CHAPTER III.
Slow Advancing.
“You talk about sending black coats among the Indians; now we have no such poor children among us; we have no such drunkards or people who abuse the Great Spirit. Indians dare not do so. They pray to the Great Spirit, and He is kind to them. Now, we think it would be better for you teachers all to stay at home, and go to work right here in your own streets, where all your good work is wanted. This is my advice. I would rather not say any more.”—Extract from Speech of the Chief of the Ojibbeway Indians.
Ah this drink, this terrible drink, which still goes on slaying its thousands and tens of thousands! No wonder that indignation has been so roused against it, that many have banished it from their tables, and even from their houses! Our poor Potteries have endured a full share of the misery and destruction that ever follow it.
During the summer the brickmaker, with the assistance of the elder members of his family, sometimes earns between £2 and £3 per week. One man informed me that he and his family had earned £2, 18s. nearly every week through the season; and yet that man’s wife and three children were shivering at my door, one bitterly cold morning in December, and begging for food and clothing. The effects of the hard work and hard drinking had been to bring on a terrible illness, and not a sixpence was left of all the money which they had earned “when the sun was shining.” After enduring privation and suffering too terrible to contemplate, the man and one of the children died, and the poor widow with the remaining children went to the workhouse.
Were it not for this inveterate habit of drinking, few places would be more independent of help from without than the Potteries; but long habits of intemperance have so impoverished the people, that few can now afford to buy the pigs for themselves; they therefore fatten them “upon commission,” and in this way can gain only a miserable livelihood. Considerable sums of money, however, may be still earned by those who are careful and prudent, both by pig-feeding and brick-making. The latter work is not constant, but can be procured at only one particular time of the year. Hence in the course of the same year may be seen, in the same family, the extreme of prodigality and destitution. The effect of an increased income, generally, is that more money goes to the public-house, and the future is still unprovided for. I have often told these labourers that their memories seemed much shorter than the bees’, birds’, and ants’. These little creatures never forget that winter will return, and make the most ample provision for it. But any stranger would think that the present was the first winter which these human beings had ever known; that it had come upon them unexpectedly, and found them unprepared for it.
The only means by which many of them get food for the winter is by pawning the little furniture that they have, or by “going on tick,”—in other words, by getting trusted at the shops. Those, however, who manage to pay for their things as they buy them, do it in such a manner as to be little better off than under the “tick” system. The child is sometimes sent to the shop three times a-day, to obtain the supplies for each meal as it is wanted. Of course, the shopkeeper cannot give so much time, paper, and string without being paid for them. After a careful calculation, I feel convinced that, whether the poor man’s wants are supplied through the “tick system,” or the “hand-to-mouth” system, in either case he gets the value of only fourteen shillings for his pound. This proves the justice of the saying, that poverty perpetuates itself.
The winter of 1856–57 was one of unusual distress. Less casual work than usual turned up in the neighbourhood; and had it not been that several of the women found employment as charwomen and laundresses, many would have had no resource but the workhouse.
When the mother has to go out to work that she may obtain the necessary food for herself and children, the effects to the family are often most disastrous. On her return, wearied out in earning her hard-won half-crown, she finds that the baby has been crying for hours (as well it might, poor thing!); that another child has been scalded by hot water from the kettle; that another, perhaps, has wandered away, and has not come home, and that she herself must go and seek for it; while the “little girl” left in charge of the whole is severely scolded, if not beaten, for her many shortcomings. In the midst of all these annoyances, the father returns for the hundredth time, without having found work, exhausted and footsore in his fruitless search; and, sorer still in spirit, as he feels that he is not wanted in the world, that the labour-market has no demand for him, he enters the wretched hovel which he is obliged to call “home.” He hears the crying of the children, the scolding of the mother; and sees everywhere the destruction which children left to themselves will cause. The wife throws her half-crown at him as he enters, crying, “There! much good may that do yer. Here’s a shilling’s worth of things broke,—Johnny’s coat is burnt, and Sally’s pinafore; the children have eat up the tea out of the paper; and yer’ll have to pay for a sight o’ doctoring afore this scalded leg is well.” A man already angry would, with less aggravation than this, return railing for railing; and so the angry words are given back again with interest. Blows occasionally follow, according to the temper of the moment, sometimes inflicted on the provoking wife, sometimes on the poor victim whose negligence is supposed to have caused all these misfortunes. The cravings of hunger oblige some one at last to pick up the half-crown, and “the girl” is despatched with many threats to the nearest places where bread and cheese and porter can be procured, and charged at the same time to get “two penn’orth of gin,” to give to the baby to make it sleep. This expensive food consumes the greater part of the half-crown. Three pennyworth of bread, two pennyworth of vegetables, two pennyworth of barley or rice, and four pennyworth of meat well cooked would have supplied all the family with a good nourishing supper, leaving something for the mid-day meal of the morrow; but there has been no one at home to cook, and in their excited and miserable state it is not food they care for, so much as something that will dim the perception of their extreme wretchedness—anything that will make them sleep and forget. So they drink the porter, and the baby has the gin, and, in spite of the moan of the scalded child, they sleep; but in such an atmosphere, surrounded with such dirt within and stench without, that should they all awake with burning fever the next morning, no one can wonder. They tell me that, on the mornings after such nights, they suffer from intense depression, so much so, that whatever remains of the half-crown is spent on drink, in order to drag themselves up to a repetition of their daily toil.
Now, the earnings of the family just described (for I have drawn a picture from real life) averaged for five months in the summer £2, 10s. per week. They could, of course, have lived very well upon twenty-five shillings. If we reckon ten shillings for paying off old scores, buying new clothes, furniture, and sundries, there would still be fifteen shillings left, which might have been put into the Savings’ Bank to meet the demands of the ensuing winter. But instead of doing this, the man in his distress confessed to me, that the cost of what he and his wife drank each week of their prosperity would amount to at least a pound. The usual quantity of beer that a brickmaker takes during the hours of work is seven pints. This expenditure is looked upon simply as necessary: and when money is plentiful, there must be the drinking for luxury as well as necessity.
The only excuse which can be made for this recklessness is that the toil of the brickmaker is excessive. In the summer, he is expected to work from four or five o’clock in the morning till eight o’clock in the evening. This pressure of work necessitates the drying of sand on Sunday for the next week’s work. The Sabbath is no day of rest to him. He is expected even on that day, and during his short night, to be watchful over the bricks, and cover them up on the approach of rain. Should he oversleep himself, (which is at least possible after such a day’s work,) or be away at a place of worship on a Sunday, and the bricks in the meantime be injured by wet, he would lose some part of his wages, of which a portion is always kept back by the master.