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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/conditionofworki00enge_0 
 
TUE CONDITION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WoRKII^G Class in En^glan^d 
 
 IN 1844 
 
 WITH APPENDIX WRITTEN 1886, AND PREFACE 1887, 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDEßICK ENGELS 
 
 TrANSLATED BY Florence Kelley Wiscunewetzky 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 
 
 14 AND 16 Vesey Street 
 
COPYKIGHT, 1887. 
 
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 EACHEL a rOSTEli. 
 
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 Table of Contents. 
 
 Page. 
 
 PrEFACE I — VI 
 
 Introduction - 3 
 
 Chapter 1. 
 
 The Industrial Proletariat 15 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 The Great Towns - - 17 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 Competition 51 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 Irish Immigration .------..-60 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 Results - 63 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 Single Brauches of Industry - -- -.--.89 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 The Remaining Brauches of Industry ------ 125 
 
 Chapter VTIT. 
 
 Labor Movements - -- -- -- -- - 142 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 The Mining Proletariat - -- -- -- -- i6i 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 The Agricultural Proletariat - - - - - - - -174 
 
 Chapter XI. 
 
 Attitüde of the Bourgeoisie Towards the Proletariat - - . 184 
 
 Appendix — ix 
 
II 
 
 Epidemics— 11., 26, 29, 42, 44, 65, 67, 106. 
 
 Factory Acts — vi., vii., 13, 89, loi, 113, 116, iiS, 125. 
 
 Food — Adulteration of — 65. 
 
 Insufflciency of — 22, 50, 67. 68, 129, 138. 
 
 Quality of— 46, 49, 61, 93, 134. 
 
 Free Trade— ii. v. — et. seq. 123, 157, 179. 
 
 INTEMPERANCE — 68, 84, 85. 
 
 Inventions — 3, 5, et. seq. 29, 89, et. seq. 150. 
 
 Law — A Bourgeois Institution — 76, 86, 116, 120, 152, 1S8, 189, 192. 
 New Poor— 117, 154, 157, 175, et. seq. igi, 190, et. seq. 
 
 Old Poor — 176, 190, 191. 
 
 Of Wages — VII., 52, et. seq. 147. 
 
 Mortality — 67, 70, et. seq. 95, 100, 163. 
 
 Parliament— 13, 64, 74, 143, 153, 168, 189, 192. 
 
 Philanthropy — 20, 60, 116, 142, 186. 
 
 Police — 88, 148, 151, 152, 188, 189. 
 
 Reform Bill — v., 13, 143, 154, 191. 
 
 Reserve Army — 57, 60. 
 
 Schools — D ay — 73, et. seq. 116, 134, 139, i63. 
 
 Night— 73, 168. 
 
 Sunday— 74, 135, 168. 
 
 Socialism — IV., V., IX., 82, 158, et. seq. 184, 198. 
 
 Starvation — 18, 21, 50, 52, 54, 60, 78, 112, 126, 190. 
 
 Strikes— II., III., VI., VII., 113, 144, 146, 149, 150, 155, 170, 172. 173 
 Suicide— 77, 88. 
 
 Surplus Population— 55, et. seq. 92, 176, 178, 187, 192. 
 
 Ten Hours' Bill — ii., 94, 115, 117, et. seq. 154, 157, 189. 
 
 Truck System— ii., iii., 122, 124, 169, 171. 
 
 Ventilation of Dwellings— 25. 
 
 Mines — 167. 
 
 Towns— 19, 26, 37, et. seq. 43, 44, 64, ct. seq. 
 Workiooms — 104, 106. 
 
 WoRKHOUSES — 192, et. seq. 
 
P R E F A C E 
 
 Ten months have elapsed since, at the translator’s wish, I wrote the Appendix 
 to this book; and during these ten months, a revolution has been accomplislied in 
 American society such as, in any other country, would have taken at least ten 
 years. In February 1885, American public opinion was almost unanimous on 
 this One point; that there was no working dass, in the European sense of the 
 Word, in America; that consequently no class-struggle between workmen and 
 capitalists, such as tore European society to pieces, was possible in the American 
 Republic; and that, therefore, Socialism was a thing of foreign importation 
 which could never take root on American soil. And yet, at that moment, the 
 Corning dass struggle was Casting its gigantic shadow before it in the strikes of 
 the Pennsylvania coal miners, and of many other trades, and especially in the 
 preparations, all over the country, for the great Eight Hours’ movement which was 
 to come off, and did come off, in the May following. That I then duly 
 appreciated these Symptoms, that I anticipated a working dass movement on a 
 national scale, my “Appendix” shows; but no one could then foresee that in 
 such a short time the movement would burst out with such irresistible force, 
 would spread with the rapidity of a praiiie-fire, would shake American society 
 to its very foundations. 
 
 The fact is there, stubborn and indisputable. To what an extent it had 
 Struck with terror the American ruling classes, was revealed to me, in an amusing 
 way, by American journalists who did me the honor of calling on me last 
 Summer; the “ new departure” had put them into a state of helpless fright and 
 perplexity. But at that time the movement was only just on the Start; there 
 was but a series of confused and apparently disconnected upheavals of that 
 dass which, by the suppression of negro slavery and the rapid development of 
 manufactures, had become the lowest stratum of American society. Before the 
 year closed, these bewildering social convulsions began to take a definite direc- 
 tion. The spontaneous, instinctive movements of these vast masses of working 
 people, over a vast extent of country, the simultaneous outburst of their com- 
 mon discontent with a miserable social condition, the same everywhere and due 
 to the same caiises, made them conscious of the fact, that they formed a new 
 and distinct dass of American society; a dass of — practically speaking — more or 
 less hereditary wage-workers, proletarians. And with true American instiiict 
 this consciousness led them at once to take the next step towards their deliver- 
 ance: the formation of a political workingmen’s party, with a platform of its 
 own, and with the conquest of the Capitol and the White House for its goal. 
 
II 
 
 In May the struggle for the Eight Hours' working-day, the troubles in Chicago, 
 Milwaukee, etc., the attempts of the ruling dass to crush the nascent upris- 
 ing of Labor by brüte force and brutal class-justice; in November the new 
 Labor Party organized in all great centres, and the New York, Chicago and 
 Milwaukee elections. May and November have hitherto reminded the American 
 bourgeoisie only of the payment of Coupons of U. S. bonds; henceforth May 
 and November will remind them, too, of the dates on which the American work- 
 ing dass presented iheir Coupons for payment. 
 
 In European countries, it took the working dass years and years before they 
 fully realized the fact that they formed a distincf and, undei the existing social 
 conditions, a permanent dass of modern society; and it took years again until 
 this class-consciousness led them to form themselves into a distinct political party, 
 independent of, and opposed to, all the old political parties formed by the vari- 
 ous sections of the ruling classes. On the more favored soil of America, where 
 no mediaeval ruins bar the way, where history begins with the elements of 
 modern bourgeois society as evolved in the seventeenth Century, the working 
 dass passed through these two stages of its development within ten months. 
 
 Still, all this is but a beginning. That the laboring masses should feel their 
 Community of grievances and of interests, their solidarity as a dass in Opposition 
 to all other classes; that in Order to give expression and effect to this feeling, 
 they should set in motion the political machinery provided for that purpose in 
 every free country — that is the first Step only. The next Step is to find the 
 common remedy for these common grievances, and to embody it in the platform 
 of the new Labor Party. And this — the most important and the most difficult 
 Step in the movement — has yet to be taken in America. 
 
 A new party must have a distinct positive platform; a platform which may 
 Vary in details as circumstances vary and as the party itself developes, but still one 
 upon which the party, for the time being, is agreed. So long as such a platform 
 has not been worked out, or exists but in a rudimentary form, so long the new 
 party, too, will have but a rudimentary existence; it may exist locally but not 
 yet nationally; it will be a party potentially but not actually. 
 
 That platform, whatever may be its first initial shape, must develop in a direc- 
 tion which may be determined beforehand. The causes that brought into existence 
 the abyss between the working dass and the Capitalist dass are the same in 
 America as in Europe; the means of filling up that abyss, are equally the same 
 everywhere. Consequently, the platform of the American Proletariat will in the 
 long run coincide as to the ultimate end to be attained, with the one which, after 
 sixty years of dissensions and discussions, has become the adopted platform of 
 the great mass of the European militant Proletariat. It will proclaim, as the 
 ultimate end, the conquest of political supremacy by the working dass, in Order 
 to effect the direct appropriation of all means of production — land, railways, 
 mines, machinery. etc. — by society at large, to be worked in common by all for 
 the account and benefit of all. 
 
III 
 
 But if the new American party, like all political parties everywhere, by the 
 very fact of its formation aspires to the conquest of political power, it is as yet 
 far froin agreed upon what to do with that power when pnce attained. In New 
 York and the other great cities of the East, the Organization of the working dass 
 has proceeded upon the lines of Trades’ Societies, forming in each city a power- 
 ful Central Labor Union. In New York the Central Labor Union, last Novem- 
 ber, chose for its Standard bearer Henry George, and consequently its temporary 
 electoral platform has been largely iihbued with his principles. In the great 
 cities of the North West the electoral battle was fought upon a rather indefinite 
 labor platform, and the influence of Henry George’s theories was scarcely, if at 
 all, visible. And while in these great cencres of population and of industry the 
 new dass movement came to a political head, we find all over the country two 
 wide spread labor organizations: the “Knights of Labor” and the “Socialist 
 Labor Party,” of which only the latter has a platform in harmony with the 
 modern European standpoint as summarized above. 
 
 Of the three more or less definite forms under which the American labor move- 
 ment thus presents itself, the first, the Henry George movement in New York, 
 is for the moment of a chiefly local significance. No doubt New York is by far 
 the most important city of the States; büt New York is not Paris and the 
 United States are not France. And it seems to me that the Henry George plat- 
 form, in its present shape, is too narrow to form the basis for anything but a 
 local movement, or at best for a short-lived phase of the general movement. 
 To Henry George, the expropriation of the mass of the people from the land is 
 the great and universal cause of the Splitting up of the people into Rieh and Poor. 
 Now this is not quite correct historically. In Asiatic and classical antiquity, the 
 predominant form of class-oppression was slavery, that is to say, not so much 
 the expropriation of the masses from the land as the appropriation of their 
 persons. When, in the decline of the Roman Republic, the free Italian peasants 
 were expropriated from their farms, they formed a dass of “poor whites ” 
 similar to that of the Southern Slave States before i86i; and between slaves 
 and poor whites, two classes equally unfit for self-emancipation, the old world 
 went to pieces. In the middle ages, it was not the expropriation of the people 
 f7'om^ but on the contrary, their appropriation to the land which became 
 the source of feudal oppression. The peasant retained his land, but was 
 attached to it as a serf or villein, and made liable to tribute to the lord in labor 
 and in produce. It was only at the dawn of modern times, towards the end of 
 the fifteenth Century, that the expropriation of the peasantry on a large scale 
 laid the foundation for the modern dass of wage-workers who possess nothing 
 but their labor-power and can live only by the selling of that labor power to 
 others. But if the expropriation from the land brought this dass into existence, 
 it was the development of capitalist production, of modern industry and 
 agriculture on a large scale which perpetuated it, increased it, and shaped it into 
 a distinct dass with distinct interests and a distinct historical mission. All this 
 has been fully expounded by Marx (“Capital,” Part VIH: “The so-called 
 
IV 
 
 primitive Accumulation.”) According to Marx, the cause of the present an- 
 tagonism of the classes and of the social degradation of the working dass is 
 their expropriation from all means of production, in which the land is of course 
 included. 
 
 If Henry George declares land-monopolization to be the sole cause of poverty 
 and misery, he naturally finds the remedy in the resumption of the land by 
 society at large. Now, the Socialists of the school of Marx, too, demand the 
 resumption, by society, of the land, and not only of the land but of all other 
 means of production likewise. But even if we leave these out of the question, 
 there is another difference. What is to be done with the land? Modern 
 Socialists, as represented by Marx, demand that it should be held and worked 
 in common and for common account, and the same with all other means of 
 social production, mines, railways, factories, etc. ; Henry George would confine 
 himself to letting it out to individuals as at present, merely regulating its dis- 
 tribution and applying the rents for public, instead of, as at present, for private 
 purposes. What the Socialists demand, implies a total revolution of the whole 
 System of social production; what Henry George demands, leaves the present 
 mode of social production untouched, and has, in fact, been anticipated by the 
 extreme section of Ricardian bourgeois economists who, too, demanded the con- 
 fiscation of the rent of land by the State. 
 
 It would of course be unfair to suppose that Henry George has said his last 
 Word once for all. But I am bound to take his theory as I find it. 
 
 The second great section of the American movement is formed by the Knights 
 of Labor. And that seems to be the section most typical of the present state of 
 the movement, as it is undoubtedly by far the strongest. An immense associa- 
 tion spread over an immense extent of country in innumerable “ assemblies,’* 
 representing all shades of individual and local opinion within the working dass; 
 the whole of them sheltered under a platform of corresponding indistinctness and 
 held together much less by their impracticable Constitution than by the instinctive 
 feeling that the very fact of their clubbing together for their common aspiration 
 makes them a great power in the country; a truly American paradox clothing 
 the most modern tendencies in the most mediaeval mummeries, and hiding the 
 most democratic and even rebellious Spirit behind an apparent, but really power- 
 less despotism — such is the picture the Knights of Labor offer to a European 
 observer. But if we are not arrested by mere outside whimsicalities, we cannot 
 help seeing in this vast agglomeration an immense amount of potential energy 
 evolving slowly but surely into actual force. The Knights of Labor are the 
 first national Organization created by the American Working Class as a whole; 
 whatever be their origin and history, whatever their shortcomings and little 
 absurdities, whatever their platform and their Constitution, here they are, the 
 work of practically the whole class of American wage-workers, the only national 
 bond that holds them together, that makes their strength feit to themselves not 
 less than to their enemies, and that fills them with the proud hope of future 
 victories. For it would not be exact to say that the Knights of Labor are liable 
 
V 
 
 to development. They are constantly in full process of development and revo- 
 lution; a heaving, fermenting mass of plastic material seekin^ the shape and 
 form appropriate to its inherent nature. That form will be attained as surely 
 as historical evolution has, like natural evolution, its own immanent laws. 
 Whether the Knights of Labor will then retain their present name or not, makes 
 no difference, but to an Outsider it appears evident that htre is the raw material 
 out of which the futureof the American working dass movement, and along with 
 it, the future of American society at large, has to be shaped. 
 
 The third section consists of the Socialist Labor Party. This section is a 
 party but in name,- for nowhere in America has it, up to now, been able actually 
 to take its stand as a political party. It is, moreover, to a certain extent foreign 
 to America, having until lately been made up almost exclusively by German 
 immigrants, using their own language and for the most part, little conversant 
 with the common language of the country. But if it came from a foreign stock, 
 it came, at the same time, armed with the experience earned during long years 
 of cla^s-struggle in Europe, and with an insight into the general conditions of 
 working dass emancipation, far superior to that hitherto gained by American 
 workingmen. This is a fortunate circumstance for the American proletarians 
 who thus are enabled to appropriate, and to take advantage of, the intellectual 
 and moral fruits of the forty years’ struggle of their European classmates, and 
 thus to hasten on the time of their own victory. For, as I said before, there 
 cannot be any doubt that the ultimate platform of the American working dass 
 must and will be essentially the same as that now adopted by the whole militant 
 working dass of Europe, the same as that of the German-American Socialist 
 Labor Party. In so far this party is called upon to play a very important part 
 in the movement. But in Order to do so they will have to doff every remnant 
 of their foreign garb. They will have to become out and out American. They 
 cannot expect the Americans to come to them; they, the minority and the immi- 
 grants, must go to the Americans, who are the vast majority and the natives. 
 And to do that, they must above all things learn English. 
 
 The process of fusing together these various dements of the vast moving 
 mass — elements not really discordant, but indeed mutually isolated by their 
 various starting-points — will take some time and will not come off wichout 
 a deal of friction, such as is visible at different points even now. The Knights 
 of Labor, for instance, are here and there, in the Eastern cities, locally at war 
 with the organized Trades Unions. But then this same friction exists within 
 the Knights of Labor themselves, where there is anything but peace and 
 harmony. These are not Symptoms of decay, for capitalists to crow over. They 
 are merely signs that the innumerable hosts of workers, for the first time set in 
 motion in a common direction, have as yet found out neither the adequate ex- 
 pression for their common interests, nor the form of Organization best adapted 
 to the struggle, nor the discipline required to insure victory, They are as yet 
 the first levies en masse of the great revolutionary war, raised and equipped 
 locally and independently, all converging to form one common army, but as yet 
 
VI 
 
 without regulär Organization and common plan of campaign. The converging 
 columns cross each other here and there; confusion, angry disputes, even threats 
 of conflict arise. But the communlty of ultimate purpose in the end overcomes 
 all minor troubles; ere long the rytraggling and squabbling batallions will be 
 formed in a long line of battle array, presenting to the enemy a well-ordered 
 front, ominously silent under their glittering arms, supported by bold skirmishers 
 in front and by unshakeable reserves in the rear. 
 
 To bring about this result, the unification of the various independent bodies 
 into one national Labor Army, with no matter how inadequate a provisional plat- 
 form, provided it be a truly working dass platform^ — that is the next great Step to be 
 accomplished in America. To effect this, and to make that platform worthy of 
 the cause, the Socialist Labor Party can contribute a great deal, if they will only 
 act in the same way as the European Socialists have acted at the time when they 
 were but a small minority of the working dass. That line of action was first 
 laid down in the “ Communist Manifesto ” of 1847 in the following words: 
 
 “ The Communists ” — that was the name we took at the time and which even 
 now we are far from repudiating — “the Communists do not form a separate 
 party opposed to )ther working dass parties. 
 
 “ They have no interests separate and apart from the interests of the whole 
 working dass. 
 
 “ They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape 
 and model the proletarian movement. 
 
 “ The Communists are distinguished from the other working dass parties by 
 this only: i. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different 
 ■countries they point out, and bring to the front, the common interests of the 
 whole Proletariat, interests independent of all nationality; 2. In the various 
 stages of development which the struggle of the working dass against the 
 capitalist dass has to pass throngh, they always and everywhere represent the 
 interests of the movement as a whole. 
 
 “The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most 
 advanced and resolute section of the working dass parties of all countries, that 
 section which ever pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, 
 they have, over the great mass of the proletarians, the ad van tage of clearly 
 understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results 
 •of the proletarian movement. 
 
 “ Thus they fight for the attainment of the immediate ends, for the enforce- 
 ment of the momentary interests of the working dass; but in the movement ol 
 the present, they represent and take care of the future of the movement.” 
 
 That is the line of action which the great founder of Modern Socialism, Karl 
 Marx, and with him, I and the Socialists of all nations who worked along with 
 US, have followed for more than forty years, v/ith the result that it has led to 
 victory everywhere, and that at this moment the mass of European Socialists, in 
 Germany and in France, in Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, in Denmark and 
 Sweden as well as in Spain and Portugal, are fighting as one common army 
 under one and the same flag. 
 
 London, January 26, 1887. 
 
 Frederick Engels. 
 
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 work> 
 ing cotton. These inventions gave risc, as is well known, to an industrial revo- 
 lution, a revolution which altered' the whole civil society; one, the historical 
 importance of which is only now beginning to be recognized. 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 ma- 
 terials was carried on in the workingman’s home. Wife and daughter spun the 
 yarn that the father wove or that they sold, if he did not work it up himself. 
 These weaver families lived in the country in the neighborhood 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 of the 
 home market, keeping pace with the slow increase in population and employ- 
 ing 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 lo 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 Enghsh workman of to-day. 
 
 So the workers vegetated throughout a passably comfortable existence, lead 
 ing 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 tu 
 overwork; they did no more than they chose to do, and yet earne^ 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 recrc- 
 ations and games of their neighbors, and all these games, bowling, cricket, foot- 
 ball, etc., contributed to their physical health and vigor. They wcre, for the 
 
4 
 
 most part, strong, well-built people, in whose physique little or no difference 
 from that of their peasant neighbors 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 dass was, may be guessed. 
 Shut off from the towns which they never entered, their yarn and woven stuff 
 being delivered to traveling agents for payment of wages — so shut off that old 
 people who lived quite in the neighborhood of the town, never went thither 
 until they were robbed of their trade by the introduction of machinery and 
 obliged to look about them in the towns for work — the weavers stood upon the 
 moral and intellectual plane of the yeomen with whom they were usually im- 
 mediately connected through their little holdings. They regarded their squire, 
 the g^eatest 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 
 honor, as this patriarchal relation involved. 'fhey 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 be- 
 cause the host, at whose inn they now and then quenched their thirst was 
 also a respectable man, usually a large tenant farmer who had 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 un- 
 married. 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 recognized 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 fluctu- 
 ations in their position in life. f^hey 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 sweep- 
 ing through mankind. They were comfortable in their silent Vegetation, and 
 but for the industrial revolution they would never have emerged from this ex. 
 istence, which cosily romantic as it was, was nevertheless not worthy of human 
 beiugs. 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 
 
5 
 
 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 vStandhill, 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 em- 
 ployed 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 in- 
 creasing, 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 dass of farming weavers wholly disappeared, 
 and was merged in the newly arising dass of weavers who lived wholly upon 
 wages, had no property whatever, not even the pretended property of a holding, 
 and so became workingmen, proletarians. Moreover, the old relation between 
 Spinner and weaver was destroyed. Hitherto, so far as this had been possible, 
 yarn had been spun and woven under one roof. Now that the jenny as well as 
 the loom required a strong hand, men began to spin, and whole families lived 
 by spinning, while others laid the antiquated, superseded spinning-wheel aside; 
 and, if they had not means of purchasing a jenny, were forced to live upon the 
 wages of the father alone. Thus began with spinning and weaving that division 
 of labor 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 land owners; yeomen, who 
 had vegetated in the same unthinking quiet as their neighbors, the farming 
 weavers. They cultivated their scraps of land quite after the ancient and in- 
 efficient 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 hold- 
 
 / 
 
6 
 
 ings feil idle, and upon these the new dass of large tenants established them- 
 selves, 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 seil their produce 
 more cheaply than the yeoman, for whom nothing remained when his farm no 
 longer supported him but to seil it. procure a jenny or a loom, or take Service 
 as an agricultural laborer in the employ of a large farmer. His inherited slow- 
 ness 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 seil 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 capitalist could hold out by the application 
 of water-power even with the old machinery, for the single Spinner this was im- 
 possible. And the factory System, the beginning of which was thus made, re- 
 ceived 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 i8th 
 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 Crcmpton, of Firwood, Lan- 
 cashire, contrived the mule in 1785, and as Arkwright invented the carding 
 engine, and preparatory (“ slubbing and roving”) frames about the same tirne, 
 the factory System became the prevailing one for the spinning of cotton. By 
 means of trifling modifications these machines were gradually adapted to the 
 spinning of flax, and so to the superseding of handwork here, too. Bat even 
 then, the end was not yet. In the closing years of the last Century, Dr. Cart- 
 wright, 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 Watts’ 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 manu- 
 factured 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 
 
7 
 
 Proletariat, the destruction of all property holding and of all security of employ- 
 ment for the working dass, demoralization, 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* 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 ex- 
 ported 556,000,000 yards of woven cotton goods, 76,500,000 pounds of cotton 
 yarn, and cotton hosiery of the value of 200,000. In the same year over 
 8,000,000 mule spindles were at work, 110,000 power and 250,000 handlooms, 
 throstle spindles not included, in the Service of he cotton industry; and, accord- 
 ing to Mac Culloch’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 center of this industry is Lancashire, where it 
 originated; it has thoroughly revolutionized this county, Converting it from an 
 obscure, ill-cultivated swamp into a busy, lively region, multiplying its popula- 
 tion tenfold in eighty years, and causing giant cities such as Liverpool and 
 Manchester, containing together 700,000 inhabitants, and their neighboring 
 towns, Bolton with 60,000, Rochdale with 75,000, Oldham with 50,000, Preston 
 with 60,000, Ashton and Nelybridge 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 ihem, and all these miracles are the product of the cotton industiy. 
 Glasgow, too, the center for the cotton district of Scotland, for Lanarkshire and 
 Renfrewshire, has increased in population from 30,000 to 300,000 since the in- 
 troduction 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 i8og Heathcote in- 
 vented the bobbin-net machine, in consequence of which the production of lace 
 was greatly simplified, and the demand increased proportionately in consequence 
 
 * Accordin^ to Porter^s Progress of the Nation, London, 1836, Vol. I, 1838, Vol. II, 1843, Vol. 
 III, (official date), and other sources chiefly official. 
 
8 
 
 of the diminished cost, so that now, at least two hundred thousand persons are 
 supported by this industry. Its chief centers 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, bleach- 
 ing, and printing. Bleaching made 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 manu- 
 factured. 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 di§trict, 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 principle center 
 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 yam 
 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 popula- 
 tion is worthy of Observation : 
 
 Bradford contained in 1801 29,000, and in 1831 77,000 inhabitants. 
 
 Halifax “ “ “ 63,000, “ “ “ 110,000 “ 
 
 << 
 
 Huddersfield 
 
 Leeds 
 
 ( i 
 
 34,000 
 
 123,000 
 
 ( ( 
 
 And the whole West Riding “ 564,000, “ “ 980,000 “ 
 
 A population, which since 1831, must have increased at least 20-25 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 ex- 
 cluding nearly all weavers. 
 
 Progress in the linen trade developed later, because the nature of the raw ma- 
 terial 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 firsr who succeeded prac- 
 
9 
 
 tioally, and even Girard’s machinery 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 ex- 
 port 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 en- 
 virons, 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 princi- 
 pally 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 labor lay in the twisting of fine threads. Until 1824 the heavy 
 import duty, four Shillings per pound on raw material, greatly retarded the de- 
 velopment 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 
 Qomrnercial 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 awk- 
 ward devices of their competitors. In 1835 the British Empire possessed 263 
 twisting mills, employing 30,000 workers, located chiefly in Cheshire, in Mac- 
 clesfield, Congleton, and the surrounding districts, and in Manchester and Som- 
 ersetshire. Besides these, there are numerous mills for working up waste, from 
 which a peculiar article known as spun silk is manufactuied, 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 gigan- 
 tic advance achieved in English manufacture since 1760 restricted to the pro- 
 duction 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 immeasur- 
 able importance of mechanical power was practically demonstrated, every energy 
 was concentrated in the effort to exploit this power in all directions, and to ex- 
 ploit 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 niines which supplied 
 
10 
 
 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 rieh 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 durin g 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 smelt- 
 ing was simplified by the introduction of hot blasts, and iron could thas be pro- 
 duced 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 machin- 
 ery. Huntsman, a Sheffielder, discovered in 1790 a method for casting steel, 
 by which much labor 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 labor, 
 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 reach- 
 •jig 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 in- 
 dustry in the production of pottery, rendered important by the efforts of Josiah 
 
II 
 
 Wedgewood, about 1763. This inventor placed the whole manufacture of stone- 
 ware 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 improve- 
 ment of the soll, 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 suc- 
 cess, and the development of mechanical Science bestowed a multitude of ad- 
 vantages 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 182g, there were built in England and Wales 1,000 English miles 
 of roadway of the width prescribed by law, 60 feet, and nearly all the old roads 
 were reconstructed on the new System of McAdam. In Scotland, the Department 
 of Public Works built since 1803, nearly goo miles of roadway and more than 1,000 
 bridges, by which the population of the Highlands was suddenly placed within 
 reach of civilzation. The Highlanders had hitherto been chiefly poachers and 
 smugglers; they now became farmers and hand-workers. And, though Gaelic 
 schools were organized for the purpose of maintaining the Gaelic language, yet 
 Gaelic-Celtic customs and speech are rapidly vanishing before the approach of 
 English civilization. So, too, in Ireland; between the counties of Cork, Limer- 
 ick 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 civilization has thus gained admis- 
 sion even to this savage region. The whole British Empire, and especially Eng- 
 land, 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 eise 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 175g, 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 pass- 
 ing, 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 
 
12 
 
 alone, there are 2,200 miks of canals and 1,800 miles of navigable river. In 
 Scotland, Ihe Caledonian Canal was cut directly across the country; and in 
 Ireland several canals were built. These inprovements, too, like the railroads and 
 roadways, are nearly all the work of private individuals and Companies. 
 
 The railroads have been only lecently built. The first great one was opened 
 from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830, since which all the great eitles 
 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 Hüll and Newcastle (via York). There are also many minor lines 
 building or projected, which will soon make it possible to travel from Edinburg 
 to London in one day. 
 
 As it had transformed the means of communication by land, so did the intro- 
 duction of steam revolutionize travel by sea. The first steamboat was launched 
 in 1807, in the Hudson, in North America; the first in the British Empire, in 
 1811, 011 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 propo 7 ’tionally large agricultural popu- 
 lation. 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 sup- 
 pilies 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 in- 
 dustrial transformation is the English Proletariat. 
 
 We have already seen how the Proletariat was called into existence by the in- 
 troduction of machinery. The rapid extension of manufacture demanded 
 hands, wages rose, and troops of workmen migrated from the agricultural dis- 
 tricts to the cities. Population multiplied enormously, and nearly all the in- 
 crease 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 dis- 
 turbances, 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 dass, while the lower 
 
middle dass consists only of small shop-keepers, and very, very few handicrafts- 
 men. For, though the rising manufacture first attained importance by transform- 
 ing tools into machines, work-rooms into factories, and consequently, the toiling, 
 lower middle dass into the toiling Proletariat, and the former large merchants 
 into manufacturers, though the lower middle dass 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 ap- 
 prentices, came great capitalists and workingmen who had no prospect of rising 
 above their dass. Hand-work was carried on after the fashion of factory work, 
 the division of labor 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 Organization of hand-work, and the 
 disappearance of the lower middle dass deprived the workingman of all possi- 
 bility of rising into the middle dass himself. Hitherto he had always had the 
 prospect of establishing himself somewhere as master artificer, perhaps em- 
 ploying journeymen and apprentices; but now, when master artificers were 
 crowded out by manufacturers, when large Capital had become necessary for car- 
 rying on work independently, the working dass became, for the first time, an 
 integral, permanent dass of the population, whereas it had formerly often been 
 merely a transition leading to the bourgeoisie. Now he who was bo.rn 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 inde- 
 pendent movement. 
 
 In this way were brought together those vast masses of workingmen who 
 iiow fill the whole British Empire, whose social condition forces itself every day 
 more and more upon the attention of the civilized world. The condition of the 
 working dass is the condition of the vast majority of the English people. The 
 question: What is to become of these 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 Parlj^mentary debates, of any importance, may be reduced to 
 this; and, though the English middle dass 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 dass gains ground, the interests of the middle dass 
 diminish in importance; and, in spite of the fact that the middle dass is the 
 chief, in fact, the only power in Parliament, the last session of 1844 was a 
 continuous debate upon subjects affecting the working dass, the Poor Relief 
 Bill, the Factory Act, the Masters’ and Servants’ Act; and Thomas Duncombe, 
 the representative of the workingmen in the Ilouse of Commons, was the great 
 man of the session, while the Liberal middle dass with its motion for repealing 
 the Corn Laws, and the Radical middle dass with its resolution for refusing 
 
the taxes, played pitiable röles. Even the debates about Ireland were at bot- 
 tom debates about the Irish Proletariat, and the mtans of coming to its assist- 
 ance. It is high time, too, for the English middle dass to make some conces- 
 sions to the workingmen who no longcr plead but threaten; for in a short time 
 it may be too late. 
 
