Thrift Part 4

[Footnote 1: See the above Blue Book, p. 57, certifying the wages paid by Bliss and Son, of Chipping Norton Woollen Factory.]

But the colliers and iron-workers are paid much higher wages. One of the largest iron-masters recently published in the newspapers the names of certain colliers in his employment who were receiving from four to five pounds a week,--or equal to an annual income of from two hundred to two hundred and fifty pounds a year.[1]

[Footnote 1: Richard Fothergill, Esq., M.P. He published a subsequent letter, from which we extract the following:--

"No doubt such earnings seem large to clerks, and educated men, who after receiving a costly education have often to struggle hard for bread; but they are nevertheless the rightful earnings of steady manual labour; and I have the pleasure of adding that, while all steady, well-disposed colliers, in good health, could make equally good wages, many hundreds in South Wales are quietly doing as much or more: witness a steady collier in my employment, with his two sons living at home, whose monthly pay ticket has averaged 30 for the past twelvemonth.

"Another steady collier within my information, aided by his son, h as earned during the past five months upwards of 20 a month on the average, and from his manual labour as an ordinary collier--for it is of the working colliers and firemen I am speaking all along--he has built fifteen good houses, and, disregarding all menaces, he continues his habits of steady industry, whereby he hopes to acc.u.mulate an independence for his family in all events."]

Iron-workers are paid a still higher rate of wages. A plate-roller easily makes three hundred a year.[2] The rollers in rail mills often make much more. In busy times they have made as much as from seven to ten guineas a week, or equal to from three to five hundred a year.[3]

But, like the workers in cotton mills, the iron workers are often helped by their sons, who are also paid high wages. Thus, the under-hands are usually boys from fourteen years of age and upwards, who earn about nineteen s.h.i.+llings a week, and the helpers are boys of under fourteen, who earn about nine s.h.i.+llings a week.

[Footnote 2: See Messrs. Fox, Head, and Co.'s return, in the Blue Book above referred to. This was the rate of wages at Middlesborough, in Yorks.h.i.+re. In South Wales, the wages of the princ.i.p.al operatives engaged in the iron manufacture, recently, were--Puddlers. 9_s_. a day; first heaters on the rail mills. 8_s_. 9_d_. a day: second heaters, 11_s_.

7_d_.: roughers, 10_s_. 9_d_.: rollers, 13_s_. 2_d_., or equal to that amount.]

[Footnote 3: Even at the present time, when business is so much depressed, the mill-rollers make an average wage of 5 10_s_. a week.]

These earnings are far above the average incomes of the professional cla.s.ses. The rail rollers are able to earn a rate of pay equal to that of Lieutenant-Colonels in Her Majesty's Foot Guards; plate-rollers equal to that of Majors of Foot; and roughers equal to that of Lieutenants and Adjutants.

Goldsmith spoke of the country curate as "pa.s.sing rich with forty pounds a year." The incomes of curates have certainly increased since the time when Goldsmith wrote, but nothing like the incomes of skilled and unskilled workmen. If curates merely worked for money, they would certainly change their vocation, and become colliers and iron-workers.

When the author visited Renfrews.h.i.+re a few years ago, the colliers were earning from ten to fourteen s.h.i.+llings a day. According to the common saying, they were "making money like a minting machine." To take an instance, a father and three sons were earning sixty pounds a month,--or equal to a united income of more than seven hundred pounds a year. The father was a sober, steady, "eident" man. While the high wages lasted, he was the first to enter the pit in the morning, and the last to leave it at night. He only lost five days in one year (1873-4),--the loss being occasioned by fast-days and holidays. Believing that the period of high wages could not last long, he and his sons worked as hard as they could. They saved a good deal of money, and bought several houses; besides educating themselves to occupy higher positions.

In the same neighbourhood, another collier, with four sons, was earning money at about the same rate per man, that is about seventy-five-pounds a mouth, or nine hundred pounds a year. This family bought five houses within a year, and saved a considerable sum besides. The last information we had respecting them was that the father had become a contractor,--that he employed about sixty colliers and "reddsmen,"[1]

and was allowed so much for every ton of coals brought to bank. The sons were looking after their father's interests. They were all sober, diligent, sensible men; and took a great deal of interest in the education and improvement of the people in their neighbourhood.

[Footnote 1: "Reddsmen" are the men who clear the way for the colliers.

They "redd up" the _debris_, and build up the roof (in the long wall system) as the colliery advances.]

