it seems to me that i cannot more appropriately conclude these chapters of bygone events within my own experience, than by a summary of those of the past condition of industry which suggest a tone of manly cheerfulness and confidence in the future, not yet common among the people. changes of condition are not estimated as they pass, and when they have passed, many never look back to calculate their magnificence or insignificance. this chapter is an attempt to show the change of the environment of a great class of a character to decrease apprehension and augment hope. the question answered herein is: "did things go better before our time?"
when this question is put to me i answer "no." things did not go better before my time—nor that of the working class who were contemporaries of my earlier years. my answer is given from the working class point of view, founded on a personal experience extending as far back as 1824, when i first became familiar with workshops. many are still under the impression that things are as bad as they well can be, whereas they have been much worse than they are now. when i first took an interest in public affairs, agitators among the people were as despondent as frogs who were supposed to croak because they were neglected.
they spoke in weeping tones. there were tears even in the songs of ebenezer elliot, the corn-law rhymer,* and not without cause, for the angels would have been pessimists, had they been in the condition of the people in those days. i myself worked among men who had unitarian masters—who were above the average of employers—even they were as sheep-dogs who kept the wolf away, but bit the sheep if they turned aside. but trades unions have changed this now, and sometimes bite their masters (employers they are called now), which is not more commendable. still, multitudes of working people, who ought to be in the front ranks as claimants for redress still needed, yet hang back with handkerchief to their eyes, oppressed with a feeling of hopelessness, because they are unaware of what has been won for them, of what has been conceded to them, and what the trend of progress is bringing nearer to them.
* thomas cooper—himself a chartist poet—published (1841)
in elliot's days a hymn by william jones—a leicester poet—
of which the first verse began thus:
"come my fellow-slaves of britain.
rest, awhile, the weary limb;
pour your plaints, ye bosom-smitten,
in a sad and solemn hymn."
of course if there has been no betterment in the condition of the people, despair is excusable—but if there has, despair is as unseemly as unnecessary. every age has its needs and its improvements to make, but a knowledge of what has been accomplished should take despair out of workmen's minds. to this end i write of changes which have taken place in my time.
i was born in tinder-box days. i remember having to strike a light in my grandfather's garden for his early pipe, when we arrived there at five o'clock in the morning. at times my fingers bled as i missed the steel with the jagged flint. then the timber proved damp where the futile spark fell, and when ignition came a brimstone match filled the air with satanic fumes. he would have been thought as much a visionary as joanna southcott, who said the time would come when small, quick-lighting lucifers would be as plentiful and as cheap as blades of grass. how tardy was change in olden time! flint and steel had been in use four hundred years. philip the good put it into the collar of the golden fleece (1429). it was not till 1833 that phosphorus matches were introduced. the safety match of the present day did not appear until 1845. the consumption of matches is now about eight per day for each person. to produce eight lights, by a tinder-box, would take a quarter of an hour with the lucifer match eight lights can be had in two minutes, occupying only twelve hours a year, while the tinder box process consumes ninety hours. thus the lucifer saves nearly eighty hours annually, which, to the workman, would mean an addition of nearly eight working days to the year.
in tinder-box days the nimble night burglar heard the flint and steel going, and had time to pack up his booty and reach the next parish, before the owner descended the stairs with his flickering candle. does any one now fully appreciate the morality of light? extinguish the gas in the streets of london and a thousand extra policemen would do less to prevent outrage and robbery than the ever-burning, order-keeping street light. light is a police force—neither ghosts nor burglars like it. thieves flee before it as errors flee the mind when the light of truth bursts on the understanding of the ignorant.
seventy years ago the evenings were wasted in a million houses of the poor. after sundown the household lived in gloom. children who could read, read, as i did, by the flickering light of the fire, which often limited for life the power of seeing. now the pauper reads by a better light than the squire did in days when squires were county gods. now old men see years after the period when their forefathers were blind.