 In spite of all this, the English middle dass, espedally the manufacturing 
 dass, which is enriched directly by means of the poverty of the workers, per- 
 sists in ignoring this poverty. This dass, feeling itself the mighty representative 
 dass 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 dis- 
 tress, because it, the property holding, manufacturing dass, must bear the 
 moral responsibility for this distress.j Hence the scornful smile with which in- 
 telligent Englishmen,'(änd they, the middle dass, alone are known on the con- 
 tinent)7 assume when any one begins to speak of the condition of the working 
 dass; hence the utter ignorance on the part of the whole middle dass of every- 
 thing which concerns the workers; hence the ridiculous blunders which men of 
 this dass, 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 dass dwells upon a soil that is honeycombed, and may any day col- 
 lapse, 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 
 Tlie deep wrath of the whole working dass from Glasgow to London, against 
 the rieh, 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 '94 will prove to have been 
 cbild’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 manufac- 
 ture attained importance only in consequence of the industrial change, and en- 
 gendered a new proletaria-t, 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 aremost enlightened 
 as to their own interests, the miners somewhat less so, the agricultural laborers 
 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 Labor 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 Labor Movement has kept with the movement of industrial develop- 
 ment, the historical significance of manufacture. 
 
 Since, however, at the present moment, pretty much the whole industrial Pro- 
 letariat 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 ex- 
 amine 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 centralizes 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 thehand laborof the independent 
 workman out of the market. The division of labor, 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 
 dass ; on a large scale, it created the working dass, and raised the elect of the 
 middle dass to the throne, but only to overthrow them the moresurely when the 
 time comes. Meanwhile, it is an undenied and easily explained fact that the 
 
— i6 — 
 
 numerous, petty middle dass of the “ gocd old times ” has been annihilated by 
 manufacture, and resolved into rieh capitalists on the one hahd and poor workers 
 on the üther. i 
 
 The centralizing tendency of manufacture does not^ however, stop here. 
 Population becomes centralized 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 to- 
 gether in a single building, living near each other and forming a village of them- 
 selves 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 
 skillful 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 labor increases constantly, new establishments can be bullt 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 
 centralizing 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 manufac- 
 turing town, and Manchester and Liverpool would meet at Warrington or New- 
 ton; for in commerce, too, this centralization of the population, works inprecise- 
 ly the same way, and hence it is that one or two great harbors, such as Hüll 
 and Liverpool, Bristol and London, monopolize alniost 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 ob- 
 servable here. Here the centralization 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 rieh and a poor dass, for 
 
 l) Compare on this point my “ Outlines for a Critique of Political Econpmy in the Dcutsch- 
 JTrunzö^ i sehe JahrbitfChtr. 
 
17 
 
 the lower middle dass vanishes more completely with every passing day. Thus 
 the dass formerly most stable, has become the mostrestless 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 stränge 
 thing. This colossal centralization, this heaping together of two and a half 
 millions of human beings at one point, has multiplied thepower of this two and a 
 half millions a hundred fold ; has raised London to the commercial Capital of the 
 World , created the giant docks and assembled the thousand vessels that con- 
 tinually 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 up- 
 wards, 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.* 
 
 But the sacrifices which all this has cost become apparent later. After roam- 
 ing the streets of the Capital a day or two, making headvvay with difficulty through 
 the human turmoil and the endless lines of vehicles, after visiting the slums of 
 the metropolis, one realizes 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 civilization 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 
 
 * This appHes to the time of sailing vessels. The Thames now is a dreary collection of ugly 
 Steamers. F. E. 
 
— i8 — 
 
 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 honor 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 selfconscious 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. 
 
 I 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 bour- 
 geoisie does him the favor 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 polic'e 
 will take care that he does so in a quiet and inoffensive manner. Düring my 
 residence in England, at least twenty to 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 matterj 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 con- 
 tinued want of proper nourishment has called forth fatal illness, when it has 
 produced such debility that causes which might otherwise have remained inop- 
 erative, brought on severe illness and death. The English workingmen call this 
 
— 19 — 
 
 “ social murder,” and accuse our whole society of perpetrating this crime per- 
 petually. Are they wrong ? 
 
 True, it is only individuals who starve, but what security has the working 
 man that it may not be bis turn to-morrow ? Who assures him employment, 
 who vouches for it, that, if for any reason or no reason his lord and master dis- 
 charges him to morrow, he can struggle along with those dependent upon him 
 until he may find some one eise “ 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, ever 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 dass. Let us see what 
 pay for his work society does give the workingman 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 dose to the palaces of the 
 rieh ; but, in general, a separate territory has been assigned to it, where, re- 
 moved 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- 
 mens’ 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 neighborhood 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 
 
20 
 
 Streets, in which there is quite as much life as in the great thoroughfares of the 
 town except that, here, people of the working dass only are to be seen. A vege- 
 table 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, doorposts 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 demoralizing 
 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 rieh 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 characterized as an abode “ of a multitude of Irish 
 demoralized 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 v/hich puny children and half-starved, 
 ragged women emerge into the light of day. In the immediate neighborhood 
 of Drury Laue Theater, 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 workingmen’s families in 5,294 “dwellings” (if they 
 deserve the name !) men, women and children thrown together without distinc- 
 tion 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 workingmen’s fam- 
 ilies, 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 dass in lawful 
 ways ] The abominable dwellings in Drury Lane, just mentioned, bring in the 
 
21 
 
 foilowing rents : two cellar dwellings, 3 sh.; one room, ground floor, 4 sh. ; 
 second story, 4 sh. 6 d. ; third floor, 4 sh. ; garret room, 3 sh. weekly, so that 
 the Starving occupants of Charles Street alone, pay the house-owners a yearly 
 tribute of ;^2,ooo, and the 5,336 families above mentioned in Westminster, a 
 yearly rent of ;^40,ooo. 
 
 The most extensive working people’s district lies east of the Tower in White 
 Chapel and Bethnal Green, where the greatest massesof London working people 
 live. Let us hear Mr. G. Aiston, preacher of St. Philip’s Bethnal Green, on 
 the condition of his parish. He says : 
 
 “It containsi,400 houses, inhabited by 2,795 families, or about 12,000 persons. 
 The space upon which this large population dw-ells, 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 Lon- 
 don 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 rec- 
 tor 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 neigh- 
 borhood 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 interiors of 
 the dwellings. But let us follow the English officials who occasionally stray 
 thither, into one or two of these workingmen’s homes. 
 
 On the occasion of an inquest held Nov. iqth, 1843, by Mr. Carter, coroner for 
 Surrey, upon the body of Ann Galway, aged 45 years, the newspapers related 
 the following particulars conceining the deceased; She had lived at No. 3 
 White Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London, with her husband and a nine- 
 teen year-old son in a little room, in which neither a bedste-ad 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. I5th, 1844, two boys were brought before the police magis- 
 trate because, being in astarving condition, they had stolen and immediately de- 
 voured a half-cooked calf’s foot from a shop. The magistrate feit called upon 
 to investigaie the case farther, and received the following detailsfrom the police- 
 man: 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 
 
22 — 
 
 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 seil 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 daaghter, 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 doset, in which there was not one single piece 
 of furniture. In one corner lay some rags upon which both slept ; a ehest 
 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 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 rieh 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 ashelterare fortunate, for- 
 tunate 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 
 packedin, sick and well, young and old, drunk and sober, men and women, just 
 as they come, indiscriminately. Then come strife, blows, wounds, or, if thesc 
 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 dose 
 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 
 
23 
 
 beings of all ages, who huddle together in the parks evcry night, having no 
 other shelter than what is supplied by the trees and a few hollows of the em- 
 bankment. Of these, the majority are young girls who have been seduced froni 
 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 everywhefe. 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, dose on the palatial splendor of Bayswater, on the con- 
 fines of the old and new aristocratic quarters, in a district where the cautious re- 
 finement of modern design has refrained from creating one single tenement for 
 poverty ; which seems, as it were, dedicated to the exclusive enj oyment 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 dose 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 l^t 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 theorize, but to act. God knows, there is much room for action 
 nowadays.’i 
 
 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 
 leceived since its opening, January 27th to March lyth, 1844, 2,740 persons for 
 one or more nights; and, although the season was growing more favorable, the 
 nurnber 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 de- 
 clare 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 
 
 1 Times, Oct. i2th, 1843. 
 
24 
 
 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 I 
 in the dirt, has some share in this; but as we find thousands of the Irish in every | 
 great city in England and Scotland, and as every poor population must gradu- | 
 ally sink into the same uncleanliness, the wretchedness of Dublin is nothing 
 specific, nothing peculiar to Dublin, but something common to all great towns. i 
 The poor quarters of Dublin are extremely extensive, and the filth, the unin- 
 habitableness of the houses and the neglect of the streets surpassall 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 
 Workhousesi, 1,318 persons lived in fifty-two houses with 390 rooms in Barral 
 Street, and i,Q97 persons in 71 houses with 393 rooms in and near Church Street; j 
 that : I 
 
 ‘‘ In this and the adjoining district there exists a multitude of foul courts and 
 alleys, that many cellars receive all their light through the door, while in not a 
 few the inhabitants sleep iipon the bare floor, though most of them possess bed- 
 steads at least, that 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 wretched- 
 ness 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, and 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 de- 
 
 Qaoted 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. 
 
25 
 
 clared that it was enough to make a heart of adamant bleed to see such misery 
 in a country like Scotland.” 
 
 In the Edinburgh Medical aiid Surgical Journal, Dr. Hennan reports a similar 
 state of things. From a Parliamentary Report, ^ it is evident that in the dwell- 
 ings of the poor of Edinburgh a want of cleanliness reigns, such as must be ex- 
 pected 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 stenchwith filth and swarms of vermin. The prevailing construc- 
 tion of Edinburgh favors 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. ^ 
 
 “ These streets,” says an English Journal in an article upon the sanitary con- 
 dition 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 neighbor, while the 
 houses are piled so high, story upon story, 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 or even privies belonging to the houses. . In 
 consequence all refuse, garbage and exerements of at least 50,000 persons are 
 thrown into the gutters every night, so that, in spite of all the Street sweeping, 
 a mass of dried filth and foul vapors 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 inhabi- 
 tants will testify to the high degree which disease, wretchedness and demoral- 
 ization 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 
 
 1 Report to the Home Secretary from the Poor-Law Commissioners on an Inquiry into the 
 Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Classes in Great Britain with Appendix. Presented to both 
 Houses of Parliament in July, 1842, 3 vola. Folio. 
 
 2 The Artizan, October, 1842. 
 
26 
 
 passage-wav, the whole ordinarily very dirty and inhabited exclusively by pro- 
 letarians. Of such courts we shall have more to say when we come to Man- 
 chester. In Bristol, on one occasion, 2,800 families were visited, of whom 46^ 
 occupied but one room each. 
 
 Precisely the same state of things prevails in the factory towns. In Notting- 
 ham 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. Düring 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 Leices- • 
 ter, Derby and Sheffield, it is no better. Of Birmingham, the article above. 
 cited from the Artizan 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 numer- 
 ous in Birmingham, reaching two thousand, and containing the g'reater 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 havingtheir 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, wherefor Birmingham shows even during 
 the reign of an epidemic a far smaller mortality than, for instance, Wolver- 
 hampton, Dudley and Billston, 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 Artizan observes : 
 
 “ The working dass 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 story 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 fright- 
 ful epidemics which, beginning here, spread desolation over Glasgow.” 
 
 Let US hear how J. C. Symons, Government Commissioner for the investiga- , 
 tion of the condition of the handweavers, describes these portions of the city 
 
 *Arts and Artizans at Home and Abroad. By J. C. Symons, Edinburg, 1839. Theauthor, as i 
 it seems, himself a Scotchman, is a Liberal, and consequeutly fanatically oppostd to every inde- Z 
 pendent movement of workingmen. The passages here cited are to be found p. 116 et. seq. 
 
27 
 
 “ I have scen wretchedness in some of its worst phases both höre 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 civilized country. In the 
 lower lodging-houses ten, twelve, sometimes twenty persons of both sexes, all 
 ages and various degrees of nakedness, sleep indiscriminately huddied 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 düng heap. Re- 
 volting as was the out ward 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 Symons) 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 subsist- 
 ence 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 ofother cities never revealed anything half so bad, either in in- 
 tensity of moral and physical infection, norin 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 popu- 
 lated, because, according to the law, no rent can be demanded for them.” 
 
 The great manufacturing district in the center 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 centers. 
 The woolen 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 
 Corning into the towns themselves, one finds little to rejoice over. Leeds lies as 
 the Artizan describes it, and as I found confirmed upon examination: “on a gentic 
 “ slope that descends into the valley of the Aire. This stream flows througJi 
 “ the city for about a mile and a half and is exposed to violent floods duiing 
 “ tha WS 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 tribu- 
 “ tary becks are narrow, dirty, and enough in themselves to shorten the livesof 
 “ the inhabitants, especially of little children. Added to this, the disgusting 
 / “ state of the workingmen's districts about Kirkgate, Marsh Lane, Cross Street 
 j “ and Richmond Road, which is chiefly attributable to their unpaved, drainless 
 ‘ Streets, irregulär architecture, numerous courts and alleys, and total lack of 
 
28 
 
 “ the most ordinary means of cleanliness, all this taken togeLher is explanation 
 enough of the excessive mortality in these unhappy abodesof 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 i engenders miasmatic vapors strongly 
 impregnated with sulphurated hydrogen, and leaves a disgusting residuum 
 highly injurious to health. Düring 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 city, there were three 
 deaths to two births, whereas in the same three months, in every other part 
 ‘‘of the city, 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 shovelfulls of ashes, but in spite of all such attempts, düng heaps 
 “and pools of dirty water emptied from the houses, fillall the holes until wind and 
 “ sun dry them up. 2 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 dweliings, 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 in the junction of several 
 valleys, lies upon the banks ofa 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 pietnre, when viewed from the surrounding heights. 
 Yet within reigns the same filth and discomfort as in Leeds. The older por- 
 tions of the town are built upon steep hillsides, and are narrow and irregulär 
 In the lanes, alleys and courts lie filth and d^bris in heaps, the houses are ruin- 
 ous, 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 hill- 
 side, was totally abandoned. In general, the portions of the valley bottom in 
 which workingmen’s cottages have crowded between the tall factories, are among j' 
 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 regulär, ) 
 
 1 It must be borne in mind that these cellars are not mere storing-rooms for rubbish, but 
 dweliings of human beings. 
 
 2 Compare Report of the Town Council in the Statistical Journal, vol. 2. p. 404. 
 
— 2y — 
 
 being built in rows, but Ihey share here. too, all the evils incident to the 
 customary method of providing workingmens’ dwellings, evils of which ^ve shall 
 have occasion 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 Aug. 5th, 1844, that : “ Itis 
 “ nolorious that in Huddersfield whole streets and niany lanes and courts are 
 “ neither paved nor supplied with sewers nor other drains ; that in them refnse, 
 “ d^bris 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 labor movements emanate, namcly, South Lancashire with its 
 central city Manchester. Again we have beautiful hill country, sloping gently 
 from the w^atershed 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 manu- 
 facture has reached its perfection in Manchester. In the cotton industry of 
 South I^ancashire, the application of the forces of Nature, the superseding of 
 handlabor by machinery, (especially by the power-loom and the self-acting mule) 
 and the division of labor, are seen at the highest point; and, if we recognize 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 dass must neces- 
 sarily develop here most freely and perfectly, and the manufacturing 
 Proletariat present itself in its füllest classic perfection. The degradation to 
 which the application of steam-power, machinery and the division of labor 
 reduce the workingman, and the attempts of the Proletariat to ^rise above this 
 abasement, must likewise be carried to the highest point and with the füllest 
 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 peoples’ quarters are concerned, except that the working dass forms, 
 \ if possible, a larger prooortion of their population. These towns are purely 
 
30 
 
 industrial and conduct all their business through Manchester upon which they 
 are in every respect dependent, whence ihey are inhabited only by workingmen 
 and petty tradesmen, while Manchester has a very considerable commercial 
 Population, especially of comniission and respectable retail dealers. Hence 
 Bolton, Preston, Wigan, Bury, Rochdale, Middleton, Heywood, Oldham, Ash- 
 ton, Stalybridge, Stockport, etc., though nearly all towns of thirty, fifty, seven- 
 ty to ninety thousand inhabitants, are almost wholly working peoples’ 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 uni- 
 versal 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 northwest 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 every where, the older part of the 
 lown is especially ruinous and miserable. A dark-colored body of water which 
 ieaves 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 Man- 
 chester 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 dusk- 
 iest, smokiest holes, and looks, indeed, especially when viewed from the 
 viaduct, excessively repellant. But far more repulsive are the cottages and 
 cellar dwellings of the working dass, 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 northeast 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 Tarne, and is, in general, built on the newer, 
 more regulär 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 
 
31 
 
 arrangement Ashton owes a much more attractive appearance than that of most 
 factory towns ; the streets are broad and cleaner, the cottages look new, brighi- 
 red and comfortable. But the modern System of building cottages for working- 
 men has its own disadvantages ; every Street has its concealed rear laue to whicli 
 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 honse-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 Tarne. In coming over the hill 
 from Ashton, the traveler 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 a disorderly 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 laboring population in 
 Manchester are fully applicable to these surrounding towns as well. 
 
 Manchester lies at the foot of the Southern slope of a ränge of hills, which 
 Stretch hither from Oldham, their last peak Kersall-moor, beingatonce the race- 
 course and the Mons Sacer of Manchester. Manchester proper lies on the left bank 
 of the Irwell, between that stream and the two smaller ones, the Irk and the 
 Medlock, which here empty into the Irwell. On the left bank of the Irwell, 
 bounded by a sharp curve of the river, lies Salford, and further westward Pendle- 
 ton ; northward from the Irwell lie Upper and Lower Broughton, northward of 
 the Irk, Cheetham Hill ; south of the Medlock lies Hulme, further east Chorlton 
 on Medlock; still further, pretty well to the east of Manchester, Ardwick. The 
 whole assemblage of buildings is commonly called Manchester, and contains 
 
32 
 
 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 pleas- 
 ure walks. This arises chiefly from the fact, that by unconscious tacit agree- 
 ment as well as with outspoken conscious determination, the working-people*s 
 qiiarters are sharply separated from the sections of the city reserved for the 
 middle dass ; or if this does not succeed, they are concealed with the cloak of 
 charity. Manchester contains, at its heart, a rather extended commercial district, 
 perliaps half a mile long and about as broad, and consisting almost wholly of 
 Offices and warehouses. Nearly the whole district is abandoned by dwdlers 
 and is lonely and deserted at night ; only watchmen and policemen traverse its 
 narrow laues 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 
 breädth, 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 comfor- 
 table 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 arislocracy can take the shortest road through the middle of all the 
 laboring 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 
 workingmen’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 ; further south, when it 
 leaves the commercial district, with less inviting shops, which grow dirtier and 
 more interrupted by alehouses and gin palaces the farther one goes, until at the 
 Southern end the appearance of the shops leaves no doubt that workers ^ind 
 
33 
 
 workers only are their customers. So Market Street running southeast from 
 ihe Exchange ; at first brilliant shops of the best sort with counting houses or 
 warehouses above ; in the continuation, Piccadilly, immense hotels and ware- 
 hoiises ; in the farther continuation, London Road, in the neighborhood of the 
 Medlock, factories, alehouses, shops for the humbler bourgeoisie and the work- 
 ing population, and from this point onward, great gardens and country seats of 
 the wealthier merchants and manufacturers. In this way any one who knows 
 Manchester can infer the adjoining districts, from theappearance of the thorough- 
 fare, but one is seldom in a position to catch from the Street a glimpse of the 
 real laboring 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 dis- 
 tricts ;but at the same time I have never seen so systematic a shutting out of the 
 working dass from the thoroughfares, so tender a concealment of everything 
 which might affront the eye and the nerves of the bourgeoisie, asin 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 dass, that 
 the working dass is doing famously, I cannot help feeling that the liberal manu- 
 facturers, the “ Big Whigs” 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, and then proceed at once to de- 
 scribe the laboring quarters. First of all, there is the old town of Manchester, 
 which lies between the northern boundary of the commercial districtand 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 rem- 
 nants of the old pre-manufacturing Manchester, whose former inhabitants have 
 removed with their descendents 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 workingmens’ quarter, 
 for even the shops and alehouses 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 
 disorderly 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 im- 
 possible 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 
 
— 34 — 
 
 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 
 nnqualifiedly, 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 excre- 
 ment. 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 neighborhood with the stench of animal putrefaction. Be- 
 low 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 Chlor- 
 ide of lime. Dr. Kay gives a terrible description of the state of this court at 
 that time.* 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, mer- 
 cifully 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 fortyor 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 Con- 
 tents of all the neighboring sewers and privies. It may be easily imagined, 
 therefore, what sort of residue the stream deposits. Below the bridge you look 
 
 ♦The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes employed in the Cotton Manufac- 
 ture in Manchester. By James Ph. Kay, M. D. and. Ed. 1832. 
 
 Dr. Kay confuses the working dass in general with the factory workers, otherwise an excellent 
 Pamphlet. 
 
35 
 
 upon the piles of d^bris, the refuse, filth and offal from the courts on the steep 
 left bank ; here each honse is packed dose behind its neighbor and a piece of 
 each is visible, all black, sraoky, cnimbling, 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 d^bris ; the third Stands so 
 low that the lowest floor is uninhabitable, and therefore without Windows ordoors. 
 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 hill top, upon the work- 
 ing 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 bet- 
 ter. 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 noth- 
 ing but narrow, filthy nooks and alleys, until after a few minutes he has lost all 
 clues, and knows not whither to turn. Eveiy where half or wholly ruined build- 
 ings, 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! Every where 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 civilized 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 thor- 
 oughly. 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, xitchen, 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 chi.nney-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 feit, 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 nar- 
 row doorway alone led out into another almost equally ill-built, ill-kept laby- 
 rinth 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 
 
36 
 
 interiors fully correspond with their filthy external surronndings. 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 
 np 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-pens wliich 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 quai 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 Attings 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 neigh- 
 borhood 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 workingmen’s dwellings, we shall come into a 
 • somewhat newer quarter, which Stretches from St. Michael’s Church to Withy 
 Grove and Shudehill. Here there is somewhat better Order. In place of the 
 chaos of buildings, we find at least long straight laues 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 occasion- 
 ally having gutters, nearly every house has, on the other hand, a cellar dwell- 
 ing, 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 cleanli- 
 ness of the inhabitants, is the multitude of swine walking about in all the alleys, 
 rooting into the offal heaps, or kept imprisoned in small pens. Here, as in 
 most of the workingmen’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, Mil- 
 
37 
 
 lers 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 pass- 
 ages 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 enovgh 
 to convey a true Impression of the filth, ruin and uninhabitableness, the defi- 
 ance of all considerations of cleanliness, Ventilation and health which character- 
 ize 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 civilization he may share and yet live, it is only 
 necessary to travel hither. True, this is the old Town, and the people of Man- 
 chester emphasize the fact whenever any one mentions to them the frightful 
 condition of this Hell upon Earth; but what does that prove? Every thing 
 wdiich here arouses horror and Indignation is of recent origin, belongs to the 
 industrial epoch. The couple of hundred houses, w’hich belong to old Man- 
 chester, have been long since abandoned by their original inhabitants; the in- * 
 dustrial epoch alone has crammed into them the swarms of workers w’hom 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 be'ngs, 
 to plunder the poverty of the workers, to undermine the health of thousands, in 
 Order that they alone ^ the owners, may grow rieh. 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, w ithout these workers, this povei-ty, this slavery could not have lived. 
 True, the original Situation of this quarter was bad, little good could have been 
 made out of it; but, have the land-owners, 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 refer- 
 ence to the highest possible profit on the principle that no hole is so bad but that 
 some poor creahive must take it who can pay for itothing better. Elowever, 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, be- 
 yond the Old Town between the Irk and St. George’s Road. Here all the 
 features of the city are lost. Single rows of houses or groups of streets stand, 
 
38 
 
 here and there, like little villages on the naked, not even g^ass-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 harbor numerous colonies of swine penned in small sties or yards, 
 or wandering unrestrained through the neighborhood. 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, end- 
 ing in a continuation of lanes, blind alleys, back lanes and courts, which grow 
 more and more crowded and disorderly the nearer they approach the heart of 
 the town. True, they are here offener paved or supplied with paved sidewalks 
 and gutters; but the filth, the bad order of the houses, and especially of the cel- 
 lars, remains the same. 
 
 It may not be out of place to make some general observations just here as to 
 the customary construction of workingmen’s quarters in Manchester. We have 
 seen how in the Old Town pure accident determined the groupingof 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 workingmen’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 regulär, 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 con- 
 struction is injurious to the health of the workers by preventing Ven- 
 tilation, 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.* 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 ventilatio^n. 
 And, as the police charged with care of the streets, does not trouble itself about 
 the condition of these courts, as every thing 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. Workingmen’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 dass, so 
 
 ♦ And yet an EngHsh Liberal wiseacre asserts, in the Report of the Chüdrens* Employment 
 Commission, that these courts are the master-piece 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. 
 
39 
 
 fortunate as to possess a back door and small court, and these command th(.* 
 highest rent. In the rear of these cottages runs a narrow alley, the back Street, 
 bullt 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 ob- 
 tained 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 be- 
 cause it saves them space, and furnishes the means of fleecing better paid work- 
 ers 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 workingmen's dis- 
 trict east of St. George’s Road and Ancoats Street, and is the one most often 
 found in the other workingmen’s quarters of Manchester and its suburbs. 
 
 In the last mentioned broad distn’ct 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. Further to the Northeast lie 
 many newly-built up streets; here the cottages look neat and clean ly, 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 con- 
 struction 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 
 workingmen'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 1 
 
40 
 
 liave 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 con- 
 tiactors 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 cottdges are often built but 
 twenty or thirty years before the expiration of the term, it may easily be im- 
 agined 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 land- 
 owner; 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 workingmen’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 nig- 
 gardliness 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 to- 
 gether, 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 manu- 
 facture, chiefly indeed within the present Century, contains a vast number of 
 ruinous houses, most of them being, in fact, in the last stages of inhabitable- 
 ness. I will not dwell upon the amount of Capital thus wasted, the small addi- 
 tional 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 demoralizing 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’ dura- 
 tion of the cottage is, of course, not always perfectly strict; for, if the dwellings 
 be 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, how^ever, than is absolutely un- 
 avoidable, and the dwellings so repaired are the worst of all. Occasionally when 
 
41 
 
 an epidemic threatens, the otherwise sleepy conscience of the sanitary police is 
 a little stirred, raids are made into the workingmen’s districts, whole rows of cel- 
 lars 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 northeast sides of Manchester are 
 the only ones on which the bourgeosie has not built, because ten or eleven 
 months of the year the west and Southwest 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, workingmen’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 beit of factories and workingmen’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 säw 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 Southwest 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 Stand- 
 ing pools in all directions; the atmosphere is poisoned by the effluviafrom 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 rotton 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 ihe exterior of 
 this district forces upon the beholder. But what must one think when he lears 
 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 isprovided ; 
 and that in spite of all the preaching of the physicians, inspiteof the excitement 
 
42 
 
 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 I Dr. Kay asserts that not only the 
 cellars but the first floors of all the houses in this district are damp ; that a 
 nnmber 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 handloom weaver had to sop up the water from his 
 dwelling every morning and pour it into the Street ! 
 
 Further 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 workingmen’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 irregulär 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 
 demoralized dass 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 
 workingmen’s quarter, penetrated by a single wide avenue. Salford, once more 
 important than Manchester, was then the leading town of the surrounding dis- 
 trict 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 
 ne wer 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 naiTOw, 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 
 
43 
 
 upon the working peoples’ districts, dose the worst dwellings, and causes the 
 filthiest spots in these Augean stables to be cleansed, in Salford it seems tohave 
 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 
 vvhat 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. Ex- 
 actly the same state of affairs is found in the more distant regions of Salford, in 
 Islington, aiong 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 w^orst possible state, vie with the dwellings of 
 the Old Town in filth and overcrowding. In this district I found a man, ap>- 
 parently 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 ceil- 
 ing, had obtained a bedstead and lived there, though the rain dripped through 
 his rotten roof. This man was too old and weak for regulär work, and sup- 
 ported himself by removing manure with a hand-cart; the düng heaps lay nex: 
 door to his palace! 
 
 Such are the various working peoples* quarters of Manchester as I had occa- 
 sion 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 refere nce to Ventilation, with 
 reference solely to the profit secured by the contractor. / In a word, we must 
 confess that in the workingmen’s dwellings of Manchester, no cleanliness, no 
 convenience, and consequently no comfortable family lifc is possible; that in 
 such dwellings only a physically degeneratc race, robbed of all humanity, de- 
 graded, reduced morally and physically to bestiality, could feel comfortable and 
 at home. j And I am not alone in making this assertion. We have seen th^ 
 Dr. Kay gives precisely the same description; and, though it is superfluous, I 
 quote further the words of a Liberal, recognized 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 num- 
 ber of inhabitants they are towns, have been erected with the utmost disregard 
 of everything except the immediate advantage of the speculating builder. A 
 
 * Nassar. W. Senior’ Leiters on the Factory Act to the Rt. Hon. the President ot the Board 
 of Trade (Chas. Poulet Thompson Esq.,) London, 1837, p. 24, 
 
44 
 
 carpenter and builder unite to buy a series of buildin^f sites {t. 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 
 vvay deeper cellars could be secured without the cost of digfging, cellars not for 
 störing wares or rubbish, but for dwellings for human beings. Not one house 
 of this Street escaped the cholem. In general, the Streets of these suburbs are 
 unp.ived, with a düng 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 bourgeosie of the city. People 
 remembered the unwholesome dwellings of the poor, and trembled before the 
 certainty that each of these slums would become a center for the plague, whence 
 it would spread desolation in all directions through the houses of the propertied 
 dass. A Health Commission was appointed at once to investigate these dis- 
 tricts, and report upon their condition to the Town Council. Dr. Kay, himself 
 a member of this commi:sion, who visited in person every separate police dis- 
 trict 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 white- 
 washing 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 contained 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 ques- 
 tion. A few of the worst nooks were therefore cleansed, and everything eise 
 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 con- 
 dition 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.* 
 
 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 swine were kept, and other disgusting things of 
 the most revolting kind were found. 
 
 We must add that many families, who have but one room for themselves, re- 
 ceive 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, 
 
 Kay, loc. cit., p. 32. 
 
45 
 
 according to the “ Report concerning the sanitary condition of the working 
 class,”six tiines repeated in Manchester. Common lodging-houses, too, are 
 very numeroiis; 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 centralization of vice. *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 
 dass 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 the name in its 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 dw^ell is a safe conclu- 
 sion, and such is the fact. The clothing of the w^orking 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 colored 
 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 workingmen, who are caüed 
 “ fustian jackets,” and call themselves so in contrast to the gentlemen w’ho wear 
 broadcloth, which latter word is used as characteristio for the middle dass. 
 When Fergus O’Connor, the Chartist Leader, came tc 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 w'orkingmen. hats of the most diverse forms, round, high, 
 broad-brimmed, narrow-brimmed, or without brims — only the younger men in 
 
 * P. Gaskeil, the Manufacturing Population of England, its Moral, Social and Physical Con- 
 dition, and the Changes which have arisen from the use of Steam-Machinery, With an examina- 
 tion of Infant Labor. “Fiat Justitia,” 1833. — Depicting chiefly the state of the working dass in 
 Lancashire. The author is a Liberal, but wrote at a time when it was not a feature of Liberali^m 
 to chant the happiness of the workers. He is therefore unprejudiced, and can afford to have 
 eyes for ihe evils of the present state of things, and especially for the factory System. On the 
 other hand, he wrote before the Faciories Enquiry Commission, and adopts from untrustworthy 
 sources many a.ssertions 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 dass with the mill hands. The hisiory of the 
 development of the Proletariat contained in the introduction to the present work, is chiefly taken 
 from this work of Gaskeil s. 
 
