Victorian worthies

by George Henry Blore

Politics proper played but a small part in his career. The politicians found early that he was not of the 'available' type—that he would not lend himself to party policy or compromise on any matter which seemed to him of national interest. Such political posts as were offered to him were largely held out as a bait to silence him, and to prevent his bringing forward embarrassing measures which might split the party. Ashley himself found how much easier it was for him to follow a single course when he was an independent member. Reluctantly in 1834 he accepted a post at the Board of Admiralty and worked earnestly in his department; but this ministry only lasted for one year, and he never held office again, though he was often pressed to do so. He was attached to Wellington; but for Peel, now become the Tory leader, he had little love. The two men were very dissimilar in character; and though at times Ashley had friendly communications with Peel, yet in his diary Ashley often complains bitterly of his want of enthusiasm, of what he regarded as Peel's opportunism and subservience to party policy. The one had an instinct for what was practical and knew exactly how far he could combine interests to carry a measure; the other was all on fire for the cause and ready to push it forward against all obstacles, at all costs. Ashley, it is true, had to work through Parliament to attain his chief ends, and many a bitter moment he had to endure in striving towards the goal. But if he was not an adroit or successful politician, he gradually, as the struggle went on, by earnestness and force of character, made for himself in the House a place apart, a place of rare dignity and influence; and with the force of public opinion behind him he was able to triumph over ministers and parties.

It was in 1832 that he first had his attention drawn to the conditions of labour in factories. He never claimed to be the pioneer of the movement, but he was early in the field. The inventions of the latter part of the eighteenth century had transformed the north of England. The demand for labour had given rise to appalling abuses, especially in the matter of child labour. From London workhouses and elsewhere children were poured into the labour market, and by the 'Apprentice System' were bound to serve their masters for long periods and for long hours together. A pretence of voluntary contract was kept up, but fraud and deception were rife in the system and its results were tragic. Mrs. Browning's famous poem, 'The Cry of the Children,' gives a more vivid picture of the children's sufferings than many pages of prose. At the same time we have plenty of first-hand evidence from the great towns of the misery which went along with the wonderful development of national wealth. Speaking in 1873 Lord Shaftesbury said, 'Well can I recollect in the earlier periods of the Factory movement waiting at the factory gates to see the children come out, and a set of dejected cadaverous creatures they were. In Bradford especially the proofs of long and cruel toil were most remarkable. The cripples and distorted forms might be numbered by hundreds perhaps by thousands. A friend of mine collected together a vast number for me; the sight was most piteous, the deformities incredible.' And an eye-witness in Bolton reports in 1792: 'Anything like the squalid misery, the slow, mouldering, putrefying death by which the weak and feeble are perishing here, it never befell my eyes to behold, nor my imagination to conceive.' Some measures of relief were carried by the elder Sir Robert Peel, himself a cotton-spinner; but public opinion was slow to move and was not roused till 1830, when Mr. Sadler,[16] member for Newark, led the first fight for a 'Ten Hours Bill'. When Sadler was unseated in 1832, Lord Ashley offered his help, and so embarked on the greatest of his works performed in the public service. He had the support of a few of the noblest men in England, including Robert Southey and Charles Dickens; but he had against him the vast body of well-to-do people in the country, and inside Parliament many of the most progressive and influential politicians. The factory owners were inspired at once by interest and conviction; the political economy of the day taught them that all restrictions on labour were harmful to the progress of industry and to the prosperity of the country, while the figures in their ledgers taught them what was the most economical method of running their own mills.

Already it was clear that Lord Ashley was no mere sentimentalist out for a momentary sensation. At all times he gave the credit for starting the work to Sadler and his associates; and from the outset he urged his followers to fix on a limited measure first, to concentrate attention on the work of children and young persons, and to avoid general questions involving conflicts between capital and labour. Also he took endless pains to acquaint himself at first hand with the facts. 'In factories,' he said afterwards, 'I examined the mills, the machinery, the homes, and saw the workers and their work in all its details. In collieries I went down into the pits. In London I went into lodging-houses and thieves' haunts, and every filthy place. It gave me a power I could not otherwise have had.' And this was years before 'slumming' became fashionable and figured in the pages of Punch; it was no distraction caught up for a week or a month, but a labour of fifty years! We have an account of him as he appeared at this period of his life: 'above the medium height, about 5 feet 6 inches, with a slender and extremely graceful figure... curling dark hair in thick masses, fine brow, features delicately cut, the nose perhaps a trifle too prominent,... light blue eyes deeply set with projecting eyelids, his mouth small and compressed.' His whole face and appearance seems to have had a sculpturesque effect and to have suggested the calm and composure of marble. But under this marble exterior there was burning a flame of sympathy for the poor, a fire of indignation against the system which oppressed them.