At the same time that these two families of colliers were doing so well, it was very different with the majority of their fellow-workmen. These only worked about three days in every week. Some spent their earnings at the public-house; others took a whisky "ploy" at the seaside. For that purpose they hired all the gigs, droskies, cabs, or "machines," about a fortnight beforehand. The results were seen, as the successive Monday mornings come round. The magistrate sat in the neighbouring town, where a number of men and women, with black eyes and broken heads, were brought before him for judgment. Before the time of high wages, the Court-house business was got through in an hour: sometimes there was no business at all. But when the wages were doubled, the magistrate could scarcely get through the business in a day. It seemed as if high wages meant more idleness, more whisky, and more broken heads and faces.

These were doubtless "roaring times" for the colliers, who, had they possessed the requisite self-denial, might have made little fortunes.

Many of the men who worked out the coal remained idle three or four days in the week; while those who burnt the coal, were famished and frozen for want of it. The working people who were _not_ colliers, will long remember that period as the time of the _coal famine_. While it lasted, Lord Elcho went over to Tranent--a village in East Lothian--to address the colliers upon their thriftlessness, their idleness, and their attempted combinations to keep up the price of coal.

He had the moral courage--a quality much wanted in these days--to tell his const.i.tuents some hard but honest truths. He argued with them about the coal famine, and their desire to prolong it. They were working three days a week, and idling the other days. Some of them did not do a stroke of work during a week or a fortnight; others were taking about a hundred Bank holidays yearly. But what were they doing with the money they earned? Were they saving it for a rainy day; or, when the "roaring times" no longer existed, were they preparing to fall back upon the poor-rates? He found that in one case a man, with his two sons, was earning seven pounds in a fortnight. "I should like," he said, "to see those Scotchmen who are in the mining business taking advantage of these happy times, and endeavouring by their industry to rise from their present position--to exercise self-help, to acquire property, and possibly to become coal masters themselves."

It had been said in a newspaper, that a miner was earning wages equal to that of a Captain, and that a mining boy was earning wages equal to that of a Lieutenant in Her Majesty's service. "I only know," said Lord Elcho, "that I have a boy who, when he first joined Her Majesty's service, was an Ensign, and that his wage--to earn which, remember, he had, under the purchase system, to pay five hundred pounds,--was not the wage you are now receiving, but the wage which you were receiving in bad times,--and that was only five s.h.i.+llings a day." It might be said that the collier risks his life in earning his wages; but so does the soldier; and the gallant boy to whom Lord Elcho referred, afterwards lost his life in the Ashantee campaign.

The times of high wages did not leave a very good impression on the public mind. Prices became higher, morals became lower, and the work done was badly done. There was a considerable deterioration in the character of British workmans.h.i.+p. "We began to rely too much upon the foreigner. Trade was to a large extent destroyed, and an enormous loss of capital was sustained, both by the workmen and by the masters. Lord Aberdare was of opinion that three millions sterling were lost by _the workmen alone_, during the recent strike in South Wales. One hundred and twenty thousand workmen were in enforced idleness at once, and one hundred and fifty thousand pounds were lost every week in wages during the time that they remained idle.

What the employers think of the recent flash of "prosperity," can easily be imagined. But it may not be unnecessary to quote some of the statements of correspondents. A large employer of labour in South Lancas.h.i.+re says: "Drunkenness increases, and personal violence is not sufficiently discouraged. High wages and household suffrage came upon the people before education had prepared them for the change."

In a large iron-work near Newcastle, where the men were paid the highest wages for rolling plates and rails--and where they were earning between three and four hundred pounds a year--the proprietors observe: "Except in a few instances, we are afraid that workmen and their families spend most of their earnings." Another employer in South Staffords.h.i.+re says: In the majority of cases, the men employed in the iron-work spend the whole of their wages before the end of the following week. There are, of course, some exceptions; but they are, unhappily, very few." Another, in South Wales, says: "As to the thrifty habits of the men, a small minority are careful and saving; they generally invest their money in cottage property. But the great majority of the men spend their money often before they earn it, and that in the most reckless way. Large sums are spent in drink: this leads to idleness; and, owing to drinking and idling, the works are kept short of men until about Wednesday in each week, when the greater part of the most idly disposed have become sobered down. Of course, when wages are low, the men work more regularly. There is less drinking, and altogether the condition of the place is healthier in every respect both in a moral and physical sense."