then a social tyranny prevailed, unpleasant to the rich and costly to the poor, which regarded the beard as an outrage. i remember when only four men in birmingham had courage to wear beards. they were followers of joanna southcott. they did it in imitation of the apostles, and were jeered at in the streets by ignorant christians. george frederick muntz, one of the two first members elected in birmingham, was the first member who ventured to wear a beard in the house of commons; and he would have been insulted had not he been a powerful man and carried a heavy malacca cane, which he was known to apply to any one who offered him a personal affront. only military officers were allowed to wear a moustache; among them—no one, not even wellington, was hero enough to wear a beard. the rev. edmund r. larken, of burton rectory, near lincoln, was the first clergyman (that was as late as 1852) who appeared in the pulpit with a beard, but he shaved the upper lip as an apology for the audacity of his chin; george dawson was the first nonconformist preacher who delivered a sermon in a full-blown moustache and beard, which was taken in both cases as an unmistakable sign of latitudinarianism in doctrine. in the bank clerk or the workman it was worse. it was flat insubordination not to shave. the penalty was prompt dismissal. as though there were not fetters about hard to bear, people made fetters for themselves. such was the daintiness of ignorance that a man could not eat, dress, nor even think as he pleased. he was even compelled to shave by public opinion.
when mr. joseph cowen was first a candidate for parliament, he wore, as was his custom, a felt hat (then called a "wide-awake"). he was believed to be an italian conspirator, and suspected of holding opinions lacking in orthodox requirements. yet all his reputed heresies of acts and tenets put together did not cost him so many votes as the form and texture of his hat. he was elected—but his headgear would have ruined utterly a less brilliant candidate than he this social intolerance now shows its silly and shameless head no more. a wise tolerance is the angel, which stands at the portal of progress, and opens the door of the temple.
dr. church, of birmingham, was the first person who, in my youth, contrived a bicycle, and rode upon it in the town, which excited more consternation than a southcottean with his beard. he was an able physician, but his harmless innovation cost him his practice. patients refused to be cured by a doctor who rode a horse which had no head, and ate no oats. now a parson may ride to church on a bicycle and people think none the worse of his sermon; and, scandal of scandals, women are permitted to cycle, although it involves a new convenience of dress formerly sharply resented.
in these days of public wash-houses, public laundries, and water supply, few know the discomfort of a washing day in a workman's home, or of the feuds of a party pump. one pump in a yard had to serve several families. quarrels arose as to who should first have the use of it. sir edwin chadwick told me that more dissensions arose over party pumps in a day than a dozen preachers could reconcile in a week. now the poorest house has a water tap, which might be called moral, seeing the ill-feeling it prevents. so long as washing had to be done at home, it took place in the kitchen, which was also the dining-room of a poor family. when the husband came home to his meals, damp clothes were hanging on lines over his head, and dripping on to his plate. the children were in the way, and sometimes the wrong child had its ears boxed because, in the steam, the mother could not see which was which. this would give rise to further expressions which kept the recording angel, of whom sterne tells us, very busy, whom the public wash-houses set free for other, though scarcely less repugnant duty.
in that day sleeping rooms led to deplorable additions to the register of "idle words." the introduction of iron bedsteads began a new era of midnight morality. as a wandering speaker i dreaded the wooden bedstead of cottage, lodging-house or inn. fleas i did not much care for, and had no ill-will towards them. they were too little to be responsible for what they did; while the malodorous bug is big enough to know better. once in windsor i selected an inn with a white portico, having an air of pastoral cleanliness. the four-poster in my room, with its white curtains, was a further assurance of repose. the boers were not more skilful in attack and retreat than the enemies i found in the field. lighted candles did not drive them from the kopje pillow where they fought. in sheffield, in 1840, i asked the landlady for an uninhabited room. a cleaner looking, white-washed chamber never greeted my eyes. but i soon found that a whole battalion of red-coated cannibals were stationed there, on active service. wooden bedsteads in the houses of the poor were the fortresses of the enemy, which then possessed the land. iron bedsteads have ended this, and given to the workman two hours more sleep at night than was possible before that merciful invention. a gain of two hours for seven nights amounted to a day's holiday a week. besides, these nocturnal irritations were a fruitful source of tenemental sin, from which iron bedsteads have saved residents and wayfarers.
