Smith, --is larger than the average
quantity
indicates, since he eats a larger share .
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
.
89 The means [of subsistence] being always supposed to be a fixed quantity.
90As to any further reduction of his income, he may say, nihil habeo nihil curo.
He has no fears for the future, because he has now only the spare supply necessary to keep him.
He has reached the zero from which are dated the calculations of the farmer.
Come what will, he has no share either in prosperity or adversity.
?
91
In the year 1863, an official inquiry took place into the conditions of nourishment and labour of the criminals condemned to transportation and penal servitude. The results are recorded in two voluminous Blue books. Among other things it is said:
--From an elaborate comparison between the diet of convicts in the convict prisons in England, and that of paupers in workhouses and of free labourers in the same country . . . it certainly appears that the former are much better fed than either of the two other classes,? 92 whilst --the amount of labour required from an ordinary convict under penal servitude is about one half of what would be done by an ordinary day-labourer. ? 93
A few characteristic depositions of witnesses: John Smith, governor of the Edinburgh prison, deposes:
No. 5056. --The diet of the English prisons [is] superior to that of ordinary labourers in England. ? No 50. --It is the fact . . . that the ordinary agricultural labourers in Scotland very seldom get any meat at all. ? Answer No. 3047. --Is there anything that you are aware of to account for the necessity of feeding them very much better than ordinary labourers? - Certainly not. ? No. 3048. --Do you think that further experiments ought to be made in order to ascertain whether a dietary might not be hit upon for prisoners employed on public works nearly
? 467
Chapter 25
approaching to the dietary of free labourers? . . . ? 94 --He [the agricultural labourer] might say: ? I work hard, and have not enough to eat, and when in prison I did not work harder where I had plenty to eat, and therefore it is better for me to be in prison again than here. '? 95
From the tables appended to the first volume of the Report I have compiled the annexed comparative summary.
? ? ? ? ? WEEKLY AMOUNT OF NUTRIENTS
? ? ? ? ? ? Quantity Of Nitrogenous Ingredients
? ? ? Quantity Of Non-Nitro- genous In- gredients
? ? ? ? Quantity Of Mineral Matter
? ? ? ? ? TOTAL
? ? ? ? Ounces
? ? Ounces
? ? ? Ounces
? ? ? ? Ounces
? ? Portland (convict)
? ? ? 28. 95
? ? ? 150. 06
? ? ? ? 4. 68
? ? ? ? ? 183. 69
? ? ? Sailor in the Navy
? ? 29. 63
? ? 152. 91
? ? 4. 52
? ? ? ? 187. 06
? ? Soldier
? ? ? 25. 55
? ? ? 114. 49
? ? ? ? 3. 94
? ? ? ? ? 143. 98
? ? ? Working Coachmaker
? ? ? 24. 53
? ? ? 162. 06
? ? ? 4. 23
? ? ? ? ? 190. 82
? ? ? Compositor
? ? 21. 24
? ? 100. 83
? ? 3. 12
? ? ? ? 125. 19
? Agricultural labourer96
? ? ? 17. 73
? ? 118. 06
? ? ? 3. 29
? ? ? ? ? 139. 08
The general result of the inquiry by the medical commission of 1863 on the food of the lowest fed classes, is already known to the reader. He will remember that the diet of a great part of the agricultural labourers' families is below the minimum necessary --to arrest starvation diseases. ? This is especially the case in all the purely rural districts of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Wilts, Stafford, Oxford, Berks, and Herts.
--The nourishment obtained by the labourer himself,? says Dr. E.
Smith, --is larger than the average quantity indicates, since he eats a larger share . . . necessary to enable him to perform his labour . . . of food than the other members of the family, including in the poorer districts nearly all the meat and bacon. . . . The quantity of food obtained by the wife and also by the children at the period of rapid growth, is in many cases, in almost every county, deficient, and particularly in nitrogen. ? 97
The male and female servants living with the farmers themselves are sufficiently nourished. Their number fell from 288,277 in 1851, to 204,962 in 1861.
