The Claims of Labour: An essay on the duties of the employers to the employed

by Sir Arthur Helps

“I venture to add, as the expression of an opinion founded on communications from all parts of the kingdom, that as a highly important sanitary measure connected with any general building regulations, whether for villages or for any class of towns, arrangements should be made for all houses to be supplied with good water, and should be prescribed as being as essential to cleanliness and health as the possession of a roof or of due space; that for this purpose, and in places where the supplies are not at present satisfactory, power should be vested in the most eligible local administrative body, which will generally be found to be that having charge of cleansing and structural arrangements, to procure proper supplies for the cleansing of the streets, for sewerage, for protection against fires, as well as for domestic use.”

It is possible that some of my readers may think that the wretched state of ventilation, drainage, and building, which I have been commenting upon, is mainly to be accounted for by poverty. It belongs, they may say, to an old country; it is the long accumulated neglect of ages; it embodies the many vicissitudes of trade which Great Britain has felt; it is a thing which the people would remedy for themselves, if you could only give them more employment and better wages. In answer to this I will refer to an authority quoted by Mr. Chadwick in his Essay on the “Pressure and Progress of the Causes of Mortality,” read before the Statistical Society in 1843.

“In abundance of employment, in high wages, and the chief circumstances commonly reputed as elements of prosperity of the labouring classes, the city of New York is deemed pre-eminent. I have been favoured with a copy of ‘The Annual Report of the Interments in the City and County of New York for the Year 1842,’ presented to the Common Council by Dr. John Griscom, the city inspector, in which it may be seen how little those circumstances have hitherto preserved large masses of people from physical depression. He has stepped out of the routine to examine on the spot the circumstances attendant on the mortality which the figures represent. He finds that upwards of 33,000 of the population of that city live in cellars, courts, and alleys, of which 6618 are dwellers in cellars. ‘Many,’ he states, ‘of these back places are so constructed as to cut off all circulation of air, the line of houses being across the entrance, forming a cul de sac, while those in which the line is parallel with, and at one side of the entrance, are rather more favourably situated, but still excluded from any general visitation of air in currents. As to the influence of these localities upon the health and lives of the inmates, there is, and can be, no dispute; but few are aware of the dreadful extent of the disease and suffering to be found in them. In the damp, dark, and chilly cellars, fevers, rheumatism, contagious and inflammatory disorders, affections of the lungs, skin, and eyes, and numerous others, are rife, and too often successfully combat the skill of the physician and the benevolence of strangers.

“‘I speak now of the influence of the locality merely. The degraded habits of life, the degenerate morals, the confined and crowded apartments, and insufficient food, of those who live in more elevated rooms, comparatively beyond the reach of the exhalations of the soil, engender a different train of diseases, sufficiently distressing to contemplate; but the addition to all these causes of the foul influences of the incessant moisture and more confined air of under-ground rooms, is productive of evils which humanity cannot regard without shuddering.’

“He gives instances where the cellar population had been ravaged by fever, whilst the population occupying the upper apartments of the same houses were untouched. In respect to the condition of these places, he cites the testimony of a physician, who states that, ‘frequently in searching for a patient living in the same cellar, my attention has been attracted to the place by a peculiar and nauseous effluvium issuing from the door, indicative of the nature and condition of the inmates.’ A main cause of this is the filthy external state of the dwellings and defective street cleansing and defective supplies of water, which, except that no provision is made for laying it on the houses of the poorer classes, is about to be remedied by a superior public provision.”

After considering this account of the State of New York, it will hardly do to say, that, even under favourable circumstances, you can leave the great mass of the people to take care of those structural arrangements with regard to their habitations, which only the

scientific research of modern times has taught any persons to regard with due attention.

We have now gone over some of the principal places where the employer of labour may find scope for benevolent exertion. It has been a most inartificial division of the subject, but still one that may be retained in the memory, which is a strange creature, not always to be bound by logic, but led along by minute ties of association, among which those of place are very strong and clinging. I now venture to discuss a branch of the subject which can hardly be referred to any particular spot, unless, indeed, I were to name the manufacturer’s own house as the fit ground for it: I mean the social intercourse between the employers and the employed. Some persons will, perhaps, be startled at the phrase; hardly, however, those who have come thus far with me. By social intercourse I do not merely mean that which will naturally take place in the ordinary charities, such as visiting the sick, managing clothing societies, and the like: but that intercourse which includes an interchange of thought, an occasional community

of pursuit, and an opportunity of indirect instruction; which may be frequent and extensive enough to avoid the evil effects of a sense of perpetual condescension on one side, and timidity on the other; and which may give the employer some chance at least of learning the general wants and wishes of his people, and also of appreciating their individual characters.

This matter is not an easy one. It requires tact, patience, discretion, and the application of several of the maxims mentioned in the preceding chapter. I am not sure however, that it is any sacrifice whatever in the way of pleasure. The manufacturer’s family who occasionally give an evening to social intercourse with their people, will not, perhaps, find that evening less amusing than many that they may pass with their equals.

The advantage, to the rising generation of working people, of some intercourse with their betters, would be very great. I must here quote the authority of one who has fully expressed in action the benevolent views which he has indicated in the following words. “No humble cottage youth or maiden will

ever acquire the charm of pleasing manners by rules, or lectures, or sermons, or legislation, or any other of those abortive means by which we from time to time endeavour to change poor human nature, if they are not permitted to see what they are taught they should practise, and to hold intercourse with those whose manners are superior to their own.” This intercourse will probably lead to something like accomplishments among the young people. Some of them will profit more than others from the manners and accomplishments which they will observe. And such differences will create a higher order of love among the working people. The manners of one sex will become different from the manners of the other; and the difference of individuals in each sex will be brought into play. All this is favourable to morality. When people work at the same kind of work, have no different pursuits to call out the different qualities of the two sexes, and have all of them manners of the same rude stamp, you can hardly expect that there will be much to ennoble them in their affections.