Another observer remarks, that the miners of Bilston are about six thousand in number, and they spend more than fifty thousand pounds annually in the purchase of ale and liquors. Their improvidence may be studied with advantage in the Bilston Market. No other market is supplied with finer poultry, or comparatively to the population, in greater abundance; and this is chiefly, if not entirely, for, the consumption of the labouring cla.s.ses,--for the resident inhabitants, not directly a.s.sociated with those cla.s.ses are few in number. Sordid and ill-favoured men may there be seen buying on Sat.u.r.day, chickens, ducks, and geese, which they eat for supper; and in some instances, bottled porter and wine. Yet, so little have they beforehand in the world, that if the works were to stop, they would begin within a fortnight to p.a.w.n the little furniture of their cottages, and their clothes, for subsistence and for drink.

Mr. Chambers, of Edinburgh, in his description of the working cla.s.ses of Sunderland makes these remarks: "With deep sorrow I mention that everywhere one tale was told. Intemperance prevails to a large extent; good wages are squandered on mean indulgences; there is little care for the morrow, and the workhouse is the ultimate refuge. One man, a skilled worker in an iron-foundry, was pointed out as having for years received a wage of one guinea a day, or six guineas a week; he had spent all, mostly in drink, and was now reduced to a lower department at a pound a week."

Another ill.u.s.tration occurs. A clerk at Blackburn took a house for twenty pounds a year, and sublet the cellars underneath to a factory operative at a rental of five pounds a year. The clerk had a wife, four children, and a servant; the operative had a wife and five children. The clerk and his family were well dressed, their children went to school, and all went to church on Sundays. The operative's family went, some to the factory, others to the gutter, but none to school; they were ill-dressed, excepting on Sundays, when they obtained their clothes from the p.a.w.nshop. As the Sat.u.r.days came round, the frying-pan in the cellar was almost constantly at work until Monday night; and as regularly as Thursday arrived, the bundle of clothes was sent to the p.a.w.nshop. Yet the income of the upper-cla.s.s family in the higher part of the house was a hundred a year; and the income of the lower cla.s.s family in the cellar was fifty pounds more--that is, a hundred and fifty pounds a year!

An employer in the same neighbourhood used to say, "I cannot afford lamb, salmon, young ducks and green peas, new potatoes, strawberries and such-like, until after my hands have been consuming these delicacies of the season for some three or four weeks."

The intense selfishness, thriftlessness, and folly of these highly paid operatives, is scarcely credible. Exceptions are frequently taken to calling the working cla.s.ses "the lower orders;" but "the lower orders"

they always will be, so long as they indicate such sensual indulgence and improvidence. In cases such as these, improvidence is not only a great sin, and a feeder of sin, but it is a great _cruelty_. In the case of the father of a family, who has been instrumental in bringing a number of helpless beings into the world, it is heartless and selfish in the highest degree to spend money on personal indulgences such as drink, which do the parent no good, and the mother and the children, through the hereditary bad example, an irreparable amount of mischief. The father takes sick, is thrown out of work, and his children are at once deprived of the means of subsistence. The reckless parent has not even taken the precaution to enter a Provident or a Benefit Society; and while he is sick, his wife and children are suffering the pangs of hunger. Or, he dies; and the poor creatures are thrown upon the charity of strangers, or on the miserable pittance wrung from the poor-rates.

It would seem to be of little use preaching up an extension of rights to a people who are so supinely indifferent to their own well-being,--who are really unconcerned about their own elevation. The friends of the industrious should faithfully tell them that they must exercise prudence, economy, and self-denial, if they would really be raised from selfish debas.e.m.e.nt, and become elevated to the dignity of thinking beings. It is only by practising the principles of self-dependence that they can achieve dignity, stability, and consideration in society; or that they can acquire such influence and power as to raise them in the scale of social well-being.

Brown, the Oxford shoemaker, was of opinion that "a good mechanic is the most independent man in the world." At least he ought to be such. He has always a market for his skill; and if he be ordinarily diligent, sober, and intelligent, he may be useful, healthy, and happy. With a thrifty use of his means, he may, if he earns from thirty to forty s.h.i.+llings a week, dress well, live well, and educate his children creditably.

