, they have shown their courage
often enough when the matter in question was a specific social one. Not to
mention the Welsh insurrection of 1839, a complete battle was waged in
Manchester in May, 1843, during my residence there. Pauling & Henfrey, a
brick firm, had increased the size of the bricks without raising wages, and
sold the bricks, of course, at a higher price. The workers, to whom higher
wages were refused, struck work, and the Brickmakers' Union declared war upon
the firm. The firm, meanwhile, succeeded with great difficulty in securing
hands from the neighbourhood, and among the knobsticks, against whom in the
beginning intimidation was used; the proprietors set twelve men to guard the
yard, all ex-soldiers and policemen, armed with guns. When intimidation proved
unavailing, the brick-yard, which lay scarcely four hundred paces from an
infantry barracks, was stormed at ten o'clock one night by a crowd of
brickmakers, who advanced in military order, the first ranks armed with guns.
They forced their way in, fired upon the watchmen as soon as they saw them,
stamped out the wet bricks spread out to dry, tore down the piled-up rows of
those already dry, demolished everything which came in their way, pressed into
a building, where they destroyed the furniture and maltreated the wife of the
overlooker who was living there. The watchmen, meanwhile, had placed themselves
behind a hedge, whence they could fire safely and without interruption. The
assailants stood before a burning brick-kiln, which threw a bright light upon
them, so that every ball of their enemies struck home, while every one of their
own shots missed its mark. Nevertheless, the firing lasted half-an-hour, until
the ammunition was exhausted, and the object of the visit – the
demolition of all the destructible objects in the yard – was attained.
Then the military approached, and the brickmakers withdrew to Eccles, three
miles from Manchester. A short time before reaching Eccles they held roll-call,
and each man was called according to his number in the section when they
separated, only to fall the more certainly into the hands of the police, who
were approaching from all sides. The number of the wounded must have been very
considerable, but those only could be counted who were arrested. One of these
had received three bullets (in the thigh, the calf, and the shoulder), and had
travelled in spite of them more than four miles on foot. These people have
proved that they, too, possess revolutionary courage, and do not shun a rain of
bullets. And when an unarmed multitude, without a precise aim common to them
all, are held in check in a shut-off market-place, whose outlets are guarded by
a couple of policemen and dragoons, as happened in 1842, this by no means
proves a want of courage. On the contrary, the multitude would have stirred
quite as little if the servants of public (i.e., of the bourgeois) order had
not been present. Where the working-people have a specific end in view, they
show courage enough; as, for instance, in the attack upon Birley's mill, which
had later to be protected by artillery.

In this connection, a word or two as to the respect for the law in England.
True, the law is sacred to the bourgeois, for it is his own composition,
enacted with his consent, and for his benefit and protection. He knows that,
even if an individual law should injure him, the whole fabric protects his
interests; and more than all, the sanctity of the law, the sacredness of order
as established by the active will of one part of society, and the passive
acceptance of the other, is the strongest support of his social position.
Because the English bourgeois finds himself reproduced in his law, as he does
in his God, the policeman's truncheon which, in a certain measure, is his own
club, has for him a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working-man quite
otherwise! The working-man knows too well, has learned from too oft-repeated
experience, that the law is a rod which the bourgeois has prepared for him; and
when he is not compelled to do so, he never appeals to the law. It is
ridiculous to assert that the English working-man fears the police, when every
week in Manchester policemen are beaten, and last year an attempt was made to
storm a station-house secured by iron doors and shutters. The power of the
police in the turnout of 1842 lay, as I have already said, in the want of a
clearly defined object on the part of the working-men themselves.

Since the working-men do not respect the law, but simply submit to its power
when they cannot change it, it is most natural that they should at least
propose alterations in it, that they should wish to put a proletarian law in
the place of the legal fabric of the bourgeoisie. This proposed law is the
People's Charter, which in form is purely political, and demands a democratic
basis for the House of Commons. Chartism is the compact form of their
opposition to the bourgeoisie. In the Unions and turnouts opposition always
remained isolated: it was single working-men or sections who fought a single
bourgeois. If the fight became general, this was scarcely by the intention of
the working-men; or, when it did happen intentionally, Chartism was at the
bottom of it. But in Chartism it is the whole working-class which arises
against the bourgeoisie, and attacks, first of all, the political power, the
legislative rampart with which the bourgeoisie has surrounded itself. Chartism
has proceeded from the Democratic party which arose between 1780 and 1790 with
and in the proletariat, gained strength during the French Revolution, and came
forth after the peace as the Radical party. It had its headquarters then in
Birmingham and Manchester, and later in London; extorted the Reform Bill from
the Oligarchs of the old Parliament by a union with the Liberal bourgeoisie,
and has steadily consolidated itself, since then, as a more and more pronounced
working-men's party in opposition to the bourgeoisie. In 1838 a committee of
the General Working-men's Association of London, with William Lovett at its
head, drew up the People's Charter, whose six points are as follows: (1)
Universal suffrage for every man who is of age, sane and unconvicted of crime;
(2) Annual Parliaments; (3) Payment of members of Parliament, to enable poor
men to stand for election; (4) Voting by ballot to prevent bribery and
intimidation by the bourgeoisie; (5) Equal electoral districts to secure equal
representation; and (6) Abolition of the even now merely nominal property
qualification of £300 in land for candidates in order to make every voter
eligible. These six points, which are all limited to the reconstitution of the
House of Commons, harmless as they seem, are sufficient to overthrow the whole
English Constitution, Queen and Lords included. The so-called monarchical and
aristocratic elements of the Constitution can maintain themselves only because
the bourgeoisie has an interest in the continuance of their sham existence; and
more than a sham existence neither possesses today. But as soon as real public
opinion in its totality backs the House of Commons, as soon as the House of
Commons incorporates the will, not of the bourgeoisie alone, but of the whole
nation, it will absorb the whole power so completely that the last halo must
fall from the head of the monarch and the aristocracy. The English working-man
respects neither Lords nor Queen. The bourgeois, while in reality allowing them
but little influence, yet offers to them personally a sham worship. The English
Chartist is politically a republican, though he rarely or never mentions the
word, while be sympathises with the republican parties of all countries, and
calls himself in preference a democrat. But he is more than a mere republican,
his democracy is not simply political.

Chartism was from the beginning of 1835 chiefly a movement among the
working-men, though not yet sharply separated from the bourgeoisie. The
Radicalism of the workers went hand in hand with the Radicalism of the
bourgeoisie; the Charter was the shibboleth of both. They held their National
Convention every year in common, seeming to be one party. The lower
middle-class was just then in a very bellicose and violent state of mind in
consequence of the disappointment over the Reform Bill and of the bad business
years of 1837-1839, and viewed the boisterous Chartist agitation with a very
favourable eye. Of the vehemence of this agitation no one in Germany has any
idea. The people were called upon to arm themselves, were frequently urged to
revolt; pikes were got ready, as in the French Revolution, and in 1838, one
Stephens, a Methodist parson, said to the assembled working- people of
Manchester:

“You have no need to fear the power of Government, the
soldiers, bayonets, and cannon that are at the disposal of your oppressors; you
have a weapon that is far mightier than all these, a weapon against which
bayonets and cannon are powerless, and a child of ten years can wield it. You
have only to take a couple of matches and a bundle of straw dipped in pitch,
and I will see what the Government and its hundreds of thousands of soldiers
will do against this one weapon if it is used boldly.”

As early as that year the peculiarly social character of the
working-men's Chartism manifested itself. The same Stephens said, in a meeting
of 200,000 men on Kersall Moor, the Mons Sacer of Manchester:

“Chartism, my friends, is no political movement, where
the main point is your getting the ballot. Chartism is a knife and fork
question: the Charter means a good house, good food and drink, prosperity, and
short working-hours.”

The movements against the New Poor Law and for the Ten Hours'
Bill were already in the closest relation to Chartism. In all the meetings of
that time the Tory Oastler was active, and hundreds of petitions for
improvements of the social conditions of the workers were circulated along with
the national petition for the People's Charter adopted in Birmingham. In 1839
the agitation continued as vigorously as ever, and when it began to relax
somewhat at the end of the year, Bussey, Taylor, and Frost hastened to call
forth uprisings simultaneously in the North of England, in Yorkshire, and
Wales. Frost's plan being betrayed, he was obliged to open hostilities
prematurely. Those in the North heard of the failure of his attempt in time to
withdraw. Two months later, in January, 1840, several so-called spy outbreaks
took place in Sheffield and Bradford, in Yorkshire, and the excitement
gradually subsided. Meanwhile the bourgeoisie turned its attention to more
practical projects, more profitable for itself, namely the Corn Laws. The
Anti-Corn-Law Association was formed in Manchester, and the consequence was a
relaxation of the tie between the Radical bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The
working-men soon perceived that for them the abolition of the Corn Laws could
be of little use, while very advantageous to the bourgeoisie; and they could
therefore not be won for the project.

The crisis of 1842 came on. Agitation was once more as vigorous as in 1839.
But this time the rich manufacturing bourgeoisie, which was suffering severely
under this particular crisis, took part in it. The Anti-Corn Law League, as it
was now called, assumed a decidedly revolutionary tone. Its journals and
agitators used undisguisedly revolutionary language, one very good reason for
which was the fact that the Conservative party had been in power since 1841. As
the Chartists had previously done, these bourgeois leaders called upon the
people to rebel; and the working-men who had most to suffer from the crisis
were not inactive, as the year's national petition for the Charter with its
three and a half million signatures proves. In short, if the two Radical
parties had been somewhat estranged, they allied themselves once more. At a
meeting of Liberals and Chartists held in Manchester, February 14th, 1842, a
petition urging the repeal of the Corn Laws and the adoption of the Charter was
drawn up. The next day it was adopted by both parties. The spring and summer
passed amidst violent agitation and increasing distress. The bourgeoisie was
determined to carry the repeal of the Corn Laws with the help of the crisis,
the want which it entailed, and the general excitement. At this time, the
Conservatives being in power, the Liberal bourgeoisie half abandoned their
law-abiding habits; they wished to bring about a revolution with the help of
the workers. The working-men were to take the chestnuts from the fire to save
the bourgeoisie from burning their own fingers. The old idea of a “holy
month,” a general strike, broached in 1839 by the Chartists, was revived.
This time, however, it was not the working-men who wished to quit work, but the
manufacturers who wished to close their mills and send the operatives into the
country parishes upon the property of the aristocracy, thus forcing the Tory
Parliament and the Tory Ministry to repeal the Corn Laws. A revolt would
naturally have followed, but the bourgeoisie stood safely in the background and
could await the result without compromising itself if the worst came to the
worst. At the end of July business began to improve; it was high time. In order
not to lose the opportunity, three firms in Staleybridge reduced wages in spite
of the improvement. Whether they did so of their own motion or in agreement
with other manufacturers, especially those of the League, I do not know. Two
withdrew after a time, but the third, William Bailey & Brothers, stood
firm, and told the objecting operatives that “if this did not please
them, they had better go and play a bit.” This contemptuous answer the
hands received with jeers. They left the mill, paraded through the town, and
called upon all their fellows to quit work. In a few hours every mill stood
idle, and the operatives marched to Mottram Moor to hold a meeting. This was on
August 5th. August 8th they proceeded to Ashton and Hyde five thousand strong,
closed all the mills and coal-pits, and held meetings, in which, however, the
question discussed was not, as the bourgeoisie had hoped, the repeal of the
Corn Laws, but, “a fair day's wages for a fair day's work.” August
9th they proceeded to Manchester, unresisted by the authorities (all Liberals),
and closed the mills; on the 11th they were in Stockport, where they met with
the first resistance as they were storming the workhouse, the favourite child
of the bourgeoisie. On the same day there was a general strike and disturbance
in Bolton, to which the authorities here, too, made no resistance. Soon the
uprising spread throughout the whole manufacturing district, and all
employments, except harvesting and the production of food, came to a
standstill. But the rebellious operatives were quiet. They were driven into
this revolt without wishing it. The manufacturers, with the single exception of
the Tory Birley, in Manchester, had, contrary to their custom, not opposed it.
The thing had begun without the working-men's having any distinct end in view,
for which reason they were all united in the determination not to be shot at
for the benefit of the Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For the rest, some
wanted to carry the Charter, others who thought this premature wished merely to
secure the wages rate of 1840. On this point the whole insurrection was
wrecked. If it had been from the beginning an intentional, determined
working-men's insurrection, it would surely have carried its point; but these
crowds who had been driven into the streets by their masters, against their own
will, and with no definite purpose, could do nothing. Meanwhile the
bourgeoisie, which had not moved a finger to carry the alliance of February
15th into effect, soon perceived that the working-men did not propose to become
its tools, and that the illogical manner in which it had abandoned its
law-abiding standpoint threatened danger. It therefore resumed its law-abiding
attitude, and placed itself upon the side of Government as against the
working-men.

It swore in trusty retainers as special constables (the German merchants in
Manchester took part in this ceremony, and marched in an entirely superfluous
manner through the city with their cigars in their mouths and thick truncheons
in their hands). It gave the command to fire upon the crowd in Preston, so that
the unintentional revolt of the people stood all at once face to face, not only
with the whole military power of the Government, but with the whole
property-holding class as well. The working-men, who had no especial aim,
separated gradually, and the insurrection came to an end without evil results.
Later, the bourgeoisie was guilty of one shameful act after another, tried to
whitewash itself by expressing a horror of popular violence by no means
consistent with its own revolutionary language of the spring; laid the blame of
insurrection upon Chartist instigators, whereas it had itself done more than
all of them together to bring about the uprising; and resumed its old attitude
of sanctifying the name of the law with a shamelessness perfectly unequalled.
The Chartists, who were all but innocent of bringing about this uprising, who
simply did what the bourgeoisie meant to do when they made the most of their
opportunity, were prosecuted and convicted, while the bourgeoisie escaped
without loss, and had, besides, sold off its old stock of goods with advantage
during the pause in work.

The fruit of the uprising was the decisive separation of the proletariat
from the bourgeoisie. The Chartists had not hitherto concealed their
determination to carry the Charter at all costs, even that of a revolution; the
bourgeoisie, which now perceived, all at once, the danger with which any
violent change threatened its position, refused to hear anything further of
physical force, and proposed to attain its end by moral force, as though this
were anything else than the direct or indirect threat of physical force. 'I'his
was one point of dissension, though even this was removed later by the
assertion of the Chartists (who are at least as worthy of being believed as the
bourgeoisie) that they, too, refrained from appealing to physical force. The
second point of dissension and the main one, which brought Chartism to light in
its purity, was the repeal of the Corn Laws. In this the bourgeoisie was
directly interested, the proletariat not. The Chartists therefore divided into
two parties whose political programmes agreed literally, but which were
nevertheless thoroughly different and incapable of union. At the Birmingham
National Convention, in January, 1843, Sturge, the representative of the
Radical bourgeoisie, proposed that the name of the Charter be omitted from the
rules of the Chartist Association, nominally because this name had become
connected with recollections of violence during the insurrection, a connection,
by the way, which had existed for years, and against which Mr. Sturge had
hitherto advanced no objection. The working-men refused to drop the name, and
when Mr. Sturge was outvoted, that worthy Quaker suddenly became loyal, betook
himself out of the hall, and founded a “Complete Suffrage
Association” within the Radical bourgeoisie. So repugnant had these
recollections become to the Jacobinical bourgeoisie, that he altered even the
name Universal Suffrage into the ridiculous title, Complete Suffrage. The
working-men laughed at him and quietly went their way.

From this moment Chartism was purely a working-men's cause freed from all
bourgeois elements. The “Complete” journals, the Weekly
Dispatch, Weekly Chronicle, Examiner, etc., fell gradually into the sleepy
tone of the other Liberal sheets, espoused the cause of Free Trade, attacked
the Ten Hours' Bill and all exclusively working-men's demands, and let their
Radicalism as a whole fall rather into the background. The Radical bourgeoisie
joined hands with the Liberals against the working-men in every collision, and
in general made the Corn Law question, which for the English is the Free Trade
question, their main business. They thereby fell under the dominion of the
Liberal bourgeoisie, and now play a most pitiful role.

The Chartist working-men, on the contrary, espoused with redoubled zeal all
the struggles of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Free competition has
caused the workers suffering enough to be hated by them; its apostles, the
bourgeoisie, are their declared enemies. The working-man has only disadvantages
to await from the complete freedom of competition. The demands hitherto made by
him, the Ten Hours' Bill, protection of the workers against the capitalist,
good wages, a guaranteed position, repeal of the New Poor Law, all of the
things which belong to Chartism quite as essentially as the “Six
Points,” are directly opposed to free competition and Free Trade. No
wonder, then, that the working-men will not hear of Free Trade and the repeal
of the Corn Laws (a fact incomprehensible to the whole English bourgeoisie),
and while at least wholly indifferent to the Corn Law question, are most deeply
embittered against its advocates. This question is precisely the point at which
the proletariat separates from the bourgeoisie, Chartism from Radicalism; and
the bourgeois understanding cannot comprehend this, because it cannot
comprehend the proletariat.

Therein lies the difference between Chartist democracy and all previous
political bourgeois democracy. Chartism is of an essentially social nature, a
class movement. The “Six Points” which for the Radical bourgeois
are the beginning and end of the matter, which are meant, at the utmost, to
call forth certain further reforms of the Constitution, are for the proletarian
a mere means to further ends. “Political power our means, social
happiness our end,” is now the clearly formulated war-cry of the
Chartists. The “knife and fork question” of the preacher Stephens
was a truth for a part of the Chartists only, in 1838; it is a truth for all of
them in 1845. There is no longer a mere politician among the Chartists, and
even though their Socialism is very little developed, though their chief remedy
for poverty has hitherto consisted in the land-allotment system, which was
superseded by the introduction of manufacture, though their chief practical
propositions are apparently of a reactionary nature, yet these very measures
involve the alternative that they must either succumb to the power of
competition once more and restore the old state of things, or they must
themselves entirely overcome competition and abolish it. On the other hand, the
present indefinite state of Chartism, the separation from the purely political
party, involves that precisely the characteristic feature, its social aspect,
will have to be further developed. The approach to Socialism cannot fail,
especially when the next crisis directs the working-men by force of sheer want
to social instead of political remedies. And a crisis must follow the present
active state of industry and commerce in 1847 at the latest, and probably in
1846; one, too, which will far exceed in extent and violence all former crises.
The working-men will carry their Charter, naturally; but meanwhile they will
learn to see clearly with regard to many points which they can make by means of
it and of which they now know very little.

