Hand-loom Weavers and Others deprived of their Living by Machinery.

As has been before stated, the regular beggar seizes on the latest pretext for a plausible tale of woe. Improvements in mechanics, and consequent cheapness to the many, are usually the causes of loss to the few. The sufferings of this minority is immediately turned to account by veteran cadgers, who rush to their wardrobes of well-chosen rags, attire themselves in appropriate costume, and ply their calling with the last grievance out. When unprovided with “patter,” they seek the literati of their class, and buy a speech; this they partly commit to memory, and trust to their own ingenuity to improvise any little touches that may prove effective. Many “screevers, slum-scribblers, and fakement-dodgers” eke out a living by this sort of authorship. Real operatives seldom stir from their own locality. The sympathy of their fellows, their natural habits, and the occasional relief afforded by the parish bind them to their homes, and the “distressed weaver” is generally a spurious metropolitan production. The following is a copy of one of their prepared orations:

“My kind Christian Friends,

“We are poor working-men from —— which cannot obtain bread by our labour, owing to the new alterations and inventions which the master-manufacturers have introduced, which spares them the cost of employing hands, and does the work by machinery instead. Yes, kind friends, machinery and steam-engines now does the work, which formerly was done by our hands and work and labour. Our masters have turned us off, and we are without bread and knowing no other trade but that which we was born and bred to, we are compelled to ask your kind assistance, for which, be sure of it, we shall be ever grateful. As we have said, masters now employs machinery and steam-engines instead of men, forgetting that steam-engines have no families of wives or children, and consequently are not called on to provide for them. We are without bread to put into our mouths, also our wives and children are the same. Foreign competition has drove our masters to this step, and we working-men are the sufferers thereby. Kind friends, drop your compassion on us: the smallest trifle will be thankfully received, and God will bless you for the relief you give to us. May you never know what it is to be as we are now, drove from our work, and forced to come out into the streets to beg your charity from door to door. Have pity on us, for our situation is most wretched. Our wives and families are starving, our children cry to us for bread, and we have none to give them. Oh, my friends, look down on us with compassion. We are poor working-men, weavers from —— which cannot obtain bread by our labour owing to the new inventions in machinery, which, &c. &c. &c.”

In concluding this section of our work, I would commend to the notice of my readers the following observations on alms-giving:—

The poor will never cease from the land. There always will be exceptional excesses and outbreaks of distress that no plan could have provided against, and there always will be those who stand with open palm to receive, in the face of heaven, our tribute of gratitude for our own happier lot. Yet there is a duty of the head as well as of the heart, and we are bound as much to use our reason as to minister of our abundance. The same heaven that has rewarded our labours, and filled our garners or our coffers, or at least, given us favour in the sight of merchants and bankers, has given us also brains, and consequently a charge to employ them. So we are bound to sift appeals, and consider how best to direct our benevolence. Whoever thinks that charity consists in mere giving, and that he has only to put his hand in his pocket, or draw a check in favour of somebody who is very much in want of money, and looks very grateful for favours to be received, will find himself taught better, if not in the school of adversity, at least by many a hard lesson of kindness thrown away, or perhaps very brutishly repaid. As animals have their habits, so there is a large class of mankind whose single cleverness is that of representing themselves as justly and naturally dependent on the assistance of others, who look paupers from their birth, who seek givers and forsake those who have given as naturally as a tree sends its roots into new soil and deserts the exhausted. It is the office of reason—reason improved by experience—to teach us not to waste our own interest and our resources on beings that will be content to live on our bounty, and will never return a moral profit to our charitable industry. The great opportunities or the mighty powers that heaven may have given us, it never meant to be lavished on mere human animals who eat, drink and sleep, and whose only instinct is to find out a new caterer when the old one is exhausted.

APPENDIX.

MAPS AND TABLES
ILLUSTRATING THE CRIMINAL STATISTICS OF EACH OF THE COUNTIES OF ENGLAND AND WALES IN 1851.

PAGE
Map showing the Density of the Population[451]
Table of ditto[452]
Map showing the Intensity of Criminality[455]
Table of ditto[456]
Map showing the Intensity of Ignorance[459]
Table of ditto[460]
Table of Ignorance among Criminals[462]
Table of Relative Degrees of Criminality[464]
Comparative Educational Tables[465]
Map showing the Number of Illegitimate Children[467]
Table of ditto[468]
Map showing the Number of Early Marriages[471]
Table of ditto[472]
Map showing the Number of Females[475]
Table of ditto[476]
Map showing Committals for Rape[477]
Table of ditto[479]
Map showing Committals for Carnally abusing Girls[481]
Table of ditto[482]
Map showing Committals for Disorderly Houses[485]
Table of ditto[486]
Map showing Concealment of Births[489]
Table of ditto[490]
Map showing Attempts at Miscarriage[493]
Table of ditto[494]
Map showing Assaults with Intent[497]
Table of ditto[498]
Map showing Committals for Bigamy[499]
Table of ditto[500]
Map showing Committals for Abduction[501]
Table of ditto[502]
Map showing the Criminality of Females[503]
Table of ditto[504]