Among the master manufacturers who had been incredulous concerning these conditions until the alarm of contagion arose, was the first Sir Robert Peel. He made a personal investigation and saw the abominations of the system; he declared his convictions and introduced into Parliament the first legislative measure for the protection of children. This was in the year 1802, and after many reverses he ultimately obtained the act known as the 42d Geo. III, “for the preservation of the Health and Morals of Apprentices and others, employed in Cotton and other mills.”
This act is chiefly interesting because it established the principle of factory legislation, a principle which later in the century was greatly to promote the welfare of the masses. His first bill, however, referred only to apprentices and after its enactment children instead of being imported from the workhouses as formerly were nevertheless hired from their parents. Their services were dignified by the name of free labor, but because they were not accorded the protection given to apprentices their condition was little better than that of actual slavery.
The next step in the progress of factory legislation was to extend the protection to young persons engaged in manual employment whether apprentices or not. Time does not permit us to follow the interesting history of factory legislation, under the devoted leadership of Mr. Horner, Sir John Hobhouse (afterwards Lord Broughton), Mr. Saddler, and Lord Astley (afterwards the Earl of Shaftesbury). But the evidences of the social condition of the toilers brought out by the Parliamentary debates of 1816, 1818, 1819, and 1832, are all of the same nature and reveal a state of human misery without a parallel in history.
We turn now from child labor to the sanitary conditions of the manufacturing towns. The report printed by Doctor Kay in 1832, is an astounding document; it shows that out of six hundred and eighty-seven streets inspected, more than one half contained heaps of refuse or stagnant pools; and of nearly seven thousand houses inspected, more than one third were out of repair, damp, or ill-ventilated, and an equally large proportion lacked all sanitary conveniences, even of the most primitive kind.
The population lived on the simplest diet. Breakfast consisted of tea or coffee with a little bread, while sometimes the men had oatmeal porridge; dinner consisted generally of boiled potatoes heaped into one large dish over which melted lard was poured and sometimes a few pieces of fried fat bacon were added. Those who obtained higher wages or families whose aggregate income was large added a greater portion of animal food to this meal at least three times a week, but the quantity of meat consumed by the laboring population was not large.
The typical family sat around the table, plunging their spoons into the common dish and with animal eagerness satisfied the cravings of their appetite. The evening meal consisted of tea, often mingled with spirits and accompanied by a little bread. The population thus scantily nourished was crowded in one dense mass in cottages, separated by narrow, unpaved streets, in an atmosphere loaded with smoke. Engaged in an employment which unremittingly exhausted their physical energies, these men and women lacked every moral and intellectual stimulus; living in squalid wretchedness and on meagre food it was small wonder that their superfluous gains were spent in debauchery. With domestic economy neglected, domestic comfort unknown, home had no other relation to the factory operative than that of a shelter. At this period the number of operatives above the age of forty was incredibly small.
In a pamphlet printed during a great turnout in 1831, we find certain very interesting statistics concerning 1665 persons whose ages ranged between fifteen and sixty. Of these 1584 were under forty-five years of age, only fifty-one between forty-five and fifty were counted as fit for work, while only three had lived to be sixty years old. Such figures make it evident that large numbers of workers, prematurely unfitted for labor, came to live upon the toil of their own children. Nor was this all, for “puny and sickly parents gave birth to puny and sickly children, and thus the mischief continued its progress, one generation transmitting its accumulated evils to the next.”
VI
CHARTISM
Such was the condition of the manufacturing population of England in the early days of the factory system. It is evident that these conditions must inevitably give rise to a deep social discontent which sooner or later must become articulate, and we find from the very beginning of the factory system the records of innumerable riots.
The history of these disturbances begins with the opposition to the introduction of new machinery. Rebellious craftsmen bound themselves by fearful oaths into secret organizations, the members of which were known as Luddites, from the name of their legendary leader—Ben Ludd. His name was the password to their secret meetings, at which plans were made for the destruction of property, plans afterwards carried out with open violence. Then followed innumerable riots arising from that growing social discontent which led in the beginning to factory legislation, and later to Parliamentary reform. It must not be thought that only the factory folk were discontented. The unrest was general throughout the lower classes; it was felt, moreover, in the ranks of the rapidly growing middle class, and the justice of the demand for better conditions was admitted now and then by individuals in the governing class—men of the broader vision. I have in my possession an interesting pamphlet containing the proceedings in the trial of indictment against Thomas Walker, a merchant of Manchester, and others, for a conspiracy to overthrow the constitution and government and to assist the French, the King’s enemies, should they invade the Kingdom. The case was tried at the Assizes at Lancaster, in 1794, and the account throws light upon the true state of the public mind in Manchester at that time.