of all the benefits that have come to the working class in my time, those of travel are among the greatest. transit by steam has changed the character of man, and the facilities of the world. nothing brings toleration into the mind like seeing new lands, new people, new usages. they who travel soon discover that other people have genius, manners, and taste. the traveller loses on his way prejudices of which none could divest him at home, and he brings back in his luggage new ideas never contained in it before. think what the sea-terror of the emigrant used to be, as he thought of the dreadful voyage over the tempestuous billows. the first emigrants to america were six months in the mayflower. now a workman can go from manchester into the heart of america or canada in a fortnight. the deadly depression which weighed on the heart of home-sick emigrants occurs no more, since he can return almost at will. a mechanic can now travel farther than a king could a century ago. when i first went to brighton, third-class passengers travelled in an open cattle truck, exposed to wind and rain. for years the london and north-western railway shunted the third-class passengers at blisworth for two hours, while the gentlemen's trains went by. now workmen travel in better carriages than gentlemen did half a century ago. in newcastle-on-tyne i have entered a third-class carriage at a quarter to five in the morning. it was like noah's ark. the windows were openings which in storm were closed by wooden shutters to keep out wind and rain, when all was darkness. it did not arrive in london till nine o'clock in the evening, being sixteen hours on the journey. now the workman can leave new-castle at ten o'clock in the morning, and be in london in the afternoon.
does any one think what advantage has come to the poor by the extension of dentistry? teeth are life-givers. they increase comeliness, comfort, health and length of years—advantages now shared more or less by the poorer classes—once confined to the wealthy alone. formerly the sight of dental instruments struck terror in the heart of the patient now, fear arises when few instruments are seen, as the more numerous they are and the more skilfully they are made, the assurance of less pain is given. the simple instruments which formerly alarmed give confidence now, which means that the patient is wiser than of yore.
within the days of this generation what shrieks were heard in the hospital, which have been silenced for ever by a discovery of pain-arresting chloroform! no prayer could still the agony of the knife. the wise surgeon is greater than the priest. if any one would know what pain was in our time, let him read dr. john brown's "rab and his friends," which sent a pang of dangerous horror into the heart of every woman who read it. now the meanest hospital gives the poorest patient who enters it a better chance of life than the wealthy could once command.
it was said formerly:—
"the world is a market full of streets,
and death is a merchant whom every one meets,
if life were a thing which money could buy—
the poor could not live, and the rich would not die."
now the poor man can deal with death, and buy life on very reasonable terms, if he has commonsense enough to observe half the precepts given him by generous physicians on temperance and prudence.
not long since no man was tolerated who sought to cure an ailment, or prolong human life in any new way. even persons so eminent as harriet martineau, dr. elliotson, and sir bulwer lytton were subjected to public ridicule and resentment because they suffered themselves to be restored to health by mesmerism or hydropathy. but in these libertine and happier days any one who pleases may follow mesmer, pressnitz, or even hahnemann, and attain health by any means open to him, and is no longer expected to die according to the direction of antediluvian doctors.
until late years the poor man's stomach was regarded as the waste-paper basket of the state, into which anything might be thrown that did not agree with well-to-do digestion. now, the indian proverb is taken to be worth heeding—that "disease enters by the mouth," and the health of the people is counted as part of the wealth of the nation. pestilence is subjected to conditions. diseases are checked at will, which formerly had an inscrutable power of defiance. the sanitation of towns is now a public care. true, officers of health have mostly only official noses, but they can be made sensible of nuisances by intelligent occupiers. economists, less regarded than they ought to be, have proved that it is cheaper to prevent pestilence than bury the dead. besides, disease, which has no manners, is apt to attack respectable people.