- 46 - 
 
 factory townvS wearing caps. Any one who does not own a hat folds himself a 
 low, square paper cap. 
 
 The whole clothing of the working dass, 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 dass to wear flannel next the skin, about 
 the body, and flannel scarfs and shirts are in almost universal use. Not only 
 is the working dass 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 dothes, 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 workingman 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 ” 
 doth, manufactured for sale and not for use and liable to tear or grow thread- 
 bare 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 work- 
 ingman’s clothing is, in most cases, in bad condition, and there is the oft-recur- 
 ring necessity for placing the best pieces in the pawnbrokei’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 color 
 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: ^ 
 
 “ A suit of tatters, the gettitig on or off of which is said to be a difficult Opera- 
 tion, 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 dass. 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 
 bis 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 uni- 
 versal; and so he comes to market at five or even seven o’clock, whence the buy- 
 ers of the middle dass 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 
 
 I. Thomas Carlyle, Chartism, London, 1840, p. 28. 
 
47 
 
 wiltcd, 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 seil 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 dass. 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 Manches- 
 ter, 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 w’ere 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 sixweeks, from July ist to August I4th, 
 the same sheet reported three similar cases. According to the Guardian for 
 August 3d, 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 31, two butchers at Wigan, of whom one had 
 previously been convicted of the same offence, were find £2. st. and £4 st. re- 
 spectively, for exposing tainted meat for sale; and, according to the number 
 for August 10, 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 in- 
 spectors — and how eise 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 w^orkers obtain good and 
 nourishing meat as a usual thing. But they are victimized in yet another way 
 by the money-greed of the middle dass. 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 dass — I delight 
 in the testimony of my opponents — let us hear the Liverpool Mercury: “ Salted 
 
48 
 
 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 return- 
 ing to the proper color and being sold as fresh. Pepper is mixed with pounded 
 nut-shells; 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 wash- 
 ing; 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 conime chez 
 nous. But the lion’s share of the evil results of these frauds falls to the work- 
 ers. The rieh 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 rieh arespoiled, 
 too, by habitual good eäting, 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 can- 
 not 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 even seil 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 seil 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 de- 
 
49 
 
 fraud as before; while legal penalties attach to very few adulterations unless they 
 involve revenue frauds. Not in ihe quality alone, but in the qiiantity of bis 
 goods as well, is the English workingman 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 hav- 
 ing 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, 
 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 dass the chief sufferer from 
 frauds in the quality of goods make them the usual victims of frauds in the ques- 
 tion of quantity, too. 
 
 The habitual food of the individual workingman 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 tliere 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 ac- 
 companiment, weak tea, with perhaps a little sugar, milk, or spirits, is univers- 
 ally drunk. Tea is regarded in England, and even in Ireland, as quite as indis- 
 pensible 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 
 
50 
 
 
 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 not large 
 families, hunger prevails in spite of full and regulär 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, is this dass 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 wliich 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 dosing 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 in- 
 habited 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 
 workingman, 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 dwell- 
 ings 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 multi- 
 tudes is in rags. The food is, in general, bad; often almost wholly unfit for 
 use, and in many cases, at least at times, insufficient in quantity, so that, in ex- 
 treme cases, death by starvation results. Thus the working dass 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 case bitter want, reaching even home- 
 lessness 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 dass 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 gen- 
 eral an advantage over others, yet the condition of the workers in each brauch 
 
is subject to such great fluctuations that a single workingman may be so placed 
 as to pass through the whole ränge from comparative comfort to the extremes t 
 need, even to death by starvation, while almost every English workingman 
 can teil 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 v^ages 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 devot- 
 ing 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 centralized 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 influ- 
 ence on the working dass 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 con- 
 stant 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 
 
 u. ÜF lU- lib. 
 
52 
 
 from a free choice, of making a c<^ntract with free, unconstrained consent, as a 
 responsible agent, who has altained bis majority. 
 
 Fine free-dom, where ihe proletarian has no other choice ihan 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 
 bourgeois, 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 com petition of t he 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 idlenessTäther tharr in ~törh True, this limit is relative; one needs 
 more than another, one is accustomed to more comfort than another; the 
 Englishman who is still somewhat civilized, needs more than the Irishman who 
 goes in rags, eats potatoes, and sleeps in a pig sty. But that does hot hinder 
 the Irishman’s competing with the Englishman, and gradually forcing the rate 
 of wages, and with it the Englishman’s level of civilization down to the Irish- 
 man’s level. Certain kinds of work require a certain grade of civilization, 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 regulär work; but 
 no more lest he should be able to get on without the wages of his children, and 
 so make something eise of them than mere workingmen. Here, too, the limit, the 
 minimum wage, is relative. When every member of the family works, the in- 
 dividual worker can get on with proportionately less, and the bourgeoisie has 
 made the most of the opportunity of employing and making profitable the labor 
 of women and children afforded by machine-work. Of course, it is not in every 
 family that every member can be set at 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 
 workingman 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 
 
53 
 
 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 
 thaii 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 seil the 
 produce of their labor at a profit. 
 
 From this it is evident what the minimum of wages is. The maximum is de- 
 termined by the competition of the bourgeois among themselves; for we have 
 seen how they, too, must compete with each other. The bourgeois can increase 
 bis Capital only in commerce or manufacture, and in both cases he needs work- 
 ers. 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 in- 
 deed for his immediate living, for at need he could consume his Capital, but as 
 we need an article of trade or a beast of bürden 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 
 workingmen are employed, and a few more might perhaps be useful, the com- 
 petition among the workers falls away, and the bourgeois 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 cir- 
 cumstances, when neither workers nor capitalists have reason to compete especial- 
 ly 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 civilization of the workers. If the 
 woj kers 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 work- 
 ingmen by extraoidinary favors. 
 
 This Standard of the average needs and the average civilization of the workers 
 has become very complicnted by reason of the complications of English indus- 
 try, 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 
 
54 
 
 qualities which involve a certain grade of civilization, the rate of wages must be 
 such as to induce the worker to acquire such skill arA subject himself to such 
 regularity. Hence it is that the average wages of industrial workers are higher 
 than ihose of mere porters, day laborers, etc., higher especially than those of 
 agricultural laborers, 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 dass, so effectually a slave that he is 
 sold like a piece of goods, rises and falls in value like a commodity. If the de- 
 mand 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 lying; and as they cannot live upon that, 
 they die of slarvation. For, to speak in the words of the economists, the ex- 
 pense 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 
 j was perfectly right in his theory of population. The only difference as com- 
 1 pared 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 seil himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but 
 of the whole property-holding dass. For him the matter is unchanged at bot- 
 tom, and if this semblance of liberty necessarily gives him some real freedom 
 on the one hand, it eniails on the other the disadvantage thatno 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 in- 
 vested Capital, and gets its work done much more cheaply than is possible with 
 slave labor, as Adam Smith comfortingly pointed out.* 
 
 i Hence it follows, too, that Adam Smith was perfectly right in making the 
 I 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 
 com77iodityl If there are too few laborers 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 laborers has been secured. If 
 there are too many on hand, prices fall, want of work, poverty and starvation 
 
 ♦ Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations I., Mc Culloch’s edition in one volume, § 8, p. 36 : 
 “ The wear and tear of a slave, it has been said, is at the expense of his master, but that ot 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 jour- 
 neymen and servants, according as the increasing, diminishing or stationary demand of the 
 society may happen to require. ßut 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 fo-r 
 replacing or repairing, if I may say so, the wear and tear of the slave, is commonly managed by 
 anegligent master or careless overseer.” 
 
55 
 
 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 engeiidered rather by the competition of the workers among them- 
 selves, which forces each separate worker to labor 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 the nations 
 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 labor, the 
 introduction of machinery, the subjugalion of the forces of nature deprive a 
 multitude of workers of bread. These starving workers are then removed 
 from the market, Ihey can buy nothing, and the quantity of articles of consump- 
 tion 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 industiy, 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 competi- 
 tion and the commercial crises which arise from them. In the present unregu- 
 lated 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 everyone works for himself, to enrich himself, disturbances inevit- 
 ably 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 
 
56 
 
 how much is on hand at every given moment, much less can he know how much 
 ]iis 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. Every- 
 thing is done blindly, as guess-work, more or less at the mercy of accident. 
 Upon the slightest favorable report, each one exports what he can, and before 
 long such a market is glutted, sales stop, Capital remains inactive, prices fall, 
 and English manufacture has no further employment for its hands. In the 
 beginning of the development of manufacture, these checks were limited to 
 single branches and single markets; but the centralizing tendency of competition 
 which drives the hands thrown out of one branch into such other branches as 
 are most easily accessible, and transfers the goods which cannot be disposed of 
 in one market to other markets, has gradually brought the single minor crises 
 nearer together and United them into one periodically recurring crisis. Such a 
 crisis usually recurs once in five years after a brief period of activity and general 
 prosperity; the home market, like all foreign ones, is glutted with English goods, 
 which it can only slowly absorb, the industrial movement comes to a standstill 
 in almost every branch, the small manufacturers and merchants who cannot sur- 
 vive a prolonged inactivity of their invested Capital fail, the larger ones suspend 
 business during the worst season, dose 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 starv- 
 ing increases, and the whole multitude of “ surplus ” population presses in terrific 
 numbers into the foreground. This continues for a time; ihe “surplus” exist 
 as best they may. or perish ; philanthropy and the Poor I.aw help many of them 
 to a painful Prolongation of their existence, Others find scant means of sub- 
 sistence here and there in such kinds of work as have been least open to com- 
 petition, are most remote from manufacture. And with how little can a human 
 being keep body and soul together for a time! Gradually the state of things 
 improves; the accumulations of goods are consumed, the general depression 
 among the men of commerce and manufacture prevents a too hasty replenishing 
 of the markets, and at last rising prices and favorable 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 specula- 
 tion, 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 favorable moment. 
 
Speculation arises here, too, exerting the same influence as upon foreign 
 markets, raising prices, withdrawing goods from consumption, spurring manu- 
 facture in both ways to the highest pitch oi effort. Then come the daring 
 speculators working with fictitious Capital, living upon credit, ruined if they 
 cannot speedily seil; 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 specu- 
 lators abroad who must have money begin to seil, below market price, of course, 
 for their need is urgent; one sale is followed by others, prices fluctuate, specu- 
 lators 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 pro- 
 duction 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, pros- 
 perity, 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 5 ave 
 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 dif- 
 ference that the prosperity of the moment was required to reveal their con" 
 nection 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 return 
 discharged at the beginning of the crisis, they find their places filled and them- 
 selves 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. 
 
58 
 
 Tn every great town a multitude of such people may be found. It is astomsh- 
 ing in vvhat 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 eitles, as well as the crossings, have been swepL 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 eitles, on 
 which there is a great deal of wagon traffic, a large number of people may be 
 seeh 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 article 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 excluiively 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 utter- 
 ing 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 
 
59 
 
 at any moment; for this dumb, yet most moving appeal, is met with almost 
 solely in such streets as are frequented by workingmen, and at such hours as 
 workingmen pass by; but especially on summer evenings when the “secrets’ 
 of the working people’s quarters are generally revealed, and the middle dass 
 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 ha lf in Eng land 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 multi- 
 tude 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 agri- 
 cultural districts, and does not enter into the present discussion. Düring a 
 crisis this number naturally increases markedly, and want reaches its highest 
 pitch. Take, for instance, the crisis of 1842, which, being the lalest, was the 
 most violent; for the intensity of the crisis increases with each repetition, and 
 the next which may be expected not later than 1847* will probably be still more 
 violent and lasting. Düring 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 
 £S6,ooo, they sank to £36,000, The number of the poor to be supported rose, 
 on the other hand, to 14,000, or more than twenty per cent. of the whole num- 
 ber of inhabitants. In Leeds, the Poor Law guardians had a reserve fund of 
 ;^io,ooo. This, with a contribution of ;^7000, was wholly exhausted before the 
 crisis reached its height. So it was every where. A report drawn up in January, 
 7843, 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 dass 
 which had never before solicited relief; that the working dass 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 
 
 * And it came in 1847. 
 
6o 
 
 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 Staff ordshire 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 Novem- 
 ber, 1842, there were crowds of unemployed workingmen at every Street corner, 
 and many mills were still Standing idle. In the following months these unwill- 
 ing 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 insuf- 
 ficient; the philanthropy of the rieh 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 seil 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 multi- 
 tude 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 in- 
 directly 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 dass down- 
 wards. 
 
 Irish Immigration. 
 
 We have already referred several times in passing, to the Irish who have im- 
 migrated into England; and we shall now h:.ve to investigate more closely the 
 causes and results of this Immigration. 
 
 The rapid extension of English industry could not have taken place, if Eng- 
 land 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 wofk 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 dis- 
 tricts, especially the great cities, and there form the lowest dass of the popula- 
 
6i 
 
 tion. Thus there are in London, 120,000; in Manchester, 40,000; in Liverpool, 
 34,000; Bristol, 24,000; Glasgow, 40,000; Edinburg, 29,000, poor Irish people.'^ 
 These people having grown up almost without civilization, accustomed from 
 youth to every sort of privation, roiigh, intemperate and improvident, bring all 
 their brutal habits with them among a dass of the English population which has, 
 in truth, little inducement to cultivate education and morality. Let us hear 
 Thomas Carlyle upon this subject:^ ‘ 
 
 “ The wild Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, restlessness, unreason 
 misery and mockery, salute you on all highways and byways. The English 
 coachman as he w lirls 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 .0 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 pighutch or doghutch, 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 uncivilized 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 ex- 
 ample how the human being can exist not swimming but sunk. That the con- 
 dition of the lower multitude of English laborers approximates more and more 
 to that of the Irish, competing with them in all the markets; that whatsoever 
 labor, 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 steam- 
 boat, 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 recognizes at the first glance as dif- 
 ferent 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 
 
 ♦ Archibald Alison, Principles of Population and their Connection with Human Happiness, two 
 vols., 1840. This Ahson is the Historian of the French Revolution, and, like his brother, Dr. W. 
 P, Alison, a religious Tory. 
 
 2 Chartism, pp. 28, 31, etc. 
 
62 
 
 origin. In short, the Irish have, as Dr. Kay says, discovered the minium 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 de- 
 posits 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 peoples’ quarters and poison the air. He builds a pigsty 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 cloth- 
 ing, suffice for his nightly couch. A piece of wood, a broken chair, an old ehest 
 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 carefree 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 con- 
 tempt for all humane enjoyments in which his very crudeness make him in- 
 capable of sharing, his filth and poverty all favor urunkenness. The temptation 
 is great, he cannot resist it, and so when he has money he gets rid of it, down 
 his throat. What eise 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 workingman has to struggle, with a com- 
 petitor upon the lowest plane possible in a civilized country, who for this very 
 reason requires less wages than any other. Nothing eise is therefore possible 
 than that, as Carlyle says, the wages of English workingmen should be forced 
 down further and furthsr 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 
 
63 
 
 the Irish. For work which requires long training or regulär, perdnacio^s 
 application, the dissoliite, unsteady, drunken Irishman is on too low a plane. 
 To become a mechanic, a millhand, he would have to adopt the English civiliza- 
 tion, 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; handweavers, bricklayers, porters, Job- 
 bers, 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 
 dass. And even if the Irish, who have forced their way into other occupations, 
 should become more civilized, enough of the old habits would ding 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 vrorkers 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 charac- 
 ter of the working dass 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 cornpetition. 
 
 Results. 
 
 Having now investigated, somewhat in detail, the conditions under which the 
 English working dass 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 circum- 
 stances, whatsort 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* 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 condi- 
 tions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence; knows 
 that these thousands of victims must perish and yet permits these condi- 
 
 * When as here and elsewhere I speak of society as a responsible whole, having rights an(i 
 duties, I mean, of course. the ruling power of society, the dass 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 dass in England, as in all other civilized 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 bour- 
 geoisie, the case would be different. ( And so it is now in Germany. Our German capitahsts are 
 fully up to the English level, in this respect at least, in the year of grace, 1886.) 
 
64 
 
 tions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single in- 
 dividual; 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 workingmens’ 
 Organs, with perfect correctness, characterize as social murder, that it has placed 
 tlie 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 man- 
 slaughter but murder, I shall have proved, when I eite ofificial documents, 
 reports of Parliament and of the Government, in substantiation of my Charge. 
 
 That a dass 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 centraliza- 
 tion of population in great cities exercises of itself an unfavorable influence; the 
 atmosphere of London can never be so pure, so rieh in oxygen, as the air of the 
 country; two and a half million pairs of lungs, two hundred 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 in- 
 habitants fail to receive the due supply of oxygen, and the consequence is 
 mental and physical lassitude and low vitality. For this reason the dwcllers 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 
 the health, how great must be the harmful influence of an abnormal atmosphere 
 in the working peoples’ quarters, where, as we have seen, everything combines 
 to poison the air. In the country it may, perhaps, be comparatively innoxious 
 to keep a düng heap adjoining one’s dwelling, because the air has free ingress 
 from all sides; but in the midst of a great city, 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 decidecly injurious 
 to the health, and if these gases have no free way of escape, they inevitably 
 poison the atmosphere. The filth and stagnant pools of the working peoples’ 
 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. 
 
65 
 
 The manner in which the great multitude of the poor is treated by society to-day 
 is revolling. They are drawn inlo the large cities where they breathe a poorcr 
 atmosphere than in the country; they are lelegated 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 dis- 
 gusting 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 Water- 
 proof 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 ex- 
 citing changes of mental condition, the most violent vibrations between hope 
 and fear; they are stirred up like game, and not permitted to attain peace of 
 mind and quiet enjoyment of life. They are deprived of all enjoyments exccpt 
 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 dass to be healthy 
 and long lived ? What eise can be expected than an excessive mortality, an un- 
 broken 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 dass engender numerous diseases, is at- 
 tested on all sides, The article already quoted from the Artizan, asserts with 
 perfect truth, that lung diseases must be the inevitable consequence of such con- 
 ditions, and that indeed cases of this kind are disproportionately frequent in this 
 dass. That the bad air of London, and especially of the working peoples’ dis- 
 tricts, is in the highest degree favorable 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 appear- 
 ance; these pale, lank, narrow-chested, hollow-eyed ghosts, whom one passes at 
 every Step, these languid, flabby faces, incapable of the slightest energetic ex- 
 pression, I have seen in such startling numbers only in London, though con- 
 
66 
 
 siimption carries off a horde of victims annually in tlie 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 dass. Typhus, that universally diffused affliction, is attributed 
 by the official report on the Sanitary Condition of the Working dass, directly to 
 the bad state of the dwellings in the matters of Ventilation, drainage and cleanli- 
 ness. This report, compiled, it must not be forgotten, by the leading phy- 
 sicians of England from the testimony of other physicians, asserts that a single 
 ill-ventilated couit, 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 developes - 
 in nearly every case into specific typhus. It is to be found in the working 
 people’s quarters of all great towns and eitles, 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 ex- 
 traordinary 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; i6l^ % 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 Edin- 
 burg and Glasgow it broke out in 1817, after the famine, and in 1826 and 1837, 
 with especial violence, after the commercial crises subsiding somewhat each time 
 after having raged about three years. In Edinburg 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 dis- 
 ease increased with each repetition.* 
 
 But the fury of the epidemic in all former periods seems to have been child's 
 play in comparisori 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 
 tvvo months there were more fever cases than in twelve years before. In Glas- 
 
 ♦ Dr. Alison. Management of the Poor in Scotland. 
 
67 
 
 gow, twelve per cent. of the population were seized in the year 1843; 32,000 
 p>ersons, of whom thirty-two per cent. perished, while the mortality of Manches- 
 ter 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 be- 
 came yellow, which our authority* * regards as an indication Ihat the cause of the 
 malady was to be sought in mental excitement and anxiety. In Ireland, too, 
 these fever epidemics have become domesticated. Düring twenty-one months of 
 the years 1817 — 1818, 39,000 fever patients passed through the Dublin hospital; 
 and in a more recent year, according to Sheriff Alison,* 60,000. 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 
 further. 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 
 dass. 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 laborer, 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 
 
 ♦ Alison. Principles of Population, Vol. II. 
 
 * * Dr. Alison in an article read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science» 
 October, 1844, in York. 
 
68 
 
 educated ? But new disease arises during childhood from impaired digestion. 
 Scrophula is almost universal among the working dass, and scrophulous parents 
 have scrophulous 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 dass. 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 c-f fluctuations in trade, want of work, and the scanty wages of 
 times of crisis, it is not necessary to dwell upon. Temporary want of sufficient 
 food, to which almost every workingman 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 nutri- 
 tious food — and how many such there are during every crisis and even when 
 trade is at its best — must inevitably become weak, scrophulous, and rachitic in a 
 high degree. And that they do becomc so, their appearance amply shows. The 
 neglect to which the great mass of workingmen’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 dass, the impossibility of 
 precautions against colds, the necessity of toiling so long as health permits, 
 want made rnore 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 dass. The injurious effects peculiar to single employments as 
 now conducted, I shall not deal witff 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 vrorkers to drunkenness. Liquor is almost 
 their only source of pleasure, and all things conspire to make it accessible to 
 them, The workingman 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 Indi- 
 gestion, 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 workingmen should fall 
 into intemperance. And apart from the chiefly physical influences which drive 
 
— 69 — 
 
 the workmgman into drunlcenness, 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 bürden of life, and a hundred other circumstances so mighty that the work- 
 ers 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 re- 
 sponsible; it becomes a phenomenon, the necessaiy inevitable effect of certain 
 conditions upon an object possessed of no volition in relation to those conditions. 
 They who have degraded the workingman to a mere object have the, responsi- 
 bility to bear. But as inevitably as a great number of workingmen 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 pelvic troubles, the rise and spread 
 of typhus epidemics. 
 
 Another source of physical mischief to the working dass lies in the impossi- 
 bility of employing skilled physicians in cases of illness. It is true that a num- 
 ber 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 calcula- 
 tion,* three-fourths of the population need medical aid every year? English 
 doctors Charge high fees, and workingmen 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 client^le 
 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 Whole- 
 sale whether wanted or not. 
 
 It is by no means unusual for the manufacturer of Parr’s Life Pills to seil 
 twenty to twenty-five thousand boxes of these salutary pills in a week, and they 
 are taken, for constipation by this one, for diarrhcea by that one, for fever, weak- 
 ness, and all possible ailments. As our German peasants are cupped or bled at 
 certain seasons, so do the English working people now consume patent medi- 
 cines 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 
 
 Manufacturing Population. Ch-8. 
 
70 
 
 laudanum, under the name Godfrey’s Cordial. Women who work at home, and 
 have their own and other people’s cbildren 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 know- 
 ing the effects of this heartsease,” until the children die. The less suscepdble 
 the child’s System to the action of the opium, the greater the quantities admin- 
 istered. 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 testi- 
 fied before a Parliamentary Commission* that one apothecary had, according to 
 his own Statement, used thirteen hundred weight 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 com- 
 pleting 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 dass. 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 fiber, 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 tothe Report of Registrar-General Graham, the annual death rate of 
 all England and Wales is something less than 2 % per cent. That is to say, out 
 of forty-five persons, one dies every year.* * This was the average for the year 
 1839 — 40- 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 ofhcial tables of mortality, (Manchester Guardian^ 
 July 3ist, 1844), according to which the death rate of several great cities is as 
 follows: In Manchester, including Chorlton and Salford, one in 32.72; and ex- 
 cluding 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 num- 
 ber of wholly or partially rural districts and many small towns with a total popu- 
 lation -of 2,172,506 for the whole, is one death in 39.80 persons. How 
 unfavorably the workers are placed in the great cities, the mortality for Prescott 
 
 * Report of Commission of Inquiry into the Employment of Children and Young Persons in 
 Mines and Colleries 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 “Childrens* Employment Com- 
 mission’s Report.” First Report, 1841; Second Report, 1843. 
 
 ♦ ♦ Fifth Annual Report of the Reg. Gen. of Births, Deaths and Marriages, 
 
71 
 
 in Lancashire shows, a district inhabited by miners, and showing a lower sani 
 tary 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 Edin- 
 burgh, in 1838 — 1839, one in 29; in 1831, in the Old Town alone, one in 22. 
 In Glasgow, according to Dr. Cowen, ' 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 dass; 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 dass of Streets: 
 
 Houses I. dass. 
 
 Mortality 
 
 one in 51 
 
 t ( 
 
 (( 
 
 1 1 
 
 II 
 
 “ II. 
 
 1 1 
 
 “ “ 45 
 
 (( 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 
 ** III. 
 
 IC 
 
 II 
 
 “ “36 
 “ “ 55 
 
 II 1133 
 
 Second 
 
 1 1 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 
 “ I. 
 
 IC 
 
 C 1 
 
 ( ( 
 
 1 1 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 
 “ II. 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 
 ‘‘ 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 
 “ III. 
 
 IC 
 
 II 
 
 “ “35 
 
 Third 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 
 1 1 
 
 “ I. 
 
 IC 
 
 Wanting 
 
 
 
 11 
 
 II 
 
 1 1 
 
 “ II. 
 
 IC 
 
 Mortality 
 
 “ “35 
 
 1 < 
 
 1 1 
 
 II 
 
 1 1 
 
 “ III. 
 
 IC 
 
 1 i 
 
 II II 25 
 
 It is clear from other tables given by Holland that the mortality in the sireets 
 of the second dass is 18 per cent. greater, and in the streets of the third dass 68 
 per Cent, greater than in those of the first dass; that the mortality in the houses 
 of the second dass is 31 per cent. greater, and in the third dass 78 per cent. 
 greater than in those of the first dass; that the mortality in those bad streets 
 which were improved, decreased 25 per cent. He closes with the remark, very 
 frank for an English bourgeois-* 
 
 “ 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, hmidreds of our im~ 
 mediale neighbors are annually destroyed for want of the most evident precau- 
 tions.” 
 
 The Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Working dass contains Informa- 
 tion 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 laborers, and serviceable dass in general, but fifteen 
 years. The Parliamentary reports contain a mass of similar facts. 
 
 1. Dr. Cowen. Vital Statistics of Glasgow. 
 
 2. Report of Commission of Enquiry into the State of Large Towns and Populous Districts 
 First Report, 1844. Appendix. 
 
72 
 
 The death rate is kept so high chiefly by the heavy mortality among young 
 children in the working dass. The tender frame of a child is least able to withstand 
 the unfavorable 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, 
 rnore than fifty-seven per Cent, of the children of the working dass 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.* The article of the Artizan, 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, so de- 
 monstrating 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^ to l. Fatal cases of small- 
 pox, measles, scarlet fever and whooping cough among small children are four 
 times more frequent; those of water on the brain are trebled, and convulsions 
 ten times more frequent. To quote another acknowledged authority I append 
 the following table: Out of 10,000 persons, there die ** 
 
 In Rutlandshlre, a Under 5 years, 5-19, 20-39, 40-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80-89, 90-99, 100 x 
 healthy agricultu- 
 
 ral district 
 
 Essex, marshy agri- 
 
 2,865 
 
 891 
 
 1,275 
 
 1,299 
 
 1.189 
 
 1,428 
 
 938 
 
 112 
 
 3 
 
 cultural district.. 
 Town of Carlile, 1779- 
 
 3,159 
 
 1,110 
 
 1,526 
 
 1,413 
 
 963 
 
 1,019 
 
 630 
 
 177 
 
 3 
 
 1787, before intro- 
 ductionof mills. . 
 
 4,408 
 
 921 
 
 1,006 
 
 1,201 
 
 940 
 
 826 
 
 633 
 
 153 
 
 22 
 
 Town of Carlile, af- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ter the introduc- 
 tlon of mills 
 
 4,738 
 
 930 
 
 1,261 
 
 1,134 
 
 677 
 
 727 
 
 452 
 
 80 
 
 1 
 
 Preston, fact’ ry town 
 
 4,947 
 
 1,136 
 
 1,379 
 
 1,114 
 
 553 
 
 632 
 
 298 
 
 38 
 
 3 
 
 Leeds, factory town 
 
 5,286 
 
 927 
 
 1,228 
 
 1,198 
 
 593 
 
 612 
 
 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 
 
 in- 
 
 fluences 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. Dealhs from burns and scalds are especially fre- 
 quent, such a case occurring nearly every week during the winter months in Man- 
 chester, 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 I5th, 
 1844, according to which, in the week from December ist to December yth in- 
 
 * Factories Inquiry Commission’s Reports, 3d Vol. Report of Dr. Hawkins on Lancashire, in 
 which Dr. Robertson is cited — the “ Chief Authority for Statistics in Manchester.” 
 
 ** Quoted by Dr. Wade from the Report of the Parliamentary Factories’ Commission of 183» 
 in his History of the Middle and Working Classes. London, 1835, 3d Ed. 
 
73 
 
 clusive, six such cases occurred. These unhappy children, perishing in thfs 
 terrible way, are victims of our social disorder, and of ihe property holding 
 classes interested in maintaining and proionging this disorder. Yet one is left 
 in doubt whether even this terrible torturing death is not a blessing for the chil- 
 dren in rescuing them from a long life of toil and wretchedness, rieh in suffer- 
 ingand 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 ofHcial and non-official testimony here 
 cited which must be known to it, I broadly accuse it of social murder. Let the ruling 
 
 I class see to it that these frightful conditions are ameliorated, or let it surrender 
 the administration of the common interests to the laboring dass. 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 manifesls 
 some little anxiety for the future, passing a “ Metropolitan Buildings Act,” 
 under which the most unscrupulous overcrowding of dwellings is to be, at least 
 in some slight degree, restricted; if it points with pride to measures which, far 
 from attacking the root of the evil, do not by any means meet the demands of 
 the commonest sanitary police, it cannot thus vindicate itself from the accusa- 
 tion. 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 ab- 
 dicate in favor of the laboring dass. Hitherto it has chosen the former course. 
 
