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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Condition of the Working-Class in England
+in 1844, by Frederick Engels, Translated by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844
+       with a Preface written in 1892
+
+
+Author: Frederick Engels
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 13, 2005  [eBook #17306]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING-CLASS
+IN ENGLAND IN 1844***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the January 1943 George Allen & Unwin reprint of the
+March 1892 edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844
+With a Preface written in 1892
+
+
+by
+FREDERICK ENGELS
+
+_Translated by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky_
+
+_London_
+
+GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
+
+_Museum Street_
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The book, an English translation of which is here republished, was first
+issued in Germany in 1845.  The author, at that time, was young, twenty-
+four years of age, and his production bears the stamp of his youth with
+its good and its faulty features, of neither of which he feels ashamed.
+It was translated into English, in 1885, by an American lady, Mrs. F.
+Kelley Wischnewetzky, and published in the following year in New York.
+The American edition being as good as exhausted, and having never been
+extensively circulated on this side of the Atlantic, the present English
+copyright edition is brought out with the full consent of all parties
+interested.
+
+For the American edition, a new Preface and an Appendix were written in
+English by the author.  The first had little to do with the book itself;
+it discussed the American Working-Class Movement of the day, and is,
+therefore, here omitted as irrelevant, the second--the original
+preface--is largely made use of in the present introductory remarks.
+
+The state of things described in this book belongs to-day, in many
+respects, to the past, as far as England is concerned.  Though not
+expressly stated in our recognised treatises, it is still a law of modern
+Political Economy that the larger the scale on which Capitalistic
+Production is carried on, the less can it support the petty devices of
+swindling and pilfering which characterise its early stages.  The
+pettifogging business tricks of the Polish Jew, the representative in
+Europe of commerce in its lowest stage, those tricks that serve him so
+well in his own country, and are generally practised there, he finds to
+be out of date and out of place when he comes to Hamburg or Berlin; and,
+again, the commission agent, who hails from Berlin or Hamburg, Jew or
+Christian, after frequenting the Manchester Exchange for a few months,
+finds out that, in order to buy cotton yarn or cloth cheap, he, too, had
+better drop those slightly more refined but still miserable wiles and
+subterfuges which are considered the acme of cleverness in his native
+country.  The fact is, those tricks do not pay any longer in a large
+market, where time is money, and where a certain standard of commercial
+morality is unavoidably developed, purely as a means of saving time and
+trouble.  And it is the same with the relation between the manufacturer
+and his "hands."
+
+The revival of trade, after the crisis of 1847, was the dawn of a new
+industrial epoch.  The repeal of the Corn Laws and the financial reforms
+subsequent thereon gave to English industry and commerce all the elbow-
+room they had asked for.  The discovery of the Californian and Australian
+gold-fields followed in rapid succession.  The Colonial markets developed
+at an increasing rate their capacity for absorbing English manufactured
+goods.  In India millions of hand-weavers were finally crushed out by the
+Lancashire power-loom.  China was more and more being opened up.  Above
+all, the United States--then, commercially speaking, a mere colonial
+market, but by far the biggest of them all--underwent an economic
+development astounding even for that rapidly progressive country.  And,
+finally, the new means of communication introduced at the close of the
+preceding period--railways and ocean steamers--were now worked out on an
+international scale; they realised actually, what had hitherto existed
+only potentially, a world-market.  This world-market, at first, was
+composed of a number of chiefly or entirely agricultural countries
+grouped around one manufacturing centre--England--which consumed the
+greater part of their surplus raw produce, and supplied them in return
+with the greater part of their requirements in manufactured articles.  No
+wonder England's industrial progress was colossal and unparalleled, and
+such that the status of 1844 now appears to us as comparatively primitive
+and insignificant.  And in proportion as this increase took place, in the
+same proportion did manufacturing industry become apparently moralised.
+The competition of manufacturer against manufacturer by means of petty
+thefts upon the workpeople did no longer pay.  Trade had outgrown such
+low means of making money; they were not worth while practising for the
+manufacturing millionaire, and served merely to keep alive the
+competition of smaller traders, thankful to pick up a penny wherever they
+could.  Thus the truck system was suppressed, the Ten Hours' Bill was
+enacted, and a number of other secondary reforms introduced--much against
+the spirit of Free Trade and unbridled competition, but quite as much in
+favour of the giant-capitalist in his competition with his less favoured
+brother.  Moreover, the larger the concern, and with it the number of
+hands, the greater the loss and inconvenience caused by every conflict
+between master and men; and thus a new spirit came over the masters,
+especially the large ones, which taught them to avoid unnecessary
+squabbles, to acquiesce in the existence and power of Trades' Unions, and
+finally even to discover in strikes--at opportune times--a powerful means
+to serve their own ends.  The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders
+of the war against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach
+peace and harmony.  And for a very good reason.  The fact is, that all
+these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means
+to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for
+whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all
+importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker
+and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends
+meet without such perquisites.  Thus the development of production on the
+basis of the capitalistic system has of itself sufficed--at least in the
+leading industries, for in the more unimportant branches this is far from
+being the case--to do away with all those minor grievances which
+aggravated the workman's fate during its earlier stages.  And thus it
+renders more and more evident the great central fact, that the cause of
+the miserable condition of the working-class is to be sought, not in
+these minor grievances, but _in the Capitalistic System itself_.  The
+wage-worker sells to the capitalist his labour-force for a certain daily
+sum.  After a few hours' work he has reproduced the value of that sum;
+but the substance of his contract is, that he has to work another series
+of hours to complete his working-day; and the value he produces during
+these additional hours of surplus labour is surplus value, which cost the
+capitalist nothing, but yet goes into his pocket.  That is the basis of
+the system which tends more and more to split up civilised society into a
+few Rothschilds and Vanderbilts, the owners of all the means of
+production and subsistence, on the one hand, and an immense number of
+wage-workers, the owners of nothing but their labour-force, on the other.
+And that this result is caused, not by this or that secondary grievance,
+but by the system itself--this fact has been brought out in bold relief
+by the development of Capitalism in England since 1847.
+
+Again, the repeated visitations of cholera, typhus, smallpox, and other
+epidemics have shown the British bourgeois the urgent necessity of
+sanitation in his towns and cities, if he wishes to save himself and
+family from falling victims to such diseases.  Accordingly, the most
+crying abuses described in this book have either disappeared or have been
+made less conspicuous.  Drainage has been introduced or improved, wide
+avenues have been opened out athwart many of the worst "slums" I had to
+describe.  "Little Ireland" has disappeared, and the "Seven Dials" are
+next on the list for sweeping away.  But what of that?  Whole districts
+which in 1844 I could describe as almost idyllic, have now, with the
+growth of the towns, fallen into the same state of dilapidation,
+discomfort, and misery.  Only the pigs and the heaps of refuse are no
+longer tolerated.  The bourgeoisie have made further progress in the art
+of hiding the distress of the working-class.  But that, in regard to
+their dwellings, no substantial improvement has taken place, is amply
+proved by the Report of the Royal Commission "on the Housing of the
+Poor," 1885.  And this is the case, too, in other respects.  Police
+regulations have been plentiful as blackberries; but they can only hedge
+in the distress of the workers, they cannot remove it.
+
+But while England has thus outgrown the juvenile state of capitalist
+exploitation described by me, other countries have only just attained it.
+France, Germany, and especially America, are the formidable competitors
+who, at this moment--as foreseen by me in 1844--are more and more
+breaking up England's industrial monopoly.  Their manufactures are young
+as compared with those of England, but increasing at a far more rapid
+rate than the latter; and, curious enough, they have at this moment
+arrived at about the same phase of development as English manufacture in
+1844.  With regard to America, the parallel is indeed most striking.
+True, the external surroundings in which the working-class is placed in
+America are very different, but the same economical laws are at work, and
+the results, if not identical in every respect, must still be of the same
+order.  Hence we find in America the same struggles for a shorter working-
+day, for a legal limitation of the working-time, especially of women and
+children in factories; we find the truck-system in full blossom, and the
+cottage-system, in rural districts, made use of by the "bosses" as a
+means of domination over the workers.  When I received, in 1886, the
+American papers with accounts of the great strike of 12,000 Pennsylvanian
+coal-miners in the Connellsville district, I seemed but to read my own
+description of the North of England colliers' strike of 1844.  The same
+cheating of the workpeople by false measure; the same truck-system; the
+same attempt to break the miners' resistance by the capitalists' last,
+but crushing, resource,--the eviction of the men out of their dwellings,
+the cottages owned by the companies.
+
+I have not attempted, in this translation, to bring the book up to date,
+or to point out in detail all the changes that have taken place since
+1844.  And for two reasons: Firstly, to do this properly, the size of the
+book must be about doubled; and, secondly, the first volume of "Das
+Kapital," by Karl Marx, an English translation of which is before the
+public, contains a very ample description of the state of the British
+working-class, as it was about 1865, that is to say, at the time when
+British industrial prosperity reached its culminating point.  I should,
+then, have been obliged again to go over the ground already covered by
+Marx's celebrated work.
+
+It will be hardly necessary to point out that the general theoretical
+standpoint of this book--philosophical, economical, political--does not
+exactly coincide with my standpoint of to-day.  Modern international
+Socialism, since fully developed as a science, chiefly and almost
+exclusively through the efforts of Marx, did not as yet exist in 1844.  My
+book represents one of the phases of its embryonic development; and as
+the human embryo, in its early stages, still reproduces the gill-arches
+of our fish-ancestors, so this book exhibits everywhere the traces of the
+descent of modern Socialism from one of its ancestors,--German
+philosophy.  Thus great stress is laid on the dictum that Communism is
+not a mere party doctrine of the working-class, but a theory compassing
+the emancipation of society at large, including the capitalist class,
+from its present narrow conditions.  This is true enough in the abstract,
+but absolutely useless, and sometimes worse, in practice.  So long as the
+wealthy classes not only do not feel the want of any emancipation, but
+strenuously oppose the self-emancipation of the working-class, so long
+the social revolution will have to be prepared and fought out by the
+working-class alone.  The French bourgeois of 1789, too, declared the
+emancipation of the bourgeoisie to be the emancipation of the whole human
+race; but the nobility and clergy would not see it; the
+proposition--though for the time being, with respect to feudalism, an
+abstract historical truth--soon became a mere sentimentalism, and
+disappeared from view altogether in the fire of the revolutionary
+struggle.  And to-day, the very people who, from the "impartiality" of
+their superior standpoint, preach to the workers a Socialism soaring high
+above their class interests and class struggles, and tending to reconcile
+in a higher humanity the interests of both the contending classes--these
+people are either neophytes, who have still to learn a great deal, or
+they are the worst enemies of the workers,--wolves in sheeps' clothing.
+
+The recurring period of the great industrial crisis is stated in the text
+as five years.  This was the period apparently indicated by the course of
+events from 1825 to 1842.  But the industrial history from 1842 to 1868
+has shown that the real period is one of ten years; that the intermediate
+revulsions were secondary, and tended more and more to disappear.  Since
+1868 the state of things has changed again, of which more anon.