Meanwhile the Socialist agitation also goes forward. English Socialism comes
under our consideration so far only as it affects the working-class. The
English Socialists demand the gradual introduction of possession in common in
home colonies embracing two to three thousand persons who shall carry on both
agriculture and manufacture and enjoy equal rights and equal education. They
demand greater facility of obtaining divorce, the establishment of a rational
government, with complete freedom of conscience and the abolition of
punishment, the same to be replaced by a rational treatment of the offender.
These are their practical measures, their theoretical principles do not concern
us here. English Socialism arose with Owen, a manufacturer, and proceeds
therefore with great consideration toward the bourgeoisie and great injustice
toward the proletariat in its methods, although it culminates in demanding the
abolition of the class antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat.

The Socialists are thoroughly tame and peaceable, accept our existing order,
bad as it is, so far as to reject all other methods but that of winning public
opinion. Yet they are so dogmatic that success by this method is for them, and
for their principles as at present formulated, utterly hopeless. While
bemoaning the demoralisation of the lower classes, they are blind to the
element of progress in this dissolution of the old social order, and refuse to
acknowledge that the corruption wrought by private interests and hypocrisy in
the property-holding class is much greater. They acknowledge no historic
development, and wish to place the nation in a state of Communism at once,
overnight, not by the unavoidable march of its political development up to the
point at which this transition becomes both possible and necessary. They
understand, it is true, why the working-man is resentful against the bourgeois,
but regard as unfruitful this class hatred, which is, after all, the only moral
incentive by which the worker can be brought nearer the goal. They preach
instead, a philanthropy and universal love far more unfruitful for the present
state of England. They acknowledge only a psychological development, a
development of man in the abstract, out of all relation to the Past, whereas
the whole world rests upon that Past, the individual man included. Hence they
are too abstract, too metaphysical, and accomplish little. They are recruited
in part from the working-class, of which they have enlisted but a very small
fraction representing, however, its most educated and solid elements. In its
present form, Socialism can never become the common creed of the working-class;
it must condescend to return for a moment to the Chartist standpoint. But the
true proletarian Socialism having passed through Chartism, purified of its
bourgeois elements, assuming the form which it has already reached in the minds
of many Socialists and Chartist leaders (who are nearly all Socialists), must,
within a short time, play a weighty part in the history of the development of
the English people. English Socialism, the basis of which is much more ample
than that of the French, is behind it in theoretical development, will have to
recede for a moment to the French standpoint in order to proceed beyond it
later. Meanwhile the French, too, will develop farther. English Socialism
affords the most pronounced expression of the prevailing absence of religion
among the working-men, an expression so pronounced indeed that the mass of the
working-men, being unconsciously and merely practically irreligious, often draw
back before it. But here, too, necessity will force the working-men to abandon
the remnants of a belief which, as they will more and more clearly perceive,
serves only to make them weak and resigned to their fate, obedient and faithful
to the vampire property-holding class.

Hence it is evident that the working-men's movement is divided into two
sections, the Chartists and the Socialists. The Chartists are theoretically the
more backward, the less developed, but they are genuine proletarians all over,
the representatives of their class. The Socialists are more far-seeing, propose
practical remedies against distress, but, proceeding originally from the
bourgeoisie, are for this reason unable to amalgamate completely with the
working-class. The union of Socialism with Chartism, the reproduction of French
Communism in an English manner, will be the next step, and has already begun.
Then only, when this has been achieved, will the working-class be the true
intellectual leader of England. Meanwhile, political and social development
will proceed, and will foster this new party, this new departure of
Chartism.

These different sections of working-men, often united, often separated,
Trades Unionists, Chartists, and Socialists, have founded on their own hook
numbers of schools and reading-rooms for the advancement of education. Every
Socialist, and almost every Chartist institution, has such a place, and so too
have many trades. Here the children receive a purely proletarian education,
free from all the influences of the bourgeoisie; and, in the reading-rooms,
proletarian journals and books alone, or almost alone, are to be found. These
arrangements are very dangerous for the bourgeoisie, which has succeeded in
withdrawing several such institutes, “Mechanics' Institutes,” from
proletarian influences, and making them organs for the dissemination of the
sciences useful to the bourgeoisie. Here the natural sciences are now taught,
which may draw the working-men away from the opposition to the bourgeoisie, and
perhaps place in their hands the means of making inventions which bring in
money for the bourgeoisie; while for the working-man the acquaintance with the
natural sciences is utterly useless now when it too often happens that
he never gets the slightest glimpse of Nature in his large town with his long
working-hours..Here Political Economy is preached, whose idol
is free competition, and whose sum and substance for the working-man is this,
that he cannot do anything more rational than resign himself to starvation.
Here all education is tame, flabby, subservient to the ruling politics and
religion, so that for the working-man it is merely a constant sermon upon quiet
obedience, passivity, and resignation to his fate.

The mass of working-men naturally have nothing to do with these institutes,
and betake themselves to the proletarian reading-rooms and to the discussion of
matters which directly concern their own interests, whereupon the
self-sufficient bourgeoisie says its Dixi et salvavi, and turns with
contempt from a class which “prefers the angry ranting of ill-meaning
demagogues to the advantages of solid education.” That, however, the
working-men appreciate solid education when they can get it unmixed with the
interested cant of the bourgeoisie, the frequent lectures upon scientific,
aesthetic, and economic subjects prove which are delivered especially in the
Socialist institutes, and very well attended. I have often heard working-men,
whose fustian jackets scarcely held together, speak upon geological,
astronomical, and other subjects, with more knowledge than most
“cultivated” bourgeois in Germany possess. And in how great a
measure the English proletariat has succeeded in attaining independent
education is shown especially by the fact that the epoch-making products of
modern philosophical, political, and poetical literature are read by
working-men almost exclusively. The bourgeois, enslaved by social conditions
and the prejudices involved in them, trembles, blesses, and crosses himself
before everything which really paves the way for progress; the proletarian has
open eyes for it, and studies it with pleasure and success. In this respect the
Socialists, especially, have done wonders for the education of the proletariat.
They have translated the French materialists, Helvetius, Holbach, Diderot,
etc., and disseminated them, with the best English works, in cheap editions.
Strauss' Life of Jesus and Proudhon's Property also circulate
among the working-men only. Shelley, the genius, the prophet, Shelley, and
Byron, with his glowing sensuality and his bitter satire upon our existing
society, find most of their readers in the proletariat; the bourgeoisie owns
only castrated editions, family editions, cut down in accordance with the
hypocritical morality of today. The two great practical philosophers of latest
date, Bentham and Godwin, are, especially the latter, almost exclusively the
property of the proletariat; for though Bentham has a school within the Radical
bourgeoisie, it is only the proletariat and the Socialists who have succeeded
in developing his teachings a step forward. The proletariat has formed upon
this basis a literature, which consists chiefly of journals and pamphlets, and
is far in advance of the whole bourgeois literature in intrinsic worth. On this
point more later.

One more point remains to be noticed. The factory operatives, and especially
those of the cotton district, form the nucleus of the labour movement.
Lancashire, and especially Manchester, is the seat of the most powerful Unions,
the central point of Chartism, the place which numbers most Socialists. The
more the factory system has taken possession of a branch of industry, the more
the working-men employed in it participate in the labour movement; the sharper
the opposition between working-men and capitalists, the clearer the proletarian
consciousness in the working-men. The small masters of Birmingham, though they
suffer from the crises, still stand upon an unhappy middle ground between
proletarian Chartism and shopkeepers' Radicalism. But, in general, all the
workers employed in manufacture are won for one form or the other of resistance
to capital and bourgeoisie; and all are united upon this point, that they, as
working-men, a title of which they are proud, and which is the usual form of
address in Chartist meetings, form a separate class, with separate interests
and principles, with a separate way of looking at things in contrast with that
of all property-owners; and that in this class reposes the strength and the
capacity of development of the nation.

NOTES

1 “What kind of wild justice must it be in
the hearts of these men that prompts them, with cold deliberation, in conclave
assembled, to doom their brother workman, as the deserter of his order and his
order's cause. to die as a traitor and deserter; and have him executed, since
not by any public judge and hangman, then by a private one; – like your
old Chivalry Femgericht, and Secret-Tribunal, suddenly in this strange
guise become new; suddenly rising once more on the astonished eye, dressed now
not in mail-shirts, but in fustian jackets, meeting not in Westphalian forests
but in the paved Gallowgate of Glasgow!... Such temper must be widespread,
virulent among the many, when even in its worst acme, it can take such a form
in a few.” – Carlyle, Chartism, p. 40.– Note by
Engels.

## The Mining Proletariat

The production of raw materials and fuel for a manufacture so colossal as
that of England requires a considerable number of workers. But of all the
materials needed for its industries (except wool, which belongs to the
agricultural districts), England produces only the minerals: the metals and the
coal. While Cornwall possesses rich copper, tin, zinc, and lead mines,
Staffordshire, Wales, and other districts yield great quantities of iron, and
almost the whole North and West of England, central Scotland, and certain
districts of Ireland, produce a superabundance of coal.[1]

In the Cornish mines about 19,000 men, and 11,000 women and children are
employed, in part above and in part below ground. Within the mines below
ground, men and boys above twelve years old are employed almost exclusively.
The condition of these workers seems, according to the
Children's Employment Commission's Report, to be comparatively endurable, materially, and the English
often enough boast of their strong, bold miners, who follow the veins of
mineral below the bottom of the very sea. But in the matter of the health of
these workers, this same Children's Employment Commission's Report judges
differently. It shows in Dr. Barham's intelligent report how the inhalation of
an atmosphere containing little oxygen, and mixed with dust amid the smoke of
blasting powder, such as prevails in the mines, seriously affects the lungs,
disturbs the action of the heart, and diminishes the activity of the digestive
organs; that wearing toil, and especially the climbing up and down of ladders,
upon which even vigorous young men have to spend in some mines more than an
hour a day, and which precedes and follows daily work, contributes greatly to
the development of these evils, so that men who begin this work in early youth
are far from reaching the stature of women who work above ground; that many die
young of galloping consumption, and most miners at middle age of slow
consumption; that they age prematurely and become unfit for work between the
thirty-fifth and forty-fifth years; that many are attacked by acute
inflammations of the respiratory organs when exposed to the sudden change from
the warm air of the shaft (after climbing the ladder in profuse perspiration)
to the cold wind above ground; and that these acute inflammations are very
frequently fatal. Work above ground, breaking and sorting the ore, is done by
girls and children, and is described as very wholesome, being done in the open
air.

In the North of England, on the borders of Northumberland and Durham, are
the extensive lead-mines of Alston Moor. The reports from this districts agree
almost wholly with those from Cornwall. Here, too, there are complaints of want
of oxygen, excessive dust, powder smoke, carbonic acid gas, and sulphur, in the
atmosphere of the workings. In consequence, the miners here, as in Cornwall,
are small of stature, and nearly all suffer from the thirtieth year throughout
life from chest affections, which end, especially when this work is persisted
in, as is almost always the case, in consumption, so greatly shortening the
average of life of these people. If the miners of this district are somewhat
longer lived than those of Cornwall, this is the case, because they do not
enter the mines before reaching the nineteenth year, while in Cornwall, as we
have seen, this work is begun in the twelfth year. Nevertheless, the majority
die here, too, between forty and fifty years of age, according to medical
testimony. Of 79 miners, whose death was entered upon the public register of
the district, and who attained an average of 45 years, 37 had died of
consumption and 6 of asthma. In the surrounding districts, Allendale, Stanhope,
and Middleton, the average length of life was 49, 48, and 47 years
respectively, and the deaths from chest affections composed 48, 54, and 56 per
cent of the whole number. Let us compare these figures with the so-called
Swedish tables, detailed tables of mortality embracing all the inhabitants of
Sweden, and recognised in England as the most correct standard hitherto
attainable for the average length of life of the British working-class.
According to them, male persons who survive the nineteenth year attain an
average of 57 1/2 years; but, according to this, the North of England miners
are robbed by their work of an average of ten years of life. Yet the Swedish
tables are accepted as the standard of longevity of the workers, and
present, therefore, the average chances of life as affected by the unfavourable
conditions in which the proletariat lives, a standard of longevity less than
the normal one. In this district we find again the lodging-houses and sleeping-
places with which we have already become acquainted in the towns, and in quite
as filthy, disgusting, and overcrowded a state as there. Commissioner Mitchell
visited one such sleeping barrack, 18 feet long, 15 feet wide, and arranged for
the reception of 42 men and 14 boys, or 56 persons altogether, one-half of whom
slept above the other in berths as on shipboard. There was no opening for the
escape of the foul air; and, although no one had slept in this pen for three
nights preceding the visit, the smell and the atmosphere were such that
Commissioner Mitchell could not endure it a moment. What must it be through a
hot summer night, with fifty-six occupants? And this is not the steerage of an
American slave ship, it is the dwelling of free-born Britons!

Let us turn now to the most important branch of British mining, the iron and
coal-mines, which the Children's Employment Commission treats in common, and
with all the detail which the importance of the subject demands. Nearly the
whole of the first part of this report is devoted to the condition of the
workers employed in these mines. After the detailed description which I have
furnished of the state of the industrial workers, I shall, however, be able to
be as brief in dealing with this subject as the scope of the present work
requires.

In the coal and iron mines which are worked in pretty much the same way,
children of four, five, and seven years are employed. They are set to
transporting the ore or coal loosened by the miner from its place to the
horse-path or the main shaft, and to opening and shutting the doors (which
separate the divisions of the mine and regulate its ventilation) for the
passage of workers and material. For watching the doors the smallest children
are usually employed, who thus pass twelve hours daily, in the dark, alone,
sitting usually in damp passages without even having work enough to save them
from the stupefying, brutalising tedium of doing nothing. The transport of coal
and iron-stone, on the other hand, is very hard labour, the stuff being shoved
in large tubs, without wheels, over the uneven floor of the mine; often over
moist clay, or through water, and frequently up steep inclines and through
paths so low-roofed that the workers are forced to creep on hands and knees.
For this more wearing labour, therefore, older children and half-grown girls
are employed. One man or two boys per tub are employed, according to
circumstances; and, if two boys, one pushes and the other pulls. The loosening
of the ore or coal, which is done by men or strong youths of sixteen years or
more, is also very weary work. The usual working-day is eleven to twelve hours,
often longer; in Scotland it reaches fourteen hours, and double time is
frequent, when all the employees are at work below ground twenty-four, and even
thirty-six hours at a stretch. Set times for meals are almost unknown, so that
these people eat when hunger and time permit.

The standard of living of the miners is in general described as fairly good
and their wages high in comparison with those of the agricultural labourers
surrounding them (who, however, live at starvation rates), except in certain
parts of Scotland and in the Irish mines, where great misery prevails. We shall
have occasion to return later to this statement, which, by the way, is merely
relative, implying comparison to the poorest class in all England. Meanwhile,
we shall consider the evils which arise from the present method of mining, and
the reader may judge whether any pay in money can indemnify the miner for such
suffering.

The children and young people who are employed in transporting coal and
iron-stone all complain of being overtired. Even in the most recklessly
conducted industrial establishments there is no such universal and exaggerated
overwork. The whole report proves this, with a number of examples on every
page. It is constantly happening that children throw themselves down on the
stone hearth or the floor as soon as they reach home, fall asleep at once
without being able to take a bite of food, and have to be washed and put to bed
while asleep; it even happens that they lie down on the way home, and are found
by their parents late at night asleep on the road. It seems to be a universal
practice among these children to spend Sunday in bed to recover in some degree
from the overexertion of the week. Church and school are visited by but few,
and even of these the teachers complain of their great sleepiness and the want
of all eagerness to learn. The same thing is true of the elder girls and women.
They are overworked in the most brutal manner. This weariness, which is almost
always carried to a most painful pitch, cannot fail to affect the constitution.
The first result of such overexertion is the diversion of vitality to the
one-sided development of the muscles, so that those especially of the arms,
legs, and back, of the shoulders and chest, which are chiefly called into
activity in pushing and pulling, attain an uncommonly vigorous development,
while all the rest of the body suffers and is atrophied from want of
nourishment. More than all else the stature suffers, being stunted and
retarded; nearly all miners are short, except those of Leicestershire and
Warwickshire, who work under exceptionally favourable conditions. Further,
among boys as well as girls, puberty is retarded, among the former often until
the eighteenth year; indeed, a nineteen years old boy appeared before
Commissioner Symons, showing no evidence beyond that of the teeth, that he was
more than eleven or twelve years old. This prolongation of the period of
childhood is at bottom nothing more than a sign of checked development, which
does not fail to bear fruit in later years. Distortions of the legs, knees bent
inwards and feet bent outwards, deformities of the spinal column and other
malformations, appear the more readily in constitutions thus weakened, in
consequence of the almost universally constrained position during work; and
they are so frequent that in Yorkshire and Lancashire, as in Northumberland and
Durham, the assertion is made by many witnesses, not only by physicians, that a
miner may be recognised by his shape among a hundred other persons. The women
seem to suffer especially from this work, and are seldom, if ever, as straight
as other women. There is testimony here, too, to the fact that deformities of
the pelvis and consequent difficult, even fatal, child-bearing arise from the
work of women in the mines. But apart from these local deformities, the
coal-miners suffer from a number of special affections easily explained by the
nature of the work. Diseases of the digestive organs are first in order; want
of appetite, pains in the stomach, nausea, and vomiting, are most frequent,
with violent thirst, which can be quenched only with the dirty, lukewarm water
of the mine; the digestion is checked and all the other affections are thus
invited. Diseases of the heart, especially hypertrophy, inflammation of the
heart and pericardium, contraction of the auriculo-ventricular communications
and the entrance of the aorta are also mentioned repeatedly as diseases of the
miners, and are readily explained by overwork; and the same is true of the
almost universal rupture which is a direct consequence of protracted
overexertion. In part from the same cause and in part from the bad, dust-filled
atmosphere mixed with carbonic acid and hydrocarbon gas, which might so readily
be avoided, there arise numerous painful and dangerous affections of the lungs,
especially asthma, which in some districts appears in the fortieth, in others
in the thirtieth year in most of the miners, and makes them unfit for work in a
short time. Among those employed in wet workings the oppression in the chest
naturally appears much earlier; in some districts of Scotland between the
twentieth and thirtieth years, during which time the affected lungs are
especially susceptible to inflammations and diseases of a feverish nature. The
peculiar disease of workers of this sort is "black spittle", which arises from
the saturation of the whole lung with coal particles, and manifests itself in
general debility, headache, oppression of the chest, and thick, black mucous
expectoration. In some districts this disease appears in a mild form; in
others, on the contrary, it is wholly incurable, especially in Scotland. Here,
besides the symptoms just mentioned, which appear in an intensified form,
short, wheezing breathing, rapid pulse (exceeding 100 per minute), and abrupt
coughing, with increasing leanness and debility, speedily make the patient
unfit for work. Every case of this disease ends fatally. Dr. Mackellar, in
Pencaitland, East Lothian, testified that in all the coal-mines which are
properly ventilated this disease is unknown, while it frequently happens that
miners who go from well- to ill-ventilated mines are seized by it. The
profit-greed of mine owners which prevents the use of ventilators is therefore
responsible for the fact, that this working-men's disease exists at all.
Rheumatism, too, is, with the exception of the Warwick and Leicestershire
workers, a universal disease of the coal-miners, and arises especially from the
frequently damp working-places. The consequence of all these diseases is that,
in all districts without exception, the coal-miners age early and
become unfit for work soon after the fortieth year, though this is different in
different places. A coal-miner who can follow his calling after the 45th or
50th year is a very great rarity indeed. It is universally recognised that such
workers enter upon old age at forty. This applies to those who loosen the coal
from the bed; the loaders, who have constantly to lift heavy blocks of coal
into the tubs, age with the twenty-eighth or thirtieth year, so that it is
proverbial in the coal-mining districts that the loaders are old before they
are young. That this premature old age is followed by the early death of the
colliers is a matter of course, and a man who reaches sixty is a great
exception among them. Even in South Staffordshire, where the mines are
comparatively wholesome, few men reach their fifty-first year. Along with this
early superannuation of the workers we naturally find, just as in the case of
the mills, frequent lack of employment of the elder men, who are often
supported by very young children. If we sum up briefly the results of the work
in coal-mines, we find, as Dr. Southwood Smith, one of the commissioners, does,
that through prolonged childhood on the one hand and premature age on the
other, that period of life in which the human being is in full possession of
his powers, the period of manhood, is greatly shortened, while the length of
life in general is below the average. This, too, on the debit side of the
bourgeoisie's reckoning!