 Let US turn from the physical to the mental state of the w’orkers. 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 dass 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 rieh proflt 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. Com- 
 pulsory 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 dass was outspokenly in 
 favor 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 
 
74 
 
 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, loo, are most scantily supplied with teachers, and can be of use 
 to those only who have already learnt something in the day schools. The in- 
 terval from one Sunday to the next is too long for an ignorant child to remember 
 in the second session what it learned in the first, a week before. The Children's 
 Employment Commission’s Report fiirnishes a hundred proofs, and the Com- 
 mission 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 dass 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 work- 
 ing dass, the Ministry, in its whole enormous budget of ;^55, 000,000, has only 
 the single trifling item of ^40,000 for public education, and but for the 
 fanaticism of the religious sects which does at least as much harm as good, the 
 means of education would be yet more scanty. As it is, the State Church man- 
 ages 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 
 bosom of the church, 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 incompre- 
 hensible dogmas and theological distinctions; that sectarian hatred and bigotry 
 are awakened as early as possible, and all reasonable mental and moral training 
 shamefully neglected. The working dass has repeatedly demanded of Parlia- 
 ment a System of strictly secular public education, leaving religion to the minis- 
 ters 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 other- 
 wise 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 
 quarreling 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 Quäkers, 
 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 
 
75 
 
 workers in other directions may be jiidged 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 Instruc- 
 tion alone is furnished, the profoundest ignorance even upon that subject pre- 
 vailed." “ In Wolverhampton," says Commissioner Home, “ 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 kno^v 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 dosest 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 six- 
 teen 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 State- 
 ment, that he “was ne jedge o’ nothin’."^ 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."^ 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."^ A third “at- 
 tended 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 Wes- 
 ley.'^ To the question who Christ was, Home 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 teil 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!"® From the pottery districts of Lan- 
 cashire the reports are similar. 
 
 This is what the bourgeoisie and the State are doing for the education and 
 improvement of the working dass. Fortunately the conditions under which 
 this dass lives are such as give it a sort of practical training, which not 
 only replaces school cramming, but renders harmless the confused religious 
 noüons connected with it, and even places the workers in the vanguard of the 
 national movement of England. Necessity is the mother of invention, and 
 
 I Children’s Employment Commission’s Report. App. Part II, Q. i8, No. 216, 217, 226, 233, 
 etc. Home. 
 
 2. Ibid evidence, p. 9, 39; 133, 
 
 3. Ibid, p. 9, 36; 146. 
 
 4. Ibid, p. 34; 158. 
 
 5. Symond’s Rep. App. Part I, pp. E, 22, et seq. 
 
76 
 
 what is slill more important, of tbought and action. The English workingman 
 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 bim in spite of all the effort of the 
 preachers, he sees all the more clearly into terrestrial, political and social ques- 
 tions. ■ 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 workingman 
 w’hen 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 the authorities, and especially of the Children’s Employ- 
 ment Commission, almost nothing to the morality of the working dass. 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 the 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 dass 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 there- 
 fore 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 dass. They become brutes the moment they bend in 
 patience under the yoke, and merely strive to make life endurable while abandon- 
 ing the effort to break the yoke. 
 
 This, then, is all that the bourgeoisie has done for the education of the Pro- 
 letariat — and when we take into consideration all the circumstances in which 
 this dass lives, we shall not think the worse of it for the resentment which it 
 cherishes against the ruling dass. The moral training which is not given to the 
 worker in school is not supplied by the other conditions of his life; that moral 
 
77 
 
 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 rieh 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 
 pioletarian is intensified to the point of actual lack of the barest necessities of 
 life, to want and hunger, the temptation to the disregard of all social Order does 
 but gain power. This the bourgeoisie for the most part reoognizes. Symonds * 
 observes that poverty exercises the same ruinous influence upon the mind which 
 drunkenness exercises upon the body; and Dr. Alison explains to property-hold- 
 ing readers, with the greatest exaetness, what the consequences of social 
 oppression must be for the working class.^ Want leaves the workingman 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 dass, numbers too moral to steal even 
 when reduced to the utmost extremity, and these starve or com mit suicide. For 
 suicide, formerly the enviable privilege of the upper classes, has become fashion- 
 able among the English workers, and numbers of the poor kill themselves to 
 avoid the misery from w’hich they see no other means of escape. 
 
 But far more demoralizing than his poverty in its influence upon the English 
 workingman is the insecurity of his position. th e 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 merey of accident, they have at least something secure. The 
 proletarian, who has nothing but his two hands, who consumes to-day what ho 
 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. 
 '[ he 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 tliem. Every- 
 thing that the proletarian can do to improve his position is but a drop in the 
 
 1. Arts and Artizans. 
 
 2. Principles of Population, Vol. II., p. 196, 197. 
 
78 
 
 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 object of all posslble 
 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^ against 
 the dass which plunders him so mercilessly and then abandons him to his fate, 
 which strives to hold him in this position so demoralizing 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 favorable 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 work- 
 ingman and another would take his place. What better thing can he do, then, 
 when he gets high wages than live v/ell upon them ? The English bourgeois is 
 violently scandalized 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 (^. e. the bourgeoisie) get possession of. Yet 
 such a life is demoralizing beyond all others. What Carlyle says of the cotton 
 Spinners is true of all English industrial workers:^ 
 
 “ 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 im- 
 measurable 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. — 1 his 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.^ 
 
 “ 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 intoJerable pain 
 under the sun, our grand question as to the condition of these workingmen 
 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 humor 
 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 
 
 1. We shall see later how the rebellion of the working dass against the bourgeoisie in England 
 is legalized by the right of coalition. 
 
 2. Ckartism, p. 34, et. seq. 
 
 3. Ckartism, p. 40. 
 
79 
 
 blamed, may be vindicated; but all men must recognize it as extant there, all 
 may know that it is mournful, that unless aitered 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 hnmbly before the fate that overtakes 
 them, live a respectable private life as well as they can, do not concern them- 
 selves 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 dass 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 demoralization among the workers is their bei ng condemned 
 to work. ' A s voluntary, productive activity is the highest enjoyment known to 
 "u^so is compulsory toil the most cruel, degrading punishment. Nothing is 
 more terrible than being constrained to do some one thing every day from morn- 
 ing until night against one’s will. And the more a man the worker feels him- 
 self, 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, more- 
 over, 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 
 labor has multiplied the brutalizing influences of forced work. In mosi 
 branches the worker’s activity is reduced to some paltry, purely mechanical 
 manipulation, repeated minute after minute, unchanged year after year. ^ 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 itse-lf 
 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 think- 
 ing of anything eise. 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 
 
 I. 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. 3, book 5, chap. 8, p, 297. 
 
8o 
 
 mental activity, how can such a sentence help degrading a human being to the 
 level of a brüte ? 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 brüte, or eise he 
 must rebel, fight for his manhood, to the last, and this he can only do in the 
 light against the bourgeoisie. 
 
 And when all these conditions have engendered vast demoralization 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 centralization 
 of the Population. The writers of the English bourgeoisie are crying murder, 
 at the demoralizing 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 
 dass 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 con- 
 clusion, “ 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 
 dass which profits from it alone have created the cities is so remote, that it is ex- 
 tremely convenient for the ruling dass 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 himd 
 
 “ 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 maits 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 practice 
 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 
 difiiculty 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 dose 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 
 
 1. Principles of Population, vol. II., p. 76, et. seq. p. 82, p. 135. 
 
8i 
 
 crime or disorderly babits cbiefly to their ff^rtunate removal from tbe 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 experi- 
 enced 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 demoraliza- 
 tion. ^ 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 rieh, who censurc 
 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 prox- 
 imity 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 circum- 
 stances is almost as certain and often nearly as rapid as that of physical con- 
 tagion.” 
 
 And elsewhere: 
 
 “ When the higher Orders for their own profit have drawn the laboring 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 man- 
 ner 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, betrays the other side. 
 He teils US that life in great cities facilitates cabals among the workers and con- 
 fers 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 great est bene- 
 factors, the frugal and enterprising capitalists, with a jealous and hostile eye. 
 Here proper training alone can avail, or national bankruptey and other horrors 
 must follow, since a revolution of the workers could hardly fall to occur. And 
 our bourgeois is perfectlv justified in his fears. If the centralization of popula- 
 tion stimulates and developes the property holding dass, it forces the develop- 
 ment of the workers yet more rapidly. The workers begin to feel as a dass, as 
 a w'hole; 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 labor 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 
 
 I. Philosophy of Manufactures, London, 1835, p, 406, et. seq. We shall have occasion to refer 
 farther lo this reputable work. 
 
82 
 
 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 populär Intelligence, the working dass 
 would be far less advanced than it is. Moreover, they have destroyed the last 
 remnant of the patriarchal relation between workingmen and ernployers, 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 tyrannize 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 patronizing friendliness which cost him iiothing, 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 dass, 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 in- 
 dividual. 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 recognize 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 con- 
 tributed. 
 
 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 civilization, and aggravated the hardship of their lot; but, on the other 
 hand, it has thereby deepened the chasm between workers and bourgeois, and 
 hastened the approaching crisis. For the course of the social disease from which 
 England is suffering, is the same as the course of a physical disease; it develops, 
 according to certain laws, has its own crises, the last and most violent of which 
 determines the fate of the patient. And as the English nation cannot succumb 
 under the final crisis, but most go forth from it, born again, rejuvenated, we 
 can but rejoice over everything which accelerates the course cf 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 
 
83 
 
 English working dass. The Irish and English are to each other much as the 
 French and the Germans, and the mixing of the more fadle 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 dass 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 dass 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 peoples, 
 as unlike as the difference of race can 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 workingman, 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 saysri 
 
 “ The poor give one another more than the rieh give the poor. I can con- 
 firm my Statement by the testimony of one of our eldest, mosc skillful, most 
 Observant and humane physicians, Dr. Bardsley, who has often declared that tlie 
 total sum which the poor yearly bestow upon one another, surpasses that which 
 the rieh 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 there- 
 fore 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 
 dass. 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 workingman 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, 
 
 I. On the present Condition oT the Laboring Poor in Manchester, etc., by the Rev. Rd. Parkin- 
 son, Canon of Manchester, 3d Ed., London and Manches'.er, 1841, Pamphlet. 
 
84 
 
 and does not look at everything through the spectacles of personal selfishness- 
 His faultv education saves him from religious prepossessions, he does not un- 
 derstand religious questions, does not trouble himself about them, knows noth- 
 ing 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, 
 arid the like. But among the masses there prevails almost universJly a total 
 indifference to religion, or at the utmost, some trifling 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 odor with the workingmen, 
 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 workingman more 
 unconstrained, freer from inherited stable tenets and cut-and-dried opinions, 
 than the bourgeois who is saturated with the dass 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 dass, 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 corresponding public action of the workers, with 
 which we shall deal later, forms the favorable side of the character of this dass; 
 the unfavorable 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 workingmen 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 alehouses, (jerry shops), whose keepers are licensed to 
 seil 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 neighboring houses 
 in the country one is sure to be a jerry shop. Besides these, there are 
 hush shops in multitudes, i. <?., 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 
 
85 
 
 these secret distilleries in Manchester alone at more tlian a hundred, and thcir 
 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 the 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 
 011 her arm gin to drink, the demoralizing effects of frequenting such places 
 cannot be denied. 
 
 On Saturday evenings, especially when wages are paid and work stops some- 
 what earlier than usual, when the whole working dass 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 
 rreeting 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, 4jntil 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 dass 
 annually expends something like twenty-five million pounds sterling upon in- 
 toxicating liquor; and the deterioration in external conditions, the frightful shat- 
 tering 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 ihree or four years in Manchester, the 
 total is greater than the whole population of the town — and still it is by no 
 mcans evident that intemperance is diminishing. 
 
 Next to intemperance in the enjoyment of intoxicating liquors, one of the 
 Principal faults of English workingmen is sexual licence. But this, too, follows 
 with relentless logic, with inevitable necessity out of the position of a dass left 
 to itself, with no means of making fitting use of its freedom. The bourgeoisie 
 has left the working dass only these two pleasures, while imposing upon it a 
 multitude of labors and hardships, and the consequence is that the workingmen, 
 
86 
 
 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 brüte 
 only, what remains to them but lo rebel or to succumb to utter bestiality? 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. 
 
 Lhe 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 dass 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 dass 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 dass to providence, to “respect- 
 ability,” 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 dass 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 dass respect this 
 social Order? Verily that'is asking much! But the workingman 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 warmed, 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 workingman cannot 
 escape from the family, must live in the family, and the consequence is a per- 
 petual succession of family troubles, domestic quarrels most demoralizing 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 demoralizing influences, are 
 expected to turn out goody goody and moral in the end ? Verily the require- 
 ments are naive, which the self-satisfied bourgeois makes upon the workingman! 
 
 The contempt for the existing social Order is most conspicuous in its extreme 
 form, that of offences against the law. If the influences demoralizing to the 
 workingman act more powerfully, more concentratedly than usual, he becomes- 
 
87 
 
 an offender as certainly as water abandons the fluid for the vaporous state at 8o 
 degrees, R^aumur. Under the brutal and brutalizing treatment of the bour- 
 geoisie, the workingman 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 natiön 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 incom- 
 prehensible rapidity. The numbers of arrests for criminal offences reached in 
 theyears; 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 Eng- 
 land 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 populatior^s, 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 Prole- 
 tariat; 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 civilized 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 i: 7,140, and in 
 France, as i: 1,804, was in England when Gaskell wrote, as i: 799. The pro- 
 portion of offences against persons to the population is, in the Netherlands, i: 
 28.904; in France, i: 17,573; in England, i: 23,395; that of crimes in general 
 to the population in the agricultural districts, as i: 1,043; manufacturing 
 
 districts as i: 840.* * In the whole of England to-day the proportion is i: 660;** 
 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 demoralization 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 
 
 * Manufacturing Population of England, chap. 10. 
 
 * * The total of population, about fifteen millions, divided by the number of convicted criminals^ 
 
 ( 22 , 733 -) 
 
88 
 
 more rapidly,) what will the result be ? Society is already in a state of visible 
 dissülution; 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; tliere 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 credilors. From the neighboring 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 w’omen, 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 workingmen 
 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 poisoningof 
 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 
 w^hat 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. PliT^ort, every one sees in his neighbor an 
 enemy to be got out of the way or, at least, a tool to be used for his owm 
 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 dass prejudice and preconceived opinions can hold a whole dass of human 
 beings in such perfect, I might almost say such mad blindness. Meanwhile the 
 
89 
 
 development of the nation goes its way whether the bourgeoisie lias eyes for it 
 or not, and will surprise the property-holdiiig dass one day with things not 
 dreamed of in its philosophy. 
 
 SINGLE BRANCHES OF INDUSTRY. 
 FACTORY RANDS. 
 
 In dealing now with the more important branches of the English manufactur- 
 ing 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 w'orking-day in mills in which wool, silk, 
 cotton andTIäx are spun or woven by means of water 6r steam-power, and em- 
 braces, thereTore, the more important branches of English manufacture. The 
 dass 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 w’hole, and the cotton-workers pre-eminently stand, 
 at the head of the labor 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,* Baines,f and others, is the 
 Story of improvements in every direction,most of which have become domesticated 
 in the other branches of industry as welk 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 fnrther 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 them- 
 selves, and so deprive the majority of the means of subsistence. Every im- 
 provement 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 inven- 
 tion, 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 
 
 ♦ The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, by Dr. A. Ure, 1836. 
 
 t History of the Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, by E. Baines, Esq. 
 
go 
 
 employment. The mule, which required yet fewer hands in proportion to the 
 product, had the same effect, and every improvement in the mule, every multi- 
 plication 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 tnrown out of employment by it. For, whereas one 
 Spinner, with a couple of children for piecers, formerly setsix 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 em- 
 ployed were thrown out. And since sell-acting mules have been introduced 
 into a very large number of spinning mills, the Spinners work is wholly per- 
 formed by the machine. There lies before me a book from the pen of Janies 
 Leach,* one of the recognized 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 them- 
 selves, 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 teils 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 in- 
 dustry; the power-loom has taken possession of one brauch 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 scrts of manufacture, in fiax and wool spinning, in silk twisting, the 
 case is the same. The power-loom, too, is beginning to appropriate one brauch 
 after another of wool and linen w^eaving; in Rochdale alone, there are more 
 power than hand-looms in flannel and other wool-w^eaving branches. The 
 bourgeoisie usually replies to this, that improvements in machinery by decreas- 
 
 * Stubborn Facts from the Factories by a Manchester Operative. Pablished and dedicated to 
 the working classes, by Wm. Rashleigh, M. P., London, Oihvier, 1844, p. 28, et seq. 
 
— QI — 
 
 ing the cost of production, siipply 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.* The bour- 
 geoisie is so far correct that under certain condiiions favorable for the general 
 development of manufacture, every reduction in price of goods in ivhich tkernw 
 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 meref 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 7iot re-e77iployed 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 operath'e hassucceeded in 
 making himself at home in a newbranch, if he actually does succeed in so doing, 
 this, too, is taken from him, and with it the last remnant of security which re- 
 mained 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 improve- 
 ment not yet universally introduced; and it would be too much to ask that it 
 should häve an open eye for the disadvantages inseparable from these improve- 
 ments. 
 
 The fact that improved machinery reduces wages has also been as violently 
 disputed by the bourgeoisie, as it is constantly reiterated by the workingmen. 
 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 toget 
 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. U'he 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 spin- 
 ning), 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 
 
 Compare Factories Inquiry Commkslon’s Report. 
 
92 
 
 earii more than fourtecn 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 iip 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 
 iiecessaries 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 dass has been iin- 
 proved by machinery is most vigorously proclaimed a falsehood in every meeting 
 of workingmen 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 workingman, 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 im- 
 provements in machinery?’’* As though the bourgeois did not know well 
 enough that without machinery and the expansion of industry which it pro- 
 duced, 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 reforni 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 else- 
 where, (though even this is past now, since machines for the purpose have been 
 invented and introduced), or seil 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 
 workingman, solely injurious, and often in the highest degree oppressive. 
 Every new advance brings with it loss of employment, want and sufifering, and 
 in a country like England where, without that, there is usually a “ surplus popu- 
 lation,” 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 
 
 L. Symonds, in ArH and ArtizofOs. 
 
93 
 
 bourgeoisie or drunkenness, dissoluteness in general. And the English operatives 
 are accustomed to take refuge in both. The history of the English Proletariat 
 relateä hundreds of uprisings against machinery and the bourgeoisie; we have 
 already spoken of the moral dissolution which, in itself, is only another sort 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 eise 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 com- 
 petition 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 dass 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 over- 
 crowded. 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 eighleen hours a day. Most woven 
 goods require moreover a damp weaving-room, to keep the wool from snapping, 
 and in part for this reason, in partbecause of their poverty which prevents them 
 from paying for better dwellings, the work-rooms of these weavers are usually 
 without wooden or paved floors. I have been in many dwellings of such 
 weavers, in remote, vile courts and alleys, usually in cellars. Often half a dozen 
 of these hand-loom weavers, several of them married, live together in a cottage 
 with one or two work-rooms and one large sleeping-room. Their food consists 
 almost exclusively of potatoes, with perhaps oatmeal porridge, rarely milk, and 
 scarcely ever meat. Great numbers of them are Irish or of Irish descent. And 
 these poor hand-loom weavers, first to suffer from every crisis, and last to be re- 
 lieved 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 the7t 
 judge the factory* System!” As though it were not precisely the factory System 
 and the machinery belonging to it which had so shamefully crushed the hand- 
 loom weavers, and as though the bourgeoisie did not know this quite as well as 
 ourselvesl But the bourgeoisie has interests at stäke, 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 labor, involved in both spinning 
 
 ♦ See Dr. Ure in the Philosophy of Manufacture, 
 
94 
 
 and weaving, consists chiefly in piecing broken tbreads, 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* 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- 
 flrst 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 moünt- 
 ing and taking down bobbins, and a few men as overlookers, a mechanic and an 
 engineer for the steam-engines, carpenters, porters, etc. ; but the actual work of 
 the mills is done by women and children. This the manufacturers deny. 
 
 They published last year elaborate tables to prove that machinery does not 
 supersede adult male operatives. According to these tables, rather more than 
 half of all the factory-workers employed, viz. : 52 per Cent, were females and 48 
 per Cent, males, and of these operatives more than half were over eighteen yea's 
 old. So far, so good. But the manufacturers are very careful not to teil 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 teil the whole truth, These 
 publications teem general ly 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 State- 
 ments of a Speech with which Lord Ashley introduced the Ten Hours Bill, March 
 I5th, 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. 
 
 * Report of Factory Inspector, L. Horner, October, 1844; The state of things in the matte*" 
 
 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 ihirteen years, working under 
 the saine roof, earn 5 Shillings, and young girls, Iroiii sixteen to twenty years, 10 — 12 Shillings per 
 week.** 
 
95 
 
 whose Statements, as quoted above, cover moreover only a pari of the manufac- 
 turing 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, 56^4^ per cent.; in the woollen mills, 69^ per cent.; in the 
 silk mills, 70^ per cent. ; in the flax spinning mills, 70^ per cent. of all opera- 
 tives 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 con- 
 firmed. Hence follows of necessity that Inversion of the existing social Order 
 which, being a constrained one, 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 
 eighteen pence 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* showed for nine 
 months: 69 deaths from burning, 56 from drowning, 23 from falling, 77 from 
 other causes, or a total of 225* * deaths from accident, while in non-manufac- 
 turing Liverpool during twelve months, there were but 146 fatal accidents. 
 The mining accidents are excluded in both cases; and since the Coroner of Man- 
 chester 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 some- 
 thing, and what sort of suckling that can be is also evident. Lord Ashley 
 repeats the testimony of several w'orkwomen; “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 morn- 
 ing 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 
 
 * Report of Factories Inquiry Commission. Testimony of Dr. Hawkins, p. 3. 
 
 ♦ ♦In 1843, among the accidents brought to the Infirmary in Manchester, one hundred and 
 eighty-nine were from burnirg. 
 
96 
 
 this infamous System, and has reached a great extent in the factory districts. 
 Dr. Johns, Registrar in Cliief 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 demoralizing 
 consequences for parents as well as children. A mother who has no time lo 
 trouble herseif 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 grpw 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 :he working dass. 
 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 in the 
 fourteenth or fifteenth year. ^ In a word, the children emancipate themselves, 
 and regard the paternal dwelling as a lodging-house, which they often exchange 
 for another, as suits Ihem. 
 
 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 workingmen by this reversal of all relations within the 
 family, w^hile the otber social conditions remain unchanged. There lies before 
 me a letter from an English workingman, Robert Pounder, Baron’s Buildings, 
 Woodhouse Moorside, in Leeds, (the bourgeoisie may hunt him up there; I give 
 the exact address for the purpose), written by him to Oastler:^ 
 
 He relates how another workingman, 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 nearthe 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 in the factory; she has to leave at 
 
 1. Factories Inquiry Commission*s Report, Power’s Report on Leeds; passim Tufn eil Report 
 on Manchester, p. 17, etc. 
 
 2. This letter is re-translated from the German, no attempt being made to re-produce either the 
 spelling or the original Yorkshire dialect. 
 
97 
 
 half-past five and works tili eight at night, and then she is so knocked up that 
 she cannot do aught when she gets home, so I have lo 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, 
 and Joe 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 eise 
 would have been seen 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 shifted ?" “ I’ll teil thee, Joe, as well as I could, 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 liard 
 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. 
 “1 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 govern- 
 ment, 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 woman- 
 liness, or the woman true manliness, this condition which degrades, in the most 
 shameful way, both sexes, and, through them, Ilumanity, is the last result of 
 our much praised civilization, 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 labor and toil result in such a mockery, or we must ad mit 
 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 pre- 
 tended community of possessions. The same relation exists on the part of 
 those children who Support unemployed parents’ when they do not directly pay 
 board as already referred to. Dr. Hawkins testified in the Factories Inquiry 
 Commission’s Report, that this relation is common enough, and in Manchester 
 it is notorious. ln this case the children are the masters in the house, as the 
 wife was in the fornier case, and Lord Ashley gives an example of this in his 
 Speech:^ A man berated his two daughters for going to the public house, and 
 they answered that they were tired of being ordered about, saying: “ Damn 
 you, we have to keep you!” Determined to keep the proceeds of their work for 
 themselves, they left the family dwelling, and abandoned their parents to their 
 fate. 
 
 The unmarried women, who have grown up in mills, are no better off than 
 the married ones. It is self-evident that a girl who has worked in a mill from 
 her ninth year is in no position to understand domestic work, whence it follows 
 that female operatives prove wholly inexperienced and unfit as housekeepers. 
 They cannot knit or sew, cook or wash, are unacquainted with the most ordinary 
 duties of a housekeeper,- and when they have young children to take care of, 
 have not the vaguest idea how to set about it. The Factories Inquiry Com- 
 mission’s Report gives dozens of examples of this, and Dr. Hawkins, Com- 
 missioner for Lancashire, expresses his opinion as follows:^ 
 
 “ 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 vfould find no time in married life for the perf<^rmance 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. Be- 
 sides this, the dwelling of the millhands is too often no home but a cellar, which 
 contains no cooking or washing Utensils, no sswing or mending materials, noth- 
 ing which makes life agreeable and civilized, 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. ” 
 
 But that is the least of the evil. The moral consequences of the employment 
 
 1. 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 lwo, if not three men for each 
 factory, are supported by the work of their wives. 
 
 2. House of Commons, March isth, 1844. 
 
 3. Factories Inquiry Commission’s Report, p. 4. 
 
 4. For further examples and information compare Factories Inquiry Commission’s Report. 
 Cowell Evidence, p. 37, 38, 39, 72, 77, 59: FulneÜ Evidence, p. 9, 15. 45, 54, etc. 
 
99 
 
 of women in factories are even worse. The collecting of pensons of both sexcs 
 and all ag^es in a single work-room, the inevitable contact, the crowding into 
 a small space of people, to whom neither mental nor moral education has been 
 given, is not calculated for the favorable development of the female character. 
 The manufactnrer, if he pays any attention to the matter, can interfere only 
 when something scandaloiis 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 characterized by many witnesses in the Report of 1833, as “ indecent," 
 “bad,” “ filthy," etc. ^ It is the same process upon a small scale which we 
 have already witnessed upon a large one in the great cities. The centralization 
 of population has the same influence upon the same persons, whether it affects 
 them in a great city or a small factory. The smaller the mill the closer the 
 packing, and the more unavoidable the contact; and the consequences are not 
 wanting. A witness in Leicester said that he would rather let his daughter beg 
 than go into a factory; that they are perfect gates of hell; that most of the 
 prostitutes of the town had their employment in the mills to thank for their 
 present Situation.^ Another, in Manchester, “ did not hesitate to assert that 
 three-fourths of the young factory employees, from fourteen to twenty years of 
 age, were unchaste.”'^ Commissioner Cowell expresses it as his opinion, that 
 the morality of the factory operatives is somewhat below the average of that of 
 the working dass in general.'*^ And Dr. Hawkins’ 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, llke any other, and to 
 an even higher degree, confers the jiis prim ce noctis, upon the master. In this 
 respect also, the employer is sovereign over the persons and charms of his em- 
 ployees. The threat of discharge suflices 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 wiihout education or considerations for the 
 
 1. Cowell Evidence, p. 35, 37, and elscwhere. 
 
 2. Power Evidence, p. 8, 
 
 3. Cowell Evidence, p. 57. 
 
 4. “ “ p. 82. 
 
 5. Factories Inquiry Commission’s Report, p. 4, Hawkins. 
 
100 
 
 hypocrisy of sodety, they let nothing interfere wilh the exerdse 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, and 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 lodg^d, 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 ex- 
 pression through Dr. Percival and Sir Robert Peel, (father of the Cabinet 
 Minister and himself a cotton manufacturer), that in 1802 Parliament passed an 
 Apprentice Bill, by which the most crying evils were removed. Gradually the 
 increasing competition of free w^ork-people crowded out the whole apprentice 
 System; factories were built in cities, machinery was constructed on a larger 
 scale, and work-rooms were made more airy and wholesome; gradually. too. 
 more work was found for adults and young persons. The number of children 
 in the mills diminished somewhat, and the age at wnich 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 dass, and especially 
 among those of the factory operatives, is proof enough of the unwholesome con- 
 ditions 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 favorable case is a tendency to dis- 
 ease, or some check in development, and consequent less than normal vigor 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 insuf- 
 ficient clüthing 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 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 six and a half hours daily work, without any one’s 
 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 unpardon- 
 able to sacrifice to the greed of an unfeeling bourgeoisie the time of children 
 which should be devoted solely to their physical and mental development, with- 
 draw them from school and the fresh air, in order to vvear them out for the 
 
— lOI — 
 
 benefit of the maniifacturers. The bourgeoisie says: “ If we do not employ the 
 children in the mills, they only remain under conditions unfavorable to their de- 
 velopment;” and this is trne on the whole. But what does this mean if it is not 
 a confession that the bourgeoisie first places the children of the working dass 
 under unfavorable 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 dass, 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 them- 
 selves. One case is related of a Scotch manufacturer, who rode after a sixteen 
 years old runaway, forced him to return running before the employer as fast as 
 the master’s horse trotted, and beat him the whole way with a long whip.' In 
 the large towns where the operatives resisted more vigorously, such things 
 naturally happened less often. But even this long working day failed to satisfy 
 the greed of the capitalists. Their aim was to make the Capital invested in the 
 building and machinery produce the highest return, by every available means, 
 to make it work as actively as possible. Ilence the manufacturers introduced 
 the shameful System of night-work. Some of them employed two sets of opera- 
 tives, 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 entiie frame were the inevitable results, with the fostering of temptation 
 to drunkenness and unbridled sexual indulgence. One manufacturer testifies* 
 that during the two years in which night-work was carried on in his factory, the 
 number of illegitimate children born was doubled, and such general demoraliza- 
 tion 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, 
 
 1. Stuart Evidence, p. 35. 
 
 2, Tufnell Evidence, p. 91. 
 
102 
 
 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 eise to be found — yet we shall see that the bourgeoisie constantly 
 appeals to the testimony of the Commission as being in its own favor. The 
 consequences of these cruelties became evident quickly enough. The Com- 
 missioners mention a crowd of cripples who appeared before them, who clearly 
 owed their distortion to the long working hours. This distortion usually con- 
 sists of a curving of the spinal column and legs, and is described as follows. by 
 Francis Sharp, M. R. C. S., of Leeds: ^ 
 
 “ 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 them- 
 selves 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 con- 
 sequences of overwork. So far as I know they were all mill children, and them- 
 selves 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 
 
 “ Malformations of the spine are very frequent among mill hands; some of 
 them consequent upon mere overwork, others the effect of long work upon con- 
 stitutions originally feeble, or weakened by bad food. Deformities seem even 
 more frequent tlian 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 disproportion- 
 ately 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. London contain a muhitude of examples 
 of such distortions, and those of Tufnell and Sir David Barry, which are less 
 directed to this point, give single examples. ^ The Commissioners for Lanca- 
 
 1. Br. London Evidence, pp. 12, 13, 
 
 2. Dr. London Evidence, p. 16, 
 
 3. 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, p. 
 29. 3L 40, 43, 53, et. seg. 
 
 London Evidence, pp. 4, 7, (fonr 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. 
 
103 
 
 shire, Cowell, Tufnell and Hawkins have almost wholly neglected this aspect of 
 the physiological results of the factory System though this district rivals York- 
 shire 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 testi- 
 mony 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 flatten- 
 ing of the foot, which Sir D. Barry ^ frequently observed, as did the physicians 
 and surgeons in Leeds. ^ In cases, in which a stronger Constitution, better food 
 and other more favorable 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 affeciions 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 theremaining 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 Dumferline, and in the cotton mills of 
 Glasgow and Lanark. 
 
 1. Factories Inquiry Commission’s Report, 1836, Sir D. Barry Evidence, p. at, (two cases.) 
 “ “ “ “ “ Loudon “ pp. 13, 16, etc. 
 