Hugh Miller never had more than twenty-four s.h.i.+llings a week while working as a journeyman stonemason, and here is the result of his fifteen years' experience:--

"Let me state, for it seems to be very much the fas.h.i.+on to draw dolorous pictures of the condition of the labouring cla.s.ses, that from the close of the first year in which I worked as a journeyman until I took final leave of the mallet and chisel, I never knew what it was to want a s.h.i.+lling; that my two uncles, my grandfather, and the mason with whom I served my apprentices.h.i.+p--all working men--had had a similar experience; and that it was the experience of my father also. I cannot doubt that deserving mechanics may, in exceptional cases, be exposed to want; but I can as little doubt that the cases _are_ exceptional, and that much of the suffering of the cla.s.s is a consequence either of improvidence on the part of the competently skilled, or of a course of trifling during the term of apprentices.h.i.+p, quite as common as trifling at school, that always lands those who indulge in it in the hapless position of the inferior workman."

It is most disheartening to find that so many of the highest paid workmen in the kingdom should spend so large a portion of their earnings in their own personal and sensual gratification. Many spend a third, and others half their entire earnings, in drink. It would be considered monstrous, on the part of any man whose lot has been cast among the educated cla.s.ses to exhibit such a degree of selfish indulgence; and to spend even one-fourth of his income upon objects in which his wife and children have no share.

Mr. Roolmck recently asked, at a public meeting,[1] "Why should the mail who makes 200 or 300 a year by his mechanical labour, be a rude, coa.r.s.e, brutal fellow? There is no reason why he should be so.

[Footnote 1: Meeting of the Mechanics' Inst.i.tutes at Dewsbury, Yorks.h.i.+re.]

Why should he not be like a gentleman? Why should not his house be like my house? When I go home from my labour, what do I find? I find a cheerful wife--I find an elegant, educated woman. I have a daughter; she is the same. Why should not you find the same happy influences at home?

I want to know, when the working man comes from his daily labour to his home, why he should not find his table spread as mine is spread; why he should not find his wife well dressed, cleanly, loving, kind, and his daughter the same?... We all know that many working men, earning good wages, spend their money in the beerhouse and in drunkenness, instead of in clothing their wives and families. Why should not these men spend their wages as I spend my small stipend, in intellectual pleasures, in joining with my family in intellectual pursuits? Why should not working men, after enjoying their dinners and thanking G.o.d for what they have got, turn their attention to intellectual enjoyments, instead of going out to get drunk in the nearest pothouse! Depend on it these things ought to go to the heart of a working man; and he is not a friend to the working man who talks to him and makes him believe that he is a great man in the State, and who don't tell him what are the duties of his position."

It is difficult to account for the waste and extravagance of working people. It must be the hereditary remnant of the original savage. It must be a survival. The savage feasts and drinks until everything is gone; and then he hunts or goes to war. Or it may be the survival of slavery in the State. Slavery was one of the first of human inst.i.tutions. The strong man made the weak man work for him. The warlike race subdued the less warlike race, and made them their slaves. Thus slavery existed from the earliest times. In Greece and Rome the righting was done by freemen, the labour by helots and bondsmen. But slavery also existed in the family. The wife was the slave of her husband as much as the slave whom he bought in the public market.

Slavery long existed among ourselves. It existed when Caesar lauded. It existed in Saxon times, when the household work was done by slaves. The Saxons were notorious slave-dealers, and the Irish were their best customers. The princ.i.p.al mart was at Bristol, from whence the Saxons exported large numbers of slaves into Ireland so that, according to Irish historians, there was scarcely a house in Ireland without a British slave in it.

When the Normans took possession of England, they continued slavery.

They made slaves of the Saxons themselves whom they decreed villeins and bondsmen. Domesday Book shows that the toll of the market at Lewes in Suss.e.x was a penny for a cow, and fourpence for a slave--not a serf (_adscriptus glebae_), but an unconditional bondsman. From that time slavery continued in various forms. It is recorded of "the good old times," that it was not till the reign of Henry IV. (1320--1413) that villeins, farmers, and mechanics were permitted by law to put their children to school; and long after that, they dared not educate a son for the Church without a licence from the lord.[1] The Kings of England, in their contests with the feudal aristocracy, gradually relaxed the slave laws. They granted charters founding Royal Burghs; and when the slaves fled into them, and were able to conceal themselves for a year and a day, they then became freemen of the burgh, and were declared by law to be free.

[Footnote 1: _Henry's History of England_, Book v., chap. 4]

The last serfs in England were emanc.i.p.ated in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but the last serfs in Scotland, were not emanc.i.p.ated until the reign of George III, at the end of last century. Before then, the colliers and salters belonged to the soil. They were bought and sold with it. They had no power to determine what their wages should be. Like the slaves in the Southern States of America, they merely accepted such sustenance as was sufficient to maintain their muscles and sinews in working order.