+
+I have taken care not to strike out of the text the many prophecies,
+amongst others that of an imminent social revolution in England, which my
+youthful ardour induced me to venture upon.  The wonder is, not that a
+good many of them proved wrong, but that so many of them have proved
+right, and that the critical state of English trade, to be brought on by
+Continental and especially American competition, which I then
+foresaw--though in too short a period--has now actually come to pass.  In
+this respect I can, and am bound to, bring the book up to date, by
+placing here an article which I published in the _London Commonweal_ of
+March 1, 1885, under the heading: "England in 1845 and in 1885."  It
+gives at the same time a short outline of the history of the English
+working-class during these forty years, and is as follows:
+
+   "Forty years ago England stood face to face with a crisis, solvable to
+   all appearances by force only.  The immense and rapid development of
+   manufactures had outstripped the extension of foreign markets and the
+   increase of demand.  Every ten years the march of industry was
+   violently interrupted by a general commercial crash, followed, after a
+   long period of chronic depression, by a few short years of prosperity,
+   and always ending in feverish over-production and consequent renewed
+   collapse.  The capitalist class clamoured for Free Trade in corn, and
+   threatened to enforce it by sending the starving population of the
+   towns back to the country districts whence they came, to invade them,
+   as John Bright said, not as paupers begging for bread, but as an army
+   quartered upon the enemy.  The working masses of the towns demanded
+   their share of political power--the People's Charter; they were
+   supported by the majority of the small trading class, and the only
+   difference between the two was whether the Charter should be carried
+   by physical or by moral force.  Then came the commercial crash of 1847
+   and the Irish famine, and with both the prospect of revolution
+
+   "The French Revolution of 1848 saved the English middle-class.  The
+   Socialistic pronunciamentos of the victorious French workmen
+   frightened the small middle-class of England and disorganised the
+   narrower, but more matter-of-fact movement of the English
+   working-class.  At the very moment when Chartism was bound to assert
+   itself in its full strength, it collapsed internally, before even it
+   collapsed externally on the 10th of April, 1848.  The action of the
+   working-class was thrust into the background.  The capitalist class
+   triumphed along the whole line.
+
+   "The Reform Bill of 1831 had been the victory of the whole capitalist
+   class over the landed aristocracy.  The repeal of the Corn Laws was
+   the victory of the manufacturing capitalist not only over the landed
+   aristocracy, but over those sections of capitalists, too, whose
+   interests were more or less bound up with the landed
+   interest,--bankers, stock-jobbers, fund-holders, etc.  Free Trade
+   meant the re-adjustment of the whole home and foreign, commercial and
+   financial policy of England in accordance with the interests of the
+   manufacturing capitalists--the class which now represented the nation.
+   And they set about this task with a will.  Every obstacle to
+   industrial production was mercilessly removed.  The tariff and the
+   whole system of taxation were revolutionised.  Everything was made
+   subordinate to one end, but that end of the utmost importance to the
+   manufacturing capitalist: the cheapening of all raw produce, and
+   especially of the means of living of the working-class; the reduction
+   of the cost of raw material, and the keeping down--if not as yet the
+   _bringing down_--of wages.  England was to become the 'workshop of the
+   world;' all other countries were to become for England what Ireland
+   already was,--markets for her manufactured goods, supplying her in
+   return with raw materials and food.  England the great manufacturing
+   centre of an agricultural world, with an ever-increasing number of
+   corn and cotton-growing Irelands revolving around her, the industrial
+   sun.  What a glorious prospect!
+
+   "The manufacturing capitalists set about the realisation of this their
+   great object with that strong common sense and that contempt for
+   traditional principles which has ever distinguished them from their
+   more narrow-minded compeers on the Continent.  Chartism was dying out.
+   The revival of commercial prosperity, natural after the revulsion of
+   1847 had spent itself, was put down altogether to the credit of Free
+   Trade.  Both these circumstances had turned the English working-class,
+   politically, into the tail of the 'great Liberal party,' the party led
+   by the manufacturers.  This advantage, once gained, had to be
+   perpetuated.  And the manufacturing capitalists, from the Chartist
+   opposition, not to Free Trade, but to the transformation of Free Trade
+   into the one vital national question, had learnt, and were learning
+   more and more, that the middle-class can never obtain full social and
+   political power over the nation except by the help of the
+   working-class.  Thus a gradual change came over the relations between
+   both classes.  The Factory Acts, once the bugbear of all
+   manufacturers, were not only willingly submitted to, but their
+   expansion into acts regulating almost all trades, was tolerated.
+   Trades' Unions, hitherto considered inventions of the devil himself,
+   were now petted and patronised as perfectly legitimate institutions,
+   and as useful means of spreading sound economical doctrines amongst
+   the workers.  Even strikes, than which nothing had been more nefarious
+   up to 1848, were now gradually found out to be occasionally very
+   useful, especially when provoked by the masters themselves, at their
+   own time.  Of the legal enactments, placing the workman at a lower
+   level or at a disadvantage with regard to the master, at least the
+   most revolting were repealed.  And, practically, that horrid 'People's
+   Charter' actually became the political programme of the very
+   manufacturers who had opposed it to the last.  'The Abolition of the
+   Property Qualification' and 'Vote by Ballot' are now the law of the
+   land.  The Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 make a near approach to
+   'universal suffrage,' at least such as it now exists in Germany; the
+   Redistribution Bill now before Parliament creates 'equal electoral
+   districts'--on the whole not more unequal than those of Germany;
+   'payment of members,' and shorter, if not actually 'annual
+   Parliaments,' are visibly looming in the distance--and yet there are
+   people who say that Chartism is dead.
+
+   "The Revolution of 1848, not less than many of its predecessors, has
+   had strange bedfellows and successors.  The very people who put it
+   down have become, as Karl Marx used to say, its testamentary
+   executors.  Louis Napoleon had to create an independent and united
+   Italy, Bismarck had to revolutionise Germany and to restore Hungarian
+   independence, and the English manufacturers had to enact the People's
+   Charter.
+
+   "For England, the effects of this domination of the manufacturing
+   capitalists were at first startling.  Trade revived and extended to a
+   degree unheard of even in this cradle of modern industry; the previous
+   astounding creations of steam and machinery dwindled into nothing
+   compared with the immense mass of productions of the twenty years from
+   1850 to 1870, with the overwhelming figures of exports and imports, of
+   wealth accumulated in the hands of capitalists and of human working
+   power concentrated in the large towns.  The progress was indeed
+   interrupted, as before, by a crisis every ten years, in 1857 as well
+   as in 1866; but these revulsions were now considered as natural,
+   inevitable events, which must be fatalistically submitted to, and
+   which always set themselves right in the end.
+
+   "And the condition of the working-class during this period?  There was
+   temporary improvement even for the great mass.  But this improvement
+   always was reduced to the old level by the influx of the great body of
+   the unemployed reserve, by the constant superseding of bands by new
+   machinery, by the immigration of the agricultural population, now,
+   too, more and more superseded by machines.
+
+   "A permanent improvement can be recognised for two 'protected'
+   sections only of the working-class.  Firstly, the factory hands.  The
+   fixing by Act of Parliament of their working-day within relatively
+   rational limits has restored their physical constitution and endowed
+   them with a moral superiority, enhanced by their local concentration.
+   They are undoubtedly better off than before 1848.  The best proof is
+   that, out of ten strikes they make, nine are provoked by the
+   manufacturers in their own interests, as the only means of securing a
+   reduced production.  You can never get the masters to agree to work
+   'short time,' let manufactured goods be ever so unsaleable; but get
+   the workpeople to strike, and the masters shut their factories to a
+   man.
+
+   "Secondly, the great Trades' Unions.  They are the organisations of
+   those trades in which the labour of _grown-up men_ predominates, or is
+   alone applicable.  Here the competition neither of women and children
+   nor of machinery has so far weakened their organised strength.  The
+   engineers, the carpenters, and joiners, the bricklayers, are each of
+   them a power, to that extent that, as in the case of the bricklayers
+   and bricklayers' labourers, they can even successfully resist the
+   introduction of machinery.  That their condition has remarkably
+   improved since 1848 there can be no doubt, and the best proof of this
+   is in the fact, that for more than fifteen years not only have their
+   employers been with them, but they with their employers, upon
+   exceedingly good terms.  They form an aristocracy among the working-
+   class; they have succeeded in enforcing for themselves a relatively
+   comfortable position, and they accept it as final.  They are the model
+   working-men of Messrs. Leone Levi & Giffen, and they are very nice
+   people indeed nowadays to deal with, for any sensible capitalist in
+   particular and for the whole capitalist class in general.
+
+   "But as to the great mass of working-people, the state of misery and
+   insecurity in which they live now is as low as ever, if not lower.  The
+   East End of London is an everspreading pool of stagnant misery and
+   desolation, of starvation when out of work, and degradation, physical
+   and moral, when in work.  And so in all other large towns--abstraction
+   made of the privileged minority of the workers; and so in the smaller
+   towns and in the agricultural districts.  The law which reduces the
+   _value_ of labour-power to the value of the necessary means of
+   subsistence, and the other law which reduces its _average price_, as a
+   rule, to the minimum of those means of subsistence, these laws act
+   upon them with the irresistible force of an automatic engine, which
+   crushes them between its wheels.
+
+   "This, then, was the position created by the Free Trade policy of
+   1847, and by twenty years of the rule of the manufacturing
+   capitalists.  But, then, a change came.  The crash of 1866 was,
+   indeed, followed by a slight and short revival about 1873; but that
+   did not last.  We did not, indeed, pass through the full crisis at the
+   time it was due, in 1877 or 1878; but we have had, ever since 1876, a
+   chronic state of stagnation in all dominant branches of industry.
+   Neither will the full crash come; nor will the period of longed-for
+   prosperity to which we used to be entitled before and after it.  A
+   dull depression, a chronic glut of all markets for all trades, that is
+   what we have been living in for nearly ten years.  How is this?
+
+   "The Free Trade theory was based upon one assumption: that England was
+   to be the one great manufacturing centre of an agricultural world.  And
+   the actual fact is that this assumption has turned out to be a pure
+   delusion.  The conditions of modern industry, steam-power and
+   machinery, can be established wherever there is fuel, especially
+   coals.  And other countries beside England,--France, Belgium, Germany,
+   America, even Russia,--have coals.  And the people over there did not
+   see the advantage of being turned into Irish pauper farmers merely for
+   the greater wealth and glory of English capitalists.  They set
+   resolutely about manufacturing, not only for themselves, but for the
+   rest of the world; and the consequence is, that the manufacturing
+   monopoly enjoyed by England for nearly a century is irretrievably
+   broken up.
+
+   "But the manufacturing monopoly of England is the pivot of the present
+   social system of England.  Even while that monopoly lasted, the
+   markets could not keep pace with the increasing productivity of
+   English manufacturers; the decennial crises were the consequence.  And
+   new markets are getting scarcer every day, so much so that even the
+   negroes of the Congo are now to be forced into the civilisation
+   attendant upon Manchester calicos, Staffordshire pottery, and
+   Birmingham hardware.  How will it be when Continental, and especially
+   American, goods flow in in ever-increasing quantities--when the
+   predominating share, still held by British manufacturers, will become
+   reduced from year to year?  Answer, Free Trade, thou universal
+   panacea.
+
+   "I am not the first to point this out.  Already, in 1883, at the
+   Southport meeting of the British Association, Mr. Inglis Palgrave, the
+   President of the Economic section, stated plainly that 'the days of
+   great trade profits in England were over, and there was a pause in the
+   progress of several great branches of industrial labour.  _The country
+   might almost be said to be entering the non-progressive state_.'
+
+   "But what is to be the consequence?  Capitalist production _cannot_
+   stop.  It must go on increasing and expanding, or it must die.  Even
+   now, the mere reduction of England's lion's share in the supply of the
+   world's markets means stagnation, distress, excess of capital here,
+   excess of unemployed workpeople there.  What will it be when the
+   increase of yearly production is brought to a complete stop?
+
+   "Here is the vulnerable place, the heel of Achilles, for capitalistic
+   production.  Its very basis is the necessity of constant expansion,
+   and this constant expansion now becomes impossible.  It ends in a
+   deadlock.  Every year England is brought nearer face to face with the
+   question: either the country must go to pieces, or capitalist
+   production must.  Which is it to be?
+
+   "And the working-class?  If even under the unparalleled commercial and
+   industrial expansion, from 1848 to 1866, they have had to undergo such
+   misery; if even then the great bulk of them experienced at best but a
+   temporary improvement of their condition, while only a small,
+   privileged, 'protected' minority was permanently benefited, what will
+   it be when this dazzling period is brought finally to a close; when
+   the present dreary stagnation shall not only become intensified, but
+   this, its intensified condition, shall become the permanent and normal
+   state of English trade?
