"Mr Smith is a very good man,
He lets us ride in his harvest van,
He gives us food and he gives us ale,
We pray his heart may never fail."
There is nothing to be said against Mr. Smith, who was evidently a kindly farmer of his time. Yet to what incredible humiliation his "pastors and masters" had brought poor Hodge, who could sing these lines, as though he had reached the Diamond Jubilee of his life when he rode in somebody else's cart, and had cheese and beer. Now the farm workers of a co-operative way of thinking have learned how to ride in their own vans, to possess the crop with which they are loaded, and to provide themselves with a harvest supper.
In my time the mechanic had no personal credit for his work, whatever might be his skill. Now in industrial exhibitions the name of the artificer is attached to his work, and he is part of the character of the firm which employs him. He has, also, now—if co-operation prevails—a prospect of participating in the profits of his own industry. Half a century ago employers were proud of showing their machinery to a visitor—never their men. Now they show their work-people as well—whose condition and contentment is the first pride of great firms.
Above all knowledge is a supreme improvement, which has come to workmen. They never asked for it, the ignorant never do ask for knowledge, and do not like those who propose it to them. Brougham first turned aside their repugnance by telling them what Bacon knew, that "knowledge is power." Now they realise the other half of the great saying, Dr. Creighton, the late Bishop of London, supplied, that "ignorance is impotence." They can see that the instructed son of the gentleman has power, brightness, confidence, and alertness; while the poor man's child, untrained, incapable, dull in comparison, often abject, is unconscious of his own powers which lie latent within him. If an educated and an ignorant child were sold by weight, the intelligent child would fetch more per pound avoirdupois than the ignorant one. Now education can be largely had for working men's children for nothing. Even scholarships and degrees are open to the clever sort. Moreover, how smooth science has made the early days of instruction, formerly made jagged with the rod.
Sir Edwin Chadwick showed that the child mind could not profitably be kept learning more than an hour at a time, and recreation must intervene before a second hour can be usefully spent. What a mercy and advantage to thousands of poor children this has been! Even the dreary schoolroom of the last generation is disappearing. A schoolroom should be spacious and bright, and board schools are beginning to be made so now. I have seen a board school in a dismal court in Whitechapel which looked like an alley of hell. All thoughts for pleasant impressions in the child mind, which make learning alluring, were formerly uncared for. Happier now is the lot of poor children than any former generation knew.
Within my time no knowledge of public affairs was possible to the people, save in a second-hand way from sixpenny newspapers a month old. Now a workman can read in the morning telegrams from all parts of the world in a halfpenny paper, hours before his employer is out of bed. If a pestilence broke out in the next street to the man's dwelling, the law compelled him to wait a month for the penny paper, the only one he could afford to buy, before he became aware of his danger, and it often happened that some of his family never lived to read of their risk.
The sons of working people are now welcomed in the army, and their record there has commanded the admiration of the onlooking world. But they are not flogged as they once were, at the will of any arrogant dandy who had bought his mastership over them. Intelligence has awakened manliness and self-respect in common men, and the recruiting-sergeant has to go about without the lash under his coat. The working man further knows now that there is a better future for his sons in the public service, in army or navy, than ever existed before our time. Even the emigrant ship has regulations for the comfort of steerage passengers, unknown until recent years. People always professed great regard for "Poor Jack," but until Mr. Plimsoll arose, they left him to drown.
Until a few years ago millions of home-born Englishmen were kept without votes, like the Uitlanders of South Africa, and no one sent an army into the country to put down the "corrupt oligarchy," as Mr. Chamberlain called those who withheld redress. But it has come, though in a limping, limited way. Carlylean depredators of Parliament decried the value of workmen possessing "a hundred thousandth part in the national palavers." But we no longer hear workmen at election times referred to as the "swinish multitude" who can now send representatives of their own order into the House of Commons. If the claims of labour are not much considered, they are no longer contemned. It is always easier for the rider than the horse. The people are always being ridden, but it is much easier for the horse now than it ever was before.
Sir Michael Foster, in a recent Presidential Address to the British Association, said that, "the appliances of science have, as it were, covered with a soft cushion the rough places of life, and that not for the rich only but also for the poor." It is not, however, every kind of progress, everywhere, in every department of human knowledge, in which the reader is here concerned, but merely with such things as Esdras says, which have "passed by us in daily life," and which every ordinary Englishman has observed or knows.
If the question be asked whether the condition of the working class has improved in proportion to that of the middle and upper class of our time, the answer must be it has not. But that is not the question considered here. The question is, "Are the working class to-day better off than their fathers were?" The answer already given is Yes. Let the reader think what, in a general way, the new advantages are. The press is free, and articulate with a million voices—formerly dumb. Now a poor man can buy a better library for a few shillings than Solomon with all his gold and glory could in his day; or than the middle class man possessed fifty years ago. Toleration—not only of ideas but of action, is enlarged, and that means much—social freedom is greater, and that means more. The days of children are happier, schoolrooms are more cheerful, and one day they will be educated so as to fit them for self-dependence and the duties of daily life. Another change is that the pride in ignorance, which makes for impotence, is decreasing, is no longer much thought of among those whose ignorance was their only attainment.