104 
 
 All these affections are easily explained by the nature of factory-work, which 
 fe as the manufacturers say, very “ light,” and precisely by reason of its light- 
 ness, 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 mechan- 
 ical 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 
 manufaclurer; and in Order that somewhat less raw material may be spoiled for 
 the bourgeois, the operative must sacrifice health and strength. ^ This long 
 protracted upright position, with the bad atmosphere prevalent in the mills, 
 entails, besides the deformities mentioned, a marked relaxation of all vital 
 energies and, in consequence, all sorts of other affections general rather than 
 local. The atmosphere of the factories is, as a rule, at once damp and warm, 
 usually warmer than is necessary and, when the Ventilation is not very good, 
 impure, heavy, deficient in oxygen, filled with dust and the smell of the machine 
 oil which almost everywhere smears the floor, sinks into it, and becomes rancid. 
 The operatives are lightly clad by reason of the warmth and would readily take 
 cold in case of irregularity of the temperature; a draught is distasteful to them, 
 the general enervation which gradually takes possession of all the physical func- 
 tions, diminishes the animal warmth; this must be replaced from without, and 
 nothing is Iherefore 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 sud- 
 den change of temperature on going out into the cold and wet or frosty 
 atmosphere, without the means of protection from 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 noth- 
 ing whatsoever counteracts the ennervating, relaxing tendency of all these con- 
 ditions; 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:" 
 
 1. In the splnning room of a mill at Leeds, too, chairs had been introduced. Drinkwater 
 Evidence, p. 8o, 
 
 2 . General report by Sir D. Barry. 
 
105 
 
 “ The unfavorable influences of mill-work upon tlie hands are the following: 
 I.) The inevitable necessity of forcing' their mental and bodily effort to keep 
 p.ice with a machine moved by a uniform and unceasing motive power. 2.) 
 Continuance in an upright position during unnaturally long and quickly recur- 
 ring periods. 3.) Löss 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 work-rooms, impure air, a high temperature, and con- 
 stant perspiration. Hence the boys especially, very soon and with but few ex- 
 ceptions, lose the rosy freshness of childhood, and become paler and thinner 
 than other boys. Even the hand-weaver’sbound-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 
 youth up, and there are very few tall, athletic men among them, the conclusion 
 is justified that their occupation is very unfavorable 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: ^ 
 
 “ I can bear witness that the factory System in Bradford has engendered a 
 multitude of cripples, and that the effect of long continued labor 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 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 fiber less 
 vigorous here than in Scarborough and its environs. I saw, too, that many 
 children were exceptionally small for their age. I have met witl» numberless 
 cases of scrophula, lung trouble, mesenteric affections and Indigestion, concern- 
 ing which I, as a physician, have not a 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 con- 
 stantly coming in, the race of millhands 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 
 
 1. Power Report, p. 74. 
 
 2. 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. 
 
— to6 — 
 
 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: 
 
 I.) “ I have had opportunity of observing the effects of the factory System 
 upon the health of children under the most favorable circumstances (in Wood’s 
 mill, in Bradford, the best arranged of the district, in which he was factory 
 physician). 2.) These effects are decidedly and, to a very great extent, injurious 
 even under these most favorable circumstances. 3.) In the year 1842, three» 
 fifths of all the children employed in Wood’s mill were treated by me. 4.) The 
 w’orst effect is not the predominence of deformities, but of enfeebled and mopbid 
 constitutions. 5.) All this is greatly improved since the working hours of chil- 
 dren have been reduced at Wood’s to ten.” 
 
 The Commissioner, Dr. London 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 labor which scarcely any human 
 being is able to endure. The consequence is that many have died prematurely, 
 and others are afflicted for life wnth 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 Manchestei. 
 
 “ I believe that most travelers are struck by the lowness ot staturc, the lean- 
 ness and the paleness which present themselves so commonly to the eye at Man- 
 chester, 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 color 
 from the national Standard has been so obvious. Among the married women 
 all the characteristic peculiarities of the English woman are conspicuously want- 
 ing. 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 ex- 
 pression of their faces lay nothing of the usual mobility, liveliness and cheeriness 
 of youth. Many of them told me that they feit 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 Hawkin’s Report, which only half belongs 
 here, but may be quoted here as well as anywhere eise: 
 
 “ 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 
 
107 
 
 this dass 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, 
 peoplewill 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 workingmen, I think Robert Hyde Greg, said, 
 himself, on one occasion, that if things went on as at present, the operatives of 
 Lancashire would soon be a race of pigmies. ^ A recruiting officer^ testified 
 that operatives are little adapted for military service, looked thin and nervoiis, 
 and were frequently rejected by the physicians 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 1600 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 favor, 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 yani, 
 and are therefore “sometimes” discharged; he calls operatives forty years of 
 age “oldpeoplel" 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 
 
 1. This Statement is not taken from the report. 
 a. Tufnell, p. 59. 
 
io8 
 
 years is old age for thcm.’ And similar evidence may be found elsewhere.® In 
 Manchester, this premature old age among the operatives is so universal that 
 almost every man of forty would be taken for ten to fifteen years older, while 
 the prosperous classes, men as well as women, preserve their appearance exceed- 
 ingly 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. London, in his report, “ no example of malformation 
 of the pelvis and of some other affections came under my notice, these things 
 <'ire nevertheless so common, that every physician must regard them as probable 
 consequences of such working hours, and as vouched for besides, b}^ men of the 
 Jiighest 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.® Moreover, they suffer from the general enfeeblement 
 common to all operatives and, when pregnant, continue to work in the factory 
 üp to the hour of delivery, because otherwise they lose their w’ages 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 them- 
 selves fortunate. Many come back to the factory after eight, and even after 
 three to fcur da5's, 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, 
 dreadof 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 hisemployees 
 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:** 
 
 1. Stuart Evidence, p. loi. 
 
 2. Tufnell “ 3, 9, 15. 
 
 3. Hawkins Report, p. 4; Evidence, p. 14, etc., etc, 
 
 Hawkins Evidence, pp, ii, 13. 
 
 4. Cowell Evidence, p. 77. 
 
** A girl feels very ill, can scarcely do her work. Why does she not ask pcr- 
 mission to go home? Ah! the master is very particular, and if we are away a 
 half a day, we risk being sent away altogether." 
 
 Or Sir D. Barry 
 
 “ 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 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. Roberten 
 whom I have already cited (mentioned in the Factories Inquiry Com- 
 mission’s Report as the “eminent” gynsecologist 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 develoj^ed woman but pregnant, and 
 that it was by no means rare in Manchester for women to be conhned 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 de- 
 bility. On the other hand, retarded development of the female Constitution 
 occurs, the breasts mature late or not at all.^ Menstruation hrst appears in the 
 seventeenth or eighteenth, sometimes in the twentieth year, and is often wholly 
 wanting. ^ Irregulär menstruation, coupled with great pain and numerous 
 affections, especially with ancemia, is very frequent, as the medical reporls 
 unanimously state. 
 
 Children of su:h 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 farther, 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 circum- 
 stance which contributes greatly to the invigoration of the children. The 
 operatives’ children in the neighborhood of Manchester are nearly all thriving 
 and rosy, while those within the city look pale and scrophulous; but with the 
 ninth 5’’ear the color 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 ehest affections, especially 
 among workers in the carding and combing rooms. Some constitutions can bear 
 it, some cannot; but the operative has no choice. Fle must take the room in 
 
 1. Sir D. Barry Evidence, p. 44, 
 
 2. Cowell, p. 35. 
 
 3. Dr. Hawkins Evidence, p. ii. 
 
 Dr. London, p. 14, etc. 
 
 Sir D. Barry, p. 5, etc. 
 
HO 
 
 vvhich he finds work, whether his ehest is sound or not. The most -common 
 effects of this breathing of dust are blood-spitting, hard, noisy breathing, pains 
 in the ehest, coughs, sleeplessness, in short all the Symptoms of asthma ending 
 in the worst cases in consumption. ’ Especially unwholesome is the wet spin- 
 rnng 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 ehest. 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 considera- 
 ,tion shown by most of the manufacturers for the health of the girls who do it. 
 Another effect of flax spinning is a peculiar deform ity of the shoulder, especially 
 a projection of the right shoulder blade, consequent upon the nature of the 
 work. This sort of spinning and the throttle-spinning of cotton frequently pro- 
 duce 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 stuntieg 
 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, dc- 
 cidedly 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 wilh 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 ceiling above and floor below wdth such force that there is rarely 
 a whole bone left in the body, and death follows instantly. Between June I2th 
 and August 3rd, 1843, the Manchester Guardian reported the following serious 
 accidents, (the trifling ones it does not notice): June I2th, a boy died in Man- 
 
 I. Compare Stuart, pp. 13, 70, loi; Mackintosh, p. 24. etc.; Power Report on Nottingham, on 
 T.eeds; Cowell, p. 33, etc.; Barry, p. 12; (five cases in one factory), p. 17, 44, 52, 60, etc.; Luu* 
 dun, p. 13. 
 
III 
 
 ehester of lockjaw, caused by his hand being crushed between wheels. June 
 i6th, 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 Man- 
 chester, at work in a machine shop, feil 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 Man- 
 chester 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, Manchester In- 
 firmary 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 of 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 ex- 
 ceptional 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 tkemselves 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 
 develope? Or the machinery is ill-arranged, and must be surrounded with fenc- 
 ing 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 clean- 
 ing 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, 
 
II2 
 
 and almost never fenced. But the number is still large enough as the fore- 
 going 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 dass, and plunges 
 so many industrious working people into want and starvation by reason of 
 injuries iindergone in the Service and through the fault of the bourgeoisie. 
 
 A pretty list of diseases engendered purely by the hateful money greed of the 
 manufacturers! Women made unfit for child-bearing, children deformed, men 
 enfeebled, limbs crushed, whole generations wrecked, afflicted with disease and 
 infirmity, purely to fill the purses of the bourgeoisie. And when one reads of 
 the barbarism of single cases, how children are seized naked in bed by the over- 
 lookers, and driven with blows and kicks to the factory, their clothing over their 
 arms, ^ how their sleepiness is driven off with blows, how they fall asleep over 
 their work nevertheless, how one poor child sprang up, still asleep, at the call of 
 the overlooker, and mechanically went through the operations of its work after 
 its machine was stopped; when one reads how children, too tired to go home, 
 hid 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 
 villanies 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 
 dass 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 Manufachires'^ that the workers have been told that their wages had no 
 relation to their sacrifices, the good understanding between masters and men 
 being thus disturbed. Instead of this, the workingmen 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, superin- 
 tendents and finally partners, and would thus — (Oh! Wisdom, thou speakest as 
 the dove!) — “ have increased at the same time the demand for their companions’ 
 labor 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 de- 
 veloped still more rapidly and beneficially.”'^ 
 
 1. Stuart, p, 39. 
 
 2. Philosophy of Manufactures^ by Dr. Andrew Ure, p. 277, et. seq. 
 
 3. Ibid, 277. 
 
— II3 — 
 
 Hereupon follows a long Jercmiad upon the Spirit of resistance of the opera- 
 tives, and on the occasion of a strike of the best paid workers, the fine Spinners, 
 the following naive Observation : ^ 
 
 “ In fact, it was their high wages w’hich enabled them to maintain a stipendi- 
 ary committee in affluence, and to pamper themselves into nervous ailments by 
 a diet too rieh and exciting for their indoor employments.” 
 
 Let US hear how the bourgeois describes the work of children:* 
 
 “I have visited many factories, both in Manchester and in the surrounding 
 districts, during a period of several months, entering the spinning-rooms ur.- 
 expectedly, 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 humor. They seemed to be always cheerful and alert, 
 taking pleasure in the light play of their muscles, enjoying the mobility natural 
 to their age. The scene of industry, so far from exciting sad emotions in my 
 mind, was always exhilarating. It was delightful to observe the nimbleness 
 with which they pieced broken ends, as the mule carriage began to recede from 
 the fixed roller beam, and to see them at leisure, after a few seconds’ exercise of 
 their tiny fingers, to amuse themselves in any attitude they chose, tili 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 neighboring 
 play-ground, and to commence their little games with the same alacrity as boys 
 issuing from a school.” 
 
 Naturally! As though the immediate movement of every muscle were not an 
 urgent necessity for frames grown at once stiff and relaxed! But Ure should 
 have waited to see whether this momentary excitement had not subsided after a 
 couple of minutes. And besides, Ure could see this whole performance only in 
 the afternoon after five or six hours work, but not in the evening! As to the 
 health of the operatives, the bourgeois has the boundless impndence to eite 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 scrophula 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 Factor)" Act of 1834, passed by 
 the Liberal bourgeoisie, and imposing only the most meagre limitations upon 
 the manufacturers, as w’e shall see. This law, especially its compulsory educa- 
 lion clause, he calls an absurd and despotic measure directed against the manu- 
 facturers; through which all children under tvvelve years of age have been throw’n 
 out of employment; and with what results? The children thus discharged 
 
 1. Ibid, p. 298. 
 
 2. Ibid, p. 301. 
 
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 in- 
 tensifies the ^ufferings of the poor, and will greatly restrict the conscientious 
 manufacturer in his useful work, if indeed it does wholly stop him. * 
 
 The ruinous inflrence 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 I 83 i, 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 dis- 
 charged, 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-hour 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 wit- 
 nesses 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 investi- 
 gation; they knew that an exact report must in this case be advantageous to 
 them; they knew that Whigs, genuine bourgeois, were at the heim, 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 
 
 I. Dr. Andrew Ure, Philosophy of Manufaciures, pp. 405, 406, et. seq. 
 
direction. On every page it betrays sympathy with the manufactiirers, distrust 
 of the Sadlcr report, repugnance to the workingmen agitating independently 
 and the supporters of the ten-hour bill. It nowhere recognizes the right of the 
 workingman 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-Hour Bill they thought, not of the children only, but of themselves as 
 well; it calls the workingmen engaged in the agitation demagogues, ili-inten- 
 tioned, 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-hour 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 civilization and humanity. Yet Dr. Haw- 
 kins, the medical commissioner for Lancashire, expresses himself decidedly in 
 favor of the Ten-Hour Bill in the opening lines of his report, and Commissioner 
 Mackintosh cxplains that his own report does not contain the whole truth, 
 because it is very difficult to induce the operatives to testify against tneir 
 employers, and because the manufacturers, besides being forced into greater 
 concessions towards their operatives by the excitement among the latter, are 
 often prepared for the inspection of the factories, have them swept, the speed of 
 the machinery reduced, etc. In Lancashire especially, they resorted to the 
 device of bringing the overlookers of work-rooms before the commissioners and 
 letting them testify as workingmen to the humanity of the employers, the whole- 
 some effects of the work, and the indifference, if not the hostility of the opera- 
 tives towards the Ten Hours Bill. But these are no genuine working- 
 men; they are deserters from their dass, 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 manufac- 
 turing 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 P^conomy of the man- 
 ufacturers 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 em- 
 ployment 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 
 
— ii6 — 
 
 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 repeaied the total 
 Prohibition of night- work for persons under eighteen years of age. Compuisory 
 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 physician and a certificate of school 
 attendance from the teacher. As recompense, the employer was peimitted 10 
 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 oaths, 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 thirte'en, 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. Never- 
 theless, 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 regions, nausea, want of appetite alternating with unnatural hunger, 
 indigestion, hypochondria, affections of the ehest in consequence of the dust and 
 foul atmosphere of the factories, etc., etc., all occur among employes subject 
 to the provisions of Sir J. C. Hobhouse’s law (of 1831), which prescribes twelve 
 to thirteen hours as the maximum. The reports of 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 dass to 
 this day. Care has been taken to give the brutal profit-greed of the bourgeoisie 
 a hypocritical, civilized form, to restrain the manufaefurers through the arm of 
 the law from too conspicuous villanies, and thiis to give them a pretext for 
 parading seif complacently 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 extemporized compuisory attendance at school, it remained wholly a 
 dead letter, since the government failed to provide good schools. The manu- 
 facturers employed as teachers worn out operatives to whom they sent the chil- 
 dren 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 inspectors duties, i. e., the enforcement of the Fac- 
 tory 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 free 
 hours, work children longer ihan 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 under full headway once more, and Sadler’s place, 
 
 he having died, was filled in the House of Commons by Lord Ashley^ and 
 Richard Oastler, both Tories. Oasller 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 favorite of the workingmen. 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 con- 
 fer other favors 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 schoo.s. 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 feit themselves threatened. 
 The manufacturers and the Liberais generally united with them, the working- 
 men were divided by the church queslion, 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 workingmen, collected nevertheless, 
 nearly two million signatures for a petition against it, and Graham allowed him- 
 self 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 after- 
 noon 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 
 
 I. Afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, died 1885. 
 
ii8 — • 
 
 agitation was begun again more vigoroiisly than ever. Oastler had just then 
 regained bis liberty; a number o£ bis friends and a Collection among tbe work- 
 ers had paid bis debt, and he threw himself into tbe movement with all bis might. 
 The defenders of tbe Ten Hours Bill in tbe House of Commons bad increased in 
 numbers, tbe masses of petitions supporting it which poured in from all sides, 
 brougbt them allies, and on March igtb, 1844, Lord Asbley carried, with a 
 majority of 179 to 170, a resolution that tbe word “ Night ” in tbe Factory Act 
 should express tbe time from six at night to six in tbe morning, whereby the 
 Prohibition of night work came to mean the limitation of working houri* to 
 twelve, including free hours, or ten hours of actual work a day. But tbe min- 
 istry 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 rcsGued it. In all the divisions, the bulk of the Opposition voted for and 
 the bulk of its own party against the ministry.* The forgoing 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 over-work for making up time lost through breakdown of machinery 
 or insufhcient water-power by reason of frost or drought, a working day of more 
 than twelve hours has been made well nigh impossible. There remains, how- 
 ever, 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 honorable and dishonorable means 
 against this dreaded measure, but with no other result than that of drawing 
 down upon them the ever deepening hatred of the workingmen. The bill will 
 pass. What the workingmen 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 \xm^\ but they prove nothing except this, that the industrial great - 
 ness of England can be maintained only through the barbarous treatment of the 
 
 * It is notorious that the House of Commons made itself ridiculous a second time ln the same 
 Session in the same way on the Sugar Question, when k first voted against the ministry and then 
 for it, after an application of the ministerial whip. 
 
— irg — 
 
 operatives, the destruction of their Health, the social, phypical and mental decay 
 of whole generations. Naturally, if the Ten Ilours Bill were a final measure, 
 it must ruin England: biit since it must inevitably bring with it other measures 
 which must draw England into a path wholly different from that hitherto 
 followcd, it can only prove an advance. 
 
 Let US turn to another side of the factory systcm 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 conceiv- 
 able. The operative is condemned to let his physical and mental powe s d cay 
 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 over- 
 looker 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 feit as the 
 keenest torture by the operatives, and its action upon mind and body is in the 
 long riin stunting in the highest degree. There is no better means of inducing 
 stupefaction than a period of factory work, and if the operatives have, neverthe- 
 less, not only rescued their intelligence, but cultivated and sharpened it more 
 than other workingmen, they have found this possible, only in rebellion against 
 their fate and against the bourgeoisie, the sole subject on which undcr all cir- 
 cumstances 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 
 demoralization. The physical ennervation and the disease, universal in con- 
 sequence of the factory System, were enough to induce Commissioner Hawkins 
 to attribute this demoralization to them as inevitable; how much more when 
 mental lassitude is added to them, and when ihe influences already mentioned 
 which tempt every workingman to demoralization, make themselves feit 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.* 
 
 ♦ Let US hear another competent jndge: “ If we consider the example of the Irish in Connec- 
 tion with the ceaseless toil of the cotton operative dass, we shall wonder less at their terrible 
 demoralization. Continuous exhausting toi!, day after day, yearafter year, is not calculated to 
 develope the intellectual and moral capabilities of the human being. The wearisome routine of 
 endless drudgery, in which the same mechanical process is ever repeat. d, is like the torture of 
 Sissyphus; the bürden of toil, like the rock, is ever falling back upon the worn out drudge. I he 
 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 
 
120 
 
 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 abso- 
 lute 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 con- 
 tract if you did not wish to; but now when you have freely entered into it, you 
 must be bound by it. ” And so the workingman 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 favor, giving the workingmen the explanation cited 
 above.^ And such rules as these usually are! For instance: i.) 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, id. 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 
 employe without notice for bad w'ork or improper behavior. 6.)’ Every opera- 
 tive detected speaking to another, singing or whistling, will be fined 6d. ; for 
 leaving his place during working hours, 6d.^ Another copy of factory regula- 
 tions lies before me, according to which every operative who comes three 
 
 reaches a luxuriant development. To condemn a human being to such work isto 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 ßcanty nourishment, and squanders the rest of his earnings in debauchery. * 
 Dr.J. Kay. 
 
 1, Manchester Guardian, October soth, 
 
 2. Stubborn Facts, p. 9, et. seq. 
 
121 
 
 minutes too late, forfeits the wages for a quarter of an hour, and every one who 
 comes twe:dy 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 con- 
 demned 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 
 linder glowing hatred towards their oppressors, and towards that order of things 
 which places them in such a position, which degrades them to machines. But it 
 is far more shameful yet, that according to the universal testimony of the ^ 
 operatives, numbers of manufacturers collect the fines imposed upon the opera- 
 tives 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 for- 
 ward 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 w’orking hours, so that the 
 operatives worked over-time without extra pay; in another, a whole quarter of 
 an hour over-time 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 worked over- 
 time, who, nevertheless, betook themselves to a life of prostitution rather than 
 submit to this tyranny.' To return to the fines, Leach relates having repeatedly 
 seen women in the last period'of pregnancy fined 6d. for the offence of sitting 
 down a moment to rest. Fines for bad work are wholly arbitrary; the goods 
 are examined in the wareroom, and the Supervisor charges the fines upon a list 
 
 I. Drink water Evidcnce, p. 80, 
 
122 
 
 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 3 SjC>t I7sh., lod. He relates that in 
 the factory where this list was made, a new Supervisor was dismissed for 
 fining too little, and so bringing in five pounds too little weekly. ^ And I repeat 
 that I know Leach to be a thoroughly trustworthy man incapable of a falsehood. 
 
 But the operative is his employer’s slave in still other respects. If his wife or 
 daughter finds favor in the eyes of the rieh man, a command, a hint suffices, 
 and she must place herseif at his disposal. When the employer wishes to sup- 
 ply with signatures a petition in favor 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 pub- 
 lic meeting, he dismisses them a half hour earlier than usual, and secures them 
 places dose 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 systejn and the Cottage System. 
 The truck System, the payment of the operatives in goods, was lormeriy 
 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 efhciently; but in the country, the truck System, disguised or un- 
 disguised, 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 Man- 
 chester Guardia^i 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 eise. 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 Hudders- 
 field, in Yorkshire, which refers to a manufacturer of the name of Bowers, as 
 follows, (re-translated from the German:) 
 
 “ It is very stränge to think that the accursed truck System should exist to 
 
 2 . Stubborn Facts, p. 13-X7. 
 
123 
 
 such an extent as it does in Ilolmfirth, and nobody be fonnd who has the pluck 
 to make the manufacturers 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 
 w’ho has upon himself the curses of the u hole 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 
 goous, 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 Frte Trade Mercury^ 
 the Leeds Mercury? "J'hey are not bound to take them; they can please them- 
 selves. Oh, yes, but they must take them or eise 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 tili 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 employe. 
 In the neighborhood of the mills in the country, there is often a lack of d A^elling 
 accommodations for the operatives. The manufacturer is frequently obliged to 
 tuild such dwellings and does so gladly, as they yield great advantages, besides 
 the interest upon the Capital invested. If any owner of workingmen’s dwellings 
 averages about six per cent. on his invested Capital, it is safe lo 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. Fle is therefore spared the two chief disadvantages under which 
 other house-owners labor; 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 manu- 
 facturer, at cost of the operatives, makes a brilliant investment at twelve to four- 
 teen per cent. For it is clearly unjust that he should make twice as much proflt 
 as other competing house-owners, who at the same time are excluded from com- 
 peting with him. But it implies a double wrong, when he draws his fixed prolit 
 from the pockets of the non-possessing dass, which must consider the ex- 
 penditure 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- 
 
124 
 
 I.yne, Oldham and Rochdale, etc,, are forced by thelr employers to pay house- 
 rent whether they occupy the houses or not. ^ The cottage System is universal 
 in the country districts; it has created whole villages, and the manufacturer 
 usually has little or no competition agalnst 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 Aveek; after that time the opera- 
 tive is not only without bread but without a shelter, a vägabond 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 towaids 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, boiind to the soil, so is the 
 free workingman through the cottage System. The serf owed his master the 
 jus primae noctis, the right of the first night — the free workingman must, on 
 demand, surrender to his master not only that, but the right of every night. 
 The serf could acquire no property; every thing that he gained, his master could 
 take from him; the free workingman 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 im- 
 mediate necessities. The relation of the lord of the soil to the serf was regu- 
 lated by the prevailing customs and by laws which were obeyed, because they 
 corresponded to them. The free workingman 's relation to his master is regu- 
 lated 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 seil him apart from it, and since 
 almost all the land was fief and there was no Capital, practically could not seil 
 him at all. The modern bourgeoisie forces the workingman to seil 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 guaranty for the 
 means of subsistence in the feudal Order of society in which every member had 
 his own place. The free workingman has no guaranty 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 a non-existent. The serf sacrificed him- 
 self 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 civilized and regards his “hand” as a machine. In short, the 
 
 I. Sun, a London daily; end of November, 1844. 
 
125 
 
 Position of the two is not far from equal, and if either is at a disadvantage, it is 
 the free workingman. 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 eise, 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 recognizes 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 pri^iciple of freedom is affirmed, and the 
 oppressed will one day see to it that this principle is carried out. ^ 
 
 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 indus- 
 trial 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 w^ay into each brauch of industry, and 
 what other peculiarities these may reveal. 
 
 The four branches compiised under the Factory Act are engaged in the pro- 
 duction 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 stock- 
 ing 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 
 
 1. I have nelther 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, morever, 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 respectab!e 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 coiintry; Mr. Greg to Quarrybank in Cheshire, Mr. Ash- 
 worth 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 conducrs you to the cottages, which 
 look new, clean and neat, and goes with you into this one and that one, naturally only to over- 
 lookers, mechanics, etc., so that you may see “families who live wholly from the factory.” Arnong 
 other families you might find that only wife and children work, and the husband darns stockings. 
 
126 
 
 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, dose rooms. It is not 
 uncommon for them to fairit 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 scrophulous Constitution, and the manufacturers usually 
 refuse to employ giiis who have worked in this way, as being too weak. The 
 condition of these children is characterized as “a disgrace to a Christian 
 country,” and the wish expressed for legislative interference. The Factory 
 Report^ adds that the stocking weavers are the worst paid workers in Leicester, 
 earning six, or with great effort, seven Shillings a week, for sixteen to eighteen 
 hours’ daily work. Formerly they earned twenty to twenty-one Shillings, but 
 the introduction of enlarged frames has ruined their business; the great majority 
 still work with old small single frames, and compete with difficulty with the 
 progress of machinery. Here, too, every progress is a disadvantage for the 
 workers! Nevertheless, Commissioner Power speaks of the pride of the stocking 
 weavers that they are free, and had no factory bell to measure out the time for their 
 eating, sleeping and working. Their position to-day is not 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 stiong 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 011, proud and happy, for the greater glory of German industry, since 
 the honor of the Fatherland demands the t his table should be bare, his dish half 
 empty? Ah! It is a noble thing, this competition, this “ race of the nations.*’ 
 
 The presence of the employer keeps you from asking indiscreet questions; you find every one 
 well-paid, comforlable, comparatively healthy by reason of the country air; you begin to be con- 
 verced from your exaggerated ideasof misery and starvation. But, that the cottage System makes 
 slaves of the operatives, that there may be a truck shop in the neighborbood, 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 manu- 
 facturer comes to a sudden end. Further, if you should wish to be accompanied through the work- 
 ing peoples’ 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 rieh bourgeois will help you! These gen- 
 tlemen do not know in what condition their employees are nor what they w'ant, 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 110 consequence; what the workingmen have to carry out, they 
 carry out for themselves, 
 
 I. Grainger Report. Appendix, Part I., p. 7, 15, et. seq., 132 — 142. 
 
127 
 
 In the Mo 7 ’ning 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 ^ n average 5)4 Shillings; each family earned an average of iis. 
 
 4d. weekly. Out of this, there was required for house-rent, frame-rent, fuel, 
 light, soap and needles, together 5s., lod., so that there remained for food, per 
 head daily, i) 4 d., and for clothing nothing. “No eye,” says the stocking 
 weaver, “ has seen, no ear heard, and no heart feit 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 eise more readily than this, and the rattling noise of the frame 
 is audible throughout the neighborhood. “ 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 shan’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 w^orst 
 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 w'orkingmen’s movements, the more active 
 and effective because the frames are worked chiefly by men. 
 
 In this stocking weaver’s 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 labor, and embraces a multitude of branches. 
 The yarn is first spooled by girls fourteen years of age and upwards, winders; then 
 the spools are set up on the frames by boys eight years old and upwards, 
 threaders, who pass the thread through fine openings of which each machine 
 has an average of 1,800, and bring it towards its destination; then the weaver 
 weaves the lace which comes out of the machine like a broad piece of cloth and 
 is taken apart by very little children who draw out the connecting threads. This 
 is called running or drawing lace, and the children themselves lace-runners. 
 The lace is then made ready for sale. The winders, like the threaders, have no 
 specified working time, being called upon whenever the spools on a frame are 
 empty, and are liable, since the weavers work at night, to be required at any 
 time in the factory or work-room. This irregularity, the frequent night work, 
 the disorderly way of living consequent upon it, engender ■ a multitude of 
 physical and moral ills, especially early and unbridled sexual license, upon which 
 point all witnesses are unanimous. The work is very bad for the eyes, and 
 
128 
 
 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 difflcult, as the frames have con- 
 stantly 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 i,8oo 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 men- 
 tions 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 unfavorable case, 
 aggravated nearsightedness 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 scrophulous 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 recognized 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, scrophula and 
 consumption. The health of the female lacemakers especially, is constantly 
 and deeply undermined, complaints are universal of anaemia, difflcult childbirlh 
 and miscarriage. ^ The same subordinate offlcial 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:^ 
 
 I, Grainger's whole Report. 
 
 a. Grainger Children^s Employment Commission’s Report. 
 