+
+   "The truth is this: during the period of England's industrial monopoly
+   the English working-class have, to a certain extent, shared in the
+   benefits of the monopoly.  These benefits were very unequally
+   parcelled out amongst them; the privileged minority pocketed most, but
+   even the great mass had, at least, a temporary share now and then.  And
+   that is the reason why, since the dying-out of Owenism, there has been
+   no Socialism in England.  With the breakdown of that monopoly, the
+   English working-class will lose that privileged position; it will find
+   itself generally--the privileged and leading minority not excepted--on
+   a level with its fellow-workers abroad.  And that is the reason why
+   there will be Socialism again in England."
+
+To this statement of the case, as that case appeared to me in 1885, I
+have but little to add.  Needless to say that to-day there is indeed
+"Socialism again in England," and plenty of it--Socialism of all shades:
+Socialism conscious and unconscious, Socialism prosaic and poetic,
+Socialism of the working-class and of the middle-class, for, verily, that
+abomination of abominations, Socialism, has not only become respectable,
+but has actually donned evening dress and lounges lazily on drawing-room
+_causeuses_.  That shows the incurable fickleness of that terrible despot
+of "society," middle-class public opinion, and once more justifies the
+contempt in which we Socialists of a past generation always held that
+public opinion.  At the same time, we have no reason to grumble at the
+symptom itself.
+
+What I consider far more important than this momentary fashion among
+bourgeois circles of affecting a mild dilution of Socialism, and even
+more than the actual progress Socialism has made in England generally,
+that is the revival of the East End of London.  That immense haunt of
+misery is no longer the stagnant pool it was six years ago.  It has
+shaken off its torpid despair, has returned to life, and has become the
+home of what is called the "New Unionism;" that is to say, of the
+organisation of the great mass of "unskilled" workers.  This organisation
+may to a great extent adopt the form of the old Unions of "skilled"
+workers, but it is essentially different in character.  The old Unions
+preserve the traditions of the time when they were founded, and look upon
+the wages system as a once for all established, final fact, which they at
+best can modify in the interest of their members.  The new Unions were
+founded at a time when the faith in the eternity of the wages system was
+severely shaken; their founders and promoters were Socialists either
+consciously or by feeling; the masses, whose adhesion gave them strength,
+were rough, neglected, looked down upon by the working-class aristocracy;
+but they had this immense advantage, that _their minds were virgin soil_,
+entirely free from the inherited "respectable" bourgeois prejudices which
+hampered the brains of the better situated "old" Unionists.  And thus we
+see now these new Unions taking the lead of the working-class movement
+generally, and more and more taking in tow the rich and proud "old"
+Unions.
+
+Undoubtedly, the East Enders have committed colossal blunders; so have
+their predecessors, and so do the doctrinaire Socialists who pooh-pooh
+them.  A large class, like a great nation, never learns better or quicker
+than by undergoing the consequences of its own mistakes.  And for all the
+faults committed in past, present, and future, the revival of the East
+End of London remains one of the greatest and most fruitful facts of this
+_fin de siecle_, and glad and proud I am to have lived to see it.
+
+F. ENGELS.
+_January_ 11_th_, 1892.
+
+
+
+
+ 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 working-man'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 to-day.
+
+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 neighbourhood
+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 Standhill, 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 working-men,
+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
+yeomen, 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
+hand-work 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 manufacture {7}
+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 1834 England exported 556,000,000 yards of woven
+cotton goods, 76,500,000 pounds of cotton yarn, and cotton hosiery of the
+value of 1,200,000 pounds.  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
+MacCulloch'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 33,000 horse-power,
+and water, equivalent to 11,000 horse-power.  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 Heathcote invented the bobbin-net 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, 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 district, 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 1834, 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 1835, 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:
+
+Bradford contained in 1801 29,000, and in 1831 77,000 inhabitants.
+Halifax ,, ,, 68,000, ,, ,, 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 32,000,000 yards in 1800 to
+53,000,000 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," consists 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 1790 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 3,000,000 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 1753, 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
+Wedgewood, about 1763.  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 Humphrey 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 M'Adam.  In
+Scotland, the Department of Public Works built since 1803 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.  To-day 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 regime_ 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
+shopkeepers, and very very few handicraftsmen.  For, though the rising
+manufacture first attained importance by transforming tools into
+machines, workrooms 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 working-man 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 to-day 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.
+
+
+
+
+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. {20}
+
+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, has 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 to-
+day, wages sink so low in the country to-morrow, 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 to-day 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.
+
+
+
+
+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. {23}
+
+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 repellant 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, 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 to-morrow?  Who assures him
+employment, who vouches for it that, if for any reason or no reason his
+lord and master discharges him to-morrow, 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 to-day, and that it does not depend
+upon himself whether he shall have something to-morrow.  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 to-day, it is very uncertain whether he shall to-morrow.
+
+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 kitchen 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,
+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_, 5,366 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, 26,830 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 pounds, and the 5,336 families above mentioned
+in Westminster, a yearly rent of 40,000 pounds.
+
+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, or about
+   12,000 persons.  The space upon which this large population dwells, is
+   less than 400 yards (1,200 feet) square, and in this overcrowding it
+   is nothing unusual to find a man, his wife, four or five children,
+   and, sometimes, both grandparents, all in one single room, where they
+   eat, sleep, and work.  I believe that before the Bishop of London
+   called attention to this most poverty-stricken parish, people at the
+   West End knew as little of it as of the savages of Australia or the
+   South Sea Isles.  And if we make ourselves acquainted with these
+   unfortunates, through personal observation, if we watch them at their
+   scanty meal and see them bowed by illness and want of work, we shall
+   find such a mass of helplessness and misery, that a nation like ours
+   must blush that these things can be possible.  I was rector near
+   Huddersfield during the three years in which the mills were at their
+   worst, but I have never seen such complete helplessness of the poor as
+   since then in Bethnal Green.  Not one father of a family in ten in the
+   whole neighbourhood has other clothing than his working suit, and that
+   is as bad and tattered as possible; many, indeed, have no other
+   covering for the night than these rags, and no bed, save a sack of
+   straw and shavings."
+
+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 working-men's homes.
+
+On the occasion of an inquest held Nov. 14th, 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. 3 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 pound 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 all 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." {32}
+
+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 every
+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, {33} 1,318
+persons lived in 52 houses with 390 rooms in Barral Street, and 1,997
+persons in 71 houses with 393 rooms in and near Church Street; that:
+
+   "In this and the adjoining district there exists a multitude of foul
+   courts and alleys; many cellars receive all their light through the
+   door, while in not a few the inhabitants sleep upon the bare floor,
+   though most of them possess bedsteads at least; Nicholson's Court, for
+   example, contains twenty-eight wretched little rooms with 151 human
+   beings in the greatest want, there being but two bedsteads and two
+   blankets to be found 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 district 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:
+
+   "He had never before seen such misery as in his parish, where the
+   people were without furniture, without everything, two married couples
+   often sharing one room.  In a single day he had visited seven houses
+   in which there was not a bed, in some of them not even a heap of
+   straw.  Old people of eighty years sleep on the board floor, nearly
+   all slept in their day-clothes.  In one cellar room he found two
+   families from a Scotch country district; soon after their removal to
+   the city two of the children had died, and a third was dying at the
+   time of his visit.  Each family had a filthy pile of straw lying in a
+   corner; the cellar sheltered besides the two families a donkey, and
+   was, moreover, so dark that it was impossible to distinguish one
+   person from another by day.  Dr. Lee declared that it was enough to
+   make a heart of adamant bleed to see such misery in a country like
+   Scotland."
+
+In the Edinburgh _Medical and Surgical Journal_, Dr. Hennan reports a
+similar state of things.  From a Parliamentary Report, {35a} 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. {35b}
+
+   "These streets," says an English journal in an article upon the
+   sanitary condition of the working-people in cities, "are often so
+   narrow that a person can step from the window of one house into that
+   of its opposite neighbour, while the houses are piled so high, storey
+   upon storey, that the light can scarcely penetrate into the court or
+   alley that lies between.  In this part of the city there are neither
+   sewers nor other drains, nor even privies belonging to the houses.  In
+   consequence, all refuse, garbage, and excrements of at least 50,000
+   persons are thrown into the gutters every night, so that, in spite of
+   all street sweeping, a mass of dried filth and foul vapours are
+   created, which not only offend the sight and smell, but endanger the
+   health of the inhabitants in the highest degree.  Is it to be wondered
+   at, that in such localities all considerations of health, morals, and
+   even the most ordinary decency are utterly neglected?  On the
+   contrary, all who are more intimately acquainted with the condition of
+   the inhabitants will testify to the high degree which disease,
+   wretchedness, and demoralisation have here reached.  Society in such
+   districts has sunk to a level indescribably low and hopeless.  The
+   houses of the poor are generally filthy, and are evidently never
+   cleansed.  They consist in most cases of a single room which, while
+   subject to the worst ventilation, is yet usually kept cold by the
+   broken and badly fitting windows, and is sometimes damp and partly
+   below ground level, always badly furnished and thoroughly
+   uncomfortable, a straw-heap often serving the whole family for a bed,
+   upon which men and women, young and old, sleep in revolting confusion.
+   Water can be had only from the public pumps, and the difficulty of
+   obtaining it naturally fosters all possible filth."
+
+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 parti-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 quarters of the city there are many bad districts,
+   filthy and neglected, full of stagnant pools and heaps of refuse.
+   Courts are very numerous in Birmingham, reaching two thousand, and
+   containing the greater number of the working-people of the city.  These
+   courts are usually narrow, muddy, badly ventilated, ill-drained, and
+   lined with eight to twenty houses, which, by reason of having their
+   rear walls in common, can usually be ventilated from one side only.  In
+   the background, within the court, there is usually an ash heap or
+   something of the kind, the filth of which cannot be described.  It
+   must, however, be observed that the newer courts are more sensibly
+   built and more decently kept, and that even in the old ones, the
+   cottages are much less crowded than in Manchester and Liverpool,
+   wherefore Birmingham shows even during the reign of an epidemic a far
+   smaller mortality than, for instance, Wolverhampton, Dudley, and
+   Bilston, only a few miles distant.  Cellar dwellings are unknown, too,
+   in Birmingham, though a few cellars are misused as workrooms.  The
+   lodging-houses for proletarians are rather numerous (over four
+   hundred), chiefly in courts in the heart of the town.  They are nearly
+   all disgustingly filthy and ill-smelling, the refuge of beggars,
+   thieves, tramps, and prostitutes, who eat, drink, smoke, and sleep
+   here without the slightest regard to comfort or decency in an
+   atmosphere endurable to these degraded beings only."
+
+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% of the whole population (about
+   300,000), and lives in parts of the city which exceed in wretchedness
+   and squalor the lowest nooks of St. Giles and Whitechapel, the
+   Liberties of Dublin, the Wynds of Edinburgh.  There are numbers of
+   such localities in the heart of the city, south of the Trongate,
+   westward from the Saltmarket, in Calton and off the High Street,
+   endless labyrinths of lanes or wynds into which open at almost every
+   step, courts or blind alleys, formed by ill-ventilated, high-piled,
+   waterless, and dilapidated houses.  These are literally swarming with
+   inhabitants.  They contain three or four families upon each floor,
+   perhaps twenty persons.  In some cases each storey is let out in
+   sleeping places, so that fifteen to twenty persons are packed, one on
+   top of the other, I cannot say accommodated, in a single room.  These
+   districts shelter the poorest, most depraved, and worthless members of
+   the community, and may be regarded as the sources of those frightful
+   epidemics which, beginning here, spread desolation over Glasgow."
+
+Let us hear how J. C. Symonds, Government Commissioner for the
+investigation of the condition of the hand-weavers, describes these
+portions of the city: {38}
+
+   "I have seen wretchedness in some of its worse phases both here and
+   upon the Continent, but until I visited the wynds of Glasgow I did not
+   believe that so much crime, misery, and disease could exist in any
+   civilised country.  In the lower lodging-houses ten, twelve, sometimes
+   twenty persons of both sexes, all ages and various degrees of
+   nakedness, sleep indiscriminately huddled together upon the floor.