All this deals only with the average of the English coal-mines. But there
are many in which the state of things is much worse, those, namely, in which
thin seams of coal are worked. The coal would be too expensive if a part of the
adjacent sand and clay were removed; so the mine owners permit only the seams
to be worked; whereby the passages which elsewhere are four or five feet high
and more are here kept so low that to stand upright in them is not to be
thought of. The working-man lies on his side and loosens the coal with his
pick; resting upon his elbow as a pivot, whence follow inflammations of the
joint, and in cases where he is forced to kneel, of the knee also. The women
and children who have to transport the coal crawl upon their hands and knees,
fastened to the tub by a harness and chain (which frequently passes between the
legs), while a man behind pushes with hands and head. The pushing with the head
engenders local irritations, painful swellings, and ulcers. In many cases, too,
the shafts are wet, so that these workers have to crawl through dirty or salt
water several inches deep, being thus exposed to a special irritation of the
skin. It can be readily imagined how greatly the diseases already peculiar to
the miners are fostered by this especially frightful, slavish toil.

But these are not all the evils which descend upon the head of the
coal-miner. In the whole British Empire there is no occupation in which a man
may meet his end in so many diverse ways as in this one. The coal-mine is the
scene of a multitude of the most terrifying calamities, and these come directly
from the selfishness of the bourgeoisie. The hydrocarbon gas which develops so
freely in these mines, forms, when combined with atmospheric air, an explosive
which takes fire upon coming into contact with a flame, and kills every one
within its reach. Such explosions take place, in one mine or another, nearly
every day; on September 28th, 1844, one killed 96 men in Haswell Colliery,
Durham. The carbonic acid gas, which also develops in great quantities,
accumulates in the deeper parts of the mine, frequently reaching the height of
a man, and suffocates every one who gets into it. The doors which separate the
sections of the mines are meant to prevent the propagation of explosions and
the movement of the gases; but since they are entrusted to small children, who
often fall asleep or neglect them, this means of prevention is illusory. A
proper ventilation of the mines by means of fresh air-shafts could almost
entirely remove the injurious effects of both these gases. But for this purpose
the bourgeoisie has no money to spare, preferring to command the working-men to
use the Davy lamp, which is wholly useless because of its dull light, and is,
therefore, usually replaced by a candle. If an explosion occurs, the
recklessness of the miner is blamed, though the bourgeois might have made the
explosion well-nigh impossible by supplying good ventilation. Further, every
few days the roof of a working falls in, and buries or mangles the workers
employed in it. It is the interest of the bourgeois to have the seams worked
out as completely as possible, and hence the accidents of this sort. Then, too,
the ropes by which the men descend into the mines are often rotten, and break,
so that the unfortunates fall, and are crushed. All these accidents, and I have
no room for special cases, carry off yearly, according to the Mining
Journal, some fourteen hundred human beings. The Manchester
Guardian reports at least two or three accidents every week for Lancashire
alone. In nearly all mining districts the people composing the coroner's juries
are, in almost all cases, dependent upon the mine owners, and where this is not
the case, immemorial custom insures that the verdict shall be: "Accidental
Death". Besides, the jury takes very little interest in the state of the mine,
because it does not understand anything about the matter. But the Children's
Employment Commission does not hesitate to make the mine owners directly
responsible for the greater number of these cases.

As to the education and morals of the mining population, they are, according
to the Children's Employment Commission, pretty good in Cornwall, and excellent
in Alston Moor; in the coal districts, in general, they are, on the contrary,
reported as on an excessively low plane. The workers live in the country in
neglected regions, and if they do their weary work, no human being outside the
police force troubles himself about them. Hence, and from the tender age at
which children are put to work, it follows that their mental education is
wholly neglected. The day schools are not within their reach, the evening and
Sunday schools mere shams, the teachers worthless. Hence, few can read and
still fewer write. The only point upon which their eyes are as yet open is the
fact that their wages are far too low for their hateful and dangerous work. To
church they go seldom or never; all the clergy complain of their irreligion as
beyond comparison. As a matter of fact, their ignorance of religious and of
secular things, alike, is such that the ignorance of the factory operatives,
shown in numerous examples in the foregoing pages, is trifling in comparison
with it. The categories of religion are known to them only from the terms of
their oaths. Their morality is destroyed by their work itself. That the
overwork of all miners must engender drunkenness is self- evident. As to their
sexual relations, men, women, and children work in the mines, in many cases,
wholly naked, and in most cases, nearly so, by reason of the prevailing heat,
and the consequences in the dark, lonely mines may be imagined. The number of
illegitimate children is here disproportionately large, and indicates what goes
on among the half-savage population below ground; but proves too, that the
illegitimate intercourse of the sexes has not here, as in the great cities,
sunk to the level of prostitution. The labour of women entails the same
consequences as in the factories, dissolves the family, and makes the mother
totally incapable of household work.

When the Children's Employment Commission's Report was laid before
Parliament, Lord Ashley hastened to bring in a bill wholly forbidding the work
of women in the mines, and greatly limiting that of children. The bill was
adopted, but has remained a dead letter in most districts, because no mine
inspectors were appointed to watch over its being carried into effect. The
evasion of the law is very easy in the country districts in which the mines are
situated; and no one need be surprised that the Miners' Union laid before the
Home Secretary an official notice, last year, that in the Duke of Hamilton's
coal-mines in Scotland, more than sixty women were at work; or that the
Manchester Guardian reported that a girl perished in an explosion in a
mine near Wigan, and no one troubled himself further about the fact that an
infringement of the law was thus revealed. In single cases the employment of
women may have been discontinued, but in general the old state of things
remains as before.

These are, however, not all the afflictions known to the coal-miners. The
bourgeoisie, not content with ruining the health of these people, keeping them
in danger of sudden loss of life, robbing them of all opportunity for
education, plunders them in other directions in the most shameless manner. The
truck system is here the rule, not the exception, and is carried on in the most
direct and undisguised manner. The cottage system, likewise, is universal, and
here almost a necessity; but it is used here, too, for the better plundering of
the workers. To these means of oppression must be added all sorts of direct
cheating. While coal is sold by weight, the worker's wages are reckoned chiefly
by measure; and when his tub is not perfectly full he receives no pay whatever,
while he gets not a farthing for overmeasure. If there is more than a specified
quantity of dust in the tub, a matter which depends much less upon the miner
than upon the nature of the seam, he not only loses his whole wage but is fined
besides. The fine system in general is so highly perfected in the coal-mines,
that a poor devil who has worked the whole week and comes for his wages,
sometimes learns from the overseer, who fines at discretion and without
summoning the workers, that he not only has no wages but must pay so and so
much in fines extra! The overseer has, in general, absolute power over wages;
he notes the work done, and can please himself as to what he pays the worker,
who is forced to take his word. In some mines, where the pay is according to
weight, false decimal scales are used, whose weights are not subject to the
inspection of the authorities; in one coal-mine there was actually a regulation
that any workman who intended to complain of the falseness of the scales
must give notice to the overseer three weeks in advance! In many
districts, especially in the North of England, it is customary to engage the
workers by the year; they pledge themselves to work for no other employer
during that time, but the mine owner by no means pledges himself to give them
work, so that they are often without it for months together, and if they seek
elsewhere, they are sent to the treadmill for six weeks for breach of contract.
In other contracts, work to the amount of 26s. every 14 days, is promised the
miners, but not furnished; in others still, the employers advance the miners
small sums to be worked out afterwards, thus binding the debtors to themselves.
In the North, the custom is general of keeping the payment of wages one week
behindhand, chaining the miners in this way to their work.
And to complete the slavery of these enthralled workers, nearly all the
Justices of the Peace in the coal districts are mine owners themselves, or
relatives or friends of mine owners, and possess almost unlimited power in
these poor, uncivilised regions where there are few newspapers, these few in
the service of the ruling class, and but little other agitation. It is almost
beyond conception how these poor coal-miners have been plundered and tyrannised
over by Justices of the Peace acting as judges in their own cause.

So it went on for a long time. The workers did not know any better than that
they were there for the purpose of being swindled out of their very lives. But
gradually, even among them, and especially in the factory districts, where
contact with the more intelligent operatives could not fail of its effect,
there arose a spirit of opposition to the shameless oppression of the "coal
kings". The men began to form Unions and strike from time to time. In civilised
districts they joined the Chartists body and soul. The great coal district of
the North of England, shut off from all industrial intercourse, remained
backward until, after many efforts, partly of the Chartists and partly of the
more intelligent miners themselves, a general spirit of opposition arose in
1843. Such a movement seized the workers of Northumberland and Durham that they
placed themselves at the forefront of a general Union of coal-miners throughout
the kingdom, and appointed W. P. Roberts, a Chartist solicitor, of Bristol,
their "Attorney General", he having distinguished himself in earlier Chartist
trials. The Union soon spread over a great majority of the districts; agents
were appointed in all directions, who held meetings everywhere and secured new
members; at the first conference of delegates, in Manchester, in 1844, there
were 60,000 members represented, and at Glasgow, six months later, at the
second conference, 100,000. Here all the affairs of the coal-miners were
discussed and decisions as to the greater strikes arrived at. Several journals
were founded, especially the Miner's Advocate at Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
for defending the rights of the miners. On March 31st, 1844, the contracts of
all the miners of Northumberland and Durham expired. Roberts was empowered to
draw up a new agreement, in which the men demanded: (1) Payment by weight
instead of measure; (2) Determination of weight by means of ordinary scales
subject to the public inspectors; (3) Half-yearly renewal of contracts; (4)
Abolition of the fines system and payment according to work actually done; (5)
The employers to guarantee to miners in their exclusive service at least four
days' work per week, or wages for the same. This agreement was submitted to the
"coal kings", and a deputation appointed to negotiate with them; they answered,
however, that for them the Union did not exist, that they had to deal with
single workmen only, and should never recognise the Union. They also submitted
an agreement of their own which ignored all the foregoing points, and was,
naturally, refused by the miners. War was thus declared. On March 31st, 1844,
40,000 miners laid down their picks, and every mine in the county stood empty.
The funds of the Union were so considerable that for several months a weekly
contribution of 2s. 6d. could be assured to each family. While the miners were
thus putting the patience of their masters to the test, Roberts organised with
incomparable perseverance both strike and agitation, arranged for the holding
of meetings, traversed England from one end to the other, preached peaceful and
legal agitation, and carried on a crusade against the despotic Justices of the
Peace and truck masters, such as had never been known in England. This he had
begun at the beginning of the year. Wherever a miner had been condemned by a
Justice of the Peace, he obtained a habeas corpus from the Court of
Queen's bench, brought his client to London, and always secured an acquittal.
Thus, January 13th, Judge Williams of Queen's bench acquitted three miners
condemned by the Justices of the Peace of Bilston, South Staffordshire; the
offence of these people was that they refused to work in a place which
threatened to cave in, and had actually caved in before their return! On an
earlier occasion, Judge Patteson had acquitted six working-men, so that the
name Roberts began to be a terror to the mine owners. In Preston four of his
clients were in jail. In the first week of January he proceeded thither to
investigate the case on the spot, but found, when he arrived, the condemned all
released before the expiration of the sentence. In Manchester there were seven
in jail; Roberts obtained a habeas corpus and acquittal for all from
Judge Wightman. In Prescott nine coal-miners were in jail, accused of creating
a disturbance in St. Helens, South Lancashire, and awaiting trial; when Roberts
arrived upon the spot, they were released at once. All this took place in the
first half of February. In April, Roberts released a miner from jail in Derby,
four in Wakefield, and four in Leicester. So it went on for a time until these
Dogberries came to have some respect for the miners. The truck system shared
the same fate. One after another Roberts brought the disreputable mine owners
before the courts, and compelled the reluctant Justices of the Peace to condemn
them; such dread of this “lightning” “Attorney General”
who seemed to be everywhere at once spread among them, that at Belper, for
instance, upon Roberts' arrival, a truck firm published the following notice:

N O T I C E!

Pentrich Colliery

Messrs. Haslam
think it right (to prevent mistake), to give notice that all men employed at
their colliery will receive their wages wholly in money, and be at liberty to
spend it where they like. If they buy at Messrs. Haslam's shop they will be
supplied (as heretofore) at wholesale prices; but they are not expected to buy
there, and will have the same work and wages whether they go to that shop or
any other.

This triumph aroused the greatest jubilation throughout the English
working-class, and brought the Union a mass of new members. Meanwhile the
strike in the North was proceeding. Not a hand stirred, and Newcastle, the
chief coal port, was so stripped of its commodity that coal had to be brought
from the Scotch coast, in spite of the proverb. At first, while the Union's
funds held out, all went well, but towards summer the struggle became much more
painful for the miners. The greatest want prevailed among them; they had no
money, for the contributions of the workers of all branches of industry in
England availed little among the vast number of strikers, who were forced to
borrow from the small shopkeepers at a heavy loss. The whole press, with the
single exception of the few proletarian journals, was against them; the
bourgeois, even the few among them who might have had enough sense of justice
to support the miners, learnt from the corrupt Liberal and Conservative sheets
only lies about them. A deputation of twelve miners who went to London received
a sum from the proletariat there, but this, too, availed little among the mass
who needed support. Yet, in spite of all this, the miners remained steadfast,
and what is even more significant, were quiet and peaceable in the face of all
the hostilities and provocation of the mine owners and their faithful servants.
No act of revenge was carried out, not a renegade was maltreated, not one
single theft committed. Thus the strike had continued well on towards four
months, and the mine owners still had no prospect of getting the upper hand.
One way was, however, still open to them. They remembered the cottage system;
it occurred to them that the houses of the rebellious spirits were THEIR
property. In July, notice to quit was served the workers, and, in a week, the
whole forty thousand were put out of doors. This measure was carried out with
revolting cruelty. The sick, the feeble, old men and little children, even
women in child-birth, were mercilessly turned from their beds and cast into the
roadside ditches. One agent dragged by the hair from her bed, and into the
street, a woman in the pangs of child-birth. Soldiers and police in crowds were
present, ready to fire at the first symptom of resistance, on the slightest
hint of the Justices of the Peace, who had brought about the whole brutal
procedure. This, too, the working-men endured without resistance. The hope had
been that the men would use violence; they were spurred on with all force to
infringements of the laws, to furnish an excuse for making an end of the strike
by the intervention of the military. The homeless miners, remembering the
warnings of their Attorney General, remained unmoved, set up their household
goods upon the moors or the harvested fields, and held out. Some, who had no
other place, encamped on the roadsides and in ditches, others upon land
belonging to other people, whereupon they were prosecuted, and, having caused
"damage of the value of a halfpenny", were fined a pound, and, being unable to
pay it, worked it out on the treadmill. Thus they lived eight weeks and more of
the wet fag-end of last summer under the open sky with their families, with no
further shelter for themselves and their little ones than the calico curtains
of their beds; with no other help than the scanty allowances of their Union and
the fast shrinking credit with the small dealers. Hereupon Lord Londonderry,
who owns considerable mines in Durham, threatened the small tradesmen in "his"
town of Seaham with his most high displeasure if they should continue to give
credit to "his" rebellious workers. This "noble" lord made himself the first
clown of the turnout in consequence of the ridiculous, pompous, ungrammatical
ukases addressed to the workers, which he published from time to time, with no
other result than the merriment of the nation. When none of their efforts
produced any effect, the mine owners imported, at great expense, hands from
Ireland and such remote parts of Wales as have as yet no labour movement. And
when the competition of workers against workers was thus restored, the strength
of the strikers collapsed. The mine owners obliged them to renounce the Union,
abandon Roberts, and accept the conditions laid down by the employers. Thus
ended at the close of September the great five months' battle of the
coal-miners against the mine owners, a battle fought on the part of the
oppressed with .an endurance, courage, intelligence, and coolness which demands
the highest admiration. What a degree of true human culture, of enthusiasm and
strength of character, such a battle implies on the part of men who, as we have
seen in the Children's Employment Commission's Report, were described as late
as 1840, as being thoroughly brutal and wanting in moral sense! But how hard,
too, must have been the pressure which brought these forty thousand colliers to
rise as one man and to fight out the battle like an army not only
well-disciplined but enthusiastic, an army possessed of one single
determination, with the greatest coolness and composure, to a point beyond
which further resistance would have been madness. And what a battle! Not
against visible, mortal enemies, but against hunger, want, misery, and
homelessness, against their own passions provoked to madness by the brutality
of wealth. If they had revolted with violence, they, the unarmed and
defenceless, would have been shot down, and a day or two would have decided the
victory of the owners. This law-abiding reserve was no fear of the constable's
staff, it was the result of deliberation, the best proof of the intelligence
and self-control of the working-men.

