Manchester Guardian, October 30th. ↩
Stubborn Facts, p. 9 et seq. ↩
Drinkwater Evidence; p. 80. ↩
Stubborn Facts, pp. 13–17. ↩
Sun, a London daily; end of . ↩
I have neither time nor space to deal in detail with the replies of the manufacturers to the charges made against them for twelve years past. These men will not learn because their supposed interest blinds them. As, moreover, many of their objections have been met in the foregoing, the following is all that it is necessary for me to add:
You come to Manchester, you wish to make yourself acquainted with the state of affairs in England. You naturally have good introductions to respectable people. You drop a remark or two as to the condition of the workers. You are made acquainted with a couple of the first Liberal manufacturers, Robert Hyde Greg, perhaps, Edmund Ashworth, Thomas Ashton, or others. They are told of your wishes. The manufacturer understands you, knows what he has to do. He accompanies you to his factory in the country; Mr. Greg to Quarrybank in Cheshire, Mr. Ashworth to Turton near Bolton, Mr. Ashton to Hyde. He leads you through a superb, admirably arranged building, perhaps supplied with ventilators, he calls your attention to the lofty, airy rooms, the fine machinery, here and there a healthy-looking operative. He gives you an excellent lunch, and proposes to you to visit the operatives’ homes; he conducts you to the cottages, which look new, clean and neat, and goes with you into this one and that one, naturally only to overlookers, mechanics, etc., so that you may see “families who live wholly from the factory.” Among other families you might find that only wife and children work, and the husband darns stockings. The presence of the employer keeps you from asking indiscreet questions; you find everyone well-paid, comfortable, comparatively healthy by reason of the country air; you begin to be converted from your exaggerated ideas of misery and starvation. But, that the cottage system makes slaves of the operatives, that there may be a truck shop in the neighbourhood, that the people hate the manufacturer, this they do not point out to you, because he is present. He has built a school, church, reading-room, etc. That he uses the school to train children to subordination, that he tolerates in the reading-room such prints only as represent the interests of the bourgeoisie, that he dismisses his employees if they read Chartist or Socialist papers or books, this is all concealed from you. You see an easy, patriarchal relation, you see the life of the overlookers, you see what the bourgeoisie promises the workers if they become its slaves, mentally and morally. This “country manufacture” has always been what the employers like to show, because in it the disadvantages of the factory system, especially from the point of view of health, are, in part, done away with by the free air and surroundings, and because the patriarchal servitude of the workers can here be longest maintained. Dr. Ure sings a dithyramb upon the theme. But woe to the operatives to whom it occurs to think for themselves and become Chartists! For them the paternal affection of the manufacturer comes to a sudden end. Further, if you should wish to be accompanied through the working-people’s quarters of Manchester, if you should desire to see the development of the factory system in a factory town, you may wait long before these rich bourgeoisie will help you! These gentlemen do not know in what condition their employees are nor what they want, and they dare not know things which would make them uneasy or even oblige them to act in opposition to their own interests. But, fortunately, that is of no consequence: what the workingmen have to carry out, they carry out for themselves. ↩
Grainger Report. Appendix, Part I, pp. 7, 15, et seq., 132–142. ↩
Grainger’s whole Report. ↩
Grainger Children’s Employment Commission’s Report. ↩
Burns, Children’s Employment Commission’s Report. ↩
Leach. Stubborn Facts from the Factories, p. 47. ↩
Leach. Stubborn Facts from the Factories, p. 33. ↩
Leach. Stubborn Facts from the Factories, p. 37–40. ↩
Children’s Employment Commission’s Report. ↩
See p. 112. ↩
Grainger Report and Evidence. ↩
Horne Report and Evidence. ↩
Dr. Knight, Sheffield. ↩
Symonds Report and Evidence. ↩
Scriven Report and Evidence. ↩
Leifchild Report Append., Part II, p. L 2, ss. 11,12; Franks Report Append., Part II, p. K 7, s. 48, Tancred Evid. Append., Part II, p. I 76, etc.—Children’s Employment Commission’s Rep’t. ↩
See Weekly Dispatch, . ↩
Thomas Hood, the most talented of all the English humorists now living, and, like all humorists, full of human feeling, but wanting in mental energy, published at the beginning of a beautiful poem, “The Song of the Shirt,” which drew sympathetic but unavailing tears from the eyes of the daughters of the bourgeoisie. Originally published in Punch, it made the round of all the papers. As discussions of the condition of the sewing-women filled all the papers at the time, special extracts are needless.