+   These dwellings are usually so damp, filthy, and ruinous, that no one
+   could wish to keep his horse in one of them."
+
+And in another place:
+
+   "The wynds of Glasgow contain a fluctuating population of fifteen to
+   thirty thousand human beings.  This quarter consists wholly of narrow
+   alleys and square courts, in the middle of every one of which there
+   lies a dung heap.  Revolting as was the outward appearance of these
+   courts, I was yet not prepared for the filth and wretchedness within.
+   In some of the sleeping-places which we visited at night (the
+   Superintendent of Police, Captain Miller, and Symonds) we found a
+   complete layer of human beings stretched upon the floor, often fifteen
+   to twenty, some clad, others naked, men and women indiscriminately.
+   Their bed was a litter of mouldy straw, mixed with rags.  There was
+   little or no furniture, and the only thing which gave these dens any
+   shimmer of habitableness was a fire upon the hearth.  Theft and
+   prostitution form the chief means of subsistence of this population.
+   No one seemed to take the trouble to cleanse this Augean stable, this
+   Pandemonium, this tangle of crime, filth, and pestilence in the centre
+   of the second city of the kingdom.  An extended examination of the
+   lowest districts of other cities never revealed anything half so bad,
+   either in intensity of moral and physical infection, nor in
+   comparative density of population.  In this quarter most of the houses
+   have been declared by the Court of Guild ruinous and unfit for
+   habitation, but precisely these are the most densely populated,
+   because, according to the law, no rent can be demanded for 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 woollen 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 gentle slope that descends into the valley of the
+Aire.  This stream flows through the city for about a mile-and-a-half and
+is exposed to violent floods during thaws or heavy rain.  The higher
+western portions of the city are clean, for such a large town.  But the
+low-lying districts along the river and its tributary becks are narrow,
+dirty, and enough in themselves to shorten the lives of the inhabitants,
+especially of little children.  Added to this, the disgusting state of
+the working-men's districts about Kirkgate, Marsh Lane, Cross Street and
+Richmond Road, which is chiefly attributable to their unpaved, drainless
+streets, irregular architecture, numerous courts and alleys, and total
+lack of the most ordinary means of cleanliness, all this taken together
+is explanation enough of the excessive mortality in these unhappy abodes
+of filthy misery.  In consequence of the overflows of 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 houses and cellars are often so full of water that they have to be
+pumped out.  And at such times the water rises, even where there are
+sewers, out of them into cellars, {40a} engenders miasmatic vapours
+strongly impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, and leaves a disgusting
+residuum highly injurious to health.  During the spring-floods of 1839
+the action of such a choking of the sewers was so injurious, that,
+according to the report of the Registrar of Births and Deaths for this
+part of the town, there were three deaths to two births, whereas in the
+same three months, in every other part of the town, there were three
+births to two deaths.  Other thickly populated districts are without any
+sewers whatsoever, or so badly provided as to derive no benefit from
+them.  In some rows of houses the cellars are seldom dry; in certain
+districts there are several streets covered with soft mud a foot deep.
+The inhabitants have made vain attempts from time to time to repair these
+streets with shovelfuls of cinders, but in spite of all such attempts,
+dung-heaps, and pools of dirty water emptied from the houses, fill all
+the holes until wind and sun dry them up. {40b}  An ordinary cottage in
+Leeds occupies not more than five yards square of land, and usually
+consists of a cellar, a living room, and one sleeping-room.  These
+contracted dwellings, filled day and night with human beings, are 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 we found
+brothers and sisters, and lodgers of both sexes, sharing the parents'
+sleeping-room, whence arise consequences at the contemplation of which
+human feeling shudders."
+
+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 _debris_ 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 in Huddersfield whole streets and many
+lanes and courts are neither paved nor supplied with sewers nor other
+drains; that in them refuse, _debris_, and filth of every sort lies
+accumulating, festers and rots, and that, nearly everywhere, stagnant
+water accumulates in pools, in consequence of which the adjoining
+dwellings must inevitably be bad and filthy, so that in such places
+diseases arise and threaten the health of the whole town."
+
+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 broad 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 racecourse 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 left 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
+population; 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 official 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
+sensitive 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.
+
+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. {49}  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 debris, 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 debris; 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's quarter below.
+
+Above Ducie Bridge, the left bank grows more flat and the right bank
+steeper, but the condition of the dwellings on both banks 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 debris,
+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, debris,
+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 cattle-sheds 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, remains 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. {55}  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 thoroughfares, 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.
+
+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
+fire-wood--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 door-posts, 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 appearance, 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 to-day, 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, {63}
+recognised and highly valued as an authority by the manufacturers, and a
+fanatical opponent of all independent movements of the workers:
+
+"As I passed through the dwellings of the mill hands in Irish Town,
+Ancoats, and Little Ireland, I was only amazed that it is possible to
+maintain a reasonable state of health in such homes.  These towns, for in
+extent and number of inhabitants they are towns, have been erected with
+the utmost disregard of everything except the immediate advantage of the
+speculating builder.  A carpenter and builder unite to buy a series of
+building sites (_i.e_., they lease them for a number of years), and cover
+them with so-called houses.  In one place we found a whole street
+following the course of a ditch, because in this way deeper cellars could
+be secured without the cost of digging, cellars not for storing wares or
+rubbish, but for dwellings for human beings.  _Not one house of this
+street escaped the cholera_.  In general, the streets of these suburbs
+are unpaved, with a dung-heap or ditch in the middle; the houses are
+built back to back, without ventilation or drainage, and whole families
+are limited to a corner of a cellar or 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, 6,565 urgently needed whitewashing
+within; 960 were out of repair; 939 had insufficient drains; 1,435 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.
+{64}
+
+It often happens that a whole Irish family is crowded into one bed; often
+a heap of filthy straw or quilts of old sacking cover all in an
+indiscriminate heap, where all alike are degraded by want, stolidity, and
+wretchedness.  Often the inspectors found, in a single house, two
+families in two rooms.  All slept in one, and used the other as a kitchen
+and dining-room in common.  Often more than one family lived in a single
+damp cellar, in whose pestilent atmosphere twelve to sixteen persons were
+crowded together.  To these and other sources of disease must be added
+that pigs were kept, and other disgusting things of the most revolting
+kind were found.
+
+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 concerning the sanitary
+condition of the working-class," six times repeated in Manchester.  Common
+lodging-houses, too, are very numerous; Dr. Kay gives their number in
+1831 at 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. {65}  Gaskell 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 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,--{67}
+
+   "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, sixty-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, the same sheet reported
+three similar cases.  According to the _Guardian_ for August 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
+pounds 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_: "Salted butter is sold for fresh, the lumps being covered with
+a coating of fresh butter, or a pound of fresh being laid on top to
+taste, while the salted article is sold after this test, or the whole
+mass is washed and then sold as fresh.  With sugar, pounded rice and
+other cheap adulterating materials are mixed, and the whole sold at full
+price.  The refuse of soap-boiling establishments also is mixed with
+other things and sold as sugar.  Chicory and other cheap stuff is mixed
+with ground coffee, and artificial coffee beans with the unground
+article.  Cocoa is often adulterated with fine brown earth, treated with
+fat to render it more easily mistakable for real cocoa.  Tea is mixed
+with the leaves of the sloe and with other refuse, or dry tea-leaves are
+roasted on hot copper plates, so returning to the proper colour and being
+sold as fresh.  Pepper is mixed with pounded nutshells; port wine is
+manufactured outright (out of alcohol, dye-stuffs, etc.), while it is
+notorious that more of it is consumed in England alone than is grown in
+Portugal; and tobacco is mixed with disgusting substances of all sorts
+and in all possible forms in which the article is produced."  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 threepence 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 practiced 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 16, 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 9, 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 pre-supposes 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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,"
+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 worker 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 to-day 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. {80}
+
+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 at 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 are always
+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 them.  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 centralising 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 improve; 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 handcarts, 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
+waggon 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.
+Matches and such things, sealing-wax, and patent mixtures for lighting
+fires are further resources of such venders.  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 all the London docks," says the Rev. W. Champney,
+   preacher of the East End, "hundreds of the poor appear every morning
+   in winter before daybreak, in the hope of getting a day's work.  They
+   await the opening of the gates; and, when the youngest and strongest
+   and best known have been engaged, hundreds cast down by disappointed
+   hope, go back to their wretched homes."
+
+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 of 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, {87} 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 pounds, they sank to 36,000 pounds.  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 pounds.  This, with a contribution
+of 7,000 pounds, was wholly exhausted before the crisis reached its
+height.  So it was everywhere.  A report drawn up in January, 1843, 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, 1843, 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.
+
+
+
+
+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. {90a}  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: {90b}
+
+   "The wild Milesian 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-men 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 injury 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 {95} 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 to-day 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; 16.5 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. {100a}
+
+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; 32,000 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 {100b} regards as an indication that
+the cause of the malady was to be sought in mental excitement and
+anxiety.  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, {100c} 60,000.  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.
+
+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 usual 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 2,200 patients annually.  But what is that in a city in
+which, according to Gaskell's calculation, {104} 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 "heartsease," 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 {105a} that one apothecary had, according to his own
+statement, used thirteen hundredweight of laudanum 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 2.25 per cent.  That
+is to say, out of forty-five persons, one dies every year. {105b}  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 30.75.  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. Cowen, {106}
+the average has been, since 1830, one in 30; 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 ,,                  ,,     I. ,,       ,,      ,,      55
+,,     ,,                  ,,    II. ,,       ,,      ,,      38
+,,     ,,                  ,,   III. ,,       ,,      ,,      35
+Third  ,,                  ,,     I. ,,      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 is those bad streets which were improved,
+decreased 25 per cent.  He closes with the remark, very frank for an
+English bourgeois: {107}
+
+   "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. {108a}  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 2.5 to
+1.  Fatal cases of smallpox, 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--{108b}
+
+             Under  5-19   20-39   40-59   60-69   70-79  80-89  90-99  100 x
+             5 years
+In Rutlandshire, 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  177     3
+Town of Carlisle,
+1779-1787, before
+introduction of
+mills        4,408   921   1,006   1,201     940     826    633  153    22
+Town of Carlisle,
+after introduction
+of mills     4,738   930   l,201   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 divers 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 Despatch_ 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 policy, 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 pounds, has only the single trifling item of 40,000
+pounds 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 had attended both day and Sunday school, 'had
+   never heard of another world, of Heaven, or another life.'  A boy,
+   seventeen years old, did not know that twice two are four, nor how
+   many farthings in two pence 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 are, nor
+   how much four farthings make.  A youth of seventeen asserted that four
+   farthings are four half pence; a third, seventeen years old, answered
+   several very simple questions with the brief statement, that he 'was
+   ne jedge o' nothin'.'" {112a}  These children who are crammed with
+   religious doctrines four or five years at a stretch, know as little at
+   the end as at the beginning.  One child "went to Sunday school
+   regularly for five years; does not know who Jesus Christ is, but had
+   heard the name; had never heard of the twelve Apostles, Samson, Moses,
+   Aaron, etc." {112b}  Another "attended Sunday school regularly six
+   years; knows who Jesus Christ was; he died on the Cross to save our
+   Saviour; had never heard of St. Peter or St. Paul." {113a}  A third,
+   "attended different Sunday schools seven years; can read only the
+   thin, easy books with simple words of one syllable; has heard of the
+   Apostles, but does not know whether St. Peter was one or St. John; the
+   latter must have been St. John Wesley." {113b}  To the question who
+   Christ was, Horne received the following answers among others: "He was
+   Adam," "He was an Apostle," "He was the Saviour's Lord's Son," and
+   from a youth of sixteen: "He was a king of London long ago."  In
+   Sheffield, Commissioner Symonds 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: "I know, mister; they were the
+   lepers!" {113c}  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.  Symonds {115a} 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. {115b}  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 to-day 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 {116} 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:
+{117a}
+
+   "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; society, 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 fuz, gin riot, wrath and toil, created by a Demon,
+   governed by a Demon?"