--The labour of women in the fields,? says Dr. Smith, --whatever may be its disadvantages, . . . is under present circumstances of great advantage to the family, since it adds that amount of income which . . . provides shoes and clothing and pays the rent, and thus enables the family to be better fed. ? 98
One of the most remarkable results of the inquiry was that the agricultural labourer of England, as compared with other parts of the United Kingdom, --is considerably the worst fed,? as the appended table shows:
Quantities of Carbon and Nitrogen weekly consumed by an average agricultural adult:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? Carbon, grains
? ? ? Nitrogen, grains
? ? England
? ? ? 46,673
? ? ? ? 1,594
? ? 468
Chapter 25
--To the insufficient quantity and miserable quality of the house accommodation generally had,? says Dr. Simon, in his official Health Report, --by our agricultural labourers, almost every page of Dr. Hunter's report bears testimony. And gradually, for many years past, the state of the labourer in these respects has been deteriorating, house-room being now greatly more difficult for him to find, and, when found, greatly less suitable to his needs than, perhaps, for centuries had been the case. Especially within the last twenty or thirty years, the evil has been in very rapid increase, and the household circumstances of the labourer are now in the highest degree deplorable. Except in so far as they whom his labour enriches, see fit to treat him with a kind of pitiful indulgence, he is quite peculiarly helpless in the matter. Whether he shall find house-room on the land which he contributes to till, whether the house-room which he gets shall be human or swinish, whether he shall have the little space of garden that so vastly lessens the pressure of his poverty - all this does not depend on his willingness and ability to pay reasonable rent for the decent accommodation he requires, but depends on the use which others may see fit to make of their ? right to do as they will with their own. ' However large may be a farm, there. is no law that a certain proportion of labourers' dwellings (much less of decent dwellings) shall be upon it; nor does any law reserve for the labourer ever so little right in that soil to which his industry is as needful as sun and rain. . . . An extraneous element weighs the balance heavily against him . . . the influence of the Poor Law in its provisions concerning settlement and chargeability. 100 Under this influence, each parish has a pecuniary interest in reducing to a minimum the number of its resident labourers: - for, unhappily, agricultural labour instead of implying a safe and permanent independence for the hardworking labourer and his family, implies for the most part only a longer or shorter circuit to eventual pauperism - a pauperism which, during the whole circuit, is so near, that any illness or temporary failure of occupation necessitates immediate recourse to parochial relief - and thus all residence of agricultural population in a parish is glaringly an addition to its poor- rates . . . . Large proprietors 101 . . . have but to resolve that there shall be no labourers' dwellings on their estates, and their estates will thenceforth be virtually free from half their responsibility for the poor. How far it has been intended, in the English constitution and law, that this kind of unconditional property in land should be acquirable, and that a landlord ? doing as he wills with his own,' should be able to treat the cultivators of the soil as aliens, whom he may expel from his territory, is a question which I do not pretend to discuss. . . . For that (power) of eviction . . . does not exist only in theory. On a very large scale it prevails in practice - prevails . . . as a main governing condition in the household circumstances of agricultural labour. . . . As regards the extent of the evil, it may suffice to refer to the evidence which Dr. Hunter has compiled from the last census, that destruction of houses, notwithstanding increased local demands for them, had, during the last ten years, been in progress in 821 separate parishes or townships of England, so that irrespectively of persons who had been forced to become non-resident (that is in the parishes in which they work), these parishes
? ? ? Wales
? ? ? ? 48,354
? ? ? 2,031
? ? ? Scotland
? ? ? ? 48,980
? ? ? ? 2,348
? ? ? Ireland99
? ? ? ? ? ? 43,366
? ? ? ? 2,434
? ? ? 469
Chapter 25
and townships were receiving in 1861, as compared with 1851, a population 5 1/3 per cent. greater, into houseroom 41/2 per cent. less. . . When the process of depopulation has completed itself, the result, says Dr. Hunter, is a show-village where the cottages have been reduced to a few, and where none but persons who are needed as shepherds, gardeners, or game-keepers, are allowed to live; regular servants who receive the good treatment usual to their class. 