Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century

by James Richard Joy

When the labor leaders turned to him, in 1833, to champion their cause, he took the question into consideration over night, obtained his wife's cordial approval, consulted his Bible, resorted to prayer, and the next day gave himself unreservedly to the cause. His friends of the aristocratic families shunned him, his parents discountenanced his design and closed their doors against him for many years, but, said he, in dedication of himself to the work, "I believe it is my duty to God and to the poor, and I trust He will support me."

The manufacturers sought to side-track the Ten-Hours Bill by proposing that nothing should be done until a committee of Parliament should make thorough inquiry into the alleged conditions in the mills. But the very commission which they asked for could not go against the evidence of their own eyes in the factory towns, swarming with ignorant, ragged child-operatives, prematurely old. The commission reported: (1) that the work hours of children and adults were the same; (2) that such labor was resulting in the permanent physical and intellectual deterioration of the young; (3) that these maltreated children were not free agents, but hired out by parents or guardians; and finally, "that a case was made out for the interference of the legislature on behalf of the children employed in factories."

In place of the radical measure of Lord Ashley the government carried a substitute, the Factory Law of 1833. "Night work was prohibited to persons under eight even in cotton, wool, worsted, hemp, flax, tow, and linen spinneries and weaving mills; children from nine to thirteen were not allowed to work more than forty- eight hours a week, and young persons thirteen to eighteen were restricted to sixty-eight hours a week. In silk factories children might be admitted under nine, and children under thirteen were to be allowed ten hours a day. Provision was made for a certain amount of school attendance, and factory inspectors were provided to inquire into violations of the statute." At the time Ashley and his friends bewailed the passage of the Factory Act as a defeat, though the former eventually admitted that "it contained some humane and highly useful provisions, and established for the first time the great principle that labor and education should be combined."

Defeat, if that be a defeat, which forces your foe to adopt your own principles in order to win, only proved Lord Ashley's superior fitness for the leadership of the cause. Instead of abandoning the contest he began to prepare for a fresh assault by collecting information touching every part of the question. He visited the workrooms and lodgings of the operatives in every part of the land, examining at first hand their condition, and studying the problem in all its bearings with the same persistency and intellectual force which had won him his "first- class" at the university. Nothing which could subserve his cause escaped his searching inquiry, and when he arose to address Parliament his mastery of his subject was so complete as to baffle the skill of the few who durst ask him questions.

As the Anti-Corn Law gained ground the labor reformers met with a new form of opposition. Lord Ashley was taunted with inconsistency in seeking the welfare of the factory workers, while neglecting to remedy the no less servile condition of the agricultural laborers. Manufacturers as high-minded as Cobden and Bright did not scruple to say—as doubtless they believed—that the outcry against the manufacturers sprang from the desire of the landowners to harass the opponents of "the tax on bread." John Bright answered Lord Ashley's arguments for the ten hours' clause in the bill of 1844 in a speech as vindictive as it was eloquent. Though Ashley was again defeated, at this time the new Factory Act, which was passed, carried farther the principles of the original law. In 1845 his calico print-works measure brought relief to thousands of weary little hands, and in 1847 the long- worked-for and earnestly prayed-for Ten-Hours Bill became a law. Lord Ashley had resigned his seat in Parliament, but had not relaxed his efforts in behalf of the bill which he had borne on his heart for fourteen years. When the news came that the bill, after going through the Commons with flying colors, had passed the critical stage in the Upper House, Lord Ashley's feelings found vent in this entry in his journal: "I am humbled that my heart is not bursting with thankfulness to Almighty God—that I can find breath and sense to express my joy. What reward shall we give unto the Lord for all the benefits he hath conferred upon us? God, in his mercy, prosper the work and grant that these operatives may receive the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord! Praised be the Lord! Praised be the Lord in Christ Jesus!" The operatives received the news with tumultuous joy, for the act brought substantial relief to fully three hundred and sixty thousand persons, more than two-thirds of all the operatives then employed in the textile industries of the kingdom.