They were never required to save for any purpose, for they had no right to their own savings. They did not need to provide for to-morrow; their masters provided for them. The habit of improvidence was thus formed; and it still continues. The Scotch colliers, who were recently earning from ten to fourteen s.h.i.+llings a day, are the grandsons of men who were slaves down to the end of last century. The preamble of an Act pa.s.sed in 1799 (39th Geo. III., c. 56), runs as follows: "Whereas, before the pa.s.sing of an Act of the fifteenth of his present Majesty, many colliers, coal-bearers, and salters _were bound for life to, and transferable with, the collieries and salt-works where they worked_, but by the said Act their bondage was taken off and they were declared to be free, notwithstanding which many colliers and coalbearers and salters still continue in a state of bondage from not having complied with the provisions, or from having become subject to the penalties of that Act,"

etc. The new Act then proceeds to declare them free from servitude. The slaves formerly earned only enough to keep them, and laid by nothing whatever for the future. Hence we say that the improvidence of the colliers, as of the iron-workers, is but a survival of the system of slavery in our political const.i.tution.

Matters have now become entirely different. The workman, no matter what his trade, is comparatively free. The only slavery from which he suffers, is his pa.s.sion for drink. In this respect he still resembles the Esquimaux and the North American Indians. Would he be really free?

Then he must exercise the powers of a free, responsible man. He must exercise self-control and self-constraint,--and sacrifice present personal gratifications for prospective enjoyments of a much higher kind. It is only by self-respect and self-control that the position of the workman can be really elevated.

The working man is now more of a citizen than he ever was before. He is a recognized power, and has been admitted within the pale of the const.i.tution. For him mechanics' inst.i.tutes, newspapers, benefit societies, and all the modern agencies of civilization, exist in abundance. He is admitted to the domain of intellect; and, from time to time, great thinkers, artists, engineers, philosophers, and poets, rise up from his order, to proclaim that intellect is of no rank, and n.o.bility of no exclusive order. The influences of civilization are rousing society to its depths; and daily evidences are furnished of the rise of the industrious cla.s.ses to a position of social power.

Discontent may, and does, exhibit itself; but discontent is only the necessary condition of improvement; for a man will not be stimulated to rise up into a higher condition unless he be first made dissatisfied with the lower condition out of which he has to rise. To be satisfied is to repose; while, to be rationally dissatisfied, is to contrive, to work, and to act, with an eye to future advancement.

The working cla.s.ses very much under-estimate themselves. Though they receive salaries or wages beyond the average earnings of professional men, yet many of them have no other thought than that of living in mean houses, and spending their surplus time and money in drink. They seem wanting in respect for themselves as well as for their cla.s.s. They encourage the notion that there is something degrading in labour,--than which nothing can be more false. Labour of all kinds is dignifying and honourable; it is the idler, above all others, who is undignified and dishonourable.

"Let the working man," says Mr. Sterling, "try to connect his daily task, however mean, with the highest thoughts he can apprehend, and he thereby secures the rightfulness of his lot, and is raising his existence to his utmost good. It is because the working man has failed to do this, and because others have failed to help him as they ought, that the lot of labour has. .h.i.therto been a.s.sociated with what is mean and degrading."

With respect to remuneration, the average of skilled mechanics and artisans, as we have already said, are better paid than the average of working curates. The working engineer is better paid than the ensign in a marching regiment. The foreman in any of our large engineering establishments is better paid than an army surgeon. The rail-roller receives over a guinea a day, while an a.s.sistant navy surgeon receives fourteen s.h.i.+llings, and after three years' service, twenty-one s.h.i.+llings, with rations. The majority of dissenting ministers are much worse paid than the better cla.s.ses of skilled mechanics and artizans; and the average of clerks employed in counting-houses and warehouses receive wages very much lower.

Skilled workmen might--and, if they had the will, they would--occupy a social position as high as the educated cla.s.ses we refer to. What prevents them rising? Merely because they will not use their leisure to cultivate their minds. They have sufficient money; it is culture that they want. They ought to know that the position of men in society does not depend so much upon their earnings, as upon their character and intelligence. And it is because they neglect their abundant opportunities,--because they are thriftless and spend their earnings in animal enjoyments,--because they refuse to cultivate the highest parts of their nature,--that they are excluded, or rather self-excluded, from those social and other privileges in which they are ent.i.tled to take part.