102 But the land requires cultivation, and it will be found that the labourers employed upon it are not the tenants of the owner, but that they come from a neighbouring open village, perhaps three miles off, where a numerous small proprietary had received them when their cottages were destroyed in the close villages around. Where things are tending to the above result, often the cottages which stand, testify, in their unrepaired and wretched condition, to the extinction to which they are doomed. They are seen standing in the various stages of natural decay. While the shelter holds together, the labourer is permitted to rent it, and glad enough he will often be to do so, even at the price of decent lodging. But no repair, no improvement shall it receive, except such as its penniless occupants can supply. And when at last it becomes quite uninhabitable - uninhabitable even to the humblest standard of serfdom - it will be but one more destroyed cottage, and future poor-rates will be somewhat lightened. While great owners are thus escaping from poor-rates through the depopulation of lands over which they have control, the nearest town or open village receive the evicted labourers: the nearest, I say, but this --nearest? may mean three or four miles distant from the farm where the labourer has his daily toil. To that daily toil there will then have to be added, as though it were nothing, the daily need of walking six or eight miles for power of earning his bread. And whatever farm work is done by his wife and children, is done at the same disadvantage. Nor is this nearly all the toil which the distance occasions him. In the open village, cottage-speculators buy scraps of land, which they throng as densely as they can with the cheapest of all possible hovels. And into those wretched habitations (which, even if they adjoin the open country, have some of the worst features of the worst town residences) crowd the agricultural labourers of England. 103. . . . Nor on the other hand must it be supposed that even when the labourer is housed upon the lands which he cultivates, his household circumstances are generally such as his life of productive industry would seem to deserve. Even on princely estates . . . his cottage . . . may be of the meanest description. There are landlords who deem any stye good enough for their labourer and his family, and who yet do not disdain to drive with him the hardest possible bargain for rent. 104 It may be but a ruinous one-bedroomed hut, having no fire-grate, no privy, no opening window, no water supply but the ditch, no garden - but the labourer is helpless against the wrong. . . . And the Nuisances Removal Acts . . . are . . . a mere dead letter . . . in great part dependent for their working on such cottage-owners as the one from whom his (the labourer's) hovel is rented. . . . From brighter, but exceptional scenes, it is requisite in the interests of justice, that attention should again be drawn to the overwhelming preponderance of facts which are a reproach to the civilisation of England. Lamentable indeed, must be the case, when, notwithstanding all that is evident with regard to the quality of the present accommodation, it is the common conclusion of competent observers that even the general badness of dwellings is an evil infinitely less urgent than their mere numerical insufficiency. For years the over-crowding of rural labourers'
? 470
Chapter 25
dwellings has been a matter of deep concern, not only to persons who care for sanitary good, but to persons who care for decent and moral life. For, again and again in phrases so uniform that they seem stereotyped, reporters on the spread of epidemic disease in rural districts, have insisted on the extreme importance of that over-crowding, as an influence which renders it a quite hopeless task, to attempt the limiting of any infection which is introduced. And again and again it has been pointed out that, notwithstanding the many salubrious influences which there are in country life, the crowding which so favours the extension of contagious disease, also favours the origination of disease which is not contagious. And those who have denounced the over-crowded state of our rural population have not been silent as to a further mischief. Even where their primary concern has been only with the injury to health, often almost perforce they have referred to other relations on the subject. In showing how frequently it happens that adult persons of both sexes, married and unmarried, are huddled together in single small sleeping rooms, their reports have carried the conviction that, under the circumstances they describe, decency must always be outraged, and morality almost of necessity must suffer. 105 Thus, for instance, in the appendix of my last annual report, Dr. Ord, reporting on an outbreak of fever at Wing, in Buckinghamshire, mentions how a young man who had come thither from Wingrave with fever, --in the first days of his illness slept in a room with nine other persons. Within a fortnight several of these persons were attacked, and in the course of a few weeks five out of the nine had fever, and one died. . . ? From Dr. Harvey, of St. George's Hospital, who, on private professional business, visited Wing during the time of the epidemic, I received information exactly in the sense of the above report. . . . --A young woman having fever, lay at night in a room occupied by her father and mother, her bastard child, two young men (her brothers), and her two sisters, each with a bastard child - 10 persons in all. A few weeks ago 13 persons slept in it. ? 106
Dr.