‘*A 11 the inhabitants of Nottingham, the police, the clergy, the manufac- 
 turers, the working people, and the parents of the children, are all unanimously 
 of opinion that the present System of labor is a most fruitful source of im- 
 morality. The threaders, chiefly boys, and the winders, usually girls, are called 
 foi 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 Con- 
 nections and remain together after the dose 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 families 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 agricul- 
 tural shires of Northampton, Oxford and Bedford, chiefly by children and young 
 persons who complain universally of bad food, and rarely taste meat. The em- 
 ployment itself is most unwholesome. The children work in small, ill-ven- 
 tilated, 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 makes narrow chests universal. They usually 
 die of consumption after suffering the severest forms of digestive dis- 
 orders, brought on by sedentary work in a bad atmosphere. They are almost 
 wholly without education, least of all do they receive moral training. They love 
 finery, and in consequence of these two influences their moral condition is most 
 deplorable, and prostitution almost epidemic among them.^ 
 
 This is the price at which society purchases for the fine ladies of the 
 bourgeoisie the pleasure of wearing lace; a reasonable price truly! Only a few 
 thousand blind workingmen, some consumptive laborers’ daughters, a sickly 
 generation of the vile muititude bequeathing its debility to its equally “vile” 
 children and childrens’ children. But what does that come to? Nothing, 
 nothing whatsoever. Our English bourgeoisie will lay the report of the Govern- 
 ment Commission aside, indifferently, and wives and daughters will deck them- 
 selves 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 establish- 
 ments 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 colors at once with such cylinders, has as completely super- 
 seded handwork as did the application of machinery to the spinning and weav- 
 ing of cotton, and these new arrangements in the printing works have superseded 
 the handworkers 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 
 
 I. Burns Children’s Employment Commission’s Report 
 
130 
 
 printed cloth per minute. The calico printers are in a very bad way in con- 
 sequence; the shires of Lancaster, Derby and Che-ster produced, (according to a 
 Petition of the printers to the House of Commons) in the year 1842. eleven 
 million pieces of printed cotton goods; of these, 100,000 were printed by hand 
 exclusively, goo,ooo in part with machinery and in part by hand, and 10,000,000 
 by machinery alone, with four to six colors. As the machinery is chiefly new 
 and undergoes constant improvement, the nnmber of hand-printers is far too 
 great for the available quantity of work, and many of them are therefore starv- 
 ing; the petition puts the number at one-quarter of the whole, while the 
 rest'are employed but one or two, in the best case three days in the week, and 
 are ill-paid. Leach^ asserts of one print works, (Deeply Dale, near Bury, in 
 Lancashire), that the hand-printers did not earn on an average more than five 
 Shillings, though he knows that the machine printers were pretty well paid. The 
 print works are thus wholly affiliated with the factory System, but without being 
 subject to the legislative restrictions placed upon it. They produce an article 
 subject to fashion, and have therefore no regulär work. If they have small 
 Orders, they work half time; if they make a hit with a pattem, and business is 
 brisk, they work twelve hours, perhaps all night. In the neighborhood of my 
 home, near Manchester, there was a print works that was often lighted when I 
 returned late at night; and I have heard that the children were obliged at times 
 to work so long there, that they would try to catch a moment’s rest and sleep on 
 the stone steps and in the corners of the lobby. I have no legal proof of the 
 truth of the Statement, or I should name the firm. The Report of the 
 Children's Employment Commission is very cursory upon this subject, stating 
 merely that in England, at least, the children are mostly pretty well clothed and 
 fed (relatively, according to the wages of the parents), that they receive no 
 education whatsoever, and are morally on a low plane. It is only necessary to 
 remember that these children are subject to the factory System, and then, refer- 
 ring 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 infer- 
 ence that they do not receive less than the average wages, otherwise they would 
 make complaint. The fustian cutters, who in consequence of the large consump- 
 tion 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 per- 
 fectly 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 wool is exactly parallel with the preceding one, and cutting is no 
 
 I. Stubborn Facts from the Factories, p. 47. 
 
longer an art. The workers thrown out of employment by the inlroduction of 
 machinery turn to fustian cutting, and force down wages by their competition; 
 the manufacturers discovered that they could employ women and children, and 
 thc wages iank to the rate paid them, while hundreds of men were thrown out 
 cf employment. The manufacturers found that they could get the work done in 
 the factory itself more cheaply than in the cutter’s work-room, for which they 
 indirectly paid the rent. Since this discovery, the low upper-story cutter’s 
 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 id.; true, he can cut the more regulär 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’ gives a list of wages paid in 1827 and in 1843 various goods, from 
 which it appears that articles paid in 1827 at the rates of qd., 2^d., 2^d. and 
 id. per yard, were paid in 1843 at the rate of i^d., ^d., id. and ^d. per yard 
 Cutters’ wages. The average weekly wage, according to Leach, was as follows: 
 1827, £1, 6s., 6d. ; £1, 2s., 6d. ; £i\ £1, 6s., 6d. ; and for the same goods in 1843, 
 los., 6d. ; 7s., 6d.; 6s., 8d. ; lOs., while there are hundreds of workers who 
 cannot find employment even at these last named rates. Of the handweavers of 
 the cotton induslry 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 com.petitors 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 ail 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^s., ^s., 
 i^s., lOs., he paid in 1839 but 9s., 2%?,., *^s., >^s., b^s., 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, i6^sh., 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^d. in 1843, (single sarsnets), and a great number of weavers in the 
 country can get work only when they undertake these goods at 1% — 2d. },Iore- 
 over, 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 
 
 I. Leach, Slubborn Facts from the Factories, p. 35. 
 
132 
 
 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 wool-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 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 prose- 
 cutor, witness, judge, law-giver and executive in one person. And if the work- 
 man 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 work- 
 man 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,^ “ 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 trans- 
 lates into plain English with the w’ords: “ If you don’t iike 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 wilh their lot is proved by their taking a 
 most active part in the English labor movements in general, and the 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 Investi- 
 gating the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring 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 
 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| 
 
 1, Leach, Stubbom Facts, etc., p. 37 — 40. 
 
133 
 
 and furnishing motive power for the machinery. Leon Faucher, author of a 
 series of articles in the Revue des Detix Moiides, which at least betray study, and 
 are better than what has hitherto been written upon the subject by Englishmen, 
 or Germans, characterizes this relation in conlrast with the manufacture 
 of Lancashire as “ Democratie industrielle,” and observes that it produces no 
 very favorable 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 manufaclurer. The centralizing tendency of Capital holds them 
 down. For one who grows rieh ten are ruined, and a hundred placed at a 
 greater disadvantage than ever, by the pressure of the one upstart who can 
 afford to seil 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 iiidependence — 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 Sup- 
 port 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 labor 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 divisiom of 
 labor, 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 mul- 
 titude of w’omen and children, and we find here’ 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 demoralization; further, the crowd- 
 ing 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 penny worth 
 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 vigor. And when we reflect that with these insufficient 
 means of reproducing the physical forces, hard and protracted work in dose 
 
 I. Children’s Employment Commission’s Report. 
 
134 
 
 rooms is required of them, we cannct wonder that there are few adults in 
 Birmingham fit for military Service. “ The workingmen/’ says a recruiting 
 surgeon, “ are small, delicate and of very slight physical power; many of them 
 deformed, too, in the ehest or spinal column.” According to the assertion of a 
 recruiting Sergeant, the people of Birmingham are smaller than those anywhere 
 eise, being usually 5 feet 4 to 5 inches tall; while out of 613 recruits, but 238 
 were found fit for Service. As to education, a series of depositions and speci- 
 mens taken from the metal districts has already been given* to which the 
 reader is referred. It appears further, from the Children’s Employment Com- 
 mission’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 Avhat sort of teachers are employed. One teacher, in 
 answer to the question vrhether she gave moral Instruction said no, for three 
 pence 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 de- 
 cided 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 crimmals are children under fifteen, 
 and in a single year ninety ten-years^-old offenders, among them forty-four 
 serious criminal cases, were sentenced. Unbridled sexual intercourse seems, 
 according to the opinion of the commissioner, almost universal, and that at a 
 ► very early age.^ 
 
 In the iron district of Staffordshire, the state of things is still worse. For the 
 coarse wares made here neither much division of labor, (with certain exceptions), 
 nor steam-power or machinery can be applied. In Wolverhampton, Willenhall, 
 Bilston, Sedgley, 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 taiiited 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. 
 
 1. See p. 42. 
 
 2. Grainger Report and Evidence. 
 
135 
 
 often so much so that they give rise to disease; and in spite of the not materially 
 unhealthy work, the children arc puny, weak, and, in many cases, severely 
 crippled. In Willenhall, for instance, there are countless persons who have 
 from perpetuc^lly filing at the lathe crooked backs and one leg crooked, “hind- 
 ieg” 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 \vorkingmen 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 Sedgley 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^d. Every 
 nail receives twelve blows, and since the hammer weighs 1^4^ pounds, the naher 
 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 wdth the other 
 districts can read, and in the matter of writing the case is much worse. Na- 
 turally, 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 theirnames 
 with difFiculty. The prevailing morals correspond with these means of education. 
 In Willenhall, Commissioner Home asserts and supplies ample proofs of his as- 
 sertion, that there exists absolutely no moral sense among the workers. In 
 general, he found that the children neither recognized duties to their parents nor 
 feit 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 four- 
 teen hours, were clad in rags, did not get enough to eat, and, were beaten so 
 that they feit it several days afterwards. They knew nothing of a different kind 
 of life than that in which they toil from morning until they are allowed to stop 
 at night, and did not even understand the question never heard before, whether 
 they were tired. ' 
 
 In Sheffield wages are better, and the external state of the workers also. On 
 the oth^^r 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 ehest, 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 
 
 1. Home Report and Evidence. 
 
136 
 
 with it headache, biliousness, and among girls, of whom many are employed, 
 anaemia. By far, the most unvvholesome 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 ehest and stomach are cramped; but especially in the quantity of sharp- 
 edged metal dust particles freed in the cutting, which fill the atmosphere, and 
 are necessarily inhaled. The dry-grinders’ average life is hardly thirty-five 
 years, the wet grinders’ rarely exceeds forty-five. Dr. Knight, in Sheffield, 
 says:^ 
 
 “ I can convey some idea of the injuriousness of this occupation only by as- 
 serting 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 years.’* 
 
 The same physician gives the following description of the course of the dis- 
 ease called grinders’ asthma: 
 
 “ They usually begin their work with the fourteenth year, and, if they have 
 good consiitutions, 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 generai, 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 ehest. Their voices become 
 rough and hoarse, they cough loudly, and the sound is as if air w'ere 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 mucous, spitting blood, inability to lie down, night sweat, 
 colliquative diarrhoea, unusual loss of flesh and all the usual Symptoms of con- 
 sumption 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 eure 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 Shef- 
 
 1. Dr. Knight, Sheffield. 
 
137 
 
 field is lipon a very low plane; a clerjryman, who had occnpied himself largely 
 with the statistics of ediication, was of the opinion that of 16,500 children of the 
 working dass wbo are in a position to attend school, scarcely 6,500 can read. 
 This comes of the fact that the diildren are taken from sdiool in the seventh, 
 and at the very latest in the twelfth year, and that the teachers are good for 
 nothing; one was a convicted thirf who found no other way of supporting him- 
 self after being released from jail than tcaching school! Immorality among 
 young people seems to be more prevalent in Sheffield than anywhere eise. It is 
 hard to teil which town ought to have the pvize, 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 nntil late at 
 night, when they take walks in solitary couples. In an alehouse which the com- 
 missioner visited, there sat forty to fifty young people of both sexes, nearly all 
 linder seventeen years of age, and each lad beside his lass. Here and there 
 cards were played, at other places dancing was going on, and every where drink- 
 ing. Among the Company were openly avowed professional prostitutes. No 
 wonder, then, that as all the witnesses testify, early, unbridled sexual inter- 
 course, youthful prostitution beginning with persons of fourteen to fifteen years 
 is extraordinarily frequent in Sheffield. Crimes of a savage and despairing sori 
 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 labor movement in Sheffield has this same savage character. ’ 
 
 Besides these two main centers 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 nai! 
 forges in the neighborhood of Wigan, in Lancashire, and in the east of Scot- 
 land. The reports from these latter districts teil almost precisely the same 
 Story as those of Staffordshire. There is one more branch of this industry car- 
 ried 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 regulär 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, Burslam, Lane End, I.ane 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. 
 
 I. Symons Report and Evidence. 
 
- 133 - 
 
 the children have light employment in warm, airy rooms; in others, on the con- 
 trary, hard, wearing labor 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 had 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 molded 
 article with the form to the drying-room, and afterwards bring back the empiy 
 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 cx- 
 haustiveness 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, 
 t*he 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 favorable for the absorption of 
 this dangerous substance. The consequence is violent pain, and serious disease 
 of the stomach and intestines, obstinate constipation, colic, sometimes consump- 
 tion 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 lielped with the dipping 
 two years while a boy, relates that he had violent pains in the bowels at lirst, 
 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 
 paralyzed, and the physicians teil 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 alflicted with severe colic, and eleven boys, several of whom were already 
 epileptic. In short, this frightful disease follows this occupation universaliy; 
 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 pulverized flint, 
 the breathing of which is as injurious as that of the Steel dust among the Shef- 
 field 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 
 
139 
 
 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 teil 
 one letter from another, and the moral and religious education, as well as the 
 intellectual, is on a vtry low plane. ^ 
 
 In the manufacture of glass, too, work occurs which seems little injurious to 
 men, but cannot be endured by children. The hard labor, the irregularity of 
 the hours, the frequent night-work, and especially the great heat of the working 
 place, (300 to 330 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 ehest 
 affections.^ 
 
 As a whole, this report testifies to the gradual but sure introduction of the 
 factory System into all branches of industry, recognizable especially by the em- 
 ployment 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 w^orkers. 
 Every one who is in any degree acquainted with the natiire of manufacture can 
 fill this out for himself. while space falls 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 intro- 
 duced, and the last trace of the workingman's independence thus destroyed. In 
 all directions the family is being dissolved by the labor of wife and children, or 
 Inverted by the husband’s being thrown out of employment and made de- 
 pendent upon them for bread; every where the inevitable machinery bestows 
 upon the great capitalist command of trade and of the workers with it. The 
 centralization of property 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 han lic^afts the power of Capital and in some 
 cases the division of labor, 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 ih -re 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 
 
 1. Scriven Report and Evidence. 
 
 2. Leifchild Report Append., Part II., p. 2, L, SS. II, i2;I , , t- , ^ . 
 
 Franks Report Append., Part 11., p. 7, iv, s. 48; f Children s Employment Commis- 
 
 Tancred Lvid. Append., Part II., p. 76, l’ etc. * j sion’s Report. 
 
— 140 — 
 
 its influence upon the heallh since the beginning of the industrial movement. 
 Biit the constant contact with the factory operatives, the pressure of the great 
 capitalists which is much more feit thaii 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 the labor 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 
 wo men. 
 
 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 prooL They employ a mass of young girls — there are said 
 to be 15,000'bf them in all — who sleep and eat on the premises, come usually 
 from the country, and are therefore absolutely the slaves of their employers. 
 Düring 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 with out 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 un- 
 broken toil as no strong man, much less a delicate girl of fourteen to twenty 
 years can endure. In addition to this, the foul air of the work-room and sleep- 
 ing 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, less 
 of appetite, pains in the shoulders, back and hips, but especially headache, begin 
 very soon; then follow curvatures of the spine, high, deformed shoulders, lean- 
 ness, 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 mar- 
 
141 
 
 ried, 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 craelty, though somewhat more indirectly, the rest of the 
 needle women of London are exploited. The girls employed in staymaking 
 have a hard, wearing occupation, trying to the eyes. And what wages do they 
 gel? I do not know; but this I know, that the middleman who has to give 
 security for the material delivered and who distributes the work among the 
 needle women, receives i^d. per piece. From this he deducts his own pay, at 
 least ^d., so that id. at most reaches the pocket of the girl. The girls who 
 sew neckties must bind themselves to work sixteen hours a day, and receive 
 45 ^s. a week. ‘ But the shirtmakers’ lot is the worst. They receive for an 
 ordinary shirt formerly 2 — 3d.; but since the wwkhouse of St. Pancras, 
 
 which is administered by a Radical board of guardians, began to undertake work 
 at ij 4 d., 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 sewiiig women according to this and according to 
 tesiimony from many sides, including both needle women and employers, is 
 2s. 6d. to 3s. for most sirained work continued far into the night. And what 
 crow’ns 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 can- 
 not 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, 
 1S43. A poor girl who got into this strait and did not kuow what to do next, 
 drowned herseif in a canal in 1844. These woinen usually live in little garret 
 rooms in the utmost distress, where as many crowd togelher 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. ^ And below them roll the brilliant ec]uipage3 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. 
 
 * :i: * 
 
 Such is the condition of the English manufacturing Proletariat. In all direc- 
 tions, whithersoever we may turn, we find want and disease permanent or 
 temporary, and demoralization arising from the condition of the workers; in all 
 
 1. See Wetkly Dispatch, March i6th, 1844. 
 
 2. Thomas Hood, the most talented of all the English humorists now living, and like all humor- 
 ists full of human leeling but wanting in mental energy, published at the beginning of 1844 a 
 beautiful poem, 1 he Song of the Shirt,” which drew sympathetic but unavailing tears from the 
 eyes of the daughters of the bourgeoisie. Origmally published in Punck^ it made the round of 
 all the papers. As discussions of the condition of the sewing women filled all the papers at the 
 time, spccial extracts are needless. 
 
142 
 
 directions slow but sure undermining“, and final destruction of t!ie human being 
 physically as well as mentally. Is this a state of things whith 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. 
 
 Labor 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 dass 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 workingman 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 dass 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 dass. The English workingman is no Englishman nowadays; 
 no calculating money-grabber like bis wealthy neighbor. He possesses more 
 fully developed feelings, his native northern coldness is overborne by the unre- 
 strained development of his passions and their control over him. The cultiva- 
 tion of the understanding w’hich 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 workingman, whose passions are therefore strong and mighty as 
 those of the foreigner. English nationality is annihilated in the workingman. 
 
 Since, as w^e 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 workingmen 
 is directed to this point, and that even their atteiiipts to altain general education 
 all stand in direct connection with this. True, we shall have single acts of 
 violence and even of brutality to repoit, but it must always be kept in mind that 
 the social war is avowedly raging in England; and that, whereas it is in the in- 
 terest of the bourgeoisie to conduct this war hypocritically, under the disguise 
 of peace and even of philanthropy, the only help for the workingmen consists in 
 
143 
 
 layin g- bare the true state of things and deslroying this hypocrisy; that the most 
 violent attacks of the workers upon the bourgeoisie and ils 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, limit- 
 ing myself meanwhile to such bare facts as serve to characterize the condition of 
 the English Proletariat. 
 
 The earliest, crudest and least fruitful form of this rebellion was that of 
 crime. The w'orkingman 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 lich 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 relalion to the number of bales 
 of cotton annually consumed. 
 
 The workers soon realized 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 bronght 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 ex- 
 pression of the public opinion of the workingmen, however much they might 
 approve of it in silence. As a dass, they first manifested Opposition to the 
 bourgeoisie when they resisted the introduction of machinery at the very begin- 
 ning 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 pre- 
 cisely 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 feil upon the 
 unprotected evil-doers and punished them to its hearts content, while the 
 machinery was introduced none the less. A new form of Opposition had to be 
 found. 
 
 At this point help came in theshape 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 dass, 
 'l'his was enacted in 1824, and repealed all laws by which coalitions between 
 workingmen for labor purposes had hitherto been forbidden. The workingmen 
 obtained a right previously restricted to the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, the 
 right of free association. Secret coalitions had, it is true, previously existed. 
 
144 
 
 but could never achieve great results. In Glasgow, as Symons’ relates, a 
 general strike of weavers had taken place in 1812, which was brought about by 
 a secret association. It was repeated in 1822, and on this occasion vitriol was 
 thrown into the faces of two workingmen who would not join the association, 
 and vvere therefore regarded by the members as traitors to their dass. Both Ihe 
 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 spcrecy, had regulär lists, treasurers, book-keepers and local 
 branches. But the secrecy with which everything was conducted crippled their 
 growth. When, on ihe olher hand, the workingman 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 workingman 
 against the tyranny and neglect of the bourgeoisie. Their objects were to deal, 
 en 7 ?tasse, as a power, with the employers; to regulate the rate of wages accord- 
 ing to the pro fit of the latter, to raise it when opportunity offered, and lo 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 labor by limiting the number of 
 apprentices and so to keep wages high; to counteract, as far as possible, the in- 
 direct wages-reductions which the manufacturers brought about by means of 
 new tools and machinery; and finally, to assist unemployed workingmen finan- 
 cially. This they do either directly or by means of a card to legitimate the 
 bearer as a “society man,” and with which the workingman wanders from place 
 to place supported by his fellow workers, and instructed as to the best oppor- 
 tunity for finding employment. This is tramping, and the w^anderer 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 com- 
 mittee 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 Organization for each trade. These 
 associations, however, never held together long, and were seldom realized even 
 for the moment, since an exceptionally universal excitement is necessary to 
 make such a federation possible and eifective, 
 
 The means usually employed by these Unions for attaining their ends are the 
 füilowing: If one or more employers refuse to pay the wage specified by the 
 
 I. Arts and Artizans, p. 137 et. seq. 
 
Union, a deputation is sent or a petition forwarded, (the workingmen, you see 
 know how to recognize 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 acgording to 
 the proposals of the Union. So far go the lawful means of the Union, assum- 
 ing the strike to take effect after the expiration of the legal notice, which is not 
 always the case. But these lawful means are very w’eak when there are w^orkers 
 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 w'orkers. 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 workingmen 
 intenupted by a few isolated victories. All these efforts naturally can- 
 not alter the economic law according to which wages are determined by the 
 relation between supply and demand in the labor market. Hence the Unions 
 remain powerless against all greai 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 labor, it cannot fix the 
 rate of w^ages 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 leduce 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 
 mihimum. But this competition of the manufacturers among themselves is, 
 tnider average conditionSy somewhat reslricted 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 inj u re 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, reduc- 
 ing 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 work- 
 ingmen demand an increased v/age as soon as the market improves, and they 
 
146 
 
 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 labor 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 shop-keepers give at high interest is withdrawn after a 
 time, and want compels the workingman to place himself once more under the 
 yoke of the bourgeoisie. But slrikes end disastrously for the workers mostly, 
 because the manufacturers, in their own interest (which has, be it said, become 
 their interest only through the resistence 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 them- 
 selves as far as in them lies. 
 
 It will be asked- “ VVhy, then, do the workers strike in such cases, when the 
 uselessness of such measures is so evident?” Simply because they musi 
 proLest against every reduction even if dictated by necessity; because they feel 
 bound to proclaim that they, as human beings, shall not be made 10 bow to social 
 circumstances, but social condiiions ought to yield to them as human beings; 
 because silence on their part would be a recognition of these social con- 
 ditions, 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 workingmen 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 pro- 
 testers themselves. The active resistance of the English workingmen has its eft'ect 
 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 dass. 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 the 
 cohesion of the Proletariat. And precisely because they direct themselves 
 against the vital nerve of the present social Order, however one-sidedly, in how • 
 ever narrow a way, are they so dangerous to this social Order. The woiking- 
 man 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 
 
147 
 
 of demand to supply, upon tlie accidental state of the labor market, simply 
 because the workers have hitherto been content to be trcated as chattels, to be 
 boujjht and sold. The moment the workers resolve to be bought and sold no 
 longer, when in the determination of the value of labor, 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 workingmen did not go beyond this Step of abolishing 
 competition among themselves. But they must go beyv'^nd that unless they are 
 prepared to recede again and to allow competition among themselves to re- 
 appear. Thus once advanced so far, necessity compels them to go further; to 
 abolish not only one element of competition, but competition itself altogether, 
 and that they will do. 
 
 The workers are coming to perceive more clearly with every day how competi- 
 tion affects them; they see far more clearly than the bourgeois that competition 
 of the capitalists among themselves presses upon the w’orkers, too, by bringing 
 on commercial crises, and that this element 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 dass 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 tue 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 eite severÄl. In 1831, during a 
 violent labor movement, young Ashton, a manufacturer in Hyde, near Man- 
 chester, 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 work- 
 ingmen. 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 füled with powder 
 w’as 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. Ile 
 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 workingmen 
 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 loth, 1844, the Com- 
 missioner 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 Snnday, January 20lh, 1844, an explosion, 
 caused by a package of powder, took place in the sawmill of Bentley and White, 
 at Bury, in Lancashire, and produced considerable damage. On Thursday, 
 February ist, 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 workingmen against the employers. What sort of a social 
 state it must be in which such things are possible I need hardly say. These 
 facts are proof enough that in England, even in good business years, such as 
 1843, the social war is avowed and openly carried on, and still the English 
 bourgeoisie does not stop to reflect! But the case which speaks most loudly is 
 that of the Glasgow Thugs* which came up before the Assizes from the 3d to 
 the iith of January, 1838. It appears from the proceedings that the Cotton 
 Spinners’ Union which existed here, from the year 1816, possessed rare Organi- 
 zation and power. The meinbers 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. McPherson, 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 Maclnarry, was shot at and Mounded, for 
 which deed the doer received twenty pounds from the Union, but was discovered 
 and transported for life. h'inally, in 1837, in May, disturbances occurred in 
 consequence of a turnout in the Oatbank and Mile End factories, in which per- 
 haps a dozen knobsticks were maltreated. ln 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, maltreat- 
 ment of knobsticks, and incendiarism in the mill of James and Francis 
 Wood, and they were transported for seven years. What do our good Germans 
 say to this story 
 
 1. So called from the East Indian tribe whose only trade is the murder of all the strangers who 
 fall in its hands. 
 
 2. “ What kmd of wild justice must it be in the hearts of these men that prompts them, with 
 cold deliberation, m conclave assembled, to dooin their brother workman, as the desert'^r 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 stränge guise; suddenly rising once more on the 
 astonished eye, dressed not now in mail shirts but in fustian jackets, meeting not in Wesiphalian 
 forests, but in the paved Gallowgate of (jlasgow I Such teniper must be widespread virulent 
 among the many when, even in its worst acme, it can take such form in the few.*' Carlyle 
 Chiirtism, p. 40. 
 
The property holding dass, and especially the maniifacturing- portion of it 
 whidi comes into direct contact with the workingmen, declainis with the 
 greatest violence against these Unions, and is constantly trying to prove their 
 uselessness to the workingmen upon groiinds which are economically pcrfectly 
 correct but for that very reason partially mistaken, and for ihe workingman’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 vvorkingmen did not know that the Unions hold the emulation 
 of their masters in the reduction of vvages, at least in a measure in check, they 
 would still stand by theUnions, simply to the injury of their enemies, the manufac- 
 turers. In war, the injury of one party is the benefit of the other, and since 
 the workingmen are on a war-footing towards their employers, they do merely 
 wdial 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 
 paralyze every disobedient manufacturer; ^ “ and so bring ruin on the man who 
 had given them profitable employment for many a year.” He speaks of a time^ 
 “when the inventive head and the sustaining heart of trade were held in bond- 
 age by the unruly lower members. ” A pity that the English workingmen 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 lead- 
 ing 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. Düring an un- 
 happy dislurbance of this sort in Hyde, Dukinfield, and the surrounding neigh- 
 borhood, the manufacturers of the districts anxious lest they should be driven 
 from Ihe market by the French, Belgians and Americans, addressed themselves 
 to the machine Works of Sharp, Roberts & Co., and requested Mr. Sharp to 
 turn his inventive mind to the construction of an automatic mule in Order “ to 
 emancipate the trade from galling slavery and impending ruin.”^ 
 
 “ He produced in the course of a few months a machine apparently instinct 
 with thought, feeling and tact of the experienced w'orkman— which even in its 
 infancy displayed a new principle of regulation, ready in its mature state to ful- 
 fil the functions of a finished Spinner. Thus the fron Man, as the operatives 
 fitly call it, Sprung out of the hands of our modern Prometheus at the bidding of 
 
 1. Dr. Ure, Philoso'phy of Manufactzire, p. 282. 
 
 2. Dr. Ure, PJiilosophy of Manvf acture, p. 282. 
 
 3. Dr. Ure, P hilosophy of Manufacture, p. 367. 
 
Minerva— a creation destined to restore Order among the industrioiis 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 speck, it strangled the Hydra of misrule.”^ 
 
 Ure proves further that the invention of the machine with which four and five 
 colors are printed at once, was a result of the disturbances among the calico 
 Printers, that the refractoriness of the yarn dre^sers in the power-loom weaving 
 mills gave rise to a new and perfected machine for warp dressing, and mentions 
 several othcr such cases. A few pages earlier this same Ure givcs 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, shrieking 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 bourgeoisie which 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 ail 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 employ- 
 ment of knobsticks or the continuance of abuses, sometimes against new 
 machinery, or for a hundred other reasons. These strikes at first skirmishes 
 sometinits result in weighty struggies; they decide nothing, it is true, but they 
 are iLe strongest proof that the decisive battle between bourgeoisie and 
 Proletariat is approaching. They are the military school of the workingmen 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 labor 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 workingmen, are cowardly, that they cannot carry out a revoliition 
 because, unlike the French, they do not riot at intervals, because they 
 apparently accept the bourgeois regime so quietly. This is a complete mistake. 
 l'he English workingmen are second to none in courage; they are quite as rest- 
 less as the French, but they fight differently. The French, who are by nalure 
 political, struggle against social evils with political weapons; the English, for 
 
 I Ure, Philosophy of Manufacturts, p. 366, et seq. 
 
I5I 
 
 whom politics exist only as a matter of interest, solejy in the interest of bourgeois 
 society, fight, not against the government biit directly against the bourgcoisie; 
 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 favor 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 workingman 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 workingman chooses in preference to sub- 
 jection under the yoke of the property holding dass? 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 prccisely in 
 this quiet perseverance, in this lasting determination which undergoes a hundred 
 tests every day, the English workingman developes 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 workingman 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 Man- 
 chester, in May, 1843, during my residence thcre. Pauling & Ilenfrey, 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 
 w’ere refused, Struck work, and the Brickmakers’ Union declared war upon the 
 firm. The firm meanwhile succeeded, with great difficulty, in securing hands 
 from the neighborhood, and among the knobsticks, against whom in the begin- 
 ning 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 scaiicely 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 themselvcs behind a hedge,. 
 whence they could fire safely and without interruption. The assailants stooci 
 
152 
 
 before a burning brick kiln which threw a bright light upon Ihem, so tbat every 
 ball of their enemies struck home, while every one of their own shots missed its 
 mark. Nevertheless the firing lasted half an honr 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 brick- 
 makers 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 traveled 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 woiild 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 wonder- 
 fully soothing power. But for the workingman 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 com- 
 pelled to do so, he never appeals to the law. It is ridiculous to assert that the 
 English workingman 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 
 workingmen themselves. 
 