Thus were the working-men forced once more, in spite of their unexampled
endurance, to succumb to the might of capital. But the fight had not been in
vain. First of all, this nineteen weeks' strike had tom the miners of the North
of England forever from the intellectual death in which they had hitherto lain;
they have left their sleep, are alert to defend their interests, and have
entered the movement of civilisation, and especially the movement of the
workers. The strike, which first brought to light the whole cruelty of the
owners, has established the opposition of the workers here, forever, and made
at least two-thirds of them Chartists; and the acquisition of thirty thousand
such determined, experienced men is certainly of great value to the Chartists.
Then, too, the endurance and law-abiding which characterised the whole strike,
coupled with the active agitation which accompanied it, has fixed public
attention upon the miners. On the occasion of the debate upon the export duty
on coal, Thomas Duncombe, the only decidedly Chartist member of the House of
Commons, brought up the condition of the coal-miners, had their petition read,
and by his speech forced the bourgeois journals to publish, at least in their
reports of Parliamentary proceedings, a correct statement of the case.
Immediately after the strike, occurred the explosion at Haswell; Roberts went
to London, demanded an audience with Peel, insisted as representative of the
miners upon a thorough investigation of the case, and succeeded in having the
first geological and chemical notabilities of England, Professors Lyell and
Faraday, commissioned to visit the spot. As several other explosions followed
in quick succession, and Roberts again laid the details before the Prime
Minister, the latter promised to propose the necessary measures for the
protection of the workers, if possible, in the next session of Parliament, i.
e., the present one of 1845. All this would not have been accomplished if these
workers had not, by means of the strike, proved themselves freedom-loving men
worthy of all respect, and if they had not engaged Roberts as their counsel.

Scarcely had it become known that the coal-miners of the North had been
forced to renounce the Union and discharge Roberts, when the miners of
Lancashire formed a Union of some ten thousand men, and guaranteed their
Attorney General a salary of £1,200 a year. In the autumn of last year they
collected more than £700, rather more than £200 of which they expended upon
salaries and judicial expenses, and the rest chiefly in support of men out of
work, either through want of employment or through dissensions with their
employers. Thus the working-men are constantly coming to see more clearly that,
united, they too are a respectable power, and can, in the last extremity, defy
even the might of the bourgeoisie. And this insight, the gain of all labour
movements, has been won for all the miners of England by the Union and the
strike of 1844. In a very short time the difference of intelligence and energy
which now exists in favour of the factory operatives will have vanished, and
the miners of the kingdom will be able to stand abreast of them in every
respect. Thus one piece of standing ground after another is undermined beneath
the feet of the bourgeoisie; and how long will it be before their whole social
and political edifice collapses with the basis upon which it rests?

But the bourgeoisie will not take warning. The resistance of the miners does
but embitter it the more. Instead of appreciating this forward step in the
general movement of the workers, the property-holding class saw in it only a
source of rage against a class of people who are fools enough to declare
themselves no longer submissive to the treatment they had hitherto received. It
saw in the just demands of the non-possessing workers only impertinent
discontent, mad rebellion against "Divine and human order", and, in the best
case, a success (to be resisted by the bourgeoisie with all its might) won by
"ill-intentioned demagogues who live by agitation and are too lazy to work". It
sought, of course, without success, to represent to the workers that Roberts
and the Union's agents, whom the Union very naturally had to pay, were insolent
swindlers, who drew the last farthing from the working-men's pockets. When such
insanity prevails in the property-holding class, when it is so blinded by its
momentary profit that it no longer has eyes for the most conspicuous signs of
the times, surely all hope of a peaceful solution of the social question for
England must be abandoned. The only possible solution is a violent revolution,
which cannot fail to take place.

NOTES

1. According to the census of
1841, the number of working-men employed in mines in Great Britain, without
Ireland, was:

Coal mines
83,408
32,475
1,185
1,165
118,233

Copper mines
9,866
3,428
913
1,200
15,407

Lead
9,427
1,932
40
20
11,419

Iron
7,773
2,679
424
73
10,949

Tin
4,602
1,349
68
82
6,101

Various
24,162
6,591
472
491
31,716

TOTAL
139,238
48,454
3,102
3,031
193,825

As the coal and iron mines are usually worked by the same people, a part of
the miners attributed to the coal-mines, and a very considerable part of those
mentioned under the last heading are to be attributed to the iron mines.
– Note by Engels.

## The Agricultural Proletariat

We have seen in the introduction how, simultaneously with the small
bourgeoisie and the modest independence of the former workers, the small
peasantry also was ruined when the former Union of industrial and agricultural
work was dissolved, the abandoned fields thrown together into large farms, and
the small peasants superseded by the overwhelming competition of the large
farmers. Instead of being landowners or leaseholders, as they had been
hitherto, they were now obliged to hire themselves as labourers to the large
farmers or the landlords. For a time this position was endurable, though a
deterioration in comparison with their former one. The extension of industry
kept pace with the increase of population until the progress of manufacture
began to assume a slower pace, and the perpetual improvement of machinery made
it impossible for manufacture to absorb the whole surplus of the agricultural
population. From this time forward, the distress which had hitherto existed
only in the manufacturing districts, and then only at times, appeared in the
agricultural districts too. The twenty-five years' struggle with France came to
an end at about the same time; the diminished production at the various seats
of the wars, the shutting off of imports, and the necessity of providing for
the British army in Spain, had given English agriculture an artificial
prosperity, and had besides withdrawn to the army vast numbers of workers from
their ordinary occupations. This check upon the import trade, the opportunity
for exportation, and the military demand for workers, now suddenly came to an
end; and the necessary consequence was what the English call agricultural
distress. The farmers had to sell their corn at low prices, and could,
therefore, pay only low wages. In 1815, in order to keep up prices, the Corn
Laws were passed, prohibiting the importation of corn so long as the price of
wheat continued less than 80 shillings per quarter. These naturally ineffective
laws were several times modified, but did not succeed in ameliorating the
distress in the agricultural districts. All that they did was to change the
disease, which, under free competition from abroad, would have assumed an acute
form, culminating in a series of crises, into a chronic one which bore heavily
but uniformly upon the farm labourers.

For a time after the rise of the agricultural proletariat, the patriarchal
relation between master and man, which was being destroyed for manufacture,
developed here the same relation of the farmer to his hands which still exists
almost everywhere in Germany. So long as this lasted, the poverty of the
farm-hands was less conspicuous; they shared the fate of the farmer, and were
discharged only in cases of the direst necessity. But now all this is changed.
The farm-hands have become day-labourers almost everywhere, are employed only
when needed by the farmers, and, therefore, often have no work for weeks
together, especially in winter. In the patriarchal time, the hands and their
families lived on the farm, and their children grew up there, the farmer trying
to find occupation on the spot for the oncoming generation; day-labourers,
then, were the exception, not the rule. Thus there was, on every farm, a larger
number of hands than were strictly necessary. It became, therefore, the
interest of the farmers to dissolve this relation, drive the farm-hand from the
farm, and transform him into a day-labourer. This took place pretty generally
towards the year 1830, and the consequence was that the hitherto latent
over-population was set free, the rate of wages forced down, and the poor-rate
enormously increased. From this time the agricultural districts became the
headquarters of permanent, as the manufacturing districts had long been of
periodic, pauperism, and the modification of the Poor Law was the first measure
which the State was obliged to apply to the daily increasing impoverishment of
the country parishes. Moreover, the constant extension of farming on a large
scale, the introduction of threshing and other machines, and the employment of
women and children (which is now so general that its effects have recently been
investigated by a special official commission), threw a large number of men out
of employment. It is manifest, therefore, that here, too, the system of
industrial production has made its entrance, by means of farming on a large
scale, by the abolition of the patriarchal relation, which is of the greatest
importance just here, by the introduction of machinery, steam, and the labour
of women and children. In so doing, it has swept the last and most stationary
portion of working humanity into the revolutionary movement. But the longer
agriculture had remained stationary, the heavier now became the burden upon the
worker, the more violently broke forth the results of the disorganisation of
the old social fabric. The "over-population" came to light all at once, and
could not, as in the manufacturing districts, be absorbed by the needs of an
increasing production. New factories could always be built, if there were
consumers for their products, but new land could not be created. The
cultivation of waste common land was too daring a speculation for the bad times
following the conclusion of peace. The necessary consequence was that the
competition of the workers among each other reached the highest point of
intensity, and wages fell to the minimum. So long as the Old Poor Law existed,
the workers received relief from the rates; wages naturally fell still lower,
because the farmers forced the largest possible number of labourers to claim
relief. The higher poor-rate, necessitated by the surplus population, was only
increased by this measure, and the New Poor Law, of which we shall have more to
say later, was now enacted as a remedy. But this did not improve matters. Wages
did not rise, the surplus population could not be got rid of, and the cruelty
of the new law did but serve to embitter the people to the utmost. Even the
poor-rate, which diminished at first after the passage of the new law, attained
its old height after a few years. Its only effect was that whereas previously
three to four million half-paupers had existed, a million of total paupers now
appeared, and the rest, still half-paupers, merely went without relief. The
poverty in the agricultural districts has increased every year. The people live
in the greatest want, whole families must struggle along with 6, 7, or 8
shillings a week, and at times have nothing. Let us hear a description of this
population given by a Liberal member of Parliament as early as 1830:

"That is an English peasant or pauper; for the words are
synonymous. His sire was a pauper, and his mother's milk wanted nourishment.
From infancy his food has been bad as well as insufficient; and he now feels
the pains of unsatisfied hunger nearly whenever he is awake. But half-clothed,
and never supplied with more warmth than suffices to cook his scanty meals,
cold and wet come to him, and stay by him with the weather. He is married, but
he has not tasted the highest joys of husband and father. His partner, and
little ones being, like himself, often hungry, seldom warm, sometimes sick
without aid, and always sorrowful without hope, are greedy, selfish, and
vexing; so, to use his own expression, he 'hates the sight of them', and
resorts to his hovel, only because a hedge affords less shelter from the wind
and rain." He must support his family, though he cannot do so. "This brings
begging, trickery, and quarrelling; and ends in settled craft. Though he have
the inclination, he wants the courage to become, like more energetic men of his
class, a poacher or smuggler on a large scale; but he pilfers occasionally, and
teaches his children to lie and steal. His subdued and slavish manner toward
his great neighbours shows that they treat him with suspicion and harshness.
Consequently, he at once dreads and hates them; but he will never harm then by
violent means. Too degraded to be desperate, he is thoroughly depraved. His
miserable career will be short; rheumatism and asthma are conducting him to the
workhouse, where he will breathe his last without one pleasant recollection,
and so make room for another wretch who may live and die in the same way."

Our author adds that besides this class of agricultural labourers, there is
still another, somewhat more energetic and better endowed physically, mentally,
and morally; those, namely, who live as wretchedly, but were not born to this
condition. These he represents as better in their family life, but smugglers
and poachers who get into frequent bloody conflicts with the gamekeepers and
revenue officers of the coast, become more embittered against society during
the prison life which they often undergo, and so stand abreast of the first
class in their hatred of the property-holders.

"By courtesy," he says, in closing, "the entire body is
called 'the bold peasantry of England'."

Down to the present time, this description applies to the greater portion of
the agricultural labourers of England. In June, 1844, the Times sent a
correspondent into the agricultural districts to report upon the condition of
this class, and the report which he furnished agreed wholly with the foregoing.
In certain districts wages were not more than six shillings a week; not more,
that is, than in many districts in Germany, while the prices of all the
necessaries of life are at least twice as high. What sort of life these people
lead may be imagined; their food scanty and bad, their clothing ragged, their
dwellings cramped and desolate, small, wretched huts, with no comforts
whatsoever; and, for young people, lodging-houses, where men and women are
scarcely separated, and illegitimate intercourse thus provoked. One or two days
without work in the course of a month must inevitably plunge such people into
the direst want. Moreover, they cannot combine to raise wages, because they are
scattered, and if one alone refuses to work for low wages, there are dozens out
of work, or supported by the rates, who are thankful for the most trifling
offer, while to him who declines work, every other form of relief than the
hated workhouse is refused by the Poor Law guardians as to a lazy vagabond; for
the guardians are the very farmers from whom or from whose neighbours and
acquaintances alone he can get work. And not from one or two special districts
of England do such reports come. On the contrary, the distress is general,
equally great in the North and South, the East and West. The condition of the
labourers in Suffolk and Norfolk corresponds with that of Devonshire,
Hampshire, and Sussex. Wages are as low in Dorsetshire and Oxfordshire as in
Kent and Surrey, Buckinghamshire and Cambridgeshire.

One especially barbaric cruelty against the working-class is embodied in the
Game Laws, which are more stringent than in any other country, while the game
is plentiful beyond all conception. The English peasant who, according to the
old English custom and tradition, sees in poaching only a natural and noble
expression of courage and daring, is stimulated still further by the contrast
between his own poverty and the car tel est notre plaisir [1] of the lord, who preserves thousands of hares and game
birds for his private enjoyment. The labourer lays snares, or shoots here and
there a piece of game. It does not injure the landlord as a matter of fact, for
he has a vast superfluity, and it brings the poacher a meal for himself and his
starving family. But if he is caught he goes to jail, and for a second offence
receives at the least seven years transportation. From the severity of these
laws arise the frequent bloody conflicts with the gamekeepers, which lead to a
number of murders every year. Hence the post of gamekeeper is not only
dangerous, but of ill-repute and despised. Last year, in two cases, gamekeepers
shot themselves rather than continue their work. Such is the moderate price at
which the landed aristocracy purchases the noble sport of shooting; but what
does it matter to the lords of the soil? Whether one or two more or less of the
"surplus" live or die matters nothing, and even if in consequence of the Game
Laws half the surplus population could be put out of the way, it would be all
the better for the other half – according to the philanthropy of the
English landlords.

Although the conditions of life in the country, the isolated dwellings, the
stability of the surroundings and occupations, and consequently of the
thoughts, are decidedly unfavourable to all development, yet poverty and want
bear their fruits even here. The manufacturing and mining proletariat emerged
early from the first stage of resistance to our social order, the direct
rebellion of the individual by the perpetration of crime; but the peasants are
still in this stage at the present time. Their favourite method of social
warfare is incendiarism, In the winter which followed the Revolution of July,
in 1830-31, these incendiarisms first became general. Disturbances had taken
place, and the whole region of Sussex and the adjacent counties had been
brought into a state of excitement in October, in consequence of an increase of
the coastguard (which made smuggling much more difficult and "ruined the coast"
– in the words of a farmer), changes in the Poor Law, low wages, and the
introduction of machinery. In the winter the farmers' hay and corn-stacks were
burnt in the fields, and the very barns and stables under their windows. Nearly
every night a couple of such fires blazed up, and spread terror among the
farmers and landlords. The offenders were rarely discovered, and the workers
attributed the incendiarism to a mythical person whom they named "Swing". Men
puzzled their brains to discover who this Swing could be and whence this rage
among the poor of the country districts. Of the great motive power, Want,
Oppression, only a single person here and there thought, and certainly no one
in the agricultural districts. Since that year the incendiarisms have been
repeated every winter, with each recurring unemployed season of the
agricultural labourers. In the winter of 1843-44, they were once more
extraordinarily frequent. There lies before me a series of numbers of the
Northern Star of that time, each one of which contains a report of
several incendiarisms, stating in each case its authority. The numbers wanting
in the following list I have not at hand; but they, too, doubtless contain a
number of cases. Moreover, such a sheet cannot possibly ascertain all the cases
which occur. November 25th, 1843, two cases; several earlier ones are
discussed. December 16th, in Bedfordshire, general excitement for a fortnight
past in consequence of frequent incendiarisms, of which several take place
every night. Two great farm-houses burnt down within the last few days; in
Cambridgeshire four great farm-houses, Hertfordshire one, and besides these,
fifteen other incendiarisms in different districts. December 30th, in Norfolk
one, Suffolk two, Essex two, Cheshire one, Lancashire one, Derby, Lincoln, and
the South twelve. January 6th, 1844, in all ten. January 13th, seven. January
20th, four incendiarisms. From this time forward, three of four incendiarisms
per week are reported, and not as formerly until the spring only, but far into
July and August. And that crimes of this sort are expected to increase in the
approaching hard season of 1844-45, the English papers already indicate.

What do my readers think of such a state of things in the quiet, idyllic
country districts of England? Is this social war, or is it not? Is it a natural
state of things which can last? Yet here the landlords and farmers are as dull
and stupefied, as blind to everything which does not directly put money into
their pockets, as the manufacturers and the bourgeoisie in general in the
manufacturing districts. If the latter promise their employees salvation
through the repeal of the Corn Laws, the landlords and a great part of the
farmers promise theirs Heaven upon earth from the maintenance of the same laws.
But in neither case do the property-holders succeed in winning the workers to
the support of their pet hobby. Like the operatives, the agricultural labourers
are thoroughly indifferent to the repeal or non-repeal of the Corn Laws. Yet
the question is an important one for both. That is to say – by the repeal
of the Corn Laws, free competition, the present social economy is carried to
its extreme point; all further development within the present order comes to an
end, and the only possible step farther is a radical transformation of the
social order. For the agricultural labourers the question has, further, the
following important bearing: Free importation of corn involves (how, I cannot
explain here) the emancipation of the farmers from the landlords,
their transformation into Liberals. Towards this consummation the Anti-Corn Law
League has already largely contributed, and this is its only real service. When
the farmers become Liberals, i.e., conscious bourgeois, the agricultural
labourers will inevitably become Chartists and Socialists; the first change
involves the second. And that a new movement is already beginning among the
agricultural labourers is proved by a meeting which Earl Radnor, a Liberal
landlord, caused to be held in October, 1844, near Highworth, where his estates
lie, to pass resolutions against the Corn Laws. At this meeting, the labourers,
perfectly indifferent as to these laws, demanded something wholly different,
namely small holdings, at low rent, for themselves, telling Earl Radnor all
sorts of bitter truths to his face. Thus the movement of the working-class is
finding its way into the remote, stationary, mentally dead agricultural
districts; and, thanks to the general distress, will soon be as firmly rooted
and energetic as in the manufacturing districts.

As to the religious state of the agricultural labourers, they are, it is
true, more pious than the manufacturing operatives; but they, too, are greatly
at odds with the Church – for in these districts members of the
Established Church almost exclusively are to be found. A correspondent of the
Morning Chronicle, who, over the signature, "One who has whistled at
the plough" [Alexander Somerville], reports his
tour through the agricultural districts, relates, among other things, the
following conversation with some labourers after service:

“I inquired if the clergyman who had preached was the
one who usually ministered there? ‘Yes, blast him! he be our own parson
sure enough – he be always a-begging; he be always, sin’ ever I
knowed him.’ ” (The sermon had been upon a mission to the
heathen.) ‘And sin’ I knowed him,’ said another, ‘I
never knowed a parson as wasn’t a-begging for summat or tother.’
‘Ah!’ says a woman who came just out of the church: ‘And look
at wages a comin’ down, look at them rich wagerbonds as the parsons hunt
and dine and drink with! So help me God, we bes more fitter to be taken into
the union and starved, than pay for parsons to go abroad.’ ‘Why
don't they,’ said another, ‘send them parsons as be chantering
every day in Salisbury Cathedral to nobody but the bare stones, why don't they
go?’ ‘They don’t go,’ said the old man who spoke first,
‘because they be so rich as to have so much land all over, they wants the
money to send away the poor uns; I knows what they want; I been knowing them
too long not to know that.’ ‘But my good friends,’ said I,
‘you surely don’t go to church always and come out of it with such
bitter dislike to the parsons. If you do, why go at all?’ ‘Why go
at all?’ said the woman, ‘we be like to go, and we wouldn’t
lose everything, work and all; we be like to go.’ I learned later that
they ‘could get a few privileges in regard to fuel and ground for
potatoes’ (to be paid for!) if they went to church."