+
+And elsewhere: {117b}
+
+   "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. {119}  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: {120}
+
+   "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_, a
+man after the heart of the Anti-Corn Law League, Dr. Andrew Ure, {122}
+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 employes 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 employe 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
+crisis, the last and most violent of which determines the fate of the
+patient.  And as the English nation cannot succumb under the final
+crises, 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.
+
+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: {125}
+
+   "The poor give one another more than the rich give the poor.  I can
+   confirm my statement by the testimony of one of our eldest, most
+   skilful, most observant, and humane physicians, Dr. Bardsley, who has
+   often declared that the total sum which the poor yearly bestow upon
+   one another, surpasses that which the rich contribute in the same
+   time."
+
+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-grabber 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.  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 produce 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 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 Matthew, 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, Reaumur.  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,
+7,898; 1820, 13,710; 1825, 14,437; 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 3,176, 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 districts as 1: 840. {131a}  In the whole
+of England to-day the proportion is 1: 660; {131b} 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.
+
+
+
+
+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, {134a} Baines, {134b} 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,
+{135} 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, 1,060 fewer mule spinners were employed
+than in 1829, though the number of spindles in these 35 factories had
+increased by 99,239.  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 1840 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. {136}  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?" {138}  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 workrooms 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 workrooms, 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 {140} 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 water-
+power, 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 {141}
+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 those 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 419,560 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 96,569 adult male operatives, _or not one full
+quarter_ of the whole number.  In the cotton factories, 56.25 per cent.;
+in the woollen mills, 69.5 per cent.; in the silk mills, 70.5 per cent.;
+in the flax-spinning mills, 70.5 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 {143a} showed for nine
+months: 69 deaths from burning, 56 from drowning, 23 from falling, 77
+from other causes, or a total of 225 {143b} deaths from accidents, 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. {144}  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: {145}
+
+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 house 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 he 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.  The same relation exists on the part
+of those children who support unemployed parents {147a} 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: {147b} 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: {147c}
+
+   "The girls marry early and recklessly; they have neither means, time,
+   nor opportunity to learn the ordinary duties of household life; but if
+   they had them all, they would find no time in married life for the
+   performance of these duties.  The mother is more than twelve hours
+   away from her child daily; the baby is cared for by a young girl or an
+   old woman, to whom it is given to nurse.  Besides this, the dwelling
+   of the mill-hands is too often no home but a cellar, which contains no
+   cooking or washing utensils, no sewing or mending materials, nothing
+   which makes life agreeable and civilised, or the domestic hearth
+   attractive.  For these and other reasons, and especially for the sake
+   of the better chances of life for the little children, I can but wish
+   and hope that a time may come in which married women will be shut out
+   of the factories." {148a}
+
+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 workroom, 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 most injurious.  The language used in
+the mills is characterised by many witnesses in the report of 1833, as
+"indecent," "bad," "filthy," etc. {148b}  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. {148c}  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." {149a}  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.
+{149b}  And Dr. Hawkins {149c} says:
+
+   "An estimate of sexual morality cannot readily be reduced to figures;
+   but if I may trust my own observations and the general opinion of
+   those with whom I have spoken, as well as the whole tenor of the
+   testimony furnished me, the aspect of the influence of factory life
+   upon the morality of the youthful female population is most
+   depressing."
+
+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 workrooms 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 year.  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 6.5 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 6.5 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 out
+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 to-day 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. {151}  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 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 {152a} 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:
+{152b}
+
+   "I never saw the peculiar bending of the lower ends of the thigh bones
+   before I came to Leeds.  At first I thought it was rachitis, but I was
+   soon led to change my opinion in consequence of the mass of patients
+   who presented themselves at the hospital, and the appearances of the
+   disease at an age (from the fourteenth to the eighteenth year) in
+   which children are usually not subject to rachitis, as well as by the
+   circumstance that the malady had first appeared after children began
+   to work in the mills.  Thus far I have seen about a hundred such
+   cases, and can, most decidedly, express the opinion that they are the
+   consequences of overwork.  So far as I know they were all mill
+   children, and themselves attributed the evil to this cause.  The
+   number of cases of curvature of the spine which have fallen under my
+   observation, and which were evidently consequent upon too protracted
+   standing, was not less than three hundred."
+
+Precisely similar is the testimony of Dr. Ray, for eighteen years
+physician in the hospital in Leeds: {153a}
+
+   "Malformations of the spine are very frequent among mill-hands; some
+   of them consequent upon mere overwork, others the effect of long work
+   upon constitutions originally feeble, or weakened by bad food.
+   Deformities seem even more frequent than these diseases; the knees
+   were bent inward, the ligaments very often relaxed and enfeebled, and
+   the long bones of the legs bent.  The thick ends of these long bones
+   were especially apt to be bent and disproportionately developed, and
+   these patients came from the factories in which long work-hours were
+   of frequent occurrence."
+
+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. {153b}  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. Ray, 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 {154a} frequently observed, as
+did the physicians and surgeons in Leeds. {154b}  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. {155}  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,
+unusually 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: {156}
+
+   "The unfavourable influences of mill-work upon the hands are the
+   following: (1) The inevitable necessity of forcing their mental and
+   bodily effort to keep pace with a machine moved by a uniform and
+   unceasing motive power.  (2) Continuance in an upright position during
+   unnaturally long and quickly recurring periods.  (3) Loss of sleep in
+   consequence of too long working-hours, pain in the legs, and general
+   physical derangement.  To these are often added low, crowded, dusty,
+   or damp workrooms, impure air, a high temperature, and constant
+   perspiration.  Hence the boys especially very soon and with but few
+   exceptions, lose the rosy freshness of childhood, and become paler and
+   thinner than other boys.  Even the hand-weaver's bound boy, who sits
+   before his loom with his bare feet resting upon the clay-floor,
+   retains a fresher appearance, because he occasionally goes into the
+   fresh air for a time.  But the mill child has not a moment free except
+   for meals, and never goes into the fresh air except on its way to
+   them.  All adult male spinners are pale and thin, suffer from
+   capricious appetite and indigestion; and as they are all trained in
+   the mills from their youth up, and there are very few tall, athletic
+   men among them, the conclusion is justified that their occupation is
+   very unfavourable for the development of the male constitution;
+   females bear this work far better."  (Very naturally.  But we shall
+   see that they have their own diseases.)
+
+So, too, Power: {157a}
+
+   "I can bear witness that the factory system in Bradford has engendered
+   a multitude of cripples, and that the effect of long continued labour
+   upon the physique is apparent, not alone in actual deformity, but
+   also, and much more generally, in stunted growth, relaxation of the
+   muscles, and delicacy of the whole frame."
+
+So, too, F. Sharp, in Leeds, the surgeon {157b} already quoted:
+
+   "When I moved from Scarborough to Leeds, I was at once struck by the
+   fact that the general appearance of the children was much paler, and
+   their fibre less vigorous here than in Scarborough and its environs.  I
+   saw, too, that many children were exceptionally small for their age.  I
+   have met with numberless cases of scrofula, lung trouble, mesenteric
+   affections, and indigestion, concerning which I, as a medical man,
+   have no doubt that they arose from mill work.  I believe that the
+   nervous energy of the body is weakened by the long hours, and the
+   foundation of many diseases laid.  If people from the country were not
+   constantly coming in, the race of mill-hands would soon be wholly
+   degenerate."
+
+So, too, Beaumont, surgeon in Bradford:
+
+   "To my thinking, the system, according to which work is done in the
+   mills here, produces a peculiar relaxation of the whole organism, and
+   thereby makes children in the highest degree susceptible to epidemic,
+   as well as to incidental illness.  I regard the absence of all
+   appropriate regulations for ventilation and cleanliness in the mills
+   very decidedly as the chief cause of that peculiar tendency or
+   susceptibility to morbid affections which I have so frequently met in
+   my practice."
+
+Similar testimony is borne by Dr. Ray:
+
+   (1)  "I have had opportunity of observing the effects of the factory
+   system upon the health of children under the most favourable
+   circumstances (in Wood's mill, in Bradford, the best arranged of the
+   district, in which he was factory surgeon). (2)  These effects are
+   decidedly, and to a very great extent, injurious, even under these
+   most favourable circumstances. (3)  In the year 1842, three-fifths of
+   all the children employed in Wood's mill were treated by me. (4)  The
+   worst effect is not the predominance of deformities, but of enfeebled
+   and morbid constitutions. (5)  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 cites these witnesses, says:
+
+   "In conclusion, 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 consequence is
+   that many have died prematurely, and others are afflicted for life
+   with defective constitutions, and the fear of a posterity enfeebled by
+   the shattered constitution of the survivors is but too well founded,
+   from a physiological point of view."
+
+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.  Among the married women all the characteristic peculiarities
+   of the English wife are conspicuously wanting.  I must confess that
+   all the boys and girls brought before me from the Manchester mills had
+   a depressed appearance, and were very pale.  In the expression of
+   their faces lay nothing of the usual mobility, liveliness, and
+   cheeriness of youth.  Many of them told me that they felt not the
+   slightest inclination to play out of doors on Saturday and Sunday, but
+   preferred to be quiet at home."
+
+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, excess, and want of providence are the chief faults of
+   the factory population, and these evils may be readily traced to the
+   habits which are formed under the present system, and almost
+   inevitably arise from it.  It is universally admitted that
+   indigestion, hypochondria, and general debility affect this class to a
+   very great extent.  After twelve hours of monotonous toil, it is but
+   natural to look about for a stimulant of one sort or another; but when
+   the above-mentioned diseased conditions are added to the customary
+   weariness, people will quickly and repeatedly take refuge in
+   spirituous liquors."
+
+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 pigmies. {159a}  A recruiting officer {159b} 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 143 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 I was prepared for it from the way the children are
+   employed, I still found it difficult to believe the statements of the
+   older hands as to their ages; they age so very early."
+
+Surgeon Smellie, of Glasgow, who treated operatives chiefly, says that
+forty years is old age for them. {160a}  And similar evidence may be
+found elsewhere. {160b}  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 example of
+   malformation of the pelvis and of some other affections came under my
+   notice, these things are nevertheless so common, that every physician
+   must regard them as probable consequences of such working-hours, and
+   as vouched for besides by men of the highest medical credibility."
+
+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. {161}  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: {162a}
+
+   "A girl feels very ill, can scarcely do her work.  Why does she not
+   ask permission to go home?  Ah! the master is very particular, and if
+   we are away half a day, we risk being sent away altogether."
+
+Or Sir D. Barry: {162b}
+
+   "Thomas McDurt, workman, has slight fever.  Cannot stay at home longer
+   than four days, because he would fear of losing his place."
+
+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.  Robertson, 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. {162c}
+Menstruation first appears in the seventeenth or Eighteenth, sometimes in
+the twentieth year, and is often wholly wanting. {163a}  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. {163b}  Especially unwholesome is the wet spinning
+of linen-yarn which is carried on by young girls and boys.  The water
+spirts 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,
+1843, 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 16th, 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 1843, 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 over-grown 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 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 childbearing, 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, {167a} 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" {167b} 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."
+   {168a}
+
+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: {168b}
+
+   "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: {168c}
+
+   "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 exhilerating.  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 playground, 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 1834, 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.