what are workshops now to what they once were? any hole or stifling room was thought good enough for a man to work in. they, indeed, abound still, but are now regarded as discreditable. many mills and factories are palaces now compared with what they were. considering how many millions of men and women are compelled to pass half their lives in some den of industry or other, it is of no mean importance that improvement has set in in workshops.
co-operative factories have arisen, light, spacious and clean, supplied with cool air in summer and warm air in winter. in my youth men were paid late on saturday night; poor nailers trudged miles into birmingham, with their week's work in bags on their backs, who were to be seen hanging about merchants' doors up to ten and eleven o'clock to get payment for their goods. the markets were closing or closed when the poor workers reached them. it was midnight, or sunday morning, before they arrived at home. twelve or more hours a day was the ordinary working period. wages, piece-work and day-work, were cut down at will. i did not know then that these were "the good old times" of which, in after years, i should hear so much.
the great toil of other days in many trades is but exercise now, as exhaustion is limited by mechanical contrivances. a pressman in my employ has worked at a hand-press twenty-four hours continuously, before publishing day. now a gas engine does all the labour. machinery is the deliverer which never tires and never grows pale.
the humiliation of the farm labourer is over. he used to sing:
"mr smith is a very good man,
he lets us ride in his harvest van,
he gives us food and he gives us ale,
we pray his heart may never fail."
there is nothing to be said against mr. smith, who was evidently a kindly farmer of his time. yet to what incredible humiliation his "pastors and masters" had brought poor hodge, who could sing these lines, as though he had reached the diamond jubilee of his life when he rode in somebody else's cart, and had cheese and beer. now the farm workers of a co-operative way of thinking have learned how to ride in their own vans, to possess the crop with which they are loaded, and to provide themselves with a harvest supper.
in my time the mechanic had no personal credit for his work, whatever might be his skill. now in industrial exhibitions the name of the artificer is attached to his work, and he is part of the character of the firm which employs him. he has, also, now—if co-operation prevails—a prospect of participating in the profits of his own industry. half a century ago employers were proud of showing their machinery to a visitor—never their men. now they show their work-people as well—whose condition and contentment is the first pride of great firms.
above all knowledge is a supreme improvement, which has come to workmen. they never asked for it, the ignorant never do ask for knowledge, and do not like those who propose it to them. brougham first turned aside their repugnance by telling them what bacon knew, that "knowledge is power." now they realise the other half of the great saying, dr. creighton, the late bishop of london, supplied, that "ignorance is impotence." they can see that the instructed son of the gentleman has power, brightness, confidence, and alertness; while the poor man's child, untrained, incapable, dull in comparison, often abject, is unconscious of his own powers which lie latent within him. if an educated and an ignorant child were sold by weight, the intelligent child would fetch more per pound avoirdupois than the ignorant one. now education can be largely had for working men's children for nothing. even scholarships and degrees are open to the clever sort. moreover, how smooth science has made the early days of instruction, formerly made jagged with the rod.
sir edwin chadwick showed that the child mind could not profitably be kept learning more than an hour at a time, and recreation must intervene before a second hour can be usefully spent. what a mercy and advantage to thousands of poor children this has been! even the dreary schoolroom of the last generation is disappearing. a schoolroom should be spacious and bright, and board schools are beginning to be made so now. i have seen a board school in a dismal court in whitechapel which looked like an alley of hell. all thoughts for pleasant impressions in the child mind, which make learning alluring, were formerly uncared for. happier now is the lot of poor children than any former generation knew.