In the year 1863, an official inquiry took place into the conditions of nourishment and labour of the criminals condemned to transportation and penal servitude. The results are recorded in two voluminous Blue books. Among other things it is said:
--From an elaborate comparison between the diet of convicts in the convict prisons in England, and that of paupers in workhouses and of free labourers in the same country . . . it certainly appears that the former are much better fed than either of the two other classes,? 92 whilst --the amount of labour required from an ordinary convict under penal servitude is about one half of what would be done by an ordinary day-labourer. ? 93
A few characteristic depositions of witnesses: John Smith, governor of the Edinburgh prison, deposes:
No. 5056. --The diet of the English prisons [is] superior to that of ordinary labourers in England. ? No 50. --It is the fact . . . that the ordinary agricultural labourers in Scotland very seldom get any meat at all. ? Answer No. 3047. --Is there anything that you are aware of to account for the necessity of feeding them very much better than ordinary labourers? - Certainly not. ? No. 3048. --Do you think that further experiments ought to be made in order to ascertain whether a dietary might not be hit upon for prisoners employed on public works nearly
? 467
Chapter 25
approaching to the dietary of free labourers? . . . ? 94 --He [the agricultural labourer] might say: ? I work hard, and have not enough to eat, and when in prison I did not work harder where I had plenty to eat, and therefore it is better for me to be in prison again than here. '? 95
From the tables appended to the first volume of the Report I have compiled the annexed comparative summary.
? ? ? ? ? WEEKLY AMOUNT OF NUTRIENTS
? ? ? ? ? ? Quantity Of Nitrogenous Ingredients
? ? ? Quantity Of Non-Nitro- genous In- gredients
? ? ? ? Quantity Of Mineral Matter
? ? ? ? ? TOTAL
? ? ? ? Ounces
? ? Ounces
? ? ? Ounces
? ? ? ? Ounces
? ? Portland (convict)
? ? ? 28. 95
? ? ? 150. 06
? ? ? ? 4. 68
? ? ? ? ? 183. 69
? ? ? Sailor in the Navy
? ? 29. 63
? ? 152. 91
? ? 4. 52
? ? ? ? 187. 06
? ? Soldier
? ? ? 25. 55
? ? ? 114. 49
? ? ? ? 3. 94
? ? ? ? ? 143. 98
? ? ? Working Coachmaker
? ? ? 24. 53
? ? ? 162. 06
? ? ? 4. 23
? ? ? ? ? 190. 82
? ? ? Compositor
? ? 21. 24
? ? 100. 83
? ? 3. 12
? ? ? ? 125. 19
? Agricultural labourer96
? ? ? 17. 73
? ? 118. 06
? ? ? 3. 29
? ? ? ? ? 139. 08
The general result of the inquiry by the medical commission of 1863 on the food of the lowest fed classes, is already known to the reader. He will remember that the diet of a great part of the agricultural labourers' families is below the minimum necessary --to arrest starvation diseases. ? This is especially the case in all the purely rural districts of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Wilts, Stafford, Oxford, Berks, and Herts.
--The nourishment obtained by the labourer himself,? says Dr. E.
Smith, --is larger than the average quantity indicates, since he eats a larger share . . . necessary to enable him to perform his labour . . . of food than the other members of the family, including in the poorer districts nearly all the meat and bacon. . . . The quantity of food obtained by the wife and also by the children at the period of rapid growth, is in many cases, in almost every county, deficient, and particularly in nitrogen. ? 97
The male and female servants living with the farmers themselves are sufficiently nourished. Their number fell from 288,277 in 1851, to 204,962 in 1861.