After describing their poverty and ignorance, the correspondent closes by
saying:

“Now I assert fearlessly that the condition of these
people, their poverty, their hatred of the churches, their outward compliance
with, but inward bitterness towards, its dignitaries, is the rule throughout
rural England; and that anything to the contrary is the exception.”

If the peasantry of England shows the consequences which a numerous
agricultural proletariat in connection with large farming involves for the
country districts, Wales illustrates the ruin of the small holders. If the
English country parishes reproduce the antagonism between capitalist and
proletarian, the state of the Welsh peasantry corresponds to the progressive
ruin of the small bourgeoisie in the towns. In Wales are to be found, almost
exclusively, small holders, who cannot with like profit sell their products as
cheaply as the larger, more favourably situated English farmers, with whom,
however, they are obliged to compete. Moreover, in some places the quality of
the land admits of the raising of livestock only, which is but slightly
profitable. Then, too, these Welsh farmers, by reason of their separate
nationality, which they retain pertinaciously, are much more stationary than
the English farmers. But the competition among themselves and with their
English neighbours (and the increased mortgages upon their land consequent upon
this) has reduced them to such a state that they can scarcely live at all; and
because they have not recognised the true cause of their wretched condition,
they attribute it to all sorts of small causes, such as high tolls, etc., which
do check the development of agriculture and commerce, but are taken into
account as standing charges by every one who takes a holding, and are therefore
really ultimately paid by the landlord. Here, too, the New Poor Law is
cordially hated by the tenants, who hover in perpetual danger of coming under
its sway. In 1843, the famous “Rebecca” disturbances broke out
among the Welsh peasantry; the men dressed in women’s clothing, blackened
their faces, and fell in armed crowds upon the toll-gates, destroyed them
amidst great rejoicing and firing of guns, demolished the toll-keepers’
houses, wrote threatening letters in the name of the imaginary
“Rebecca”, and once went so far as to storm the workhouse of
Carmarthen. Later, when the militia was called out and the police strengthened,
the peasants drew them off with wonderful skill upon false scents, demolished
toll-gates at one point while the militia, lured by false signal bugles, was
marching in some opposite direction; and betook themselves finally, when the
police was too thoroughly reinforced, to single incendiarisms and attempts at
murder. As usual, these greater crimes were the end of the movement. Many
withdrew from disapproval, others from fear, and peace was restored of itself.
The Government appointed a commission to investigate the affair and its causes,
and there was an end of the matter. The poverty of the peasantry continues,
however, and will one day, since it cannot under existing circumstances grow
less, but must go on intensifying, produce more serious manifestations than
these humorous Rebecca masquerades.

If England illustrates the results of the system of farming on a large scale
and Wales on a small one, Ireland exhibits the consequences of overdividing the
soil. The great mass of the population of Ireland consists of small tenants who
occupy a sorry hut without partitions, and a potato patch just large enough to
supply them most scantily with potatoes through the winter. In consequence of
the great competition which prevails among these small tenants, the rent has
reached an unheard-of height, double, treble, and quadruple that paid in
England. For every agricultural labourer seeks to become a tenant-farmer, and
though the division of land has gone so far, there still remain numbers of
labourers in competition for plots. Although in Great Britain 34,000,000 acres
of land are cultivated, and in Ireland but 14,000,000; although Great Britain
produces agricultural products to the value of £150,000,000, and Ireland of but
£36,000,000, there are in Ireland 75,000 agricultural proletarians
more than in the neighbouring island. How great the competition for
land in Ireland must be is evident from this extraordinary disproportion,
especially when one reflects that the labourers in Great Britain are living in
the utmost distress. The consequence of this competition is that it is
impossible for the tenants to live much better than the labourers, by reason of
the high rents paid. The Irish people is thus held in crushing poverty, from
which it cannot free itself under our present social conditions. These people
live in the most wretched clay huts, scarcely good enough for cattle-pens, have
scant food all winter long, or, as the report above quoted expresses it, they
have potatoes half enough thirty weeks in the year, and the rest of the year
nothing. When the time comes in the spring at which this provision reaches its
end, or can no longer be used because of its sprouting, wife and children go
forth to beg and tramp the country with their kettle in their hands. Meanwhile
the husband, after planting potatoes for the next year, goes in search of work
either in Ireland or England, and returns at the potato harvest to his family.
This is the condition in which nine-tenths of the Irish country folks live.
They are poor as church mice, wear the most wretched rags, and stand upon the
lowest plane of intelligence possible in a half-civilised country. According to
the report quoted, there are, in a population of 8 1/2 millions, 585,000 heads
of families in a state of total destitution; and according to other
authorities, cited by Sheriff Alison, there are in Ireland 2,300,000 persons
who could not live without public or private assistance – or 27 per cent
of the whole population paupers!

The cause of this poverty lies in the existing social conditions, especially
in competition here found in the form of the subdivision of the soil. Much
effort has been spent in finding other causes. It has been asserted that the
relation of the tenant to the landlord who lets his estate in large lots to
tenants, who again have their sub-tenants, and sub-sub-tenants, in turn, so
that often ten middlemen come between the. landlord and the actual cultivator
– it has been asserted that the shameful law which gives the landlord the
right of expropriating the cultivator who may have paid his rent duly, if the
first tenant fails to pay the landlord, that this law is to blame for all this
poverty. But all this determines only the form in which the poverty manifests
itself. Make the small tenant a landowner himself and what follows? The
majority could not live upon their holdings even if they had no rent to pay,
and any slight improvement which might take place would be lost again in a few
years in consequence of the rapid increase of population. The children would
then live to grow up under the improved conditions who now die in consequence
of poverty in early childhood. From another side comes the assertion that the
shameless oppression inflicted by the English is the cause of the trouble. It
is the cause of the somewhat earlier appearance of this poverty, but not of the
poverty itself. Or the blame is laid on the Protestant Church forced upon a
Catholic nation; but divide among the Irish what the Church takes from them,
and it does not reach six shillings a head. Besides, tithes are a tax upon
landed property, not upon the tenant, though he may nominally pay them; now,
since the Commutation Bill of 1838, the landlord pays the tithes directly and
reckons so much higher rent, so that the tenant is none the better off. And in
the same way a hundred other causes of this poverty are brought forward, all
proving as little as these. This poverty.is the result of our social
conditions; apart from these, causes may be found for the manner in which it
manifests itself, but not for the fact of its existence. That poverty manifests
itself in Ireland thus and not otherwise, is owing to the character of the
people, and to their historical development. The Irish are a people related in
their whole character to the Latin nations, to the French, and especially to
the Italians. The bad features of their character we have already had depicted
by Carlyle. Let us now hear an Irishman, who at least comes nearer to the truth
than Carlyle, with his prejudice in favour of the Teutonic character:

"They are restless yet indolent, shrewd and indiscreet,
impetuous, impatient and improvident, instinctively brave, thoughtlessly
generous; quick to resent and forgive offences, to form and renounce
friendships. With genius they are profusely gifted; with judgment sparingly."

With the Irish, feeling and passion predominate; reason must bow before
them. Their sensuous, excitable nature prevents reflection and quiet,
persevering activity from reaching development – such a nation is utterly
unfit for manufacture as now conducted. Hence they held fast to agriculture,
and remained upon the lowest plane even of that. With the small subdivisions of
land, which were not here artificially created, as in France and on the Rhine,
by the division of great estates, [3] but have existed from
time immemorial, an improvement of the soil by the investment of capital was
not to be thought of; and it would, according to Alison, require 120 million
pounds sterling to bring the soil up to the not very high state of fertility
already attained in England. The English immigration, which might have raised
the standard of Irish civilisation, has contented itself with the most brutal
plundering of the Irish people; and while the Irish, by their immigration into
England, have furnished England a leaven which will produce its own results in
the future, they have little for which to be thankful to the English
immigration.

The attempts of the Irish to save themselves from their present ruin, on the
one hand, take the form of crimes. These are the order of the day in the
agricultural districts, and are nearly always directed against the most
immediate enemies, the landlords’ agents, or their obedient servants,
the Protestant intruders, whose large farms are made up of the potato patches
of hundreds of ejected families. Such crimes are especially frequent in the
South and West. On the other hand, the Irish hope for relief by means of the
agitation for the repeal of the Legislative Union with England. From all the
foregoing, it is clear that the uneducated Irish must see in the English their
worst enemies; and their first hope of improvement in the conquest of national
independence. But quite as clear is it, too, that Irish distress cannot be
removed by any Act of Repeal. Such an Act would, however, at once lay bare the
fact that the cause of Irish misery, which now seems to come from abroad, is
really to be found at home. Meanwhile, it is an open question whether the
accomplishment of repeal will be necessary to make this clear to the Irish.
Hitherto, neither Chartism nor Socialism has had marked success in Ireland.

I close my observations upon Ireland at this point the more readily, as the
Repeal Agitation of 1843 and O'Connell's trial have been the means of making
the Irish distress more and more known in Germany.

We have now followed the proletariat of the British Islands through all
branches of its activity, and found it everywhere living in want and misery
under totally inhuman conditions. We have seen discontent arise with the rise
of the proletariat, grow, develop, and organise; we have seen open bloodless
and bloody battles of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. We have
investigated the principles according to which the fate, the hopes, and fears
of the proletariat are determined, and we have found that there is no prospect
of improvement in their condition.

We have had an opportunity, here and there, of observing the conduct of the
bourgeoisie towards the proletariat, and we have found that it considers only
itself, has only its own advantage in view. However, in order not to be unjust,
let us investigate its mode of action somewhat more exactly.

NOTES

1. For such is our
pleasure.– Ed.

2. "The State of Ireland"
London 1807; 2nd edition 1821.[anonymous pamphlet]

3. Mistake. Small-scale
agriculture had been the prevailing form of farming ever since the Middle Ages.
Thus the small peasant farms existed even before the Revolution. The only thing
the latter changed was their ownership; that it took away from the feudal lords
and transferred, directly or indirectly, to the peasants.– Note by
Engels to the German edition of 1892.

## The Attitude of the Bourgeoisie Towards the Proletariat

In speaking of the bourgeoisie I include the so-called aristocracy, for this
is a privileged class, an aristocracy, only in contrast with the bourgeoisie,
not in contrast with the proletariat. The proletarian sees in both only the
property-holder – i.e., the bourgeois. Before the privilege of property
all other privileges vanish. The sole difference is this, that the bourgeois
proper stands in active relations with the manufacturing, and, in a measure,
with the mining proletarians, and, as farmer, with the agricultural labourers,
whereas the so-called aristocrat comes into contact with the agricultural
labourer only.

I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by
selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English
bourgeoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper,
particularly the Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing exists
in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no
bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. In the
presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single
human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted. True, these English bourgeois
are good husbands and family men, and have all sorts of other private virtues,
and appear, in ordinary intercourse, as decent and respectable as all other
bourgeois; even in business they are better to deal with than the Germans; they
do not higgle and haggle so much as our own pettifogging merchants; but how
does this help matters? Ultimately it is self-interest, and especially money
gain, which alone determines them. I once went into Manchester with such a
bourgeois, and spoke to him of the bad, unwholesome method of building, the
frightful condition of the working-peoples quarters, and asserted that I had
never seen so ill-built a city. The man listened quietly to the end, and said
at the corner where we parted: "And yet there is a great deal of money made
here, good morning, sir." It is utterly indifferent to the English bourgeois
whether his working-men starve or not, if only he makes money. All the
conditions of life are measured by money, and what brings no money is nonsense,
unpractical, idealistic bosh. Hence, Political Economy, the Science of Wealth,
is the favourite study of these bartering Jews. Every one of them is a
Political Economist. The relation of the manufacturer to his operatives has
nothing human in it; it is purely economic. The manufacturer is Capital, the
operative Labour. And if the operative will not be forced into this
abstraction, if he insists that he is not Labour, but a man, who possesses,
among other things, the attribute of labour-power, if he takes it into his head
that he need not allow himself to be sold and bought in the market, as the
commodity "Labour", the bourgeois reason comes to a standstill. He cannot
comprehend that he holds any other relation to the operatives than that of
purchase and sale; he sees in them not human beings, but hands, as he
constantly calls them to their faces; he insists, as Carlyle says, that "Cash
Payment is the only nexus between man and man." Even the relation between
himself and his wife is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, mere "Cash
Payment". Money determines the worth of the man; he is "worth ten thousand
pounds". He who has money is of "the better sort of people", is "influential",
and what he does counts for something in his social circle. The
huckstering spirit penetrates the whole language, all relations are expressed
in business terms, in economic categories. Supply and demand are the formulas
according to which the logic of the English bourgeois judges all human life.
Hence free competition in every respect, hence the regime of laissez-faire,
laissez-aller in government, in medicine, in education, and soon to be in
religion, too, as the State Church collapses more and more. Free competition
will suffer no limitation, no State supervision; the whole State is but a
burden to it. It would reach its highest perfection in a wholly ungoverned
anarchic society, where each might exploit the other to his hearts content.
Since, however, the bourgeoisie cannot dispense with government, but must have
it to hold the equally indispensable proletariat in check, it turns the power
of government against the proletariat and keeps out of its way as far as
possible.

Let no one believe, however, that the "cultivated" Englishman openly brags
with his egotism. On the contrary, he conceals it under the vilest hypocrisy.
What? The wealthy English fail to remember the poor? They who have founded
philanthropic institutions, such as no other country can boast of!
Philanthropic institutions forsooth! As though you rendered the proletarians a
service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then practising your
self-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them, placing yourselves before
the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when you give back to the plundered
victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them! Charity which degrades him
who gives more than him who takes; charity which treads the downtrodden still
deeper in the dust, which demands that the degraded, the pariah cast out by
society, shall first surrender the last that remains to him, his very claim to
manhood, shall first beg for mercy before your mercy deigns to press, in the
shape of an alms, the brand of degradation upon his brow. But let us hear the
English bourgeoisie's own words. It is not yet a year since I read in the
Manchester Guardian the following letter to the editor, which was
published without comment as a perfectly natural, reasonable thing:

"MR. EDITOR,– For some time past our main streets are
haunted by swarms of beggars, who try to awaken the pity of the passers-by in a
most shameless and annoying manner, by exposing their tattered clothing, sickly
aspect, and disgusting wounds and deformities. I should think that when one not
only pays the poor-rate, but also contributes largely to the charitable
institutions, one had done enough to earn a right to be spared such
disagreeable and impertinent molestations. And why else do we pay such high
rates for the maintenance of the municipal police, if they do not even protect
us so far as to make it possible to go to or out of town in peace? I hope the
publication of these lines in your widely- circulated paper may induce the
authorities to remove this nuisance; and I remain,– Your obedient
servant,

"A Lady."

There you have it! The English bourgeoisie is charitable out of
self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business
matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: "If I spend this much upon
benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any
further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to
irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before,
but you shall despair unseen, this I require, this I purchase with my
subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!" It is infamous, this charity
of a Christian bourgeois! And so writes "A Lady"; she does well to sign herself
such, well that she has lost the courage to call herself a woman! But if the
"Ladies" are such as this, what must the "Gentlemen" be? It will be said that
this is a single case; but no, the foregoing letter expresses the temper of the
great majority of the English bourgeoisie, or the editor would not have
accepted it, and some reply would have been made to it, which I watched for in
vain in the succeeding numbers. And as to the efficiency of this philanthropy,
Canon Parkinson himself says that the poor are relieved much more by the poor
than by the bourgeoisie; and such relief given by an honest proletarian who
knows himself what it is to be hungry, for whom sharing his scanty meal is
really a sacrifice, but a sacrifice borne with pleasure, such help has a wholly
different ring to it from the carelessly-tossed alms of the luxurious
bourgeois.

In other respects, too, the bourgeoisie assumes a hypocritical, boundless
philanthropy, but only when its own interests require it; as in its Politics
and Political Economy. It has been at work now well on towards five years to
prove to the working-men that it strives to abolish the Corn Laws solely in
their interest. But the long and short of the matter is this: the Corn Laws
keep the price of bread higher than in other countries, and thus raise wages;
but these high wages render difficult competition of the manufacturers against
other nations in which bread, and consequently wages, are cheaper. The Corn
Laws being repealed, the price of bread falls, and wages gradually approach
those of other European countries, as must be clear to every one from our
previous exposition of the principles according to which wages are determined.
The manufacturer can compete more readily, the demand for English goods
increases, and, with it, the demand for labour. In consequence of this
increased demand wages would actually rise somewhat, and the unemployed workers
be re-employed; but for how long? The “surplus population” of
England, and especially of Ireland, is sufficient to supply English manufacture
with the necessary operatives, even if it were doubled; and, in a few years,
the small advantage of the repeal of the Corn Laws would be balanced, a new
crisis would follow, and we should be back at the point from which we started,
while the first stimulus to manufacture would have increased population
meanwhile. All this the proletarians understand very well, and have told the
manufacturers to their faces; but, in spite of that, the manufacturers have in
view solely the immediate advantage which the repeal of the Corn Laws would
bring them. They are too narrow-minded to see that, even for themselves, no
permanent advantage can arise from this measure, because their competition with
each other would soon force the profit of the individual back to its old level;
and thus they continue to shriek to the working-men that it is purely for the
sake of the starving millions that the rich members of the Liberal party pour
hundreds and thousands of pounds into the treasury of the Anti-Corn Law League,
while every one knows that they are only sending the butter after the cheese,
that they calculate upon earning it all back in the first ten years after the
repeal of the Corn Laws. But the workers are no longer to be misled by the
bourgeoisie, especially since the insurrection of 1842. They demand of every
one who presents himself as interested in their welfare, that he should declare
himself in favour of the Peoples Charter as proof of the sincerity of his
professions, and in so doing, they protest against all outside help, for the
Charter is a demand for the power to help themselves. Whoever declines so to
declare himself they pronounce their enemy, and are perfectly right in so
doing, whether he be a declared foe or a false friend. Besides, the Anti-Corn
Law League has used the most despicable falsehoods and tricks to win the
support of the workers. It has tried to prove to them that the money price of
labour is in inverse proportion to the price of corn; that wages are high when
grain is cheap, and vice versa, an assertion which it pretends to prove with
the most ridiculous arguments, and one which is, in itself, more ridiculous
than any other that has proceeded from the mouth of an Economist. When this
failed to help matters, the workers were promised bliss supreme in consequence
of the increased demand in the labour market; indeed, men went so far as to
carry through the streets two models of loaves of bread, on one of which, by
far the larger, was written: “American Eightpenny Loaf, Wages Four
Shillings per Day”, and upon the much smaller one: “English
Eightpenny Loaf, Wages Two Shillings a Day”. But the workers have not
allowed themselves to be misled. They know their lords and masters too well.

