Secondly, it is stated that the seats of disease are the seats of crime, a result that we should naturally expect.
Again, it appears from many instances that what we are wont to call the improvements in great towns are apt to be attended by an increase of discomfort to the poor. To them, the opening of thoroughfares through densely crowded districts, in the displacement which it creates, is an immediate aggravation of distress. Considering this, ought we not to endeavour that improvements for the rich and the poor should go on simultaneously? It is a hard measure to destroy any considerable quantity of house property appropriated to the working classes, and thereby to raise their rents and densify their population, without making any attempt to supply the vacuum thus created in that market.
It is stated by Dr. Arnott “that nearly half of the accidental illnesses that occur
among the lower classes might be prevented by proper public management:” a statement which the general body of evidence, I think, confirms. Now, consider this result. Think what one night of high fever is: then think that numbers around you are nightly suffering this, from causes which the most simple sanitary regulations would obviate at once. When you are wearied with statistical details, vexed with the difficulty of trying to make men do any thing for themselves, disgusted with demagogues playing upon the wretchedness of the poor, then think of some such signal fact as this; and you will cheerfully, again, gird up yourself to fight, as heretofore, against evils which are not to be conquered without many kinds of endurance as well as many forms of endeavour.
I do not wish to raise a senseless moan over human suffering. Pain is to be borne stoutly, nor always looked on with unfriendly eye. But surely we need not create it in this wholesale fashion; and then say that
that which is a warning and a penalty, is but wholesome discipline, to be regarded with Mussulman indifference.
I come now to what seems to me the most important result obtained in the whole course of the elaborate evidence taken before the Health of Towns Commission. It appears not only that distress can exist with a high rate of wages, without apparently any fault on the part of the sufferers; [214a] but, actually, that in some instances, there is an increase of sickness with an increase of wages. [214b] The medical officer of the Spitalfields’ District states that the weavers have generally less fever when they are out of work. This statement is confirmed by testimony of a like nature from Paisley, Glasgow, and Manchester. It is one of the most significant facts
that has struggled into upper air. We talk of the increase of the wealth of nations—it may be attended by an increase of misery and mortality, and the production of additional thousands of unhealthy, parentless, neglected human beings. It may only lead to a larger growth of human weeds. The explanation of the matter is simple. Dr. Southwood Smith tells us that “Fever is the disease of adolescence and manhood.” Now, wretched as the dwelling houses of the poor are, their places of work are frequently still worse. [215a] Consequently, with an increase of work, there comes an increase of fever from working in ill-ventilated rooms, an increase of poor-rates, [215b] and an especial increase of orphanage and widowhood, as the fever chiefly seizes upon persons in the prime of life. And a large part of this increase is
thus distinctly brought home to neglect, or ignorance, on the part of the employers of labour. Surely, as soon as they are made cognizant of this matter, they will at once hasten to correct it. In the appendix to this work there is a letter from Dr. Arnott, giving an account of the causes of defective ventilation, and the remedies for it. We can no longer say that the evil is one which requires more knowledge than we possess to master it. Science, which cannot hitherto be said to have done much for the poor, now comes to render them signal service. It is for us to use the knowledge, thus adapted to our hands, for a purpose which Bacon describes as one of the highest ends of all knowledge, “the relief of man’s estate.” Consider the awful possibility that we may at some future time fully appreciate the results of our doings upon earth. Imagine an employer of labour having before him, in one picture as it were, groups of wretched beings, followed by a still more deteriorated race, with their vices and their sufferings expressed in some material, palpable
form—all his own handiwork in it brought out—and at the end, to console him, some heaps of money. If he had but a vision of these things by night, while yet on earth, such an all-embracing vision as comes upon a drowning man! Then imagine him to awake to life. You would not then find that he knew methods of ensuring to his workmen fresh air, but lacked energy, or care, to adventure any thing for them. Talk not to me of money, he would say—Money-making may be one of the conditions of continuance in this matter that I have taken in hand, but on no account the one great object. Indeed, if a man cannot make some good fabric by good means, he would perform a nobler part, as Mr. Carlyle would tell us, in retiring from the contest, and saying at once that the nature of things is too hard for him. He is far, far, better conquered in that way, than obstructing the road by work badly done, or adding to the world’s difficulties by inhumanity.