--The labour of women in the fields,? says Dr. Smith, --whatever may be its disadvantages, . . . is under present circumstances of great advantage to the family, since it adds that amount of income which . . . provides shoes and clothing and pays the rent, and thus enables the family to be better fed. ? 98
One of the most remarkable results of the inquiry was that the agricultural labourer of England, as compared with other parts of the United Kingdom, --is considerably the worst fed,? as the appended table shows:
Quantities of Carbon and Nitrogen weekly consumed by an average agricultural adult:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? Carbon, grains
? ? ? Nitrogen, grains
? ? England
? ? ? 46,673
? ? ? ? 1,594
? ? 468
Chapter 25
--To the insufficient quantity and miserable quality of the house accommodation generally had,? says Dr. Simon, in his official Health Report, --by our agricultural labourers, almost every page of Dr. Hunter's report bears testimony. And gradually, for many years past, the state of the labourer in these respects has been deteriorating, house-room being now greatly more difficult for him to find, and, when found, greatly less suitable to his needs than, perhaps, for centuries had been the case. Especially within the last twenty or thirty years, the evil has been in very rapid increase, and the household circumstances of the labourer are now in the highest degree deplorable. Except in so far as they whom his labour enriches, see fit to treat him with a kind of pitiful indulgence, he is quite peculiarly helpless in the matter. Whether he shall find house-room on the land which he contributes to till, whether the house-room which he gets shall be human or swinish, whether he shall have the little space of garden that so vastly lessens the pressure of his poverty - all this does not depend on his willingness and ability to pay reasonable rent for the decent accommodation he requires, but depends on the use which others may see fit to make of their ? right to do as they will with their own. ' However large may be a farm, there. is no law that a certain proportion of labourers' dwellings (much less of decent dwellings) shall be upon it; nor does any law reserve for the labourer ever so little right in that soil to which his industry is as needful as sun and rain. . . . An extraneous element weighs the balance heavily against him . . . the influence of the Poor Law in its provisions concerning settlement and chargeability. 100 Under this influence, each parish has a pecuniary interest in reducing to a minimum the number of its resident labourers: - for, unhappily, agricultural labour instead of implying a safe and permanent independence for the hardworking labourer and his family, implies for the most part only a longer or shorter circuit to eventual pauperism - a pauperism which, during the whole circuit, is so near, that any illness or temporary failure of occupation necessitates immediate recourse to parochial relief - and thus all residence of agricultural population in a parish is glaringly an addition to its poor- rates . . . . Large proprietors 101 . . . have but to resolve that there shall be no labourers' dwellings on their estates, and their estates will thenceforth be virtually free from half their responsibility for the poor. How far it has been intended, in the English constitution and law, that this kind of unconditional property in land should be acquirable, and that a landlord ? doing as he wills with his own,' should be able to treat the cultivators of the soil as aliens, whom he may expel from his territory, is a question which I do not pretend to discuss. . . . For that (power) of eviction . . . does not exist only in theory. On a very large scale it prevails in practice - prevails . . . as a main governing condition in the household circumstances of agricultural labour. . . . As regards the extent of the evil, it may suffice to refer to the evidence which Dr. Hunter has compiled from the last census, that destruction of houses, notwithstanding increased local demands for them, had, during the last ten years, been in progress in 821 separate parishes or townships of England, so that irrespectively of persons who had been forced to become non-resident (that is in the parishes in which they work), these parishes
? ? ? Wales
? ? ? ? 48,354
? ? ? 2,031
? ? ? Scotland
? ? ? ? 48,980
? ? ? ? 2,348
? ? ? Ireland99
? ? ? ? ? ? 43,366
? ? ? ? 2,434
? ? ? 469
Chapter 25
and townships were receiving in 1861, as compared with 1851, a population 5 1/3 per cent. greater, into houseroom 41/2 per cent. less. . . When the process of depopulation has completed itself, the result, says Dr. Hunter, is a show-village where the cottages have been reduced to a few, and where none but persons who are needed as shepherds, gardeners, or game-keepers, are allowed to live; regular servants who receive the good treatment usual to their class. 