But rightly to measure the hypocrisy of these promises, the practice of the
bourgeoisie must be taken into account. We have seen in the course of
our.report how the bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat in every conceivable
way for its own benefit! We have, however, hitherto seen only how the.single
bourgeois maltreats the proletariat upon his own account. Let us turn now to
the manner in which the bourgeoisie as a party, as the power of the State,
conducts itself towards the proletariat. Laws are necessary only because there
are persons in existence who own nothing; and although this is directly
expressed in but few laws, as, for instance, those against vagabonds and
tramps, in which the proletariat as such is outlawed, yet enmity to the
proletariat is so emphatically the basis of the law that the judges, and
especially the Justices of the Peace, who are bourgeois themselves, and with
whom the proletariat comes most in contact, find this meaning in the laws
without further consideration. If a rich man is brought up, or rather summoned,
to appear before the court, the judge regrets that he is obliged to impose so
much trouble, treats the matter as favourably as possible, and, if he is forced
to condemn the accused, does so with extreme regret, etc., etc., and the end of
it all is a miserable fine, which the bourgeois throws upon the table with
contempt and then departs. But if a poor devil gets into such a position as
involves appearing before the Justice of the Peace – he has almost always
spent the night in the station-house with a crowd of his peers – he is
regarded from the beginning as guilty; his defence is set aside with a
contemptuous “Oh! we know the excuse”, and a fine imposed which he
cannot pay and must work out with several months on the treadmill. And if
nothing can be proved against him, he is sent to the treadmill, none the less,
“as a rogue and a vagabond”. The partisanship of the Justices of
the Peace, especially in the country, surpasses all description, and it is so
much the order of the day that all cases which are not too utterly flagrant are
quietly reported by the newspapers, without comment. Nor is anything else to be
expected. For on the one hand, these Dogberries do merely construe the law
according to the intent of the farmers, and, on the other, they are themselves
bourgeois, who see the foundation of all true order in the interests of their
class. And the conduct of the police corresponds to that of the Justices of the
Peace. The bourgeois may do what he will and the police remain ever polite,
adhering strictly to the law, but the proletarian is roughly, brutally treated;
his poverty both casts the suspicion of every sort of crime upon him and cuts
him off from legal redress against any caprice of the administrators of the
law; for him, therefore, the protecting forms of the law do not exist, the
police force their way into his house without further ceremony, arrest and
abuse him; and only when a working-men's association, such as the miners,
engages a Roberts, does it become evident how little the protective side of the
law exists for the working-man, how frequently he has to bear all the burdens
of the law without enjoying its benefits.

Down to the present hour, the property-holding class in Parliament still
struggles against the better feelings of those not yet fallen a prey to
egotism, and seeks to subjugate the proletariat still further. One piece of
common land after another is appropriated and placed under cultivation, a
process by which the general cultivation is furthered, but the proletariat
greatly injured. Where there were still commons, the poor could pasture an ass,
a pig, or geese, the children and young people had a place where they could
play and live out of doors; but this is gradually coming to an end. The
earnings of the worker are less, and the young people, deprived of their
play-ground, go to the beer-shops. A mass of acts for enclosing and cultivating
commons is passed at every session of Parliament. When the Government
determined during the session of 1844 to force the all monopolising railways to
make travelling possible for the workers by means of charges proportionate to
their means, a penny a mile, and proposed therefore to introduce such a third
class train upon every railway daily, the "Reverend Father in God", the Bishop
of London, proposed that Sunday, the only day upon which working-men in work
can travel, be exempted from this rule, and travelling thus be left open to the
rich and shut off from the poor. This proposition was, however, too direct, too
undisguised to pass through Parliament, and was dropped. I have no room to
enumerate the many concealed attacks of even one single session upon the
proletariat. One from the session of 1844 must suffice. An obscure member of
Parliament, a Mr. Miles, proposed a bill regulating the relation of master and
servant which seemed comparatively unobjectionable. The Government became
interested in the bill, and it was referred to a committee. Meanwhile the
strike among the miners in the North broke out, and Roberts made his triumphal
passage through England with his acquitted working-men. When the bill was
reported by the committee, it was discovered that certain most despotic
provisions had been interpolated in it, especially one conferring upon the
employer the power to bring before any Justice of the Peace every working-man
who had contracted verbally or in writing to do any work whatsoever, in case of
refusal to work or other misbehaviour, and have him condemned to prison with
hard labour for two months, upon the oath of the employer or his agent or
overlooker, i.e., upon the oath of the accuser. This bill aroused the
working-men to the utmost fury, the more so as the Ten Hours Bill was before
Parliament at the same time, and had called forth a considerable agitation.
Hundreds of meetings were held, hundreds of working-men's petitions forwarded
to London to Thomas Duncombe, the representative of the interests of the
proletariat. This man was, except Ferrand, the representative of "Young
England", the only vigorous opponent of the bill; but when the other Radicals
saw that the people were declaring against it, one after the other crept
forward and took his place by Duncombe's side; and as the Liberal bourgeoisie
had not the courage to defend the bill in the face of the excitement among the
working-men, it was ignominiously lost.

Meanwhile the most open declaration of war of the bourgeoisie upon the
proletariat is Malthus’ Law of Population and the New Poor Law framed in
accordance with it. We have already alluded several times to the theory of
Malthus. We may sum up its final result in these few words, that the earth is
perennially over-populated, whence poverty, misery, distress, and immorality
must prevail; that it is the lot, the eternal destiny of mankind, to exist in
too great numbers, and therefore in diverse classes, of which some are rich,
educated, and moral, and others more or less poor, distressed, ignorant, and
immoral. Hence it follows in practice, and Malthus himself drew this
conclusion, that charities and poor-rates are, properly speaking, nonsense,
since they serve only to maintain, and stimulate the increase of, the surplus
population whose competition crushes down wages for the employed; that the
employment of the poor by the Poor Law Guardians is equally unreasonable, since
only a fixed quantity of the products of labour can be consumed, and for every
unemployed labourer thus furnished employment, another hitherto employed must
be driven into enforced idleness, whence private undertakings suffer at cost of
Poor Law industry; that, in other words, the whole problem is not how to
support the surplus population, but how to restrain it as far as possible.
Malthus declares in plain English that the right to live, a right previously
asserted in favour of every man in the world, is nonsense. He quotes the words
of a poet, that the poor man comes to the feast of Nature and finds no cover
laid for him, and adds that “she bids him begone”, for he did not
before his birth ask of society whether or not he is welcome. This is now the
pet theory of all genuine English bourgeois, and very naturally, since it is
the most specious excuse for them, and has, moreover, a good deal of truth in
it under existing conditions. If, then, the problem is not to make the
“surplus population” useful, to transform it into available
population, but merely to let it starve to death in the least objectionable way
and to prevent its having too many children, this, of course, is simple enough,
provided the surplus population perceives its own superfluousness and takes
kindly to starvation. There is, however, in spite of the violent exertions of
the humane bourgeoisie, no immediate prospect of its succeeding in bringing
about such a disposition among the workers. The workers have taken it into
their heads that they, with their busy hands, are the necessary, and the rich
capitalists, who do nothing, the surplus population.

Since, however, the rich hold all the power, the proletarians must submit,
if they will not good-temperedly perceive it for themselves, to have the law
actually declare them superfluous.. This has been done by the New Poor Law. The
Old Poor Law which rested upon the Act of 1601 (the 43rd of Elizabeth), naively
started from the notion that it is the duty of the parish to provide for the
maintenance of the poor. Whoever had no work received relief, and the poor man
regarded the parish as pledged to protect him from starvation. He demanded his
weekly relief as his right, not as a favour, and this became, at last, too much
for the bourgeoisie. In 1833, when the bourgeoisie had just come into power
through the Reform Bill, and pauperism in the country districts had just
reached its full development, the bourgeoisie began the reform of the Poor Law
according to its own point of view. A commission was appointed, which
investigated the administration of the Poor Laws, and revealed a multitude of
abuses. It was discovered that the whole working-class in the country was
pauperised and more or less dependent upon the rates, from which they received
relief when wages were low; it was found that this system by which the
unemployed were maintained, the ill-paid and the parents of large families
relieved, fathers of illegitimate children required to pay alimony, and
poverty, in general, recognised as needing protection, it was found that this
system was ruining the nation, was –

“a check to industry, a reward for improvident
marriages, a stimulant to population, and a blind to its effects on wages; a
national institution for discountenancing the industrious and honest, and for
protecting the idle, the improvident and the vicious; the destroyer of the
bonds of family life; a system for preventing the accumulation of capital, for
destroying that which exists, and for reducing the rate-payer to pauperism; and
a premium for illegitimate children" in the provision of aliment.” (Words
of the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners.)

This description of the action of the Old Poor Law is certainly correct;
relief fosters laziness and increase of “surplus population”. Under
present social conditions it is perfectly clear that the poor man is compelled
to be an egotist, and when he can choose, living equally well in either case,
he prefers doing nothing to working. But what follows therefrom? That our
present social conditions are good for nothing, and not as the Malthusian
Commissioners conclude, that poverty is a crime, and, as such, to be visited
with heinous penalties which may serve as a warning to others.

But these wise Malthusians were so thoroughly convinced of the infallibility
of their theory that they did not for one moment hesitate to cast the poor into
the Procrustean bed of their economic notions and treat them with the most
revolting cruelty. Convinced with Malthus and the rest of the adherents of free
competition that it is best to let each one take care of himself, they would
have preferred to abolish the Poor Laws altogether. Since, however, they had
neither the courage nor the authority to do this, they proposed a Poor Law
constructed as far as possible in harmony with the doctrine of Malthus, which
is yet more barbarous than that of laissez-faire, because it
interferes actively in cases in which the latter is passive. We have seen how
Malthus characterises poverty, or rather the want of employment, as a crime
under the title "superfluity", and recommends for it punishment by starvation.
The commissioners were not quite so barbarous; death outright by starvation was
something too terrible even for a Poor Law Commissioner. "Good," said they, "we
grant you poor a right to exist, but only to exist; the right to multiply you
have not, nor the right to exist as befits human beings. You are a pest, and if
we cannot get rid of you as we do of other pests, you shall feel, at least,
that you are a pest, and you shall at least be held in check, kept from
bringing into the world other surplus, either directly or through inducing in
others laziness and want of employment. Live you shall, but live as an awful
warning to all those who might have inducements to become superfluous."

They accordingly brought in the New Poor Law, which was passed by Parliament
in 1834, and continues in force down to the present day. All relief in money
and provisions was abolished; the only relief allowed was admission to the
workhouses immediately built. The regulations for these workhouses, or, as the
people call them, Poor Law Bastilles, is such as to frighten away every one who
has the slightest prospect of life without this form of public charity. To make
sure that relief be applied for only in the most extreme cases and after every
other effort had failed, the workhouse has been made the most repulsive
residence which the refined ingenuity of a Malthusian can invent. The food is
worse than that of the most ill-paid working-man while employed, and the work
harder, or they might prefer the workhouse to their wretched existence outside.
Meat, especially fresh meat, is rarely furnished, chiefly potatoes, the worst
possible bread and oatmeal porridge, little or no beer. The food of criminal
prisoners is better, as a rule, so that the paupers frequently commit some
offence for the purpose of getting into jail. For the workhouse is a jail too;
he who does not finish his task gets nothing to eat; he who wishes to go out
must ask permission, which is granted or not, according to his behaviour or the
inspectors whim; tobacco is forbidden, also the receipt of gifts from relatives
or friends outside the house; the paupers wear a workhouse uniform, and are
handed over, helpless and without redress, to the caprice of the inspectors. To
prevent their labour from competing with that of outside concerns, they are set
to rather useless tasks: the men break stones, “as much as a strong man
can accomplish with effort in a day”; the women, children, and aged men
pick oakum, for I know not what insignificant use. To prevent the
“superfluous” from multiplying, and “demoralised”
parents from influencing their children, families are broken up; the husband is
placed in one wing, the wife in another, the children in a third, and they are
permitted to see one another only at stated times after long intervals, and
then only when they have, in the opinion of the officials, behaved well. And in
order to shut off the external world from contamination by pauperism within
these bastilles, the inmates are permitted to receive visits only with the
consent of the officials, and in the reception-rooms; to communicate in general
with the world outside only by leave and under supervision.

Yet the food is supposed to be wholesome and the treatment humane with all
this. But the intent of the law is too loudly outspoken for this requirement to
be in any wise fulfilled. The Poor Law Commissioners and the whole English
bourgeoisie deceive themselves if they believe the administration of the law
possible without these results. The treatment, which the letter of the law
prescribes, is in direct contradiction of its spirit. If the law in its essence
proclaims the poor criminals, the workhouses prisons, their inmates beyond the
pale of the law, beyond the pale of humanity, objects of disgust and repulsion,
then all commands to the contrary are unavailing. In practice, the spirit and
not the letter of the law is followed in the treatment of the poor, as in the
following few examples:

In the workhouse at Greenwich, in the summer of 1843, a boy five years old
was punished by being shut into the dead-room, where he had to sleep upon the
lids of the coffins. In the workhouse at Herne, the same punishment was
inflicted upon a little girl for wetting the bed at night, and this method of
punishment seems to be a favourite one. This workhouse, which stands in one of
the most beautiful regions of Kent, is peculiar, in so far as its windows open
only upon the court, and but two, newly introduced, afford the inmates a
glimpse of the outer world. The author who relates this in the Illuminated
Magazine, closes his description with the words:

"If God punished men for crimes as man punishes man for
poverty, then woe to the sons of Adam!"

In November, 1843, a man died at Leicester, who had been dismissed two days
before from the workhouse at Coventry. The details of the treatment of the poor
in this institution are revolting. The man, George Robson, had a wound upon the
shoulder, the treatment of which was wholly neglected; he was set to work at
the pump, using the sound arm; was given only the usual workhouse fare, which
he was utterly unable to digest by reason of the unhealed wound and his general
debility; he naturally grew weaker, and the more he complained, the more
brutally he was treated. When his wife tried to bring him her drop of beer, she
was reprimanded, and forced to drink it herself in the presence of the female
warder. He became ill, but received no better treatment. Finally, at his own
request, and under the most insulting epithets, he was discharged, accompanied
by his wife. Two days later he died at Leicester, in consequence of the
neglected wound and of the food given him, which was utterly indigestible for
one in his condition, as the surgeon present at the inquest testified. When he
was discharged, there were handed to him letters containing money, which had
been kept back six weeks, and opened, according to a rule of the establishment,
by the inspector! In Birmingham such scandalous occurrences took place, that
finally, in 1843, an official was sent to investigate the case. He found that
four tramps had been shut up naked under a stair-case in a black hole, eight to
ten days, often deprived of food until noon, and that at the severest season of
the year. A little boy had been passed through all grades of punishment known
to the institution; first locked up in a damp, vaulted, narrow, lumber- room;
then in the dog-hole twice, the second time three days and three nights; then
the same length of time in the old dog-hole, which was still worse; then the
tramp-room, a stinking, disgustingly filthy hole, with wooden sleeping stalls,
where the official, in the course of his inspection, found two other tattered
boys, shrivelled with cold, who had been spending three days there. In the
dog-hole there were often seven, and in the tramp-room, twenty men huddled
together. Women, also, were placed in the dog-hole, because they refused to go
to church and one was shut four days into the tramp-room, with God knows what
sort of company, and that while she was ill and receiving medicines. Another
woman was placed in the insane department for punishment, though she was
perfectly sane. In the workhouse at Bacton, in Suffolk, in January, 1844, a
similar investigation revealed the fact that a feeble-minded woman was employed
as nurse, and took care of the patients accordingly, while sufferers, who were
often restless at night, or tried to get up, were tied fast with cords passed
over the covering and under the bedstead, to save the nurses the trouble of
sitting up at night. One patient was found dead, bound in this way. In the St.
Pancras workhouse in London (where the cheap shirts already mentioned are
made), an epileptic died of suffocation during an attack in bed, no one coming
to his relief; in the same house, four to six, sometimes eight children, slept
in one bed. In Shoreditch workhouse a man was placed, together with a fever
patient violently ill, in a bed teeming with vermin. In Bethnal Green
workhouse, London, a woman in the sixth month of pregnancy was shut up in the
reception-room with her two-year- old child, from February 28th to March 19th,
without being admitted into the workhouse itself, and without a trace of a bed
or the means of satisfying the most natural wants. Her husband, who was brought
into the workhouse, begged to have his wife released from this imprisonment,
whereupon he received twenty-four hours imprisonment, with bread and water, as
the penalty of his insolence. In the workhouse at Slough, near Windsor, a man
lay dying in September, 1844. His wife journeyed to him, arriving at midnight;
and hastening to the workhouse, was refused admission. She was not permitted to
see her husband until the next morning, and then only in the presence of a
female warder, who forced herself upon the wife at every succeeding visit,
sending her away at the end of half-an-hour. In the workhouse at Middleton, in
Lancashire, twelve, and at times eighteen, paupers, of both sexes, slept in one
room. This institution is not embraced by the New Poor Law, but is administered
under an old special act (Gilberts Act). The inspector had instituted a brewery
in the house for his own benefit. In Stockport, July 31st, 1844, a man,
seventy-two years old, was brought before the Justice of the Peace for refusing
to break stones, and insisting that, by reason of his age and a stiff knee, he
was unfit for this work. In vain did he offer to undertake any work adapted to
his physical strength; he was sentenced to two weeks upon the treadmill. In the
workhouse at Basford, an inspecting official found that the sheets had not been
changed in thirteen weeks, shirts in four weeks, stockings in two to ten
months, so that of forty-five boys but three had stockings, and all their
shirts were in tatters. The beds swarmed with vermin, and the tableware was
washed in the slop-pails. In the west of London workhouse, a porter who had
infected four girls with syphilis was not discharged, and another who had
concealed a deaf and dumb girl four days and nights in his bed was also
retained.

As in life, so in death. The poor are dumped into the earth like infected
cattle. The pauper burial-ground of St. Brides, London, is a bare morass, in
use as a cemetery since the time of Charles II., and filled with heaps of
bones; every Wednesday the paupers are thrown into a ditch fourteen feet deep;
a curate rattles through the Litany at the top of his speed; the ditch is
loosely covered in, to be reopened the next Wednesday, and filled with corpses
as long as one more can be forced in. The putrefaction thus engendered
contaminates the whole neighbourhood. In Manchester, the pauper burial-ground
lies opposite to the Old Town, along the Irk; this, too, is a rough, desolate
place. About two years ago a railroad was carried through it. If it had been a
respectable cemetery, how the bourgeoisie and the clergy would have shrieked
over the desecration! But it was a pauper burial-ground, the resting-place of
the outcast and superfluous, so no one concerned himself about the matter. It
was not even thought worth while to convey the partially decayed bodies to the
other side of the cemetery; they were heaped up just as it happened, and piles
were driven into newly made graves, so that the water oozed out of the swampy
ground, pregnant with putrefying matter, and filled the neighbourhood with the
most revolting and injurious gases. The disgusting brutality which accompanied
this work I cannot describe in further detail.

