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

by Sir Arthur Helps

Indeed, everybody is likely at some time or other to have great doubts about this distress which is so much talked of. We walk through the metropolis in the midst of activity and splendour: we go into the country and see there a healthful and happy appearance as we pass briskly along: and we naturally think that there must be great exaggeration in what we have heard about the distressed condition of the people. But we forget that Misery is a most shrinking unobtrusive creature. It cowers out of sight. We may walk

along the great thoroughfares of life without seeing more than the distorted shadow of it which mendicancy indicates. A little thought, however, will soon bring the matter home to us. It has been remarked of some great town, that there are as many people living there in courts and cellars, or at least in the state of destitution which that mode of life would represent, as the whole adult male population of London, above the rank of labourers, artisans, and tradesmen. Probably we should form the most inadequate estimate of this court and cellar population, even after a long sojourn in the town. Now ponder over the fact. Think of all the persons in London coming within the above description whom you know by sight. Think how small a part that is of the class in question, how you pass by throngs of men in that rank every day without recognizing a single person. Then reflect that a number of people as great as the whole of this class may be found in one town exhausting the dregs of destitution. When we have once appreciated

the matter rightly, the difficulty of discerning, from casual inspection, the amount of distress, will only seem to us an additional element of misfortune. We shall perceive in this quiescence and obscurity only another cause of regret and another incitement to exertion.

CHAP. II.
Remedies and Reflections suggested by the Health of Towns Report.

Having now made ourselves to some extent aware of the distress existing amongst the labouring classes, we will consider the main branches of physical improvement discussed in the Health of Towns Report.

1. Ventilation.

I put this first, being convinced that it is the most essential. It is but recently that any of us have approximated to a right appreciation of the value of pure air. But look for a moment at one of those great forest

trees; and then reflect that all that knotted and gnarled bulk has been mainly formed out of air. We, in our gross conceptions, were wont to think that the fatness of the earth was the tree’s chief source of nourishment. But it is not so. In some cases this is almost perceptible to the eye, for we see the towering pine springing from a soil manifestly of the scantiest nutritive power. When we once apprehend how large a constituent part, air is, of bodies inanimate and animate, of our own for instance, we shall be more easily convinced of the danger of living in an impure atmosphere.

And whether it agree with our preconceived notions or not, the evidence on this point is quite conclusive. The volumes of the Health of Towns Report teem with instances of the mischief of insufficient ventilation. It is one body of facts moving in one uniform direction. Dr. Guy noticed that, in a building where there was a communication between the stories, disease increased in regular gradations, floor by floor, as the air was more and more vitiated, the employment of the

men being the same. But it is needless to quote instances of what is so evident. With respect to the remedies, these are as simple as the evils to be cured are great. For instance, there was a lodging house in Glasgow where fever resided; “but by making an opening from the top of each room, through a channel of communication to an air pump, common to all the channels, the disease disappeared altogether.” Other modes of ventilation are suggested in the Report; and one very simple device introduced by Mr. Toynbee, a perforated zinc plate fixed in the window-pane furthest from the fire or the bed, has been found of signal benefit. I shall take another opportunity of saying more upon the subject of ventilation. Of all the sanitary remedies, it is the most in our power. And I am inclined to believe that half per cent. of the annual outlay of London, that is ten shillings in every hundred pounds, spent only for one year in improvements connected with ventilation, would diminish the sickness of London by one fourth.