 Since the workingmen do not respect the law, but slmply 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 
 
153 
 
 of Commons. Chartism is the compact form of their Opposition to the 
 boiirgeoisie. In the Unions and turnouts Opposition always remained isolated; 
 it was single workingmen or sections who fought a single bourgeois. If the 
 fight became general, this was scarcely by the intention of the workingmen; or, 
 when it did happen intentionally, Chartism was at the bottom of it. But in 
 Chartism it is the whole working dass 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 Demo- 
 cratic 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 Man- 
 chester, 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 pronounccd workingmen’s 
 party in Opposition to the bourgeoisie. In 1835 a committee of the general 
 Workingmen’s Association of London, with William Lovett at its head, drew 
 up the people’s Charter, whose six points are as follows: i.) Universal suffrage 
 for every man who is of age, sane and unconvicted of crime; 2.) Annual Parlia- 
 ments; 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 ;[f3oo in 
 land for candidates in Order to make every voter eligible. These six points 
 which are all limited to the reconstitution of the Plouse 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 exist- 
 ence neither possesses to-day. But as soon as real public opinion in its totality 
 backs the House of Commons, as soon as the Ilouse 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 workingman respects neither Lords 
 nor Queen. The bourgeois, while in reality allowing them but litrle influence, 
 yet offers to them personally a sham worship. The English Chartist is politic- 
 ally a republican, though he rarely or never mentions the word, while he 
 sympathizes 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 
 workingmen, 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 
 
154 
 
 dass 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 favorable 
 eye. Of the vehemence of this agitation no onc 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 acouple 
 of matches and a bündle 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 workingmen’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 110 political movement, where the main point is 
 your getting the bailot. 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 dosest relation to Chartism. In all the meetings of that time the 
 Tory Gastier 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 agitation con- 
 tinued 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 simul- 
 taneously 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. Mean- 
 while the bourgeoisie turned its attention to more practical projects, morc profit- 
 able 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 workingmen 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 rieh manufacti.rlng 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 
 
55 
 
 since 1841. As the Chartists had previously done, these bourgeois leaders 
 called upon the peopie to rebel; and the workingmen who had most to suffer 
 from the crisis were not inactive, as the year’s national petition for the charter 
 vvith its three and a half million signatures proves. In short, if the two Radical 
 parties had been somewhat estranged, they noAr allied themselves once more. 
 At a meeting of Liberais and Chartists held in Manchester, February I5th, 
 1842, a Petition urging th'^ 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 bourgeois half aban- 
 doned their lawabiding habits; they wished to bring about a revolution with the 
 help of the workers. The workingmen 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 1859 by the Chartists, has revived. 
 This time, however, it was not the workingmen who wished to quit work, but 
 the manufacturers who wished to dose their mills and send the operatives into 
 the country parishes upon the property of the aristocracy, thus forcing the 
 Tory Parliament and Tory Mimstry to repeal the Corn Laws. A revolt 
 would naturally have followed, but the bourgeoisie stood safely in the 
 background and could await its success without compromising itself if the worst 
 came to the worst. At the end of July business began to improve; it was high 
 time. In order not to lose the opportunity, three firms in Staleybridge reduced 
 wages in spite of the improvement. ^ Whether they did so of their own motion 
 or in agreement with other manufacturers, especially those of the League, I do 
 not know. Two withdrew after a time, but the third, William Bailey and 
 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 flve 
 ihousand 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 Qth they proceeded to Manchester, unresisted by the authorities, (all 
 Liberais), and closed the mills; on the iith they were in Stockport, where they 
 met with the first resistance as they were storming the workhouse, the favorite 
 child of the bourgeoisie. On the same day there was a general strike and dis- 
 turbance in Bolton, to which the authorities here, too, made no resistance. 
 Soon the uprising spread throughout the whole manufacturing district, and all 
 
 I. Compare Reports of Chambers of Commerce of Manchester and Leeds at the end of July 
 and beginniiig of August. 
 
156 
 
 employments, except harvesting and the production of food, came to a stand- 
 still. 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 cusiom, not opposed it. The 
 thing had begun without the workingmen’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 workingmen’s insur- 
 rection, 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 no nothing. Meanwhile the bourgeoisie, which had not 
 moved a finger to carry the alliance of February I5th into effect, soon perceived 
 that the workingmen did not propose to become its tools, and that the illogical 
 manner in which it had abandoned its lawabiding standpoint threatened danger. 
 It therefore resumed its lawabiding attitude, and placed itself upon the side of 
 government as against the workingmen. 
 
 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 dass as well. The workingmen, 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 populär violence by no means con- 
 sistent with its own revolutionary language of the spring; laid the blame of in- 
 surrection upon Chartist instigators, whereas it had itself done more than all of 
 them together to bring about the uprSsing; and resumed its old attitude of sanc- 
 tifying 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 oppor- 
 tunity, 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 eise than the direct 
 or indirect threat of physical force. This was one point of dissension, though 
 
157 
 
 even this was removed later by the assertion of the Chartists (who are at least 
 as worthyof being believed as the bourgeois) that they, too, refrained from appeal- 
 ing to physical force. The second point of dissehsion and the main one, which 
 brought Chartism to light in its piirity, was the repeal of the Corn Laws. In this 
 the bourgeoisie was directly interested, the Proletariat not. The Chartists there- 
 fore divided into two parties whose political programs agreed literally, but whicii 
 were nevertheless thoroughly different and incapable of Union. At the Birming- 
 ham National Convention, in January, 1843, Sturge, the representative of the 
 Radical bourgeoisie, proposed that the name of the Charter be omitted from the 
 Statutes 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 workingmen refused to drop the name, and when Mr. 
 Sturge was outvoted, that worthy Quaker suddenly became loyal, betook him- 
 self out of the hall, and founded a “ Complete Suffrage Association" within the 
 Radical bourgeoisie. So repugnant had these recollections become to the Jacobin- 
 ical bourgeoisie, that he altered even the name Universal Suffrage into the ridi- 
 culous title Complete Suffrage. The workingmen laughed at him and quietly 
 went their way. 
 
 From this moment Chartism was purely a workingman’s cause freed from all 
 bourgeois elements. The “ Complete " Journals, the Weekly Dispatch^ Weckly 
 Chronicle^ Exaniiner^ etc., feil gradually into the sleepy tone of the other Liberal 
 sheets. espoused the cause of Free Trade, attacked the Ten Hour Bill and all 
 exclusively workingmen’s motions, and let their Radicalism as a whole fall rather 
 into the background. The Radical bourgeoisie joined hands with the Liberais 
 against the workingmen 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 feil under the dominion of the Liberal bourgeoisie and now play a 
 most pitiful role. 
 
 The Chartist workingmen, 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 the hated by them; its apostles, the 
 bourgeois, are their declared enemies. The workingman has only disadvantages 
 to await from the complete freedom of competition. The demands hitherto made 
 by him, the Ten Hour Bill, protection of the workers against the capitalist, 
 good wages, a guaranteed position, repeal of the new Poor Law, all of them 
 things which belong to Chartism quite as esscntially as the “ Six Points," are 
 directly opposed to free competition and Free Trade. No wonder then that the 
 workingmen 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 in- 
 different to the Corn Law question are most deeply embittered against its ad- 
 vocates. This question is precisely the point at which the Proletariat separates 
 from the bourgeoisie, Chartism from Radicalism, and the bourgeois understand- 
 ing cannot comprehend this because it cannot comprehend the Proletariat. 
 
Therein lies the difference between Chartist democracy and all previous pqlitical 
 bourgeois democracy. Chartism is of an essentially social nature, a dass move- 
 ment. 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 for- 
 mulated 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 it no longer a mere politician among the Chartists, and 
 even though their socialism is very little developed, though their chief remedy 
 for poveity has hitherto consisted^ in the land-allotment System, which was 
 superseded by the introduction of mänufacture, though their chief practical pro- 
 positions 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 work- 
 ingmen by force of sheerwant 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 workingmen will carry their Charter, naturally; but mean- 
 while 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 dass. The English 
 socialists demand the gradual introduction of possession in common in home col- 
 onies embracing two to three thousand persons who shall carry on both agriculture 
 and manufacture and enjoy equal rights and equal education. They demand greater 
 facilityof obtaining divorce, the establishmentof a rational government with com- 
 plete freedom of conscience and the abolition of punishment, the same to be re- 
 placed by a rational treatment of the offender. These are their practical meas- 
 ures, their theoretical principles do not concern us here. English socialism arose 
 with Owen, a manufacturer, and proceeds therefore with great consideration to- 
 ward the bourgeoisie and great injustice towards the Proletariat in its methods, 
 although it culminates in demanding the abolition of the dass antagonism be- 
 tween bourgeoisie and Proletariat. 
 
 The socialists are thoroughly tarne and peaceable, accept our existing order bad 
 as it is, so far as to reject all other methods but that of winning public opiiiion. 
 
 I. See Introduction. 
 
159 
 
 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 demor- 
 alization of the lower classes, they are blind to the element of progress in this dis- 
 solution of the old social order, and refuse to acknowledge that the corruption 
 wrought by private interests and hypocrisy in the property-holding dass is much 
 greater. They acknowledge no historic development and wish to place the nation 
 in a state of Communism at once, over night, not by the unavoidable march of its 
 political development up to the point at which this transition becomes both pos- 
 sible and necessary. They understand, it is true, why the workingman is resent- 
 ful against the bourgeois but regard as unfruitful this dass hatred which is, after 
 all, the only moral incentive by which the worker can be brought nearer the goal. 
 They preach instead, 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 Fast, whereas the 
 whole world rests upon that Fast, the individual man included. Hence they are 
 too abstract, too metaphysical, and accomplish little. They are recruited in 
 part from the working dass, 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 dass; 
 it must condescend to return for a moment to the Chartist standpoint. But the 
 true proletarian socialism, having passed through Chartism, purified of its bour- 
 geois 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 Eng- 
 lish 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. Mean- 
 while the French, too, will develop farther. English Socialism affords the most 
 pronounced expression of the prevailing absence of religion among the working- 
 men, so an expression pronounced indeed that the mass of the workingmen being 
 unconsciously and merely practically irreligious, often draw back shocked by the 
 force of it. But here, too, want will force the workingmen to abandon the rem- 
 nants 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 failhful to the vampyre 
 property holding dass. 
 
 Hence it is evident that the workingmen’s movement is divided into two secj 
 tions, the C'hartists and the Socialists. The Chartists are theoretically the more 
 backward, the less developed, but they are genuine proletarians all over, the rel 
 presentatives of their dass. The Socialists are more farseeing, propose practical\ 
 remedies against distress, but, proceeding originally from the bourgeoisie, are 
 for this reason unable to amalgamate completely with the working dass. 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 
 
— i6o — 
 
 this has been achieved, will the working dass 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 workingmen, 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 bourgoisie, 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 workingmen 
 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 workingman 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 cornpetition and whose sum 
 and substance for the workingman is this, that he cannot do anything more 
 rational than resign himself to starvation. Here all education is tarne, flabby, 
 subservient to the ruling politics and religion, so that for the workingman it is 
 merely a constant sermon upon quiet obedience, passivity and resignation to his 
 fate. 
 
 The mass of workingmen naturally have nothing to do with these institutes, 
 and betake themselves to the proletarian reading-rooms and to the discussion of 
 matters which directly consern their own interests, whereupon the seif sufficient 
 bourgeoisie says its Dixi et Salvari, and turns with contempt from a dass which 
 ** prefers the angry ranting of ill-meaning demagogues to the advantages of 
 solid education.” That, however, the workingmen 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 workingmen, 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 
 raeasure the English Proletariat has succeeded in attaining independent educa- 
 tion is shown especially by the fact that the epoch-making products of modern 
 philosophical, political and poetical literature are read by workingmen almost 
 exclusively. The bourgeois, enslaved by social conditions and the prejudices 
 involved in them, trembles, ble^ses 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 workingmcn 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 rcaders in the Prole- 
 tariat; the bourgeoisie owns only castrated editions, family editions, cut down 
 in accordance 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 labor movement. Lanca- 
 shire, 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 
 workingmen employed in it participate in the labor movement; the sharper the 
 Opposition between workingmen and capitalists, the clearer the proletarian con- 
 sciousness in the workingmen. The small masters of Birmingham, though they 
 suffer from the crises, still stand upon an unhappy middle ground between 
 proletarian Chartism and shop-keepers’ Radicalism. But, in general, all the 
 workers employed in manufacture are won for one form or the other of resist- 
 ance to Capital and bourgeoisie; and all are united upon this point, that they, as 
 workingmen, a title of which they are proud, and which is the usual form of ad- 
 dress in Chartist meetings, form a separate dass, 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 dass reposes the strenglh 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 agricul- 
 tural d-istricts), England produces only the minerals, the metals and the coal. 
 While Cornwall possesses rieh copper, tin, zinc and lead mines, Staffordshire, 
 Wales and other districts yield great quantities of iron, and almost the whole of 
 
i 62 
 
 North and West England, of central Scotland and certain districts of Ireland 
 produce a superabundance of coal. ^ 
 
 In the Cornish mines about ig,ooo men, and ii,ooo 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 enongh 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 galoping 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 inflamma- 
 tions 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. 
 
 I. According to the census of 1841, the number of workingmen eirfployed in Great Britain, 
 without Ireland, was; 
 
 
 Men 
 
 Men 
 
 Women 
 
 Women 
 
 
 
 over 
 
 under 
 
 over 
 
 ander 
 
 Together 
 
 
 20 Years 
 
 20 Years 
 
 20 Years 
 
 20 Years 
 
 
 Coal mines 
 
 
 32.475 
 
 1.185 
 
 1.165 
 
 118.233 
 
 Copper mines 
 
 
 3.428 
 
 913 
 
 1.200 
 
 15 4Ü7 
 
 Lead 
 
 
 1.932 
 
 40 
 
 20 
 
 11.419 
 
 Iron “ 
 
 
 2.679 
 
 424 
 
 73 
 
 10.949 
 
 Tin « 
 
 
 1.349 
 
 68 
 
 82 
 
 6.101 
 
 VariouB, the mineral 
 
 not 
 
 
 
 
 
 specified 
 
 
 6 691 
 
 472 
 
 491 
 
 31.616 
 
 Total 
 
 
 48.454 
 
 3.102 
 
 3.031 
 
 193.726 
 
 As the coal and iron mines are usiially worked by the same people, a part of the miners at- 
 tributed to the coal mines, and a very considerable part of those mentioned under the last heading 
 are to be attributed to the iron mines. 
 
i63 
 
 In the North of England, on the borders of Northumbcrland and Durham, 
 are the extensive lead mines of Aiston Moor. The reports from this district^ 
 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 ehest 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, becanse 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 ye^rs, 37 had died of consumption and 6 of 
 asthma. In the surrounding districts, Allendale, Stanhope and Middleton, the 
 average length of life was 4g, 48 and 47 years respectively, and the deaths 
 from ehest 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 recognized in England 
 as the most correct Standard hitherto attainable for the average length of 
 life of the British working dass. According to them, male persons who sur- 
 vive the nineteenth year attain an average of 57^ 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 unfavorable 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. Com- 
 missioner 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 night s 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 
 
 1. A'so found in the Children^s Employment Commission’s Report; Commissioner Mitchell'3 
 Report. 
 
104 
 
 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 work'ed in pretty much the same way, 
 children of four, five and seven years are employed. They are set to transport- 
 ing 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, brutalizing 
 tedium of doing nothing. The transport of coal and iron-stone, on the other 
 hand, is very hard labor, 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 labor, there- 
 fore, older children and half-grown girls are employed. One man or two boys 
 per tub are employed, according to circumstances; and, if two bo3^s, 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 four- 
 teen 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 laborers surround* 
 ing them (who, however, live at starvation rates), except in certain parts of Scot- 
 land 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 dass in all England. Meanwhile we shall consider 
 the evils which arise from the present method of mining, and the reader may 
 judge whether any pay in money can indemnify the miner for such suffering. 
 
 The children and young people who are employed in transporting coal and 
 iron-stone all complain of being overtired. Even in the most recklessly conducted 
 industrial establishments there is no such universal and exaggerated overwork. 
 The whole report proves this, with a number of examples on every page. It is 
 constantly happening that children throw ihemselves 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 practise among these 
 children to spend Sunday in bed to recover in some degree from the overexertion 
 of the week. Church and school are visited by but few, and even of these the 
 
r65 
 
 teachers complain of their great sleepiness and tbc want of all eagerness to learn. 
 The same thing is true of the eldcr girls and women. They are overworked in thc 
 most brutal manner. This weariness which is almost always carried to a most pain- 
 ful 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 ehest 
 which are chiefly called into activitiy in pushing and pulling attain an uncom- 
 monly vigorous development, while all the rest of the body suffers and is atrophied 
 from want of nourishment. More than all eise the stature suffers, being stunted 
 and retarded; nearly all miners are short, except those of Leicestershire andWar- 
 wickshire who work under exceptionally favorable conditions. Further, among 
 boys as well as girls, puberty is retarded, among the former often until the eight- 
 eenth year; indeed, a nineteen years old boy appeared before Commissioner 
 Symons, showing no evidence beyond that of the teeth, that he was more than 
 eleven or twelve years old. This Prolongation of the period of childhood, is at 
 bottom nothing more than a sign of checked development, which does not fail 
 to bear fruit in later years. Distortions of the legs, knees bent inwards and feet 
 bent outwards, deformities of the spinal column and other malformations appear 
 the more readily in constitutions Ihus 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 oiily by physicians, that a miner may be recognized 
 by his shape among a hundied 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 dif- 
 ficult 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 
 affeclions easily explained by ihe nature of the work. Diseases of the diges- 
 tive 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 affcctions are thus invited. Diseases of the heart, especially hypertrophy, 
 inflammation of the heart and pericardium, contraction of the aurictilo-veniricidar 
 Communications and the entrance of the aorta are also mentioned repeatedly as dis- 
 eases of the miners, and are readily explained by overwork; and the sa.ne 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 at- 
 mosphere 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 ehest natur- 
 ally appears much earlier; in some districts of Scotland between the twentieth 
 and thirtieth years, during which time the affected lungs are especially susceptible 
 
i66 
 
 to inflammations and diseases of a feverish nature. The peculiar disease of work- 
 ers of this sort is “ black spittle," which arises from the Saturation of the whole 
 lungwithcoal particles and manifests itself in general debility, headache, oppres- 
 sion of the ehest, 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 loo 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 Pencaithland, East Lothian, testified that in all the coal mines which are pro- 
 perly ventilated this disease is unknown, while it frequently happens that miners 
 who go from well to ill-ventilaled 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 workingmen’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. Itis universally 
 recognized 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 whole- 
 some, few men reach their tifty-first year. Along with this early superannuation 
 of the w’orkers 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. South 
 wood Sm!th, one of the Commissioners, does, that through prolonged childhood 
 on the one hand and premature age on the other, tliat 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 belowthe 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 ad- 
 jacent sand and clay were removed; so the mine owners permit only the seams to 
 be worked, whereby the passages w^hich 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 workingman 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 
 
i67 
 
 in cases where he is forccd to kneel of the knee also. The women and childrcn 
 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 engen - 
 ders 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 imaginedhow greatly the diseases already peculiar to the miners are fos- 
 tered 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 mect 
 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 prev'ention 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 workingmen 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 mangies 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 acci- 
 dents, and I have no room for special cases, carry off yearly, according to the 
 Mining Journal^ some fourteen hundred human beings. The Manchester Gtiar^ 
 dian reports at least tvvo 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, im- 
 mcmorial custom insures that theverdict shall be: “Accidental Death.” Besides, 
 the jury takes very little interest in the state of the mine, because it does noL 
 understand anything about the matter. But the Children’s Employment Corii- 
 
i68 
 
 mission does not hesitate to make the mine owners directly responsible for the 
 greater nuinber 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 excel- 
 lent in Aiston 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 faclory 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 inter- 
 course of the sexes has not here, as in the great cities, sunk to the level of Pros- 
 titution. The labor 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 iaid 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 in- 
 spectors 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 ofhcial 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, 
 
pluiiders tliem in oiher direclions in the most shameless manner. The truck 
 System is here the rule, not the exception, and is carried on in the most 
 direct and undisgiiised 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 cheat- 
 ing. While coal is sold by weight, the worker's wages are reckoned chiefly by 
 measure; and when his tub is not perfectly full he receives no pay whatever, 
 while he gets not a farthing for overmeasure. If there is more than a specified 
 quantity of dust in the tub, a matter which depends much less upon ihe miner 
 than upon the nature of the seam, he not only loses his whole wage but is fined 
 besides. The fine System in general is so highly perfected in the coal mines, 
 that a poor devil who has worked the whole week and comes for his wages, 
 sometimes learns from the overseer who fines at discretion and without sum- 
 moning 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 in- 
 spection 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 inonths together, and if they seek eise where, 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, uncivilized regions where there are few 
 newspapers, these few in the Service of the ruling dass, and but little other 
 agitation. It is almost beyond conception how these poor coal miners have 
 been plundered and tyrannized 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 civilized dis- 
 
170 
 
 tricts ihey 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 move- 
 ment 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 ap- 
 pointed in all directions, who held meetings everywhere and secured new mem- 
 bers; at the first Conference of delegates, in Manchester, in 1844, there were 
 6o,OüO members represented, and at GlavSgow, 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, 
 chief among the Miners^ Advocate, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, for defending the 
 rights of the miners. On March 3 ist, 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: i.) 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 wo:k 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 recognize ihe Union. They also sub- 
 mitted an agreement of their owii which ignored all the foregoing points, and 
 was, naturally, refused by the miners. War was thus declared. On March 
 3ist, 1844, 40,000 miners laid down their picks and every mine in the county 
 stood einpty. 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 
 organized 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 dient to London, and 
 always secured an acquittal. Thus, January I3th, Judge Williams of Queen’s 
 Bench, acquitted three miners condemned by the Justices of the Peace of 
 Bilstön, South Staff ordshire; the offense 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 
 Prestcn four of bis clients were in jail. In the first week of January he pro- 
 ceeded thither to investigate the case on the spot; but found, when he arrived, 
 the condemned all released before the expiration of the sentence. In Manches- 
 ter there were seven in jail; Roberts obtained a habeas corpus and acquittal for 
 all from Judge Wightman. In Prcscott 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 dis- 
 reputable 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 here- 
 tofore 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 
 dass, 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 lo 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 amoi\^ them; they had no money, for the coniribu- 
 tions of the workers of all branches of industry in England availed little among 
 the vast number of strikers, who were forced to borrovv from the small shop 
 keepers 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 
 
172 
 
 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 rebel- 
 lious spirits were their property. In July, notice to quit wasserved 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 turn from their beds and cast 
 into the roadside ditches. One agent dragged by the hair, from her bed and in- 
 to the Street, a woman in the pangs of childbirth. Soldiers and police in crowds 
 were present, ready to fire at the first Symptom of resistence, on the slightest 
 hint of the Justices of the Peace who had brought about the whole brutal pro- 
 cedure. This, too, the workingmen endured without resistence. The hope had 
 been that the men would use violence; they were spurred on with all force to in- 
 fringements 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 sheU 
 ter for themselves and their little ones than the calico curtainsof 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 consider- 
 ableminesin Durham, threatened the small tradesmen in “ his ” town of Seahain 
 with his most high displeasure if they should continue to give credit to “his ” rebel- 
 lious workers. This “ noble ”Lord made himself the first down 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 r’emote parts of 
 Wales as have as yet no labor 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 dose 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 d^^mands 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 thoioughly brutal 
 and wanting in moral sense! But how hard, too, must have been the pressure 
 
173 
 
 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 pos- 
 sessed of one single determination, with the greatest coolness and composure to 
 a point beyond which further resistence woiild 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 bru- 
 tality of wealth. If they had revolted with violence, they, the unarmed and de- 
 fenceless, would have been shot down, and a day or two would have decided the 
 victory of the owners. This lawabiding 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 workingmen. 
 
 Thus were the workingmen forced once more, in spite of their nnexampled 
 endurance, to succumb to the mighi 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 deatl^n which they had hitherto lain; 
 they have left their sleep, are alert to defend their interests, and have entered 
 the movement of civilization, 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 lawabiding which characterized 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 Ilouse 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 reoresentative 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, com- 
 missioned to visit the spot. As several other explosions followed in quick suc- 
 cession, and Roberts again laid the details before the Piime 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 eneaged 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 ;!^I200 a year. In the autumn of last year they 
 collected more than £700, rather more than ;^200 of which they expended upon 
 
174 
 
 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 em- 
 ployers. Thus the workingmen 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 labor 
 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 favor 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 editice collapses with the basis upon which it rests?^ 
 
 But the bourgeoisie will not take warning. The resistance of the miners does 
 but embitter it the more. Instead of appreciating this forward Step in the 
 general movement of the worker», the property holding dass saw in it only a 
 source of rage against a dass of people who are fools enough to declare them- 
 selves no longer subrrissive 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 suc- 
 cess (to be resisted by the bourgeoisie with all its might) won by ‘ ‘ ill-inten- 
 tioned 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 workingmen’s pockets. When 
 such insanity prevails in the property-holding dass, 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 fall 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 aud 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 hither- 
 to, they were now obliged to hire themselves as laborers to the large farmers or 
 the landlords. For a time this position was endurable, though a deterioration 
 
 I. The coal miners have at this moment, 1886, six of their body sitting in the House of Com- 
 mons. 
 
175 
 
 in comparison with their former one. The extension of industry kept pace with 
 the incrcase 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 want which had hitherto existed only in the manufactur- 
 ing 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 samc 
 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 seil 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 unifo. mly upon the farm laborers. 
 
 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 laborers 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, tlie hands and their families lived 
 on the farm and their children grew up there, the farmer trying to find occupa- 
 tion on the spot for the oncoming generation; day laborers, 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 trans- 
 form him into a day laborer. This took place pretty generally towards the year 
 1830, and the consequence was that the hitherto latent overpopulation 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. More- 
 over, the constant extension of farming on a large scale, the introduction of 
 
176 
 
 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 intro- 
 duction of machinery, steam, and the labor 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 bürden iipon the worker, the more 
 violently broke forth the results of the disorganization of the old social fabric. 
 The “ overpopulation ” came to light all at once, and could not, as in the 
 manufacturing districls, be absorbed bv 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 Ine conclusion of peace. 
 The necessary consequence was that the competition oi the workers among 
 themselves reached the highest point of intensity, and wages feil to the 
 minimum. So long as the old Poor Law existed, the workers received relief 
 from the rates; wages natural ly feil still lower, because the farmers forced the 
 largest possible number of laborers 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 wdth 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:^ 
 
 “ An English agricultural laborer and an English pauper, these words are 
 synonymous. His father was a pauper and his mother’s milk concained 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 mar- 
 ried, but he knows nothing of the joys of the husband and father. His wifeand 
 
 1. E. G. Wakefielil, 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 existirg Old Poor Law being here omitted. 
 
177 
 
 cliildren, hiingry, rarely warm, often ill and helpless, always careworn and 
 hopeless like himself, are naturally grasping, selfish and troublesome, and so to 
 use bis own expression, he hates the sight of them, and enters bis cot only 
 because it offers bim a trifle more shelter from rain and wind than a hedge. He 
 must Support bis 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 
 bas not the courage which makes of the more energetic of his dass Wholesale 
 poachers and smugglers. But he pilfers when occasion offers, and teaches his 
 children to lie and steal. His abject and submissive demeanor towards his 
 wealthy neighbors 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 de- 
 praved through and through, too far gone to possess even the strength of 
 despair. His wretched existence is brief, rheumatisin 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 dass of agricultural laborers, 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 condi- 
 tion. These he represents as better in their family life, but smugglers and 
 poachers who get into frequent bloody conflicts with the gamekeepers and 
 revenue ofiicers of the coast, become more embittered against society during the 
 prison life which they often undergo, and so stand abreast of the first dass in 
 their hatred of the property holders. “ And,” he says, in closing, “ this whole 
 dass is called by courtesy, the bold peasantry of England.” 
 
 Down to the present time, this description applies to the greater portion of 
 the agricultural laborers of England. In June, 1844, the Times sent a cor- 
 respondent into the agricultural districts to report upon the condition of this 
 dass, and the report which he furnished agreed wholly with the foregoing. In 
 certain districts wages were not more than six Shillings a week; not more, that 
 is, than in many districts in Germany, while the prices of all the necessaries of 
 life are at least twice as high. What sort of life these people lead may be 
 imagined; their food scanty and bad, their clothing ragged, their dwellings 
 cramped and desolate, small wretched huts with no comforts whatsoever; and 
 for young people lodging houses, where men and women are scarcely separated 
 and illegitimate intercourse thus provoked. One or two days without work in 
 the course of a month must inevitably plunge such people into the direst want. 
 Moreover, they cannot combine to raise wages because they are scattered, and 
 if one alone refuses to work for low wages, there are dozens out of work or sup- 
 ported 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 neighbors 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 laborers in Suffolk 
 and Norfolk corresponds exactly with that of Devonshire, Hampshire and 
 
178 
 
 Sussex. Wages are as low in Dorsetshire and Oxfordshire as in Kent, and 
 Surrey, Buckinghamshire and Cambridgeshire. 
 
 One especially barbaric cruelty against the working dass is embodied in the 
 Game Laws, which are riiore 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 ca 7 ' iel est noire plaisir of the Lord, who pre- 
 serves thousands of hares and game birds for his private enjoyment. The 
 laborer 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 
 poadier a meal for himself and his starving family. But if he is caught he goes 
 to jail, and for a second offense 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 of the occupations, and consequently of. the 
 thoughts, are decidedly unfavorable 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 favorite method of social warfare is incendiar- 
 ism. 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 coast guard 
 (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 horror among the farmers and 
 landlords. The offenders were rarely discovered, and the workers attributed the 
 incendiarism to ä 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 agricul- 
 
179 
 
 tural districts. Since that year the incendiarisms have been repeated every 
 winter, with each recurring unemployed season of the agricultural laborers. 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 wanling in the following list 1 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 i6th, in Bedfordshire, general ex- 
 citement 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, flfteen 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 i3th, 
 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 criines 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 manu- 
 facturing 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 Sup- 
 port of their pet hobby. Eike the operatives, the agricultural laborers, 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 further is a radical transformation of the social 
 Order. ^ For the agricultural laborers 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 Liberais. Towards this consummation the Anti-Corn Law League has 
 already largely contributed, and this is its only real Service. When the farmers 
 become Liberais, i, e.y conscious bourgeois, the agricultural laborers will inevitably 
 become Chartists and Socialists; the first change involves the second. And that a 
 
 1, This has been Uterally 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. 
 
new movement is already beginning- among the agricultural laborers 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 againstthe Corn 
 Laws. At this meeting the laborers, 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 dass is finding its way into the remote, stationery, 
 mentally dead agricultural districts; and thanks to the general distress will soon 
 be as firmly rooted and energetic as in the manufacturing districts.^ 
 
 As to the religious state of the agricultural laborers, 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 ex- 
 clusively are to be found. A correspondent of the Morning Chro}iicle 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 laborers 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 aslongas l’veknown him.” 
 (The sermon had been upon a mission to the heathen.) “And as long as Tve 
 known him too, ” added another; “ and I never knew a parson but what was beg- 
 ging 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 rieh 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 everyday in Salisbury 
 Cathedral, for nobody but the bare stones ? Why don’t they go among the hea- 
 then?” “ They don’t go,” said the old man whom I had first asked, “because 
 they are rieh, 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 correspon- 
 dent 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 
 
 T. The Agricultural Laborers have now a Trades Union; their most energetic representative, 
 Joseph Arch, was elected M. P. in 1885. 
 
iSi 
 
 parishes reproduce the antagonism belween capitalist and proletarian, the state 
 of the Welsh peasantry corresponds to the progressive ruin of the small bour- 
 geoisie in the towns. In Wales are to be found, almost exclusively, small holders 
 who cannot with like profit seil their products as cheaply as the larger, more favor- 
 ably 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 neighbors (and the increased mortgages upon their land con- 
 sequent upon this), has reduced them to such a state that they can scarcely live at 
 all; and because they have not recognized the true cause of their wretched con- 
 dition, 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, and 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 feil in armed crowds upon the tollgates, 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 Carmarthon. Later, when the militia was 
 called out and the police strengthened, the peasants drew them off with wonder- 
 ful skill upon false scents, demolished tollgates 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 this was the 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 soll. 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 w'hich prevails among these small tenants, the rent has 
 reached an unheard-of height, double, treble and quadruple that paid in Eng- 
 land. For every agricultural laborer seeks to become a tenant-farmer, and 
 though the division of land has gone so far, there still rernain numbers of 
 laborers in competition for plots. Although in Great Britain 32,000,000 acres 
 
i 82 
 
 of land are cultivated, and in Ireland but 14,000,000; although Great Britain 
 produces agricultural products to the value of 150, 000, 000, and Ireland of but 
 ;^ 36 ,ooo,ooo, there are in Ireland 75,000 agricultural proletarians more than in 
 the neighboring island. ^ How great the competition for land in Ireland must be 
 is evident from this extraordinary disproportion, especially when one reflects 
 that the laborers in Great Britain are living in the utmost distress. The con- 
 sequence of this competition is that it is impossible for the tenants to live much 
 better than the laborers, 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 
 w^hich this provision reaches its end, or can no longer be used because of its sprout- 
 ing, 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, w^ear the most wretched 
 rags, and stand upon the lovvest plane of intelligence possible in a half civilized 
 country. According to the report quoted, there are, in a population of 8^ 
 millions, 585,000 heads of families in a state of total destitution; and according 
 to other authorities, cited by Sheriff Alison,^ there are in Ireland 2,300,000 per- 
 sons 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 subtenants, and sub-subtenants, 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 cultiva- 
 tor 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 con- 
 ditions 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 
 
 1. Report of the Poor Law Commission upon Ireland, 
 
 2. Principles of Population, Vol. II. 
 
i83 
 
 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 propcrty, 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 forvvard, 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 favor of the Teutonic 
 character;^ 
 
 “ They are restless, yet indolent, clever and indiscreet, stormy, impatient and 
 improvident; brave by instinct, generous without much rellection, 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, persever- 
 ing activity from reaching development — such a nation is utterly unfit for 
 manufacture as now conducted. Hence they lield 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 im- 
 provement 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 civilization, 
 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 
 Icaven, 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 min, on the 
 one hand, take the form of crimes. These are the Order of the day in the 
 agricultural districts, and are nearly alvvays directed against the most immediate 
 enemies, the landlord’s agents, or their obedient servants, the Protestant In- 
 truders, whose large farms are made up of the potato patches of hundred 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: 
 
 I. The State of Ireland, London, 1807; and Ed., 1821. PampUet. 
 
184 
 
 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. Hitherlo, neither 
 Chartism nor Socialism has had marked success in Ireland. 
 