Can any one wonder that the poor decline to accept public relief under these
conditions? That they starve rather than enter these bastilles? I have the
reports of five cases in which persons actually starving, when the guardians
refused them outdoor relief, went back to their miserable homes and died of
starvation rather than enter these hells. Thus far have the Poor Law
Commissioners attained their object. At the same time, however, the workhouses
have intensified, more than any other measure of the party in power, the hatred
of the working-class against the property-holders, who very generally admire
the New Poor Law.

From Newcastle to Dover, there is but one voice among the workers –
the voice of hatred against the new law. The bourgeoisie has formulated so
clearly in this law its conception of its duties towards the proletariat, that
it has been appreciated even by the dullest. So frankly, so boldly has the
conception never yet been formulated, that the non-possessing class exists
solely for the purpose of being exploited, and of starving when the property-
holders can no longer make use of it. Hence it is that this New Poor Law has
contributed so greatly to accelerate the labour movement, and especially to
spread Chartism; and, as it is carried out most extensively in the country, it
facilitates the development of the proletarian movement which is arising in the
agricultural districts.

Let me add that a similar law in force in Ireland since 1838, affords a
similar refuge for eighty thousand paupers. Here, too, it has made itself
disliked, and would have been intensely hated if it had attained anything like
the same importance as in England. But what difference does the ill-treatment
of eighty thousand proletarians make in a country in which there are two and a
half millions of them? In Scotland there are, with local exceptions, no Poor
Laws.

I hope that after this picture of the New Poor Law and its results, no word
which I have said of the English bourgeoisie will be thought too stern. In this
public measure, in which it acts in corpore as the ruling power, it
formulates its real intentions, reveals the animus of those smaller
transactions with the proletariat, of which the blame apparently attaches to
individuals. And that this measure did not originate with any one section of
the bourgeoisie, but enjoys the approval of the whole class, is proved by the
Parliamentary debates of 1844. The Liberal party had enacted the New Poor Law;
the Conservative party, with its Prime Minister Peel at the head, defends it,
and only alters some pettifogging trifles in the Poor Law Amendment Bill of
1844. A Liberal majority carried the bill, a Conservative majority approved it,
and the "Noble Lords" gave their consent each time. Thus is the expulsion of
the proletariat from State and society outspoken, thus is it publicly
proclaimed that proletarians are not human beings, and do not deserve to be
treated as such. Let us leave it to the proletarians of the British Empire to
reconquer their human rights. [1]

Such is the state of the British working-class as I have come to know it in
the course of twenty-one months, through the medium of my own eyes, and through
official and other trustworthy reports. And when I call this condition, as I
have frequently enough done in the foregoing pages, an utterly unbearable one,
I am not alone in so doing. As early as 1833, Gaskell declared that he
despaired of a peaceful issue, and that a revolution can hardly fail to follow.
In 1838, Carlyle explained Chartism and the revolutionary activity of the
working-men as arising out of the misery in which they live, and only wondered
that they have sat so quietly eight long years at the Barmecide feast, at which
they have been regaled by the Liberal bourgeoisie with empty promises. And in
1844 he declared that the work of organising labour must be begun at once

"if Europe, at any rate if England, is to continue
inhabitable much longer."

And the Times, the “first journal of Europe”, said in
June, 1844:

“War to the mansion, peace to the cottage – is a
watchword of terror which may yet ring through the land. Let the wealthy
beware!”

Meanwhile, let us review once more the chances of the English bourgeoisie.
In the worst case, foreign manufacture, especially that of America, may succeed
in withstanding English competition, even after the repeal of the Corn Laws,
inevitable in the course of a few years. German manufacture is now making great
efforts, and that of America has developed with giant strides. America, with
its inexhaustible resources, with its unmeasured coal and iron fields, with its
unexampled wealth of water-power and its navigable rivers, but especially with
its energetic, active population, in comparison with which the English are
phlegmatic dawdlers,– America has in less than ten years created a
manufacture which already competes with England in the coarser cotton goods,
has excluded the English from the markets of North and South America, and holds
its own in China, side by side with England. If any country is adapted to
holding a monopoly of manufacture, it is America. Should English manufacture be
thus vanquished – and in the course of the next twenty years, if the
present conditions remain unchanged, this is inevitable – the majority of
the proletariat must become forever superfluous, and has no other choice than
to starve or to rebel. Does the English bourgeoisie reflect upon this
contingency? On the contrary; its favourite economist, McCulloch, teaches from
his student’s desk, that a country so young as America, which is not even
properly populated, cannot carry on manufacture successfully or dream of
competing with an old manufacturing country like England. It were madness in
the Americans to make the attempt, for they could only lose by it; better far
for them to stick to their agriculture, and when they have brought their whole
territory under the plough, a time may perhaps come for carrying on manufacture
with a profit. So says the wise economist, and the whole bourgeoisie worships
him, while the Americans take possession of one market after another, while a
daring American speculator recently even sent a shipment of American cotton
goods to England, where they were sold for re-exportation!

But assuming that England retained the monopoly of manufactures, that its
factories perpetually multiply, what must be the result? The commercial crises
would continue, and grow more violent, more terrible, with the extension of
industry and the multiplication of the proletariat. The proletariat would
increase in geometrical proportion, in consequence of the progressive ruin of
the lower middle-class and the giant strides with which capital is
concentrating itself in the hands of the few; and the proletariat would soon
embrace the whole nation, with the exception of a few millionaires. But in this
development there comes a stage at which the proletariat perceives how easily
the existing power may be overthrown, and then follows a revolution.

Neither of these supposed conditions may, however, be expected to arise. The
commercial crises, the mightiest levers for all independent development of the
proletariat, will probably shorten the process, acting in concert with foreign
competition and the deepening ruin of the lower middle-class. I think the
people will not endure more than one more crisis. The next one, in 1846 or
1847, will probably bring with it the repeal of the Corn Laws and the enactment
of the Charter. What revolutionary movements the Charter may give rise to
remains to be seen. But, by the time of the next following crisis, which,
according to the analogy of its predecessors, must break out in 1852 or 1853,
unless delayed perhaps by the repeal of the Corn Laws or hastened by other
influences, such as foreign competition – by the time this crisis
arrives, the English people will have had enough of being plundered by the
capitalists and left to starve when the capitalists no longer require their
services. If, up to that time, the English bourgeoisie does not pause to
reflect – and to all appearance it certainly will not do so – a
revolution will follow with which none hitherto known can be compared. The
proletarians, driven to despair, will seize the torch which Stephens has
preached to them; the vengeance of the people will come down with a wrath of
which the rage of 1795 gives no true idea. The war of the poor against the rich
will be the bloodiest ever waged. Even the union of a part of the bourgeoisie
with the proletariat, even a general reform of the bourgeoisie, would not help
matters. Besides, the change of heart of the bourgeoisie could only go as far
as a lukewarm juste-milieu; the more determined, uniting with the
workers, would only form a new Gironde, and succumb in the course of the mighty
development. The prejudices of a whole class cannot be laid aside like an old
coat: least of all, those of the stable, narrow, selfish English bourgeoisie.
These are all inferences which may be drawn with the greatest certainty:
conclusions, the premises for which are undeniable facts, partly of historical
development, partly facts inherent in human nature. Prophecy is nowhere so easy
as in England, where all the component elements of society are clearly defined
and sharply separated. The revolution must come; it is already too late to
bring about a peaceful solution; but it can be made more gently than that
prophesied in the foregoing pages. This depends, however, more upon the
development of the proletariat than upon that of the bourgeoisie. In
proportion, as the proletariat absorbs socialistic and communistic elements,
will the revolution diminish in bloodshed, revenge, and savagery. Communism
stands, in principle, above the breach between bourgeoisie and proletariat,
recognises only its historic significance for the present, but not its
justification for the future: wishes, indeed, to bridge over this chasm, to do
away with all class antagonisms Hence it recognises as justified, so long as
the struggle exists, the exasperation of the proletariat towards its oppressors
as a necessity, as the most important lever for a labour movement just
beginning; but it goes beyond this exasperation, because Communism is a
question of humanity and not of the workers alone. Besides, it does not occur
to any Communist to wish to revenge himself upon individuals, or to believe
that, in general, the single bourgeois can act otherwise, under existing
circumstances, than he does act. English Socialism, i.e., Communism, rests
directly upon the irresponsibility of the individual. Thus the more the English
workers absorb communistic ideas, the more superfluous becomes their present
bitterness, which, should it continue so violent as at present, could
accomplish nothing; and the more their action against the bourgeoisie will lose
its savage cruelty. If, indeed, it were possible to make the whole proletariat
communistic before the war breaks out, the end would be very peaceful; but that
is no longer possible, the time has gone by. Meanwhile, I think that before the
outbreak of open, declared war of the poor against the rich, there will be
enough intelligent comprehension of the social question among the proletariat,
to enable the communistic party, with the help of events, to conquer the brutal
element of the revolution and prevent a "Ninth Thermidor". In any case, the
experience of the French will not have been undergone in vain, and most of the
Chartist leaders are, moreover, already Communists. And as Communism stands
above the strife between bourgeoisie and proletariat, it will be easier for the
better elements of the bourgeoisie (which are, however, deplorably few, and can
look for recruits only among the rising generation) to unite with it than with
purely proletarian Chartism.

If these conclusions have not been sufficiently established in the course of
the present work, there may be other opportunities for demonstrating that they
are necessary consequences of the historical development of England. But this I
maintain, the war of the poor against the rich now carried on in detail and
indirectly will become direct and universal. It is too late for a peaceful
solution. The classes are divided more and more sharply, the spirit of
resistance penetrates the workers, the bitterness intensifies, the guerrilla
skirmishes become concentrated in more important battles, and soon a slight
impulse will suffice to set the avalanche in motion. Then, indeed, will the
war-cry resound through the land: "War to the mansion, peace to the cottage!"
– but then it will be too late for the rich to beware.

NOTES

1. To prevent
misconstructions and consequent objections, I would observe that I have spoken
of the bourgeoisie as a class, and that all such facts as refer to
individuals serve merely as evidence of the way of thinking and acting of a
class. Hence I have not entered upon the distinctions between the diverse
sections, subdivisions and parties of the bourgeoisie, which have a mere
historical and theoretical significance. And I can, for the same reason,
mention but casually the few members of the bourgeoisie who have shown
themselves honourable exceptions. These are, on the one hand, the pronounced
Radicals, who are almost Chartists, such as a few members of the House of
Commons, the manufacturers Hindley of Ashton, and Fielden of Todmorden
(Lancashire), and, on the other hand, the philanthropic Tories, who have
recently constituted themselves "Young England", among whom are the Members of
Parliament, Disraeli, Borthwick, Ferrand, Lord John Manners, etc., Lord Ashley,
too, is in sympathy with them. The hope of "Young England" is a restoration of
the old "merry England" with its brilliant features and its romantic feudalism.
This object is of course unattainable and ridiculous, a satire upon all
historic development; but the good intention, the courage to resist the
existing state of things and prevalent prejudices, and to recognise the
vileness of our present condition, is worth something anyhow. Wholly isolated
is the half-German Englishman, Thomas Carlyle, who, originally a Tory, goes
beyond all those hitherto mentioned. He has sounded the social disorder more
deeply than any other English bourgeois, and demands the organisation of
labour.

An English Turnout

In my book on the above subject I was unable to give factual proof of
individual points. In order not to make the book too thick and indigestible, I
had to consider my statements sufficiently proven when I had confirmed them by
quotations from official documents, impartial writers or the writings of the
parties whose interests I was attacking. This sufficed to guard me against
contradiction in those cases where I was unable to speak from personal
observation when describing particular living conditions. But it was not
sufficient to produce in the reader the incontestable certainty which can only
be given by striking, irrefutable facts, and which, especially in an age in
which we are obliged by the infinite "wisdom of the fathers" to be sceptical,
can never be generated by mere reasoning, no matter how good the authorities.
Above all when it is a question of important consequences, of facts coalescing
into principles, when it is not the condition of separate, small sections of
the people that has to be described, but the position of whole classes in
relation to each other, then facts are absolutely essential. For the reasons
just mentioned, I was unable to provide these in all cases in my book. I will
now make good this unavoidable deficiency and, from time to time, will present
facts as I find them in the sources available to me. In order, at the same
time, to demonstrate that my account is still correct today, I will only use
facts which have taken place since I left England last year, and have become
known to me only since my book was published.

Readers of my book will remember that I was chiefly concerned to describe
the position of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in relation to each other
and the necessity of struggle between these two classes; and that I attached
especial importance to proving how completely justified the proletariat was in
waging this struggle, and to rebutting the English bourgeoisie's fine phrases
by means of their ugly deeds. From the first page to the last, I was writing a
bill of indictment against the English bourgeoisie. I will now provide a few
more choice pieces of evidence. However, since I have already displayed enough
passion over these English bourgeois it is not my intention to work myself up
over them once again and, so far as I can, I will keep my temper.

The first good citizen and worthy paterfamilias we are going to
meet is an old friend, or rather there are two of them. By 1843 Messrs. Pauling
& Henfrey had already had Lord knows how many conflicts with their workers,
who, refusing to be dissuaded even by the best of arguments from their demand
that they should receive increased wages for increased work, stopped work.
Pauling & Henfrey, who are important building contractors and employ many
brickmakers, carpenters, and so on, took on other workers; this led to a
conflict and in the end to a bloody battle with guns and cudgels in Pauling
& Henfrey's brickyard, which resulted in the transportation of half a dozen
workers to Van Diemen's Land, all of which is dealt with at length in my book.
But Messrs. Pauling & Henfrey have to try something on with their workers
every year, otherwise they are not happy; so they began baiting them again in
October 1844. This time it was the carpenters whose well-being the
philanthropic building contractors were anxious to promote. From time
immemorial the custom had prevailed among the carpenters of Manchester and the
surrounding area of not "striking a light" from Candlemas to November 17, i.e.,
of working from six in the morning till six in the evening during the long
days, and of starting as soon as it was light and finishing as soon as it began
to get dark during the short days. Then from November 17 onwards the lights
were lit and work carried on for the full time. Pauling & Henfrey, who had
long had enough of this "barbaric" custom, decided to put an end to this relic
of the "Dark Ages" with the help of gas lighting, and when one evening before
six o'clock the carpenters could not see any longer and put away their tools
and went for their coats, the foreman lit the gas and said that they had to
work till six o'clock. The carpenters, whom this did not suit, called a general
meeting of the workers in their trade. Mr. Pauling, much astonished, asked his
workers if they were dissatisfied about something since they had called a
meeting. Some of the workers said that it was not they who were directly
responsible for calling the meeting, but the committee of the craft union, to
which Mr. Pauling replied that he didn't care a fig for the craft union, but he
would like to put a proposition to them: if they would agree to the lights
being lit he would be prepared in return to give them three hours off on
Saturdays, and – generous fellow – also to allow them to work an
extra quarter of an hour every day for which they would get extra pay! They on
their part should work half an hour longer when all other workshops began to
put on their lights. The workers considered this proposal and calculated that
as a result Messrs. Pauling & Henfrey would gain a whole working hour every
day during the short days, that each worker would have to work altogether 92
hours, i.e., 9 1/4 days extra without getting a farthing in return, and that
taking into account all the workers employed by the firm, the above-named
gentlemen would save £400 (2,100 taler) in wages during the winter months. So
the workers held their meeting and explained to their fellow-workers that if
one firm succeeded in putting this through, all the other firms would follow
suit and, as a result, there would be a general indirect reduction in wages
which would rob the carpenters in the district of about £4,000 a year. It was
decided that on the following Monday all the carpenters employed by Pauling
& Henfrey should hand in their 3-months' notice and if their employers did
not change their minds, should stop work when this notice expired. The union on
its part promised to support them by a general levy in the event of a stoppage
of work.

On Monday, October 14, the workers went and gave in their notice, whereupon
they were told that they could leave right away, which of course they did. The
same evening another meeting of all the building workers took place, at which
all categories of building workers pledged their support to the strikers. On
the Wednesday and Thursday following, all the carpenters in the vicinity
employed by Pauling & Henfrey also stopped work and the strike was thus in
full swing.

The building employers, left so suddenly high and dry, immediately sent
people out in all directions, even as far as Scotland, to recruit workers since
in the whole vicinity there was not a soul willing to work for them. In a few
days thirteen men did arrive from Staffordshire. But as soon as the strikers
found an opportunity of talking to them and explaining the dispute and the
reasons why they had stopped work, several of the new arrivals refused to
continue working. But the masters had an effective way of dealing with this:
they had the recalcitrants, along with those who led them astray, brought
before Daniel Maude, Esquire, Justice of the Peace. But before we follow them
there, we must first put the virtues of Daniel Maude, Esq., in their proper
light.

Daniel Maude, Esq., is the "stipendiary magistrate"' or paid Justice of the
Peace in Manchester. The English magistrates are usually rich bourgeois or
landowners, occasionally also clergymen, who are appointed by the Ministry. But
since these Dogberries understand nothing about the law, they make the most
flagrant blunders, bring the bourgeoisie into ridicule and do it harm, since,
even when faced with a worker, they are frequently reduced to a state of
confusion if he is defended by a skilful lawyer, and either neglect some legal
form when sentencing him, which results in a successful appeal, or let
themselves be misled into acquitting him. Besides, the rich manufacturers in
the big towns and industrial areas have no time to spare for passing days of
boredom in a court of law and prefer to install a replacement. As a result in
these towns, on the initiative of the towns themselves, paid magistrates are
usually appointed, men versed in law, who are able to take advantage of all the
twists and subtle distinctions of English law, and when necessary to supplement
and improve it for the benefit of the bourgeoisie. Their efforts in this
respect are illustrated by the following example.

Daniel Maude, Esq., is one of those liberal justices of the peace who were
appointed in large numbers under the Whig Government. Among his heroic
exploits, inside and outside the arena of the Manchester Borough Court, we will
mention two. When in 1842 the manufacturers succeeded in forcing the workers of
South Lancashire into an insurrection, which broke out in Stalybridge and
Ashton at the beginning of August, some 10,000 workers, with Richard Pilling,
the Chartist, at their head, marched on August 9 from there to Manchester

"to meet their masters on the Exchange and to see how the
Manchester market was."