In 1833 some progress was made. Lord Althorp, the Whig leader in the Commons, under pressure from Lord Ashley, carried a bill dealing indeed with some of the worst abuses in factories, but applying only to some of the great textile industries. That it still left much to be done can be seen from studying the details of the measure. Children under eleven years of age were not to work more than nine hours a day, and young persons under nineteen not more than twelve hours a day. Adults might still work all day and half the night if the temptation of misery at home and extra wages to be earned was too strong for them. It seems difficult now to believe that this was a great step forward, yet for the moment Ashley found that he could do no more and must accept what the politicians gave him. In 1840, however, he started a fresh campaign on behalf of children not employed in these factories, who were not included in the Act of 1833, and who, not being concentrated in the great centres of industry, escaped the attention of the general public. He obtained a Royal Commission to investigate mines and other works, and to report upon their condition. The Blue Book was published in 1842 and created a sensation unparalleled of its kind. Men read with horror the stories of the mines, of children employed underground for twelve or fourteen hours a day, crouching in low passages, monotonously opening and shutting the trap-doors as the trollies passed to and fro. Alone each child sat in pitchy darkness, unable to stir for more than a few paces, unable to sleep for fear of punishment with the strap in case of neglect, and often surrounded with vermin. Women were employed crawling on hands and knees along these passages, stripped to the waist, stooping under the low roofs, and even so chafing and wounding their backs, as they hauled the coal along the underground rails, or carrying in baskets on their backs, up steps and ladders, loads which varied in weight from a half to one and a half hundredweights. The physical health, the mental education, and the moral character of these poor creatures suffered equally under such a system; and well might those responsible for the existence of such abuses fear to let the Report be published. But copies of it first reached members of Parliament, then the public at large learnt the burden of the tale, and Lord Ashley might now hope for enough support from outside to break down the opposition in the House of Commons and the delays of parliamentary procedure.

'The Mines and Collieries Bill' was brought in before the impression could fade, and on June 7, 1842, Ashley made one of the greatest of his speeches and drove home powerfully the effect of the Report. His mastery of facts was clear enough to satisfy the most dispassionate politician; his sincerity disarmed Richard Cobden, the champion of the Lancashire manufacturers and brought about a reconciliation between them; his eloquence stirred the hearts of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, and drew from the latter words of glowing admiration and promises of support. In August the bill finally passed the House of Lords, and a second great blow had been struck. Practices which were poisoning at the source the lives of the younger generation were forbidden by law; above all, it was expressly laid down that, after a few years, no woman or girl should be employed in mines at all. The influence which such a law had on the family life in the mining districts was incalculable; the women were rescued from servitude in the mines and restored to their natural place at home.

There was still much to do. In 1844 the factory question was again brought to the front by the demands of the working classes, and again Ashley was ready to champion their cause, and to propose that the working day should now be limited to eight hours for children, and to ten hours for grown men. In Parliament there was long and weary fighting over the details. The Tory Government did not wish to oppose the bill directly. Neither party had really faced the question or made up its mind. Expediency rather than justice was in the minds of the official politicians.

Such a straightforward champion as Lord Ashley was a source of embarrassment to these gentlemen, to be met by evasion rather than direct opposition. The radical John Bright, a strong opponent of State interference and equally straightforward in his methods, made a personal attack on Lord Ashley. He referred to the Dorset labourers, as if Ashley was indifferent to abuses nearer home, and left no one in doubt of his opinions. At the same time, Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, did all in his power to defeat Ashley's bill by bringing forward alternative proposals, which he knew would be unacceptable to the workers. In face of such opposition most men would have given way. Ashley, who had been a consistent Tory all his life, was bitterly aggrieved at the treatment which his bill met with from his official leaders. He persevered in his efforts, relying on support from outside; but in Parliament the Government triumphed to the extent of defeating the Ten Hours Bill in March 1844 and again in April 1846. Still, the small majority (ten) by which this last division was decided showed in which direction the current was flowing, and when a few months later the Tories were ousted from office, the Whigs took up the bill officially, and in June 1847 Lord Ashley, though himself out of Parliament for the moment, had the satisfaction of seeing the bill become the law of the land.

There was great rejoicing in the manufacturing districts, and Lord Ashley was the hero of the day. The working classes had no direct representative in Parliament in those days: without his constant efforts neither party would have given a fair hearing to their cause. He had argued with politicians without giving away principles; he had stirred the industrial districts without rousing class hatred; he had been defeated time after time without giving up the struggle. Much has been added since then to the laws restricting the conditions of labour till, in the often quoted words of Lord Morley, the biographer of Cobden, we have 'a complete, minute, and voluminous code for the protection of labour... an immense host of inspectors, certifying surgeons and other authorities whose business it is to "speed and post o'er land and ocean" in restless guardianship of every kind of labour'. But these were the heroic days of the struggle for factory legislation, and also of the struggle for cheap food for the people. Reviewing these great events many years later the Duke of Argyll said, 'During that period two great discoveries have been made in the science of Government: the one is the immense advantage of abolishing restrictions on trade, the other is the absolute necessity of imposing restrictions on labour'. While Sir Robert Peel might with some justice contest with Cobden the honour of establishing the first principle, few will challenge Lord Ashley's right to the honour of securing the second.

Of the many religious and political causes which he undertook during and after this time, of the Zionist movement to repatriate the Jews, of the establishing of a Protestant bishopric at Jerusalem, of his attacks on the war with Sind and the opium trade with China, of his championship of the Nestorian Christians against the Turk, of his leadership of the great Bible Society, there is not space to speak. The mere list gives an idea of the width of his interests and the warmth of his sympathy.

Some of these questions were highly contentious; and Lord Ashley, who was a fervent Evangelical, was less than fair to churchmen of other schools. To Dr. Pusey himself he could write a kindly and courteous letter; but on the platform, or in correspondence with friends, he could denounce 'Puseyites' in the roundest terms. One cannot expect that a man of his character will avoid all mistakes. It was a time when feeling ran high on religious questions, and he was a declared partisan; but at least we may say that the public good, judged from the highest point, was his objective; there was no room for self-seeking in his heart. Nor did this wide extension of his activity mean neglect of his earlier crusades. On the contrary, he continued to work for the good of the classes to whom his Factory Bills had been so beneficial. Not content with prohibiting what was harmful, he went on to positive measures of good; restriction of hours was followed by sanitation, and this again by education, and by this he was led to what was perhaps the second most famous work of his life.