+{169}
+
+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 1818, 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 workrooms 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 1834, 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 1834, 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 to-day, 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, 1844, 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 {174} 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. Thornley, 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 1843, 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. {176}  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. {178}
+
+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. {179a}  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. {179b}  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 place 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. {181a}  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 pounds
+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. {181b}  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, 1843, publishes a letter from an
+operative of Holmfirth, near Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, which refers to
+a manufacturer of the name of Bowers, as follows (retranslated from the
+German):
+
+   "It is very strange to think that the accursed truck system should
+   exist to such an extent as it does in Holmfirth, and nobody be found
+   who has the pluck to make the manufacturer stop it.  There are here a
+   great many honest hand-weavers suffering through this damned system;
+   here is one sample from a good many out of the noble-hearted Free
+   Trade Clique.  There is a manufacturer who has upon himself the curses
+   of the whole district on account of his infamous conduct towards his
+   poor weavers; if they have got a piece ready which comes to 34 or 36
+   shillings, he gives them 20s. in money and the rest in cloth or goods,
+   and 40 to 50 per cent. dearer than at the other shops, and often
+   enough the goods are rotten into the bargain.  But, what says the
+   _Free Trade Mercury_, the _Leeds Mercury_?  They are not bound to take
+   them; they can please themselves.  Oh, yes, but they must take them or
+   else starve.  If they ask for another 20s. in money, they must wait
+   eight or fourteen days for a warp; but if they take the 20s. and the
+   goods, then there is always a warp ready for them.  And that is Free
+   Trade.  Lord Brougham said we ought to put by something in our young
+   days, so that we need not go to the parish when we are old.  Well, are
+   we to put by the rotten goods?  If this did not come from a lord, one
+   would say his brains were as rotten as the goods that our work is paid
+   in.  When the unstamped papers came out "illegally," there was a lot
+   of them to report it to the police in Holmfirth, the Blythes, the
+   Edwards, etc.; but where are they now?  But this is different.  Our
+   truck manufacturer belongs to the pious Free Trade lot; he goes to
+   church twice every Sunday, and repeats devotedly after the parson: 'We
+   have left undone the things we ought to have done, and we have done
+   the things we ought not to have done, and there is no good in us; but,
+   good Lord, deliver us.'  Yes, deliver us till to-morrow, and we will
+   pay our weavers again in rotten goods."
+
+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. {184}  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 to wards 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.
+{186}
+
+
+
+
+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 {189} 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 had no factory bell to measure
+out the time for their eating, sleeping, and working.  Their position to-
+day 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 5.5 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, 1.5d., and for clothing nothing.  "No eye," says the
+stocking weaver, "has seen, no ear heard, and no heart felt the half of
+the sufferings that these poor people endure."  Beds were wanting either
+wholly or in part, the children ran about ragged and barefoot; the men
+said, with tears in their eyes: "It's a long time since we had any meat;
+we have almost forgotten how it tastes;" 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.  "But," said one of them, "look at my
+children and ask no questions.  My poverty forces me to it; I can't and
+won't hear my children forever crying for bread, without trying the last
+means of winning it honestly.  Last Monday I got up at two in the morning
+and worked to near midnight; the other days from six in the morning to
+between eleven and twelve at night.  I have had enough of it; I sha'n't
+kill myself; so now I go to bed at ten o'clock, and make up the lost time
+on Sundays."  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 786.
+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 workroom.  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 lacemakers especially, is
+constantly and deeply undermined; complaints are universal of anaemia,
+difficult childbirth, and miscarriage. {192a}  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: {192b}
+
+   "All the inhabitants of Nottingham, the police, the clergy, the
+   manufacturers, the working-people, and the parents of the children are
+   all unanimously of opinion that the present system of labour is a most
+   fruitful source of immorality.  The threaders, chiefly boys, and the
+   winders, usually girls, are called for in the factory at the same
+   time; and as their parents cannot know how long they are wanted there,
+   they have the finest opportunity to form improper connections and
+   remain together after the close of the work.  This has contributed, in
+   no small degree, to the immorality which, according to general
+   opinion, exists to a terrible extent in Nottingham.  Apart from this,
+   the quiet of home life, and the comfort of the family to which these
+   children and young people belong, is wholly 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. {193}
+
+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 {194} asserts of one print-work (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-work 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' workroom, 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 1d.; 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.  Leach {196} 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 rates of 4d., 2.25d., 2.75d., and 1d. per yard, were paid in 1843 at
+the rate of 1.5d., 1d., .75d., and 0.375d. per yard, cutters' wages.  The
+average weekly wage, according to Leach, was as follows: 1827, 1 pounds
+6s. 6d.; 1 pounds 2s. 6d.; 1 pounds; 1 pounds 6s. 6d.; and for the same
+goods in 1843, 10s. 6d.; 7s. 6d.; 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., 3.5s.,
+.75s., 1.5s., 10s., he paid in 1839 but 9s., 7.25s., 2.25s., 0.333s.,
+0.5s., 6.25s., 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, 16.5s., 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 2.5d. in 1843
+(single sarsnets), and a great number of weavers in the country can get
+work only when they undertake these goods at 1.5d.-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 pound 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, {197} "resists the
+lawful order as established by weavers' cards, and, moreover, has the
+impudence to doubt the wisdom of those who are, as he ought to know, 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 a 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 {199} 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
+small, delicate, and of very slight physical power; many of them
+deformed, too, in the chest or spinal column."  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, {200a} 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 instil 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. {200b}
+
+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 5.75d.  Every
+nail receives twelve blows, and since the hammer weighs 1.25 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.
+{202}
+
+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: {203}
+
+   "I can convey some idea of the injuriousness of this occupation only
+   by asserting that the hardest drinkers among the grinders are the
+   longest lived among them, because they are longest and oftenest absent
+   from their work.  There are, in all, some 2,500 grinders in Sheffield.
+   About 150 (80 men and 70 boys) are fork grinders; these die between
+   the twenty-eighth and thirty-second years of age.  The razor grinders,
+   who grind wet as well as dry, die between forty and forty-five years,
+   and the table cutlery grinders, who grind wet, die between the
+   fortieth and fiftieth year."
+
+The same physician gives the following description of the course of the
+disease called grinders' asthma:
+
+   "They usually begin their work with the fourteenth year, and, if they
+   have good constitutions, rarely notice any symptoms before the
+   twentieth year.  Then the symptoms of their peculiar disease appear.
+   They suffer from shortness of breath at the slightest effort in going
+   up hill or up stairs, they habitually raise the shoulders to relieve
+   the permanent and increasing want of breath; they bend forward, and
+   seem, in general, to feel most comfortable in the crouching position
+   in which they work.  Their complexion becomes dirty yellow, their
+   features express anxiety, they complain of pressure upon the chest.
+   Their voices become rough and hoarse, they cough loudly, and the sound
+   is as if air were driven through a wooden tube.  From time to time
+   they expectorate considerable quantities of dust, either mixed with
+   phlegm or in balls or cylindrical masses, with a thin coating of
+   mucus.  Spitting blood, inability to lie down, night sweat,
+   colliquative diarrhoea, unusual loss of flesh, and all the usual
+   symptoms of consumption of the lungs finally carry them off, after
+   they have lingered months, or even years, unfit to support themselves
+   or those dependent upon them.  I must add that all attempts which have
+   hitherto been made to prevent grinders' asthma, or to cure it, have
+   wholly 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. {205}
+
+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 60,000 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 to-day for dinner, don't
+never have dinner at home, get mostly potatoes and salt, sometimes
+bread."  "These 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. {207}
+
+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 glassblowers usually die young of debility
+and chest affections. {208}
+
+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 the 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 dressmakers 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 lacemakers, and come now to the
+dressmaking 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 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 workroom 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 dressmakers.  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
+commissioner 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 middle-man who has to
+give security for the material delivered, and who distributes the work
+among the needle-women, receives 1.5d. per piece.  From this he deducts
+his own pay, at least .5d., 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 4.5s. a week. {210}  But the shirtmakers' lot is
+the worst.  They receive for an ordinary shirt 1.5d., formerly 2d.-3d.;
+but since the workhouse of St. Pancras, which is administered by a
+Radical board of guardians, began to undertake work at 1.5d., 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 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. {211}  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.
+
+
+
+
+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 brutalizing 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-grabber 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 Symonds {214} 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, bookkeepers, and
+local branches.  But the secrecy with which everything was conducted
+crippled their growth.  When, on the other hand, the working-man 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 wages 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 to-day 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, 1843, 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, 1844, 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 20th, 1844, an explosion caused by a package of powder took place
+in the sawmill of Bently & 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,
+{221a} 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? {221b}
+
+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 indirect 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, {222a} "and so bring ruin on the man who had
+given them profitable employment for many a year."  He speaks of a time
+{222b} "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." {223a}
+
+"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, sprung 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." {223b}
+
+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 a 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 1835 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
+pounds 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 to-day.  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 he 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 in 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 condition 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 15th,
+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.
+{232}  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 cheers.  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 10th 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.  This 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-man'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 {235} 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 to-day.  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.
+
+
+
+
+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. {241}
+
+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 Reports, 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 and 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 district
+{242} 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 57.5 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, 13 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 over-tired.  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 over-
+exertion 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 over-exertion 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
+Symonds, 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, childbearing 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 over-exertion.  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 over-measure.  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 fine 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 _Miners' 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. Helen's, 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:
+
+   "NOTICE!"
+
+   "PENTRICH COAL MINE.
+
+   "The Messrs. Haslam think it necessary, in order to prevent all
+   mistakes, to announce that all persons employed in their colliery will
+   receive their wages wholly in cash, and may expend them when and as
+   they choose to do.  If they purchase goods in the shops of Messrs.
+   Haslam they will receive them as heretofore at wholesale prices, but
+   they are not expected to make their purchases there, and work and
+   wages will be continued as usual whether purchases are made in these
+   shops or elsewhere."
+
+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 childbirth, 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 childbirth.  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 torn 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 1200 pounds a year.  In the autumn of last
+year they collected more than 700 pounds, rather more than 200 pounds 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? {259}
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+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. {264}
+
+   "An English agricultural labourer and an English pauper, these words
+   are synonymous.  His father was a pauper and his mother's milk
+   contained no nourishment.  From his earliest childhood he had bad
+   food, and only half enough to still his hunger, and even yet he
+   undergoes the pangs of unsatisfied hunger almost all the time that he
+   is not asleep.  He is half clad, and has not more fire than barely
+   suffices to cook his scanty meal.  And so cold and damp are always at
+   home with him, and leave him only in fine weather.  He is married, but
+   he knows nothing of the joys of the husband and father.  His wife and
+   children, hungry, rarely warm, often ill and helpless, always careworn
+   and hopeless like himself, are naturally grasping, selfish, and
+   troublesome, and so, to use his own expression, he hates the sight of
+   them, and enters his cot only because it offers him a trifle more
+   shelter from rain and wind than a hedge.  He must support his family,
+   though he cannot do so, whence come beggary, deceit of all sorts,
+   ending in fully developed craftiness.  If he were so inclined, he yet
+   has not the courage which makes of the more energetic of his class
+   wholesale poachers and smugglers.  But he pilfers when occasion
+   offers, and teaches his children to lie and steal.  His abject and
+   submissive demeanour towards his wealthy neighbours shows that they
+   treat him roughly and with suspicion; hence he fears and hates them,
+   but he never will injure them by force.  He is depraved through and
+   through, too far gone to possess even the strength of despair.  His
+   wretched existence is brief, rheumatism and asthma bring him to the
+   workhouse, where he will draw his last breath without a single
+   pleasant recollection, and will make room for another luckless wretch
+   to live and die as he has done."