 I dose 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 organize; w^e have seen open bloodless 
 and bloody battles of the Proletariat against the bourgeoisie. We have in- 
 vestigated 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 Attitüde of the Bourgeoisie 
 
 TOWARDS THE PROLETARIAT. 
 
 In speaking of the bourgeoisie I include the so-called aristocracy, for this is a 
 privileged dass, an aristocracy, only in contrast with the bourgeoisie, not in 
 contrast with the Proletariat. The proletarian sees in both only the property 
 holder, i. ^., the bourgeois. Before the privilege of property, all othei 
 Privileges vanish. The sole difference is this, that the bourgeois proper Stands 
 in active relations with the manulacturing and in a measure with the mining 
 proletarians and, as farmer, with the agricultural laborers, whereas the so-called 
 aristocrat comes into contact with the agricultural laborer only. 
 
 I have never seen a dass so deeply demoralized, so incurably debased by 
 selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress as the English bour- 
 geoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper, particularly the 
 Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing exists in this world 
 except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that 
 of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. ^ In the presence of this 
 avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or 
 
 I, Carlyle gives in his “Fast and Present,” (London, 1843,) a splendid description of the 
 English bourgeoisie and its disgusting money greed. 
 
i85 
 
 opinion to remain untainted. l'rue, 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 mat- 
 ters? Ultimately, it is self-interest and especially money gain, which alone 
 determines them. 1 once went into Manchester wilh such a bourgeois and 
 spoke to him of the bad unwholesome method of building, the frightful condi- 
 tion 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 workingmeiT, 
 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. 
 Kence, Political Economy, the Science of Wealth, is the favorite 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, Labor. And if the 
 operative will not be forced into this abstraction, if he insists that he is not 
 Labor but a man, who possesses, among other things, the attribute of labor 
 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 “ Labor,” the bourgeois reason comes 
 to a standstill. Pie 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 nin^ty-nine cases out of a hundred, mere 
 “ Cash Payment.” Money determines the worth of the man; he is “ worth ten 
 thousand pounds.” Pie 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 relalions 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. 
 flence 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 bürden 
 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, how- 
 ever, the bourgeoisie cannot dispense with government, but must have it to hold 
 the equally indispensable Proletariat in check, it turns the power of governmeiit 
 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. 
 
i86 
 
 What? The wealthy English fail to remember the poor? They who have 
 founded philanthropic institutions, such as no other country can boast of! 
 Philanthropie institutions forsooth! As though you rendered the proletarians a 
 Service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then practicing 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 down- 
 trodden 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 merey before your merey 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 
 tue 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 and sickly aspect of dis- 
 gusting 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 mo- 
 lestations. And why eise 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 
 1 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 thus much upon benevolent institu- 
 tions, 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 herseif such, well that she has 
 lost the courage to call herseif 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 efhciency 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 lielp has a wholly different ring to it from the care- 
 lessly tossed alms of the luxurious bourgeoisie. 
 
 In other respects, loo, the bourgeoisie assumes a hypocritical, boundless 
 philanthropy, but only when its own interests rtquire it; as in its Politics and 
 Political Econ(*my. It has been at work now well on towards five years to 
 prove to the workingmen 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 difhcult 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 ex- 
 position of the principles according to which wages are determined. The 
 maiiufacturer can compete more readily, the demand for English goods increases 
 and, with it, the demand for labor. In consequence of this increased demand 
 wages would actually rise somewhat, and the unemployed woikers be re- 
 employed; but for how long? The “ surplus populaiion” of England, and 
 especially of Ireland, is sufhcient to supply English manufacture with the neces- 
 sary 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 workingmen that it is purely for the sake of the starving millions that the 
 rieh 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 intcrested in 
 their welfare, that he should declare himself in favor 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 pouer 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. Be- 
 sides, 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 labor is in inverse proportion to its price in grain; that wages 
 are high when grain is cheap, and vice versa, an assertion which it pretends to 
 
iS8 
 
 prove with the most ridiculous arguments, and one which is, in itself, more 
 ridiculous than any other that has proceeded from Ihe mouth of an Economist. 
 When this failed to help matters, the workers were promised bliss supreme in 
 consequence of the increased demand in the labor 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 them- 
 selves to be misled. They know their lords and masters too well. 
 
 But rjghtly to measure the hypocrisy of these promises, the practice of the 
 bourgeiosie 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 beneht! We have, however, hitherto seen only how the single bourgeois 
 maltreats the Proletariat upon his own account. Let us turn now to the man- 
 ner in which the bourgeoisie as a party, as the power of the State, con-’ 
 ducts itself towards the Proletariat. Laws are necessary only because there are 
 persons in existence who own nothing; and allhough 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 rieh 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 favorably as 
 possible and, if he is forced to condemn theaccused, 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, is 
 regarded from the beginning as guilty; his defense is set aside with a contemp- 
 tuous “ Oh! we know the excuses,” and a fine imposed which he cannot pay and 
 must Work out with several months on the treadmill. And if nothing can bc 
 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 coun-- 
 try, 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, with- 
 out comment. Nor is any thing eise to be expected. For on the one hand, 
 these Dogberries do merely construe the lawaccording to the intent of the framers 
 and, on the other, they are, themselves bourgeois who see the foundation of all 
 tnie Order in the interests of their dass. And the conduct of the police cor- 
 responds to that of the Justices of the Peace. The bourgeois may do what he 
 will and the policeman remains 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 ädministrators of the law; for him, therefore, the protecting’ forms 
 of the law do not exist, the police force their way into his house without furthei 
 ceremony, arrest and abuse him; and only when a workingmen’s association, such 
 as the miners, engages a Roberts, does it become evident how little the protec- 
 tive side of the law exists for the workingmen, how frequently he has to bear all 
 the burdens of the law without enjoying its benefits. 
 
 Down to the present hour, the property-holding dass in Parliament still 
 struggles against the better feeling 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 
 monopolizing 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 dass train upon every railway daily, the “Reverend 
 Father in God,” the Bishop of London, proposed that Sunday, the only day upon 
 which workingmen inwork can travel, be exempted from this rule, and travelling 
 thus be left open to the rieh but shut off from the poor. This proposition was, 
 however, too direct, too undisguised to pass through Parliament, and was drop- 
 ped. I have no room to enumerate the many concealed attacks of even one 
 single session upon the Proletariat. One from the session of 1844 niust sufflce. 
 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. 
 Meaiiwhile the strike among the miners in the North broke out, and Roberts 
 made his triumphal passage through England Vv^ith his acquitted workingmen. 
 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 workingman 
 who had contracted verbally or in writing to do any work whatsoever, in case of 
 refusal to work or other misbehavior, and have him condemned to prison with 
 hard labor for two months upon the oath of the employer or his agent or over- 
 looker, i, e , , upon the oath of the accuser. This bill aroused the workingmen 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 workingmen’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 Op- 
 ponent of the bill; but when the other Radicals sawthat the people were declar- 
 
igo 
 
 ing against it, one after the other crept forward and took his place by Dun- 
 combe’s side; and as the Liberal bourgeoisie had not the courage to defend the 
 bill in the face of the excitement among the workir.gmen, it was ignominously 
 lost. 
 
 Meanwhile the most open declaration of war of the bourgeoisie upon the Pro- 
 letariat is Malthus’ Law of Population and the New Poor I^aw framed in accor- 
 dance 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 
 overpopulated.whence poverty, misery, distress and immorality must prevail; that 
 it is the lot, the eternal desti y of mankind, to exist in too great numbers and 
 therefore in diverse classes, of which some are rieh, educated and moral, and others 
 more or less poor, distressed, ignorant and immoral. Hence it follows in prac- 
 tice, 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 labor can be con- 
 sumed, and for every unemployed laborer thus furnished employment another 
 hitherto employed, must be driven into enforced idleness whence private under- 
 takings suffer at cost of Poor Law industry; that, in other words, the whole prob- 
 lem is not howto 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 pre- 
 viously asserted in favor 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 con- 
 ditions. 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, providcd the surplus population perceives its own 
 superlluousness and takes kindly to starvation. There is, however, in spite of 
 the violent exertions of the humane bourgeoisie, no immediate prospect of its suc- 
 ceeding 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 rieh capitalists, who do nothing, the surplus population. 
 
 Since, however, the rieh 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 i6oi, (the 436 . of Elizabeth), naively 
 Started from the notion that it is the duty of the parish to provide for the main- 
 tenance 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 favor, and this became, at last, too much for 
 the büurgeoisie. In 1833, when the bourgeoisie liad just come into power through 
 the Reform Bill, and pauperism in the country districts had just reached its full de- 
 velopment, 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 dass in the country was pauperized and more or less dependent 
 upon the rates from which they receive 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, recognized 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 in- 
 creased population and a means of counterbalancing the effect of an increased 
 population upon wages; a national provision for discouraging the honest and in- 
 dustrious, and protecting the lazy, vicious and improvident; calculated to destroy 
 the bonds of family life, hinder systemactically the accumulation of Capital, scat- 
 ter 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 Commissioner). ^ This description of 
 the action of the Old Poor Law is certainly correct; relief fosters laziness and in- 
 crease 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 awarning 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 
 Procrusiean bed of their economic notions and treat them with the most revolting 
 cruelty. Convinced with Malthus and the rest of the adherents of free competi- 
 tion 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 cour- 
 age 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 characterizes poverty or rather the want of 
 employment, as a crime under the title “ superfluity,” and recommends for it pun 
 ishment by starvation. The commissioners were not quite so barbarous ; death out- 
 right 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 betits human beings. 
 You are a pest, and if wecannot get rid of you as we do of other pests, you shall 
 
 I. Extracts from Information received from the Poor Law Commissioners. Published by 
 authoriiy. London, 1833. 
 
192 
 
 feel, at least, that you are a pest, and you shall at least be held in check, kept 
 from bringing- into theworld 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 Parlia- 
 I ment in 1834, and continues in force down to the present day. All relief in money 
 f and provisions was abolished; the only relief allowed was admission to the work- 
 houses immediately built. The regulations for these workhouses, or as the people 
 I call them, Poor Law Bastilles, is such as to frighten away every one who has the 
 || slightest prospect of life without tliis 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 ingenuityof a Maltliusian can invent. The food is worse than that of the 
 most ill-paid workingman while employed, and the work harder, or they might 
 prefer the workhouse to their wretched existence outside. Meat, especially fresh 
 meat, is rarely furnished, chicfly potatoes, the worst possible bread and oat-meal 
 porridge, little or no beer. The food of criminal prisoners is better, as a rule, so 
 that the paupers frequentiy commit some off.ense 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 behavior 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 labor 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 “ demoralized ” 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 in- 
 mates 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 bour- 
 geoisie 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 crimi- 
 nals, the workhouses, prisons, their inmates beyond the pale of the law, beyond the 
 pale of humanity, objects of disgust and repulsion, all commands to the contrary 
 
rire unavailing. In practise, the spirit and not the letter of the läw is followed 
 in the treatment of the poor, as in the following few examples: 
 
 In the workhouse at Greenwich, in the suminer 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 in- 
 flicted upon a little girl for wetting the bed at night, and this method of punish- 
 ment seems to be a favorite one. This workhouse, which Stands in one of the 
 most beautiful regions of Kent, is peculiar in so far as its Windows open only up- 
 on the court, and but two, newly introduced, afford the inmates a glimpse of the 
 outer World. The author who relates this in the Illuinmated Magazine^ closes 
 his description with the words: “If God punished men for crimes as man pun- 
 ishes man for poverty, than 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 work- 
 house fare, which he was utterly unable to digest by reason of the unhealed 
 wound and his general debility; he naturally grew w’eaker, and the more he com- 
 plained, 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 herseif in the 
 presence of the female warder. He became ill, but received no better treat- 
 ment. 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 scandal- 
 ous occurrences took place, that finally, in 1843, an official was sent to investi- 
 gate the case. He found that four tramps had been shut up naked under a 
 stair-case in a black hole, eight to ten days, often deprived of food until noon, 
 and that at the severest season of the year. A little boy had been passed 
 through all grades of punishment known to the institution, first locked up in a 
 damp, vaulted, narrow, lumber-room; then in the dog-hole twice, the second 
 time three days and three nights; then the same length of time in the old dog 
 hole, which was still worse; then the tramp-room, a stinking, disgustingly, filthy 
 hole, with wooden sleeping stalls, where the official, in the course of 
 his inspection, found two other tattered boys, shrivelled with cold, who had 
 ■ ^ been spending three days there. In the dog-hole Ihere 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 
 
194 
 
 department for punishment, though she was perfectly sane. In the ’workhouse 
 at Bacton, in Suffolk, in January, 1844, a sirnilar 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 bed- 
 stead 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 suf- 
 focation during an attack in bed, no one coming to his reüef; 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 Febuary 28th to March 2oth, 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 hasten- 
 ing 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 herseif upon the wife at every succeeding visit, sending her 
 away at the end of half an hour. In the workhouse at Middleton, in Lanca- 
 shire, 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 3 ist, 1844, ^ 
 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 stiflf knee, he was 
 unfit for this work. In vain did he offer to undertake any work adapted to his 
 physical strength; he was sentenced to two weeks upon the treadmill. In the 
 workhouse at Basford, an inspecting ofiicial 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 
 
195 
 
 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 contaminatcs 
 the whole neighborhood. In Manchester, the panper 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 matten 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 putrifying matter, and filled the neighborhood with the 
 most revolting and injurious gases. The disgusting brutality which accom- 
 panied 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. Tnus far have the Poor Law Com- 
 missioners 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 dass 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 con- 
 ception never yet been formulated, that the non-possessing dass 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 con- 
 tributed so greatly to accelerate the labor 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 dis- 
 liked, and would have been intensely hated if it had attained anylhing 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 
 
196 
 
 real intentions, reveals the animus of those smaller transactions witli the Prole- 
 tariat, 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 dass, 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. ^ 
 
 Such is the state of the British working dass as I have come to know it in 
 the course of twenty-one months, through the medium of my own 4 feyes, and 
 through official and other trustworthy reports. And when 1 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 work- 
 ingmen 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 organizing labor 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!” 
 
 * sl: * 
 
 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 in- 
 evitable in the course of a few years. German manufacture is now making 
 
 I. To prevent misconstructions and consequent objections, I would observe that I have spokep 
 of the bourgeoisie as a dass, and that all such facts as refer to individuals serve merely as evidence 
 of the way of thinking and acting of a dass. Hence I have not entered upon the distinctions 
 between the divers sections, subdivisions and parties of the bourgeoisie, which have a mere his- 
 torical and theoretical significance. And I can, for the same reason, mention but casually the few 
 inembers of the bourgeoisie who have shown themselves honorable 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 Todmorden, (Lancashire), and 
 on the other hand, the Philanthropie Tories, who have recently constituted themselves “Young 
 England,” among whom are the members of Parliament, DTsraeli, Bosthwick, 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 
 recognize the vileness of our present condition is worth something anyhow. Wholly isolated is the 
 half German-Englishman, 'l’homas 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 Organization of labor. 
 
T97 
 
 great efforts, and that of America has developed with giant strides. America, 
 with its inexhanstible resources, with its unmeasnred coal and iron fields, with 
 its unexampled wealth of water-power and its navigable rivers, but especially 
 with its energetic, active popnlation 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 
 favorite economist, McCullo:h, 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 plow, a time may 
 perhaps come for carrying on manufacture with a profit. So says the wise 
 economist, and the whole bourgeoisie worships him, w’hile the Americans take 
 possession of one market after another, w^hile 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, wdth the extension of in- 
 dustry and the multiplication of the Proletariat. The Proletariat would increase 
 in geom.etrical proportion, in consequence of the progressive ruin of the lower 
 middle dass 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 dass. I think the 
 people will not endure more than one more crisis. The next one, in 1846 or 
 1847, will probably bring with it the repeal of the Corn Laws^ and the enact- 
 ment 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, ac- 
 
 I. And it did. 
 
cording to tbe analogy of its predecessors, must break out in 1852 or 1853, 
 unless delayed perhaps by the repeal of the Corn Laws or hastened^y 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 appear- 
 ance, 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 rieh 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 jMste-milieu; the more de- 
 termined, uniting with the workers, would only form a new Gironde, and suc- 
 cumb in the course of the mighty development. The prejudices of a whole 
 dass cannot be laid aside like an old coat; least of all, those of the stable, nar- 
 row, 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 peacef ul 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 commun- 
 istic elements, will the revolution diminish in bloodshed, revenge and savagery. 
 Communism Stands, in principle, above the breach between bourgeoisie and 
 Proletariat, recognizes 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 dass antagonisms. Hence it recognizes 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 labor 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, (/. e. Communism), rests directly upon the irresponsi- 
 bility of the individual. Thus the more the English workers absorb com- 
 munistic 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 
 
- 199 “ 
 
 time has gone by. Mecmwhile, I think that before the outbreak of open, 
 declared war of the poor against the rieh, there will be enough intelligent com- 
 prehension of the social question among the Proletariat, to enable the com- 
 munistic 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 rieh now carried on in detail and in- 
 directly 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 pene- 
 trates the workers, the bitterness intensifies, the guerilla skirmishes become con- 
 centrated 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 rieh to beware. 
 
 THE END. 
 
TRANSLATORS S 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. Aiston, 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 Artizan, 1842, October Number. — J. C. Symons, 
 Arts and Ariizans at Home and Abroad^ Edinb., 183g. — Report of the Town 
 Council of Leeds, published in Statistical Journal, vol, II., p. 404. — Nassau 
 \V. 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 Manches- 
 ter, On the Present Condition of the Laboring Poor in Manchester, 3d 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; 2d Ed., 1821. — Report of the Poor Law Com- 
 missioners; Extracts from Information received by the Poor Law Com- 
 missioners. Published by Authority, London, 1833. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 The book which is herewith submitted to the English-speaking public in its 
 own language, was written rather more than forty years ago. The author, at 
 the 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. That it is now translated into English, is not in any way due to 
 his initiative. Still he may be allowed to say a few words, “ to show cause why 
 this translation should not be prevented from seeing the light of day. 
 
 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 
 recognized 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 characterize its early 
 stages. The petty fogging 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 practiced there, he finds to be out of date 
 and out of place when he comes to Hamburg or Berlin; and again the Commis- 
 sion Agent, who hails from Berlin or Hamburg, Jew or Christian, after fre- 
 quenting 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 repeal of the Corn-laws, the discovery of the Californian 
 and Australian gold-fields, the almost complete crushing-out of domestic hand- 
 weaving in India, the increasing access to the Chinese market, the rapid multi- 
 plication of railways and steam-ships all over the world, and other minor causes 
 have given to English manufacturing industry such a colossal development, 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 manii- 
 facturing industry become, apparently, moralized. The competition of 
 manufacturer against manufacturer by means of petty thefts upon the work- 
 people did no longer pay. Trade had outgrown such low means of making 
 money; they were not worth while practicing for the manufacturing millionaire. 
 
II 
 
 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 Ilours’ 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 favor of the giant-capitalist in his competition with his less 
 favored 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 
 sirikes — at opportune times — a powerful means to serve their own ends. 
 The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders of the w’ar 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 eise 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 become actual nuisances; and tp 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 dass is to 
 be sought, not in these minor grievances, but in the Capitalistic System itself. 
 The wage-worker sells to the capitalist his labor-force for a certain daily sum. 
 After a few hours* work he has reproduced the value of that sum; but the sub- 
 stance 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 labor, is surplus value which costs the capitalist nothing but yet goes 
 into his pocket. That is the basis of the System which tends more and more to 
 split Up civilized society into a few Vanderbilts, the owners of all the means of 
 production and subsistence, on the one hand, and an immense number of wagc- 
 workers, the owners of nothing but their labor-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, small-pox 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 conspieuous. 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 clistricts wbich in 1844 I could descnbe as almost idyllic, Iiave 
 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 dass. But that, in regard to their dwellings, no sub- 
 stantial 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 ex- 
 ploitation described by me, other countries have only just attairuid it. France, 
 Germany, and especially America, are the formidable competitors who at this 
 moment — as foreseen by me in 1S44 — 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; 
 but 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 dass is placed in America are very different, but the same econom 
 ical 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. At this very moment I am receiving the 
 American papers with accounts of the great strike of 12,000 Pennsyivanian coal- 
 miners in the Connellsville district, and I seem but to read my own description 
 of the North of England Colliers’ strike of 1844. The same cheating of the 
 work-people 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. 
 
 There were two drcumstances which for a long time prevented the unavoid- 
 able consequences of the Capitalist System from showing themselves in the full 
 glare of day in America. These were the easy access to the ownership of cheap 
 land, and the influx of immigration. They allowed, for many years, the great 
 mass of the native American population to “retire” in early manhood fromwage- 
 labor and to become farmers, dealers, or employers of labor, while the hard 
 work for wages, the position of a proletarian for life, mostly feil to the lot of 
 immigrants. But America has outgrown this early stage. The boundless 
 backwoods have disappeared, and the still more boundless prairies are fast and 
 faster passing from the hands of the Nation and the States into those of private 
 owners. The great safety-valve against the formation of a permanent prole- 
 tarian dass has practically ceased to act. A dass of life-long and even heredi- 
 tary proletarians exists at this hour in America. A nation of sixty millions 
 striving hard to become — and with every chance of success, too — the leading 
 
IV 
 
 manufacturing nation of the world — such a nation cannot permanently imporl 
 its own wage- working dass; not even if immigrants pour in at the rate of half « 
 million a year. The tendency of the Capitalist System towards the ultimate 
 splitting-up of society into two classes, a few millionaires on the one hand, and 
 a great mass of mere \* age-workers on the other, this tendency, though constant- 
 ly crossed and counteracted by other social agencies, works nowhere with greater 
 force than in America; and the result has been the production of a dass of native 
 American wage-workers, who form, indeed, the aristocracy of the wage-working 
 dass as compared with the immigrants, but who become conscious more and 
 more every day of their solidarity with the latter and who feel all the more 
 acutely their present condemnation to life-long wage-toil, because they still re- 
 member the bygone days, when it was comparatively easy to rise to a higher 
 social level. Accordingly the working dass movement, in America, has started 
 with truly American vigor, and as on that side of the Atlantic things march with 
 at least double the European speed, we may yet live to see America take the 
 lead in this respect too. 
 
 I have not attempted. in this translation, to bring the book up to date, 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 the translation came upon me too suddenly to admit of my under- 
 taking such a work. And secondly, the first volume of “Das Kapital”, by 
 Karl Marx, an English translation of which is about to appear, contains a very 
 ample description of the state of the British working dass, as it was about 1865, 
 that is to say at the time when British industrial prosperity reached its culminat- 
 ing point. I should, then, have been obliged again to go over theground already 
 covered by Marx’s celebrated work. 
 
 It will be hardly necessary to point out that the general theoretical stand- 
 point 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 every- 
 where 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 dass, but a theory compassing the 
 emancipation of society at large, including the Capitalist dass, from its present 
 narrow conditions. This is true enough in the abstract, but absolutely useless, 
 and 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 dass, so long the social revolution will have to be prepared and fought 
 out by the working dass 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 
 che time being and, with respect to feudalism, an abstract historical truth — 
 
V 
 
 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 
 inipartiality of their “superior stand-point” preach to the workers a Socialism 
 soaring high above their dass interests and dass stniggles, and tending to re- 
 concile in a higher humanity the interests of both the contending dasses — 
 these people are either neophytes, who have still to learn a great deal, or they 
 are the worst eneinies of the workers — wolves in sheeps’ dothing. 
 
 The recurring period of the great industrial crises 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 revolutions 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 
 ardor 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 German 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 i, 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 dass during these forty years, and is as follow-s: 
 
 “Forty years ago England stood face to face with a crisis, solvable to all 
 appearances by force only. The immense and rapid development of manufac- 
 tures 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 dass clamored 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 dass, 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 dass. The 
 Socialistic pronunciamentoes of the victorious P'rench workmen frightened the 
 small middle dass of England and disorganized the narrower, but more matter- 
 of-fact movement of the English working dass. 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 loth of April, 1848. The action of 
 the working dass was thrust into the background. The capitalist dass 
 triumphed along the whole line. 
 
 “The Reform Bill of 1831 had been the victory of the whole capitalist dass 
 over the landed aristocracy. d'he repeal of the Corn Laws was the victory of 
 
VI 
 
 the manufacturing capitalists 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, fundholders, etc. Free Trade 
 meant the re-ad justment of the whole home and foreign commercial and finan- 
 cial policy of England in accordance with the interests of the manufacturing 
 capitalists — the dass 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 revolutionized. 
 Everything was made subordinate to one end, but that end of the ulmost im- 
 portance to the manufacturing capitalist: the cheapening of all raw produce, 
 and especially of the means of living of the working dass ; 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 realization 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 dass, 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 ques- 
 tion, had learnt and were learning more and more, that the middle dass can 
 never obtain full social and political power over the nation except by the help of 
 the working dass. 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, lately considered inventions of the 
 devil himself , were now petted and patronized 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 manu- 
 facturers 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 France or 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 bed-fellows and successors. The very people who put it down, have 
 become, as Karl Marx used to säy, its testamentary executors. Louis Napoleon 
 had to create an independent and united Italy, Bismarck had to revolutionize 
 Germany and to restore Hungarian independence, and the English manufacturers 
 had to enact the Peoples' Charter. 
 
VII 
 
 “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 steara 
 and machinery dwindled into nothing compared with the immense mass of pro- 
 ductions of the tvventy 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 in- 
 deed interrupted, as before, by a crisis every ten years, in 1857 as well as in 
 1868 ; 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 dass 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 hands by new machinery, by the Immi- 
 gration of the agricultural population, now, too, more and more superseded by 
 machincs. 
 
 “ A permanent improvement can be recognized for two “ protected " sections 
 only of the working dass. 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 organizations of those 
 trades in which the labor of gro%vn-up men predominates, or is alone applicable. 
 Here the competition neither of women and children nor of machinery has so 
 far weakened their organized 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’ laborers, they can even successfully 
 resist the introduction of machinery. That their condition has remarkably im- 
 proved since 1848 there can be nodoubt, 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 dass ; 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 and Giffen, and they are very 
 nice people indeed nowadays to deal with, for any sensible capitalist in particu- 
 lar and for the whole capitalist dass in general. 
 
 “ But as to the great mass of working people, the state of misery and insecuri- 
 ty in which they live now is as low as ever, if not iower. 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 labor-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 1868 was, indeed, followed by a slight and short revival 
 
VIII 
 
 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 whicn 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 estab- 
 lished 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 civilization attendant upon Manchester calicoes, 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 iDy 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 
 Economical 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 labor. The couniry jnighi ahnosi be said io be entering 
 ihe non-progressive state T 
 
 “ But what is to be the consequence? Capitalist production cayinot stop. It 
 must go on increasing and expanding, or it must die. Even now, the mere re- 
 duction 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 nCcessity 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 dass ? If even under the unparalleled commercial and 
 industrial expansion, from 1848 to 1868, they have had to undergo such misery; 
 if even then the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary improye- 
 ment of their condition, while only a small, privileged, “ protected ” minority 
 was permanently benefitted,Jwhat will it be when this dazzling period is brought 
 finally to a dose ; when the present dreary Stagnation shall not only become in- 
 tensifiedjbut this, its intensified condition, shall become the permanent and nor- 
 mal state of English trade ? 
 
 1 “ The truth is this : during the period of England’s industrial monopoly the 
 
 \\ English working dass have, to a certain extent, shared in the benefits of the 
 I monopoly. These benefits were very unequally parcelled out amongst them; 
 
IX 
 
 ihe privileged minority pocketed most, but even the great mass had at least a 
 temporary share now and then. And tliat 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 dass 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 Sodalism again in England.** 
 
 London, February 25, 1886. Frederick Engels. 
 
 f 
 
I N D EX 
 
 ACCIDENTS — 72, 95, 100, ITO, III, 167. 
 
 Adulter ATI ON — 47, et. seq. 
 
 Apprentices — 114, 132, et. seq. 140. 
 
 CHARTER--151, et. seq. 187, 197. 
 
 Chartism — V. VI., 45, 82, 153, et. seq. 184, 195. 
 
 Chartists — 90, 118, 133, 154, et. seq. 170, 173, 
 
 CoRN Laws— 76, 175, 179, 187, 196. 
 
 League— 81, 154, 178, 187. 
 
 Repeal of — I., 13, 155, i 57 , 184, 
 
 Cottage System — iii., 122, 124. 169, 172. 
 
 Crime — F orm of R.ebellion — 178, et. seq. 183, 
 
 Increase of 87, 88. 
 
 Juvenile 134, 137. 
 
 Result of Overcrowding — 45, 80, 81, 
 
 Diseases — E ngendered by Dwellings — 135. 
 
 Filth — 25, 29, 44, 64. 
 
 Occupation — iio, 119, 128, 138. 
 Overwork — 102, 104, et. seq. 115, 165, 
 Want — 22, 50, 60, 72, 132, 141. 
 Education — Means of — 73, et. seq. 130, 134, 135, 160, 168. 
 
 Want of — 61, 84, 86, 99. 
 
 EMPLOYMENT of ChILDREN — III. 
 
 In Agriculture — 175, 176. 
 
 In Factories — 94, et. seq. 112, 115, et. seq. 133. 
 In House Industry — 126, et. seq. 
 
 In Mines — 162, 164, et. seq. 
 
 In the Night — 128, 139. 
 
 Employment of Women — iii. 
 
 In Agriculture — 176. 
 
 In Factories — 94^ et. seq. 108, 109, 117, 133. 
 
 In Mines — 162, 167. 
 
 In Sewing — 140, et. seq. 
 
m 
 
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