When they reached the outskirts of the town, they were met by Daniel Maude,
Esq., with the whole estimable police force, a detachment of cavalry and a
company of riflemen. But this was all only for the sake of appearances since it
was in the interest of the manufacturers and liberals that the insurrection
should spread and force the repeal of the Corn Laws. In this Daniel Maude,
Esq., was in complete agreement with his worthy colleagues, and he began to
come to terms with the workers and allowed them to enter the town on their
promise to “keep the peace” and follow a prescribed route. He knew
very well that the insurgents would not do this nor did he in the least wish
them to – he could have nipped the whole contrived insurrection in the
bud with a little energy but, had he done so, he would not have been acting in
the interest of his Anti-Corn Law friends but in the interest of Sir Robert
Peel. So he withdrew the soldiers and allowed the workers to enter the town,
where they immediately brought all the factories to a standstill. But as soon
as the insurrection proved to be definitely directed against the liberal
bourgeoisie and completely ignored the “hellish Corn Laws”, Daniel
Maude, Esq., once more assumed his judicial office and had workers arrested by
the dozen and marched off to prison without mercy for “breach of the
peace” – so that he first caused the breaches and then punished
them. Another characteristic feature in the career of this Manchester Solomon
is revealed by the following. Since the Anti-Corn Law League was several times
beaten up in public in Manchester, it holds private meetings, admission to
which is by ticket only – but the decisions and petitions of which are
presented to the public as those of public meetings, and as manifestations of
Manchester “public opinion”. In order to put a stop to this
fraudulent boasting by the liberal manufacturers, three or four Chartists,
among them my good friend James Leach, secured tickets for themselves and went
to one of these meetings. When Mr. Cobden rose to speak, James Leach asked the
Chairman whether this was a public meeting. Instead of answering, the Chairman
called the police and had Leach arrested without more ado. A second Chartist
asked the question again, then a third, and a fourth, all were set upon one
after the other by the “bluebottles” (police) who stood massed at
the door, and packed off to the Town Hall. They appeared the next morning
before Daniel Maude, Esq., who was already fully informed about everything.
They were charged with having caused a disturbance at a meeting, were hardly
allowed to say a word, and then had to listen to a solemn speech by Daniel
Maude, Esq., who told them that he knew them, that they were political
vagabonds who did nothing, but cause uproar at meetings and disturb decent,
law-abiding, citizens and a stop must be put to this kind of thing. Therefore
– and Daniel Maude, Esq., knew very well that he could not impose any
real punishment on them – therefore, he would sentence them to pay the
costs this time.

It was before this same Daniel Maude, Esq., whose bourgeois virtues we have
just described, that the recalcitrant workers from Pauling & Henfrey's were
hauled. But they had brought a lawyer with them as a precaution. First to be
heard was the worker newly arrived from Staffordshire who had refused to
continue working at a place where others had stopped work in self-defence.
Messrs. Pauling & Henfrey had a written contract signed by the workers from
Staffordshire, and this was submitted to the magistrate.[1] The defending lawyer interjected that this agreement
had been signed on a Sunday and was therefore invalid. With much dignity Daniel
Maude, Esq., admitted that “business transactions” concluded on a
Sunday were not valid, but said that he could not believe that Messrs. Pauling
& Henfrey regarded this as a “business transaction”! So without
spending very much time asking the worker whether he “regarded” the
document as a “business transaction”, he told the poor devil that
he must either continue working or amuse himself on the treadmill for three
months.– O Solomon of Manchester! – After this case had been dealt
with, Messrs. Pauling & Henfrey brought forward the second accused. His
name was Salmon, and he was one of the firm's old workers who had stopped work.
He was accused of having intimidated the new workers into taking part in the
strike. The witness – one of these latter – stated that Salmon had
taken him by the arm and spoken to him. Daniel Maude, Esq., asked whether the
accused had perhaps used threats or beaten him? – No, said the witness.
Daniel Maude, Esq., delighted at having found an opportunity to demonstrate his
impartiality – after having just fulfilled his duty to the bourgeoisie
– declared that there was nothing in the case incriminating the accused.
He had every right to take a walk on the public highway and to talk to other
people as long as he did not indulge in intimidating words or actions –
he was therefore acquitting him. But Messrs. Pauling & Henfrey had at least
had the satisfaction, by paying the costs of the case, of having the said
Salmon sent to the lock-up for a night – and that was something after
all. Nor did Salmon's happiness last long. For after having been discharged on
Thursday, October 31, he was up again before Daniel Maude, Esq., on Tuesday,
November 5th, charged with having assaulted Messrs. Pauling & Henfrey in
the street. On that same Thursday on which Salmon had been acquitted, a number
of Scotsmen arrived in Manchester, decoyed by false statements that the
disputes were over and that Pauling & Henfrey could not find enough workers
in their district to cope with their extensive contracts. On the Friday a
number of Scottish joiners who had been working for some time in Manchester,
came to explain the cause of the stoppage to their countrymen. A large number
of their fellow-workers – some 400 – gathered around the inn where
the Scots were quartered. But these Scotsmen were kept there like prisoners
with a foreman on guard at the door. After some time, Messrs. Pauling &
Henfrey arrived in order to escort in person their new workers to their place
of work. When the group came out, those gathered outside called to the Scots
not to take work against the Manchester rules of the trade and not to disgrace
their fellow-countrymen. Two of the Scots did in fact lag behind a little and
Mr. Pauling himself ran back to drag them forward. The crowd remained quiet,
only prevented the group from moving too quickly and called to the Scots not to
interfere in other people's business, to go back home, etc. Mr. Henfrey finally
lost his temper; he saw several of his old workers in the crowd, .among them
Salmon, and in order to put an end to the affair, he gripped the latter by the
arm. Mr. Pauling seized him by the other arm and both shouted for the police
with all their might. The police inspector came up and asked what charge was
being made against the man, at which both partners were greatly embarrassed!
But they said, “We know the man.” “Oh,” said the
inspector, “that's enough then, we can let him go for the time
being.” Messrs. Pauling & Henfrey, needing to bring some kind of
charge against Salmon, considered the matter for several days until finally, on
the advice of their lawyer, they lodged the above charge. After all the
witnesses against Salmon had been heard, W. P. Roberts, the “Miners'
Attorney General”, the terror of all magistrates, suddenly rose up on
behalf of the accused and asked whether he should still call his witnesses,
since nothing had been brought against Salmon. Daniel Maude, Esq., let him
question his witnesses, who testified that Salmon had behaved calmly until Mr.
Henfrey took hold of him. When the proceedings for and against had been
concluded, Daniel Maude, Esq., said that he would pass sentence on Saturday.
Clearly, the presence of “Attorney General” Roberts led him to
think twice before he spoke once.

On Saturday, Messrs. Pauling & Henfrey brought an additional criminal
charge of conspiracy and intimidation against three of their old workers
– Salmon, Scott and Mellor. By this they hoped to deliver a mortal blow
to the craft union and, in order to be secure against the dreaded Roberts, they
called in a distinguished barrister from London, Mr. Monk. As his first
witness, Mr. Monk produced Gibson, one of the newly engaged Scotsmen, who had
also acted as witness against Salmon the previous Tuesday. He declared that on
Friday, November 1, as he and his companions came out of the inn, they were
surrounded by a crowd of people who pushed and pulled them and that the three
accused were among the crowd. Roberts now began to cross-question this witness,
confronted him with another worker, and asked whether he, Gibson, had not told
this worker the previous night that he had not known he was under oath
when he was giving his evidence the previous Tuesday and that he had not really
understood what he was supposed to do and say in court. Gibson replied that he
did not know the man, he had been with two men the previous evening but could
not say whether this man was one of them as it had been dark. It was
possible that he said something of the sort since the form of oath in
Scotland was different from that in England; he couldn't quite remember. Mr.
Monk then rose and declared that Mr. Roberts had no right to put questions like
that, to which Mr. Roberts replied that objections of that kind were quite in
place when one was representing a bad cause, but that he had the right to ask
what he wanted, not only where the witness was born but also where he had
stayed every day since that time, and what he had had to eat every day. Daniel
Maude, Esq., confirmed that Mr. Roberts had this right but gave him the
fatherly advice to keep to the point as much as possible. Then, after Mr.
Roberts had obtained from the witness a statement that he only really began
working for Pauling & Henfrey on the day after the incident on which the
charge was based, that is, on November 2, he dismissed him. Then Mr. Henfrey
himself appeared as a witness and repeated what Gibson had said about the
incident. At this, Mr. Roberts asked him: Are you not looking for an unfair
advantage over your competitors? Mr. Monk again objected to this question.

Very well, said Mr. Roberts, I will put it more clearly. Mr. Henfrey, do you
know that the working hours of the carpenters in Manchester are fixed by
certain rules?

Mr. Henfrey: I have nothing to do with those rules, I have the
right to make my own rules.

Mr. Roberts: Quite so. On oath, Mr. Henfrey, do you not demand
longer working hours from your workers than other building contractors and
master carpenters?

Mr. Henfrey: Yes.

Mr. Roberts: How many hours, approximately?

Mr. Henfrey did not know exactly and took out his notebook in order
to calculate.

Daniel Maude, Esq.: You need not spend a long time working it out,
just tell us roughly how many.

Mr. Henfrey: Well, about an hour in the mornings and an hour in the
evenings for six weeks before the time when the lights are usually turned on,
and the same for six weeks after the day when it is usual to stop putting on
the lights.

Daniel Maude, Esq.: So every one of your workers has to work an
extra 72 hours before the lights are turned on and 72 hours after, that is, 144
hours in 12 weeks?

Mr. Henfrey: Yes.

This statement was received with signs of great indignation by the public.
Mr. Monk looked angrily at Mr. Henfrey and Mr. Henfrey looked at his barrister
in confusion and Mr. Pauling tugged at Mr. Henfrey's coat-tails – but it
was too late; Daniel Maude, Esq., who obviously saw that he would have to play
at being impartial again that day, had heard the admission and made it
public.

After two unimportant witnesses had been heard, Mr. Monk said that his
evidence against the accused was now concluded.

Daniel Maude, Esq., then said that the plaintiff had not made out any case
for a criminal investigation against the accused, not having shown that the
threatened Scots had been taken on by Pauling & Henfrey before November 1,
since there was no proof of a hire contract or employment of the men concerned
before November 2, while charge had been lodged on November 1st. Thus on this
date the men were not yet employed by Pauling & Henfrey and the accused had
every right to try and deter them by every legal means from going to work for
Pauling & Henfrey. In reply to this, Mr. Monk said that the defendants had
been engaged from the moment they left Scotland and boarded the steamer. Daniel
Maude, Esq., remarked that it had indeed been stated that such hire contract
had been made out but this document had not been produced. Mr. Monk replied
that the document was in Scotland and he asked Mr. Maude to adjourn the case
until it could be laid before the court. Mr. Roberts intervened here to say:
this was something new to him. Evidence for the plaintiff had been declared
concluded and now the plaintiff was demanding that the case be adjourned in
order to introduce new evidence. He insisted that the case proceed. Daniel
Maude, Esq., decided that both pleas were superfluous since no substantiated
charge was before the court – upon which the accused were dismissed.

Meanwhile the workers had likewise not been inactive. Week after week they
held meetings in the Carpenters” Hall or the Socialist Hall, called for
aid from the different craft unions, which was given in plenty, never ceased to
make known everywhere the behaviour of Pauling & Henfrey and finally sent
delegates in all directions in order to inform their fellow craftsmen in all
the areas where Pauling & Henfrey were recruiting workers, of the reasons
for this recruitment and to prevent them taking work with this firm. Only a few
weeks after the strike began there were seven delegates on their way and
posters on the street corners in all the big towns in the country warned
unemployed carpenters about Pauling & Henfrey. On November 9 some of the
delegates who had returned reported on their mission. One of these, named
Johnson, who had been in Scotland, described how Pauling & Henfrey's
representative had recruited thirty workers in Edinburgh but as soon as they
heard from him the real facts of the case they decided they would sooner starve
than go to Manchester in such circumstances. A second delegate had been in
Liverpool keeping watch on the arriving steamers, but not a single man had
arrived and so he found that he had nothing to do. A third man had been in
Cheshire but wherever he went he found he had nothing more to do, for the
Northern Star, the workers' paper, had broadcast the real state of affairs far
and wide and had put an end to any desire people had of going to Manchester.
Indeed in one town, Macclesfield, the carpenters had already taken a collection
in support of the strikers and promised to contribute a further shilling per
man should the necessity arise. In other places he was able to stimulate the
local craftsmen to initiate such contributions.

In order to provide Messrs. Pauling & Henfrey with another opportunity
of coming to an agreement with the workers, all the craftsmen employed in the
building trade gathered at the Carpenters' Hall on Monday, November 18th,
elected a deputation to present an address to these gentlemen and marched in
procession with flags and emblems to the premises of Pauling & Henfrey.
First came the deputation followed by the strike committee, then the
carpenters, the brick-moulders and kiln-workers, the day labourers,
bricklayers, sawyers, glaziers, plasterers, painters, a band, stonemasons,
cabinetmakers. They passed the hotel where their “Attorney
General”, Roberts, was staying and greeted him with loud hurrahs as they
marched by. Arrived at the premises, the deputation fell out while the crowd
marched on to Stevenson Square where they were to hold a public meeting. The
deputation was received by the police who demanded their names and addresses
before allowing them to proceed any further. When they had entered the office,
the partners Sharps & Pauling told them that they would accept no written
address from a crowd of workers brought together merely for the purpose of
intimidation. The deputation denied that this was their aim, since the
procession had not even stopped, but had at once gone on its way. While this
procession of 5,000 workers continued its march, the deputation was finally
received and taken into a room in which were present the Chief Constable, an
officer and three newspaper reporters. Mr. Sharps, a partner in Pauling &
Henfrey, usurped the Chairman's seat, remarking that the deputation should be
careful what it said as everything would be duly recorded and, in certain
circumstances, would be used against them in court.– They now began to
ask the deputation what they were complaining about, etc., and said that they
wanted to give the men work according to the rules customary in Manchester. The
deputation asked if the men picked up in Staffordshire and Scotland were
working according to the regulations for craftsmen prevailing in Manchester.

No, was the answer, we have a special arrangement with these
men. Then your people are to be given work again, and on the usual conditions?
Oh, we are not going to negotiate with any deputation but just let the men come
and they will find out on what conditions we are willing to give them work.

Mr. Sharps added that all firms with which he was connected had always
treated their workers well and paid them the highest wages. The deputation
replied that if, as they had heard, he was associated with the firm of Pauling
& Henfrey, this firm had fiercely opposed the best interests of the
workers.– A brickmaker, a member of the deputation, was asked what the
members of his craft had to complain about.–

Oh, nothing just now, but we've had enough.

Oh, you've had enough, have you? answered Mr. Pauling with a sneer, and then
took the opportunity of delivering them a long lecture about craft unions,
strikes, etc., and the misery to which they brought the workers –
whereupon one of the deputation remarked they were not by any means disposed to
allow their rights to be taken away from them bit by bit, and, for example, to
work 144 hours a year for nothing, as was now being demanded.– Mr. Sharps
remarked that they ought also to take into account the loss incurred by those
taking part in the procession because they were not working that day, as well
as the cost of the strike, the loss of wages suffered by the strikers, etc. One
of the deputation said:

That's nobody's business but ours and we won't ask you to
contribute a farthing from your pocket.

With that the deputation left and reported to the assembled workers in the
Carpenters' Hall, where it was revealed that not only had all those in the area
working for Pauling & Henfrey (those who were not carpenters and were
therefore not on strike) come to take part in the procession, but that many of
the newly imported Scotsmen had also struck that very morning. A painter also
declared that Pauling & Henfrey had made the same unjust demands on the
painters as they had on the joiners but that they too intended to resist. In
order to simplify the whole business and shorten the struggle it was decided
that all building workers employed by Pauling & Henfrey should stop work.
This they did. The painters stopped work on the following Saturday and the
glaziers on the Monday, and on the new theatre for which Pauling & Henfrey
had received the contract only two bricklayers and four day labourers were
working after a few days instead of 200 men. Some of the new arrivals also
stopped work.

Pauling & Henfrey foamed with rage. When three more of the new arrivals
stopped work they were hauled before Daniel Maude, Esq., on Friday, November
22. The previous reverses had had no effect. A worker called Reed was the first
to be dealt with, charged with breach of contract; a contract which the accused
had signed in Derby was laid before the court. Roberts, who was again
defending, stated at once that there was not the slightest connection between
the contract and the charge, they were two quite different things. Daniel
Maude, Esq., saw the point right away once the formidable Roberts had made it,
but it took him a long, harassing time to make it clear to the Counsel for the
other side. Finally, the latter asked permission to alter the charge and after
a while he came back with one that was much worse than the first. When he saw
that this would not do either, he asked for a further adjournment of the case
and Daniel Maude, Esq., gave him until Friday, November 29, that is, a whole
week, to consider the matter. I have not been able to find out whether or not
he succeeded because the one issue of the paper which must have contained a
report of the verdict is missing from my files. Meanwhile, Roberts went over to
the offensive and had several of the recruited workers and one of Pauling &
Henfrey's foremen brought before the court for forcing their way into the house
of one of the strikers and assaulting his wife; in two other cases some of the
workers on strike had been attacked. To his great regret, Daniel Maude, Esq.,
had to find all the accused guilty but he dealt with them as leniently as he
possibly could and only bound them over to keep the peace themselves in future.

Finally, at the end of December, Messrs. Pauling & Henfrey succeeded in
getting sentence against two of their opponents, likewise on charges of assault
against one of their workers. But this time the court was not so lenient.
Without more ado, it sentenced them to a month's imprisonment and bound them
over to keep the peace after their release.

From here on news about the strike becomes meagre. It was still in full
swing on January 18. I have found no later reports. It has probably come to an
end like most others; in the course of time Pauling & Henfrey will have
secured a sufficient number of workers from distant parts and from a few
turncoats from the workers' side; after a longer or shorter strike and its
accompanying misery, for which the strikers will have been consoled by the
consciousness that they have nothing to reproach themselves with and that they
have helped to maintain the level of wages of their fellow workers, the
majority of them will have found jobs elsewhere. And as for the points in
dispute, Messrs. Pauling & Henfrey will have learnt that they cannot impose
their will so rigorously, since for them also the strike involved considerable
loss, and the other employers, after such a fierce struggle, will not think of
changing the old rules of the craftsmen carpenters so soon.

Brussels

Signed: F. Engels

NOTES

1. This contract contained
the following: the worker pledged himself to work for Pauling & Henfrey for
six months and to be satisfied with the wages which they would
give him; but Pauling & Henfrey were not bound to keep him for six
months and could dismiss him at any moment with a week's notice, and
although Pauling & Henfrey would pay his travelling expenses from
Staffordshire to Mancbester, they were to recover them by a weekly deduction of
2 shillings (20 silver groschen) from his wages. How do you like that really
marvellous contract? – Note by Engels.