102 But the land requires cultivation, and it will be found that the labourers employed upon it are not the tenants of the owner, but that they come from a neighbouring open village, perhaps three miles off, where a numerous small proprietary had received them when their cottages were destroyed in the close villages around. Where things are tending to the above result, often the cottages which stand, testify, in their unrepaired and wretched condition, to the extinction to which they are doomed. They are seen standing in the various stages of natural decay. While the shelter holds together, the labourer is permitted to rent it, and glad enough he will often be to do so, even at the price of decent lodging. But no repair, no improvement shall it receive, except such as its penniless occupants can supply. And when at last it becomes quite uninhabitable - uninhabitable even to the humblest standard of serfdom - it will be but one more destroyed cottage, and future poor-rates will be somewhat lightened. While great owners are thus escaping from poor-rates through the depopulation of lands over which they have control, the nearest town or open village receive the evicted labourers: the nearest, I say, but this --nearest? may mean three or four miles distant from the farm where the labourer has his daily toil. To that daily toil there will then have to be added, as though it were nothing, the daily need of walking six or eight miles for power of earning his bread. And whatever farm work is done by his wife and children, is done at the same disadvantage. Nor is this nearly all the toil which the distance occasions him. In the open village, cottage-speculators buy scraps of land, which they throng as densely as they can with the cheapest of all possible hovels. And into those wretched habitations (which, even if they adjoin the open country, have some of the worst features of the worst town residences) crowd the agricultural labourers of England. 103. . . . Nor on the other hand must it be supposed that even when the labourer is housed upon the lands which he cultivates, his household circumstances are generally such as his life of productive industry would seem to deserve. Even on princely estates . . . his cottage . . . may be of the meanest description. There are landlords who deem any stye good enough for their labourer and his family, and who yet do not disdain to drive with him the hardest possible bargain for rent. 104 It may be but a ruinous one-bedroomed hut, having no fire-grate, no privy, no opening window, no water supply but the ditch, no garden - but the labourer is helpless against the wrong. . . . And the Nuisances Removal Acts . . . are . . . a mere dead letter . . . in great part dependent for their working on such cottage-owners as the one from whom his (the labourer's) hovel is rented. . . . From brighter, but exceptional scenes, it is requisite in the interests of justice, that attention should again be drawn to the overwhelming preponderance of facts which are a reproach to the civilisation of England. Lamentable indeed, must be the case, when, notwithstanding all that is evident with regard to the quality of the present accommodation, it is the common conclusion of competent observers that even the general badness of dwellings is an evil infinitely less urgent than their mere numerical insufficiency. For years the over-crowding of rural labourers'
? 470
Chapter 25
dwellings has been a matter of deep concern, not only to persons who care for sanitary good, but to persons who care for decent and moral life. For, again and again in phrases so uniform that they seem stereotyped, reporters on the spread of epidemic disease in rural districts, have insisted on the extreme importance of that over-crowding, as an influence which renders it a quite hopeless task, to attempt the limiting of any infection which is introduced. And again and again it has been pointed out that, notwithstanding the many salubrious influences which there are in country life, the crowding which so favours the extension of contagious disease, also favours the origination of disease which is not contagious. And those who have denounced the over-crowded state of our rural population have not been silent as to a further mischief. Even where their primary concern has been only with the injury to health, often almost perforce they have referred to other relations on the subject. In showing how frequently it happens that adult persons of both sexes, married and unmarried, are huddled together in single small sleeping rooms, their reports have carried the conviction that, under the circumstances they describe, decency must always be outraged, and morality almost of necessity must suffer. 105 Thus, for instance, in the appendix of my last annual report, Dr. Ord, reporting on an outbreak of fever at Wing, in Buckinghamshire, mentions how a young man who had come thither from Wingrave with fever, --in the first days of his illness slept in a room with nine other persons. Within a fortnight several of these persons were attacked, and in the course of a few weeks five out of the nine had fever, and one died. . . ? From Dr. Harvey, of St. George's Hospital, who, on private professional business, visited Wing during the time of the epidemic, I received information exactly in the sense of the above report. . . . --A young woman having fever, lay at night in a room occupied by her father and mother, her bastard child, two young men (her brothers), and her two sisters, each with a bastard child - 10 persons in all. A few weeks ago 13 persons slept in it. ? 106
Dr.