within my time no knowledge of public affairs was possible to the people, save in a second-hand way from sixpenny newspapers a month old. now a workman can read in the morning telegrams from all parts of the world in a halfpenny paper, hours before his employer is out of bed. if a pestilence broke out in the next street to the man's dwelling, the law compelled him to wait a month for the penny paper, the only one he could afford to buy, before he became aware of his danger, and it often happened that some of his family never lived to read of their risk.
the sons of working people are now welcomed in the army, and their record there has commanded the admiration of the onlooking world. but they are not flogged as they once were, at the will of any arrogant dandy who had bought his mastership over them. intelligence has awakened manliness and self-respect in common men, and the recruiting-sergeant has to go about without the lash under his coat. the working man further knows now that there is a better future for his sons in the public service, in army or navy, than ever existed before our time. even the emigrant ship has regulations for the comfort of steerage passengers, unknown until recent years. people always professed great regard for "poor jack," but until mr. plimsoll arose, they left him to drown.
until a few years ago millions of home-born englishmen were kept without votes, like the uitlanders of south africa, and no one sent an army into the country to put down the "corrupt oligarchy," as mr. chamberlain called those who withheld redress. but it has come, though in a limping, limited way. carlylean depredators of parliament decried the value of workmen possessing "a hundred thousandth part in the national palavers." but we no longer hear workmen at election times referred to as the "swinish multitude" who can now send representatives of their own order into the house of commons. if the claims of labour are not much considered, they are no longer contemned. it is always easier for the rider than the horse. the people are always being ridden, but it is much easier for the horse now than it ever was before.
sir michael foster, in a recent presidential address to the british association, said that, "the appliances of science have, as it were, covered with a soft cushion the rough places of life, and that not for the rich only but also for the poor." it is not, however, every kind of progress, everywhere, in every department of human knowledge, in which the reader is here concerned, but merely with such things as esdras says, which have "passed by us in daily life," and which every ordinary englishman has observed or knows.
if the question be asked whether the condition of the working class has improved in proportion to that of the middle and upper class of our time, the answer must be it has not. but that is not the question considered here. the question is, "are the working class to-day better off than their fathers were?" the answer already given is yes. let the reader think what, in a general way, the new advantages are. the press is free, and articulate with a million voices—formerly dumb. now a poor man can buy a better library for a few shillings than solomon with all his gold and glory could in his day; or than the middle class man possessed fifty years ago. toleration—not only of ideas but of action, is enlarged, and that means much—social freedom is greater, and that means more. the days of children are happier, schoolrooms are more cheerful, and one day they will be educated so as to fit them for self-dependence and the duties of daily life. another change is that the pride in ignorance, which makes for impotence, is decreasing, is no longer much thought of among those whose ignorance was their only attainment.
not less have the material conditions of life improved. food is purer—health is surer—life itself is safer and lasts longer. comfort has crept into a million houses where it never found its way before. security can be better depended upon. the emigrant terror has gone. instead of sailing out on hearsay to an unknown land and finding himself in the wrong one, or in the wrong part of the right country, as has happened to thousands, the emigrant can now obtain official information, which may guide him rightly. towns are brighter, there are more public buildings which do the human eye good to look upon. means of recreation are continually being multiplied. opportunity of change from town to country, or coast, fall now to the poorest not in cattle trucks any more. life is better worth living. pain none could escape is evadable now. parks are multiplied and given as possessions to the people. paintings and sculpture are now to be seen on the sunday by workmen, which their forefathers never saw, being barred from them on the only day when they could see them.
by a device within the memory of most, house owning has become possible to those whose fathers never thought it possible. temperance, once a melancholy word, is now a popular resource of health and economy. the fortune of industry is higher in many ways. into how many firesides does it bring gladness to know that in barrack, or camp, or ship, the son is better treated than heretofore.