+
+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.  "And," he says, in closing, "this whole class is
+called, by courtesy, 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, that 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_ 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 has 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 farmhouses burnt down within the last few days; in Cambridgeshire
+four great farmhouses, 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 or 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. {268}  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. {269}  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," reports
+his tour through the agricultural districts, relates, among other things,
+the following conversation with some labourers after service: "I asked
+one of these people whether the preacher of the day was their own
+clergyman.  "Yes, blast him!  He is our own parson, and begs the whole
+time.  He's been always a-begging as long as I've known him."  (The
+sermon had been upon a mission to the heathen.)  "And as long as I've
+known him too," added another; "and I never knew a parson but what was
+begging for this or the other."  "Yes," said a woman, who had just come
+out of the church, "and look how wages are going down, and see the rich
+vagabonds with whom the parsons eat and drink and hunt.  So help me God,
+we are more fit to starve in the workhouse than pay the parsons as go
+among the heathen."  "And why," said another, "don't they send the
+parsons as drones every day in Salisbury Cathedral, for nobody but the
+bare stones?  Why don't _they_ go among the heathen?"  "They don't go,"
+said the old man whom I had first asked, "because they are rich, they
+have all the land they need, they want the money in order to get rid of
+the poor parsons.  I know what they want.  I know them too long for
+that."  "But, good friends," I asked, "you surely do not always come out
+of the church with such bitter feelings towards the preacher?  Why do you
+go at all?"  "What for do we go?" said the woman.  "We must, if we do not
+want to lose everything, work and all, we must."  I learned later that
+they had certain little privileges of fire-wood and potato land (which
+they paid for!) on condition of going to church."  After describing their
+poverty and ignorance, the correspondent closes by saying: "And now I
+boldly assert that the condition of these people, their poverty, their
+hatred of the church, their external submission and inward bitterness
+against the ecclesiastical dignitaries, is the rule among the country
+parishes of England, and its opposite 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 live stock 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 32,000,000 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
+pounds, and Ireland of but 36,000,000 pounds, there are in Ireland 75,000
+agricultural proletarians _more_ than in the neighbouring island. {272a}
+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 8.5
+millions, 585,000 heads of families in a state of total destitution; and
+according to other authorities, cited by Sheriff Alison, {272b} 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: {273}
+
+   "They are restless, yet indolent, clever and indiscreet, stormy,
+   impatient, and improvident; brave by instinct, generous without much
+   reflection, quick to revenge and forgive insults, to make and to
+   renounce friendships, gifted with genius prodigally, sparingly with
+   judgment."
+
+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, 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 landlord's 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.
+
+
+
+
+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. {276}  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-people's 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 force, 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 heart's 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 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 People's 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-men, 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 playground, 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 upon industry, a reward for improvident marriage, a stimulus
+   to increased population, and a means of counterbalancing the effect of
+   an increased population upon wages; a national provision for
+   discouraging the honest and industrious, and protecting the lazy,
+   vicious, and improvident; calculated to destroy the bonds of family
+   life, hinder systematically the accumulation of capital, scatter that
+   which is already accumulated, and ruin the taxpayers.  Moreover, in
+   the provision of aliment, it sets a premium upon illegitimate
+   children."
+
+(Words of the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners.) {286}  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 inspector's 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 staircase 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 medicine!  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 20th, 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 (Gilbert's 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
+his 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 re-opened 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
+had 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 petty-fogging 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 re-conquer their human rights. {293}
+
+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 or at least England, is long to remain inhabitable."  And the
+_Times_, the "first journal of Europe," said in June, 1844: "War to
+palaces, peace unto cabins--that is a battle-cry of terror which may come
+to resound throughout our country.  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,
+M'Culloch, 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 {296} 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 1793 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 gentle 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 guerilla 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 palaces, peace to the cottages!"--but then it will be
+too late for the rich to beware.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATORS NOTE.
+
+
+Being unable at this late day to obtain the original English, the
+translator has been compelled to re-translate from the German the
+passages quoted in the text from the following sources:--G. Alston,
+preacher of St. Philip's, Bethnal Green.--D. W. P. Alison, F.R.S.E.,
+"Observations on the Management of the Poor in Scotland," 1840.--The
+_Artisan_, 1842, October number.--J. C. Symonds, "Arts and Artisans at
+Home and Abroad," Edin., 1839.--Report of the Town Council of Leeds,
+published in _Statistical Journal_, vol. ii., p. 404.--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.--Report of the
+Children's Employment Commission.--Mr. Parkinson, Canon of Manchester,
+"On the Present Condition of the Labouring Poor in Manchester," 3rd Ed.,
+1841.--Factories' Inquiries Commission's Report.--E. G. Wakefield, M. P.,
+"Swing Unmasked; or, The Cause of Rural Incendiarism," London, 1831.--A
+Correspondent of the _Morning Chronicle_.--Anonymous pamphlet on "The
+State of Ireland," London, 1807; 2nd Ed., 1821.--Report of the Poor Law
+Commissioners: Extracts from Information received by the Poor Law
+Commissioners.  Published by Authority, London, 1833.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Accidents, 109, 143, 150, 164, 165, 294.
+
+Adulteration, 67, _et seq_.
+
+Apprentices, 169, 191, 197, _et seq_. 209.
+
+Charter, 225, _et seq_. 280, 296.
+
+Chartism, xiv., xix., 65, 123, 228, _et seq_. 275, 292.
+
+Chartists, 135, 176, 199, 231, _et seq_. 253, 258.
+
+Corn Laws, 113, 261, 268, 279, 280, 294.
+   League, 122, 231, 268, 280.
+   Repeal of, vi., 17, 231, 232, 275.
+
+Cottage System, v., 182, 183, 251, 252, 256.
+
+Crime--Form of Rebellion, 266, _et seq_. 274.
+   Increase of, 130, _et seq_.
+   Juvenile, 200, 204.
+   Result of Overcrowding, 65, 120, 121.
+
+Diseases, Engendered by Dwellings, 201, 202.
+   Filth, 35, 40, 41, 64, 96, 97.
+   Occupation, 162-3, 177-8, 191-2, 206.
+   Overwork, 153, 155, _et seq_. 171, 245-6.
+   Want, 30, 73, 88, 108, 199, 210-11.
+
+Education--Means of, 108, _et seq_. 195, 200, 201, 202, 238, 254.
+   Want of, 90, 91, 126, 129, 148, 149.
+
+Employment of Children,
+   In Agriculture, 262, 263.
+   In Factories, 141, _et seq_. 167, 171, _et seq_. 193.
+   In House Industry, 191, _et seq_.
+   In Mines, 241, 244, _et seq_.
+   In the Night, 191, 207.
+
+Employment of Women,
+   In Agriculture, 263.
+   In Factories, 141, _et seq_. 160, _et seq_. 175, 192.
+   In Mines, 241, 242, 248, 249.
+   In Sewing, 209, _et seq_.
+
+Epidemics, vi., 37, 41, 61, 64, 98, 100, 110, 158.
+
+Factory Acts, x., xi., 17, 134, 151, 168, 116, 176, 188.
+
+Food--Adulteration of, 98.
+   Insufficiency of, 32, 74, 101, 102, 193, 208.
+   Quality of, 68, 71, 91, 140, 201.
+
+Free Trade, vii., viii., _et seq_. 183, 234, 268.
+
+Intemperance, 102, 127, 128.
+
+Inventions.  1, 4, _et seq_. 42, 134, _et seq_. 223, 224.
+
+Law--A Bourgeois Institution, 113, 130, 173, 176, 227, 281, 282, 288.
+   New Poor, 174, 175, 230, 235, 262, _et seq_. 269, 284, _et seq_.
+   Old Poor, 176, 284, 285.
+   Of Wages, xi., 77, _et seq_. 219.
+
+Mortality, 100, 101, 104, _et seq_. 143, 150, 243.
+
+Parliament, 17, 96, 111, 214, 228, 251, 283, 287.
+
+Philanthropy, 27, 28, 88, 173, 212, 278.
+
+Police, 132, 221, 225, 226, 281, 282.
+
+Reform Bill, ix., 17, 214, 229, 285.
+
+Reserve Army, 85, 90.
+
+Schools--Day, 110, _et seq_. 173, 200, 207, 250.
+   Night, 110, 250.
+   Sunday, 111, 202, 250.
+
+Socialism, vi., vii., xii., 122, 236, _et seq_. 275, 297.
+
+Starvation, 25, 29, 73, 76, 88, 117, 167, 189, 285.
+
+Strikes, ix., xiv., xv., 168, 215, 218, 223, 224, 231, 254, 256, 257.
+
+Suicide, 115, 116.
+
+Surplus Population, 81, _et seq_. 139, 263, 266, 280, 287.
+
+Ten Hours' Bill, vii., 142, 172, 174, _et seq_. 230, 235, 284.
+
+Truck System, vii., viii., 182-3, 185, 252, 253.
+
+Ventilation of Dwellings, 36.
+   Mines, 249.
+   Towns, 27, 28, 36, 53, _et seq_. 63, 64, 96, _et seq_.
+   Workrooms, 155, 156, 158.
+
+Workhouses, 287, _et seq_.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes.
+
+
+{7}  According to Porter's _Progress of the Nation_, London, 1836, vol.
+i., 1838, vol. ii., 1843, vol. iii. (official data), and other sources
+chiefly official.
+
+{20}  Compare on this point my "Outlines for a Critique of Political
+Economy" in the _Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher_.
+
+{23}  This applies to the time of sailing vessels.  The Thames now is a
+dreary collection of ugly steamers.--F. E.
+
+{32}  _Times_, Oct. 12th, 1843.
+
+{33}  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.
+
+{35a}  "Report to the Home Secretary from the Poor-Law Commissioners 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.
+
+{35b}  _The Artisan_, October, 1842.
+
+{38}  "Arts and Artisan at Home and Abroad," by J. C. Symonds, 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_.
+
+{40a}  It must be borne in mind that these cellars are not mere storing-
+rooms for rubbish, but dwellings of human beings.
+
+{40b}  Compare Report of the Town Council in the Statistical Journal,
+vol. 2, p. 404.
+
+{49}  "The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working-Classes Employed
+in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester."  By James Ph. Kay, M.D.  2nd
+Ed. 1832.
+
+Dr. Kay confuses the working-class in general with the factory workers,
+otherwise an excellent pamphlet.
+
+{55}  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.
+
+{63}  Nassau W. Senior.  "Letters on the Factory Act to the Rt. Hon. the
+President of the Board of Trade" (Chas. Poulett Thompson, Esq.), London,
+1837, p. 24.
+
+{64}  Kay, loc. cit., p. 32.
+
+{65}  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," 1833.--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.
+
+{67}  Thomas Carlyle.  "Chartism," London, 1840, p. 28.
+
+{80}  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 a
+negligent master or careless overseer."
+
+{87}  And it came in 1847.
+
+{90a}  Archibald Alison.  "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.
+
+{90b}  "Chartism," pp. 28, 31, etc.
+
+{95}  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.  (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.)
+
+{100a}  Dr. Alison.  "Management of the Poor in Scotland."
+
+{100b}  Alison.  "Principles of Population," vol. ii.
+
+{100c}  Dr. Alison in an article read before the British Association for
+the Advancement of Science.  October, 1844, in York.
+
+{104}  "Manufacturing Population," ch 8.
+
+{105a}  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."  First Report, 1841; Second Report,
+1843.
+
+{105b}  Fifth Annual Report of the Reg. Gen. of Births, Deaths, and
+Marriages.
+
+{106}  Dr. Cowen.  "Vital Statistics of Glasgow."
+
+{107}  Report of Commission of Inquiry into the State of Large Towns and
+Populous Districts.  First Report, 1844.  Appendix.
+
+{108a}  Factories' Inquiry Commission's Reports, 3rd vol.  Report of Dr.
+Hawkins on Lancashire, in which Dr. Robertson is cited--the "Chief
+Authority for Statistics in Manchester."
+
+{108b}  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.
+
+{112a}  Children's Employment Commission's Report.  App. Part II. Q. 18,
+No. 216, 217, 226, 233, etc.  Horne.
+
+{112b}  _Ibid_. evidence, p. 9, 39; 133.
+
+{113a}  _Ibid_. p. 9, 36; 146.
+
+{113b}  _Ibid_. p. 34; 158.
+
+{113c}  Symonds' Rep.  App. Part I., pp. E, 22, _et seq_.
+
+{115a}  "Arts and Artisans."
+
+{115b}  "Principles of Population," vol. ii. pp. 136, 197.
+
+{116}   We shall see later how the rebellion of the working-class against
+the bourgeoisie in England is legalised by the right of coalition.