The manufacturers who attributed Ashley's professions of friendship for their employees to his class hatred of their masters little knew the man. His sympathies were engaged in behalf of the poor and weak in every calling, and the mill-hands were only the first whose cause he championed. The manufacturers had sometimes sought to divert attention from their own shortcomings by pointing to the greater hardship of the colliery workers, and in 1840 Lord Ashley took up this subject by moving for a parliamentary commission to inquire into the employment of the children of the poorer classes in mines and collieries. The first report of this commission, issued in 1842, is one of the most appalling of public documents. Sworn testimony was presented to show that much of the underground labor was performed by children under thirteen years of age, and that little boys and girls were set to work in the dark and noisome tunnels at the age of five. First as "trappers" these child laborers opened and shut the trap-doors in the passages of the mine. The stronger children, boys and girls alike, dragged and pushed the little coal wagons along the narrow passages—the roofs too low for them to stand upright, often so low as to compel them to creep on all- fours in the black slime of the floors. Some with laden baskets on their backs climbed many times a day up steep ascents. Some stood ankle-deep in water from morning till night in the depths of the pit, wearing out their little lives at the hand- pumps.

"The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing toward the west.
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free."

So sang Elizabeth Barrett of the sorrows of the children of the mines and mills in those dismal days, and it must be said for the great heart of England that its beat was still true. The coal- owners made the pitiful plea in extenuation of all the misery and indecency of the mines that without the labor of women and children the collieries must shut down, not only for lack of profit, but for the cogent reason that the flexible vertebra of childhood were especially adapted to the constrained positions required in the tunnels, and that there could be no good colliers unless as children they became inured to the privations and hardships of the life. The government tried to keep the report out of the hands of the indignant public, but "by a most providential mistake," as Lord Ashley believed, it got into circulation, to the horror and disgust of all right-minded persons. The press joined in the cry for remedial legislation. Ashley's speech in support of his Mines and Collieries Bill made an unusual impression in the House of Commons. Even Cobden, who had been ready to sneer at the "philanthropists" who opposed the repeal of the tax on bread, came over to the orator's side at the conclusion of his two hours' plea, and wringing his hand heartily, declared, "I don't think I have ever been put into such a frame of mind in all my life." From this time he no longer entertained doubts of Ashley's sincerity. The Queen and Prince Albert added their personal support. The government threw obstacles in the way of the bill, and the peers mutilated it, but Ashley's persistency carried it at last. Henceforth women and girls and boys under ten were excluded from underground work, and a system of mine inspection was established to secure the observance of the law. Such a triumph for morality and humanity was worth more to England than many battles won by force of arms.

There has been no retreat from the positions to which Lord Ashley carried the legislative protection of the working-classes. From time to time the Factory Laws were extended to cover the special demands of other industries, until the state had literally taken under its protection the whole class of children and young persons employed in manufacturing industries. It has done this in the name of the moral and physical health of the community. The general laws governing factories and workshops now cover a very wide scope. It is required that the building must be kept clean and sanitary; that dangerous machinery must be boxed and fenced; the hours of labor and meal-time for women and children are fixed, and children under ten may not be employed; certain holidays and half-holidays must be allowed to all "protected" persons; child-workers must go to school a certain proportion of the week; medical certificates of fitness for employment are required in the case of children; and notice of accidents causing loss of life or bodily injury must be sent to the government inspector. Many co-operated to bring about these results, but the chief advocate of all the beneficent reforms which have reinvigorated the English working-classes, saved the women from slavish toil and given them opportunity to make homes for their families, rescued the children from benumbing toil, and given them time for healthful recreation and mental improvement, is, by the common award of all, this simple-hearted Christian, Antony Ashley Cooper.

On the fly-leaf of a book in his library the Earl of Shaftesbury noted in pencil some of the obstacles which beset his progress when seeking the good of the distressed children: "I had to break every political connection, to encounter a most formidable array of capitalists, mill-owners, doctrinaires, and men who by natural impulse hate all 'humanity mongers' (tell it riot in Gath!) among the Radicals, the Irishmen, and a few sincere Whigs and Conservatives…..Peel was hostile…..Fielden and Brotherton were the only 'practical' men who supported me, and to practical prophecies of overthrow of trade, of ruin to the operatives themselves, I could only oppose 'humanity' and general principles. The newspapers were on the whole friendly. Out of Parliament there was in society every form of 'good-natured' and compassionate contempt…..In few instances did any mill-owner appear on a platform with me; in still fewer the ministers of any religious denomination—so cowed were they (or in themselves so indifferent) by the overwhelming influence of the cotton-lords."