can any of the middle-aged doubt that some things are better now than before their time? now two hundred workshops exist on the labour co-partnership principle. forty years ago those commenced, failed—failed through lack of intelligence on the part of workers. the quality of workmen to be found everywhere in our day did not exist then. sixteen years ago there were found more than a dozen workshops owned and conducted by working men. there are more than a hundred now; and hundreds in which the workers receive an addition to their wages, undreamt of in the last generation. in this, and in other respects, things go better than they did. though there is still need of enlargement, the means of self-defence are not altogether wanting. co-operation has arisen—a new force for the self-extrication of the lowest. without charity, or patronage, or asking anything from the state, it puts into each man's hand the "means to cancel his captivity."
the rich man may vote twenty times where the poor man can vote only once. still, the one voter counts for something where the unfranchised counted for nothing.
political as well as civil freedom has come in a measure to those who dwell in cottages and lodgings. for one minute every seven years the workman is free. he can choose his political masters at the poll, and neither his neighbour, his employer, nor his priest, has the knowledge to harm him on that account. one minute of liberty in seven years is not much, but there is no free country in the world where that minute is so well secured as in england. if any one would measure the present by the past, let him recall the lines:—
"allah! allah!" cried the stranger,
"wondrous sights the traveller sees,
but the latest is the greatest,
where the drones control the bees."
they do it still, but not to the extent they did. the control of wisdom, when the drones have it, is all very well, but it is the other sort of control which is now happily to some extent controllable by the bees. the manners of the rich are better. their sympathy with the people has increased. their power of doing ill is no longer absolute. employers think more of the condition of those who labour for them. the better sort still throw crumbs to lazarus. but now dives is expected to explain why it is that lazarus cannot get crumbs himself.
in ways still untold the labour class is gradually attaining to social equality with the idle class and to that independence hitherto the privilege of those who do nothing. the workman's power of self-defence grows—his influence extends—his rights enlarge. injury suffered in industry is beginning to be compensated; even old-age pensions are in the air, though not as yet anywhere else. notwithstanding, "john brown's soul goes marching on." but it must be owned its shoes are a little down at the heels. nevertheless, though there is yet much to be done—more liberty to win, more improvements to attain, and more than all, if it be possible, permanences of prosperity to secure—i agree with sydney smith—
"for olden times let others prate,
i deem it lucky i was born so late."
there is a foolish praise of the past and a foolish depreciation of the present the past had its evils, the present has fewer. the past had its promise, the present great realisations. it is not assumed in what has been said that all the advantages recounted were originated and acquired by working men alone. many came by the concessions of those who had the power of withholding them. more concessions will not lack acknowledgment "just gifts" to men who have honour in their hearts, "bind the recipients to the giver for ever."
the chinese put the feet of children in a boot and the foot never grows larger. there are boots of the mind as well as of the feet, that are worn by the young of all nations, which have no expansion in them, and which cramp the understanding of those grown up. this prevents many from comprehending the changes by which they benefit or realising the facts of their daily life. considering what the men of labour have done for themselves and what has been won for them by their advocates, and conceded to them from time to time by others, despair and the counsels of outrage which spring from it, are unseemly, unnecessary, and ungrateful. this is the moral of this story.
a doleful publicist should be superannuated. he is already obsolete. whoever despairs of a cause in whose success he once exulted, should fall out of the ranks, where some ambulance waits to carry away the sick or dispirited. he has no business to utter his discouraging wail in the ears of the constant and confident, marching to the front, where the battle of progress is being fought.
since so much has been accomplished in half a century, when there were few advantages to begin with—what may not be gained in the next fifty years with the larger means now at command and the confidence great successes of the past should inspire! if working people adhere to the policy of advancing their own honest interests without destroying others as rightfully engaged in seeking theirs, the workers may make their own future what they will. they may then acquire power sufficient, as the times once said: "to turn a reform mill which would grind down an abuse a day."
note.
the last chapter is reprinted from the fortnightly review by courtesy of the editor, and a similar acknowledgment is due to the editor of the weekly times and echo, in whose pages several of the preceding chapters appeared.