+
+{117a}  "Chartism," p. 34, _et seq_.
+
+{117b}  _Ibid_., p. 40.
+
+{119}  Shall I call bourgeois witnesses to bear testimony from 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. 8, p. 297.
+
+{120}  "Principles of Population," vol. ii., p. 76, _et seq_. p. 82, p.
+135.
+
+{122}  "Philosophy of Manufactures," London, 1835, p. 406, _et seq_.  We
+shall have occasion to refer further to this reputable work.
+
+{125}  "On the Present Condition of the Labouring Poor in Manchester,"
+etc.  By the Rev. Rd. Parkinson, Canon of Manchester, 3d Ed., London and
+Manchester, 1841, Pamphlet.
+
+{131a}  "Manufacturing Population of England," chap. 10.
+
+{131b}  The total of population, about fifteen millions, divided by the
+number of convicted criminals (22,733).
+
+{134a}  "The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain," by Dr. A. Ure, 1836.
+
+{134b}  "History of the Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain," by E.
+Baines, Esq.
+
+{135}  "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_.
+
+{136}  Compare Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report.
+
+{138}  L. Symonds, in "Arts and Artisans."
+
+{140}  See Dr. Ure in the "Philosophy of Manufacture."
+
+{141}  Report of Factory Inspector, L. Homer, October, 1844: "The state
+of things in the matter of wages is greatly perverted in certain branches
+of cotton manufacture in Lancashire; there are hundreds of young men,
+between twenty and thirty, employed as piecers and otherwise, who do not
+get more than 8 or 9 shillings a week, while children under thirteen
+years, working under the same roof, earn 5 shillings, and young girls,
+from sixteen to twenty years, 10-12 shillings per week."
+
+{143a}  Report of Factories' Inquiry Commission.  Testimony of Dr.
+Hawkins, p. 3.
+
+{143b}  In 1843, among the accidents brought to the Infirmary in
+Manchester, one hundred and eighty-nine were from burning.
+
+{144}  Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, Power's Report on Leeds:
+passim Tufnell Report on Manchester, p. 17. etc.
+
+{145}  This letter is re-translated from the German, no attempt being
+made to re-produce either the spelling or the original Yorkshire dialect.
+
+{147a}  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.
+
+{147b}  House of Commons, March 15th, 1844.
+
+{147c}  Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, p. 4.
+
+{148a}  For further examples and information compare Factories' Inquiry
+Commission's Report.  Cowell Evidence, pp. 37, 38, 39, 72, 77, 59;
+Tufnell Evidence, pp. 9, 15, 45, 54, etc.
+
+{148b}  Cowell Evidence, pp. 35, 37, and elsewhere.
+
+{148c}  Power Evidence, p. 8.
+
+{149a}  Cowell Evidence, p. 57
+
+{149b}  Cowell Evidence, p. 82.
+
+{149c}  Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, p. 4, Hawkins.
+
+{151}  Stuart Evidence, p. 35.
+
+{152a}  Tufnell Evidence, p. 91.
+
+{152b}  Dr. Loudon Evidence, pp. 12, 13.
+
+{153a}  Dr. Loudon Evidence, p. 16.
+
+{153b}  Drinkwater Evidence, pp. 72, 80, 146, 148, 150 (two brothers); 69
+(two brothers); 155, and many others.
+
+Power Evidence, pp. 63, 66, 67 (two cases); 68 (three cases); 69 (two
+cases); in Leeds, pp. 29, 31, 40, 43, 53, _et seq_.
+
+Loudon Evidence, pp. 4, 7 (four cases); 8 (several cases), etc.
+
+Sir D. Barry Evidence, pp. 6, 8, 13, 21, 22, 44, 55 (three cases), etc.
+
+Tufnell Evidence, pp. 5, 6, 16, etc.
+
+{154a}  Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, 1836, Sir D. Barry
+Evidence, p. 21 (two cases).
+
+{154b}  Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report, 1836, Loudon Evidence,
+pp. 13, 16, etc.
+
+{155}  In the spinning-room of a mill at Leeds, too, chairs had been
+introduced.  Drinkwater Evidence, p. 80.
+
+{156}  General report by Sir D. Barry.
+
+{157a}  Power Report, p. 74.
+
+{157b}  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.
+
+{159a}  This statement is not taken from the report.
+
+{159b}  Tufnell, p. 59.
+
+{160a}  Stuart Evidence, p. 101.
+
+{160b}  Tufnell Evidence, pp. 3, 9, 15.
+
+{161}  Hawkins Report, p. 4; Evidence, p. 14, etc. etc.  Hawkins
+Evidence, pp. 11, 13.
+
+{162a}  Cowell Evidence, p. 77.
+
+{162b}  Sir D. Barry Evidence, p. 44.
+
+{162c}  Cowell, p. 35.
+
+{163a}  Dr. Hawkins Evidence, p. 11; Dr. Loudon, p. 14, etc.; Sir D.
+Barry, p. 5, etc.
+
+{163b}  Compare Stuart, pp. 13, 70, 101; Mackintosh, p. 24, etc.; Power
+Report on Nottingham, on Leeds; Cowell, p. 33, etc.; Barry, p. 12; (five
+cases in one factory), pp. 17, 44, 52, 60, etc.; Loudon, p. 13.
+
+{167a}  Stuart, p. 39.
+
+{167b}  "Philosophy of Manufactures," by Dr. Andrew Ure, p. 277, _et
+seq_.
+
+{168a}  _Ibid_., 277.
+
+{168b}  _Ibid_., p. 298.
+
+{168c}  _Ibid_., p. 301.
+
+{169}  Dr. Andrew Ure.  "Philosophy of Manufactures," pp. 405, 406, _et
+seq_.
+
+{174}  Afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, died 1885.
+
+{176}  It is notorious that the House of Commons made itself ridiculous a
+second time in the same session in the same way on the Sugar Question,
+when it first voted against the ministry and then for it, after an
+application of the ministerial whip.
+
+{178}  Let us hear another competent judge: "If we consider the example
+of the Irish in connection with the ceaseless toil of the cotton
+operative class, we shall wonder less at their terrible demoralisation.
+Continuous exhausting toil, day after day, year after year, is not
+calculated to develop the intellectual and moral capabilities of the
+human being.  The wearisome routine of endless drudgery, in which the
+same mechanical process is ever repeated, is like the torture of
+Sisyphus; the burden of toil, like the rock, is ever falling back upon
+the worn-out drudge.  The mind attains neither knowledge nor the power of
+thought from the eternal employment of the same muscles.  The intellect
+dozes off in dull indolence, but the coarser part of our nature reaches a
+luxuriant development.  To condemn a human being to such work is to
+cultivate the animal quality in him.  He grows indifferent, he scorns the
+impulses and customs which distinguish his kind.  He neglects the
+conveniences and finer pleasures of life, lives in filthy poverty with
+scanty nourishment, and squanders the rest of his earnings in
+debauchery."--Dr. J. Kay.
+
+{179a}  _Manchester Guardian_, October 30th.
+
+{179b}  "Stubborn Facts," p. 9 _et seq_.
+
+{181a}  Drinkwater Evidence; p. 80.
+
+{181b}  "Stubborn Facts," pp. 13-17.
+
+{184}  _Sun_, a London daily; end of November, 1844.
+
+{186}  I have neither time nor space 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.
+
+{189}  Grainger Report.  Appendix, Part I., pp. 7, 15, _et seq_., 132-
+142.
+
+{192a}  Grainger's whole Report.
+
+{192b}  Grainger Children's Employment Commission's Report.
+
+{193}  Burns, Children's Employment Commission's Report.
+
+{194}  Leach.  "Stubborn Facts from the Factories," p. 47.
+
+{196}  Leach.  "Stubborn Facts from the Factories," p. 33.
+
+{197}  Leach.  "Stubborn Facts from the Factories," p. 37-40.
+
+{199}  Children's Employment Commission's Report.
+
+{200a}  See p. 112.
+
+{200b}  Grainger Report and Evidence.
+
+{202}  Horne Report and Evidence.
+
+{203}  Dr. Knight, Sheffield.
+
+{205}  Symonds Report and Evidence.
+
+{207}  Scriven Report and Evidence.
+
+{208}  Leifchild Report Append., Part II., p.  L 2, ss. 11,12; Franks
+Report Append., Part II., p. K 7, s. 48, Tancred Evid. Append., Part II.,
+p.  I 76, etc.--Children's Employment Commission's Rep't.
+
+{210}  See _Weekly Dispatch_, March 16th, 1844.
+
+{211}  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.
+
+{214}  "Arts and Artisans," p. 137, _et seq_.
+
+{221a}  So called from the East Indian tribe, whose only trade is the
+murder of all the strangers who fall into its hands.
+
+{221b}  "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 a traitor's and a deserter's death, have him executed, in
+default of any public judge and hangman, then by a secret one; like your
+old Chivalry Fehmgericht and Secret Tribunal, suddenly revived in this
+strange guise; suddenly rising once more on the astonished eye, dressed
+not now in mail shirts, but in fustian jackets, meeting not in
+Westphalian forests, but in the paved Gallowgate of Glasgow!  Such a
+temper must be widespread virulent among the many when, even in its worst
+acme, it can take such form in the few."--Carlyle.  "Chartism," p. 40.
+
+{222a}  Dr. Ure, "Philosophy of Manufacture," p. 282.
+
+{222b}  _Ibid_., p. 282.
+
+{223a}  Dr. Ure, "Philosophy of Manufacture," p. 367.
+
+{223b}  _Ibid_., p. 366, _et seq_.
+
+{232}  Compare Report of Chambers of Commerce of Manchester and Leeds at
+the end of July and beginning of August.
+
+{235}  See Introduction.
+
+{241}  According to the census of 1841, the number of working-men
+employed in mines in Great Britain, without Ireland, was:
+
+              Men over    Men under     Women over   Women under   Together
+              20 years    20 years      20 years     20 Years
+Coal mines    83,408      32,475        1,185        1,165         118,233
+Copper mines   9,866       3,428          913        1,200          15,407
+Lead mines     9,427       1,932           40           20          11,419
+Iron mines     7,733       2,679          424           73          10,949
+Tin mines      4,602       1,349           68           82           6,101
+Various, the
+mineral not
+specified     24,162       6,591          472          491          31,616
+Total        137,398      48,454        3,102        3,031         193,725
+
+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.
+
+{242}  Also found in the Children's Employment Commission's Report:
+Commissioner Mitchell's Report.
+
+{259}  The coal miners have at this moment, 1886, six of their body
+sitting in the House of Commons.
+
+{264}  E. G. Wakefield, M.P.  "Swing Unmasked; or, The Cause of Rural
+Incendiarism."  London, 1831.  Pamphlet.  The foregoing extracts may be
+found pp. 9-13, the passages dealing in the original with the then still
+existing Old Poor Law being here omitted.
+
+{268}  This has been literally fulfilled.  After a period of unexampled
+extension of trade, Free Trade has landed England in a crisis, which
+began in 1878, and is still increasing in energy in 1886.
+
+{269}  The agricultural labourers have now a Trade's Union; their most
+energetic representative, Joseph Arch, was elected M.P. in 1885.
+
+{272a}  Report of the Poor Law Commission upon Ireland.
+
+{272b}  "Principles of Population," vol. ii.
+
+{273}  "The State of Ireland."  London, 1807; 2nd Ed., 1821.  Pamphlet.
+
+{276}  Carlyle gives in his "Past and Present" (London, 1843) a splendid
+description of the English bourgeoisie and its disgusting money greed.
+
+{286}  Extracts from Information received from the Poor Law
+Commissioners.  Published by authority.  London, 1833.
+
+{293}  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 divers 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 Hindly
+of Ashton, and Fielden of Todmordon (Lancashire), and, on the other hand,
+the philanthropic Tories, who have recently constituted themselves "Young
+England," among whom are the members of Parliament, D'Israeli, 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.
+
+{296}  And it did.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING-CLASS
+IN ENGLAND IN 1844***
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