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

by Sir Arthur Helps

But, in themselves, the accomplishments and acquirements, which working people may attain from social intercourse with their betters, are great things. The same kind-hearted employer, whom I have quoted before, speaks thus upon the subject. “Another point which has appeared to me of great importance is to provide as many resources as possible of interest and amusement for their leisure hours; something to which they may return with renewed relish when their daily work is done; which may render their homes cheerful and happy, and may afford subjects of thought, conversation and pursuit among them.” Moreover, a habit of attention, and even scientific modes of thought, are often called out in young people when they are learning some game. Besides to do anything, or know anything, which is harmless, is beneficial. A man will not be a worse workman because he can play at cricket, or at chess; or because he is a good draughtsman, or can touch some musical instrument with skill. He is likely to have more self-respect, and to be a better citizen. He cannot succeed in anything

without attention and endurance. And these are the qualities which will enable him to behave reasonably in the vicissitudes of trade, or to prepare as much as possible against them.

In the Report on the condition of children and young persons employed in Mines and Manufactures, there is some remarkable evidence given by a man who had himself risen from the state of life which he describes. It leads us to perceive the great good which any improvement in the domestic accomplishments of the women might be expected to produce. He says,

“Children during their childhood toil throughout the day, acquiring not the least domestic instruction to fit them for wives and mothers. I will name one instance; and this applies to the general condition of females doomed to, and brought up amongst, shop-work. My mother worked in a manufactory from a very early age. She was clever and industrious; and, moreover, she had the reputation of being virtuous. She was regarded as an excellent match for a working man. She was married early. She became the mother of eleven children: I am the eldest. To the best of her ability she performed the important duties of a wife and mother. She was lamentably deficient in domestic knowledge; in that most important of all human instruction, how to make the home and the fireside to possess a charm for her husband and children, she had never received one single lesson. She had children apace. As she recovered from her lying-in, so she went to work, the babe being brought to her at stated times to receive nourishment. As the family increased, so any thing like comfort disappeared altogether. The power to make home cheerful and comfortable was never given to her. She knew not the value of cherishing in my father’s mind a love of domestic objects. Not one moment’s happiness did I ever see under my father’s roof. All this dismal state of things I can distinctly trace to the entire and perfect absence of all training and instruction to my mother. He became intemperate; and his intemperance made her necessitous. She made many efforts to abstain from shop-work; but her pecuniary necessities forced her back into the shop. The family was large, and every moment was required at home. I have known her, after the close of a hard day’s work, sit up nearly all night for several nights together washing and mending of clothes. My father could have no comfort here. These domestic obligations, which in a well-regulated house (even in that of a working man, where there are prudence and good management) would be done so as not to annoy the husband, to my father were a source of annoyance; and he, from an ignorant and mistaken notion, sought comfort in an alehouse.

“My mother’s ignorance of household duties; my father’s consequent irritability and intemperance; the frightful poverty; the constant quarrelling; the pernicious example to my brothers and sisters; the bad effect upon the future conduct of my brothers; one and all of us being forced out to work so young that our feeble earnings would produce only 1s. a-week; cold and hunger, and the innumerable sufferings of my childhood, crowd upon my mind and overpower me. They keep alive a deep anxiety for the emancipation of the thousands of families in this great town and neighbourhood, who are in a similar state of horrible misery. My own experience tells me that the instruction of the females in the work of a house, in teaching them to produce cheerfulness and comfort at the fireside, would prevent a great amount of misery and crime. There would be fewer drunken husbands and disobedient children. As a working man, within my own observation, female education is disgracefully neglected. I attach more importance to it than to any thing else.”

This evidence is the more significant, because, one sees that the poor woman had the material of character out of which the most engaging qualities might have been formed. Let her have seen better things in early life, and even if her schooling had been somewhat deficient, had she but enjoyed the advantage of such social intercourse with her betters as we are now considering, that poor woman might have been a source of joy and hope to her family, instead of a centre of repulsion.

Dr. Cooke Taylor, in his “Tour in the Manufacturing Districts,” has given a table,

which I subjoin, “showing the degree of instruction, age, and sex; of the persons taken into custody, summarily convicted, or held to bail, and tried and convicted, in Manchester, in the year 1841.” The table was formed on statistical details furnished by Sir Charles Shaw. It shows a state of facts which has been deduced from other tables of a like nature, but the facts are of such moment, that they can hardly be kept too much in mind; especially when we consider that there are large towns in which, as I have said before, half at least of the juvenile population is growing up without education of any kind whatever. [147] If such are the favourable results even of that small and superficial education, which by the way I would rather call instruction than education, described in the second and third headings of the table, what may we not expect from a training where the youth or maiden finds in her employers not only instructors, but friends and occasional companions? What store of labour on the part of judges, jailors, and policemen, must be saved by even a few of such employers.

		TOTAL IN THE YEAR1841.			Degree ofInstruction
					1. NeitherRead nor Write.		2. Read onlyor Read & Write imperfectly.		3. Read andWrite well.		4. SuperiorInstruction.
		M. & F.	Male.	Fem.	Male.	Fem.	Male.	Fem.	Male.	Fem.	Male.	Fem.
1st Class	Taken into Custody	13345	9925	3420	4901	2070	3944	1218	873	119	207	13
2nd Class	Summarily Convicted or held to Bail	2138	1661	447	795	265	660	198	193	14	13	. .
3rd Class	Tried and Convicted	24	645	179	277	100	276	72	82	7	10	. .

AGES.
	Under 10 Years of age.		10 Years, & under 15.		15 Years, & under 20.		20 Years, & under 25.		25 Years, & under 30.		30 Years, & under 40.		40 Years, & under 50.		50 Years & under 60.		60 Years, & upwards.
	Male.	Fem.	Male.	Fem.	Male.	Fem.	Male.	Fem.	Male.	Fem.	Male.	Fem.	Male.	Fem.	Male.	Fem.	Male.	Fem.
1st Class	62	6	681	83	1581	656	2425	909	1805	755	1775	582	1018	284	422	85	156	60
2nd Class	4	. .	151	17	302	84	418	150	264	93	327	75	129	39	49	14	17	5
3rd Class	. .	. .	30	2	150	54	196	61	97	21	109	25	43	11	15	3	5	2

Some persons may object to encouraging anything like refinement amongst the operatives; and others, who would hardly object in open terms, find it difficult to reconcile themselves to the idea of it. Whatever there is in this repugnance that arises from any selfish motive should be instantly cast aside. Do not let us be meanly afraid that the classes below us will tread too closely on our heels. What a disgrace it is, if, with our much larger opportunities of leisure, with professions that demand a perpetual exercise of the intellectual faculties, we cannot preserve, on the average, an intellectual superiority fully equivalent to the difference of rank and station. Let the vast tracts now left barren smile with cultivation: the happier lands, which the rivers of civilization have enriched for ages, will still maintain their supremacy. And remember this, that every insight you give the humbler classes into the vast expanse of knowledge, you give them the means of estimating with a deference founded on reason, those persons who do possess knowledge of any kind. Let us have faith that knowledge must in the long run lead to good; and let us not fancy that our