at the
beginning
of this century, already noticed the better nourishment of the latter.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
, p.
114.
66 l. c. , p. 50.
67 --Public Health. Seventh Report. 1865,? p. 18. 68 l. c. , p. 165.
69 l. c. , p. 18, Note. -- The Relieving Officer of the Chapel-en-le-Frith Union reported to the Registar- General as follows: -- --At Doveholes, a number of small excavations have been made into a large
? 493 Chapter 25
hillock of lime ashes (the refuse of lime-kilns), and which are used as dwellings, and occupied by labourers and others employed in the construction of a railway now in course of construction through that neighbourhood. The excavations are small and damp, and have no drains or privies about them, and not the slightest means of ventilation except up a hole pulled through the top, and used for a chimney. In consequence of this defect, small-pox has been raging for some time, and some deaths [amongst the troglodytes] have been caused by it. ? (l. c. , note 2. )
70 The details given at the end of Part IV. refer especially to the labourers in coal mines. On the still worse condition in metal mines, see the very conscientious Report of the Royal Commission of 1864.
71 l. c. , pp. 180, 182. 72 l. c. , pp. 515, 517. 73 l. c. , p. 16.
74 --Wholesale starvation of the London Poor. . . . Within the last few days the walls of London have been placarded with large posters, bearing the following remarkable announcement: -- ? Fat oxen! Starving men! The fat oxen from their palace of glass have gone to feed the rich in their luxurious abode, while the starving men are left to rot and die in their wretched dens. ' The placards bearing these ominous words are put up at certain intervals. No sooner has one set been defaced or covered over, than a fresh set is placarded in the former, or some equally public place. . . . This . . . reminds one of the secret revolutionary associations which prepared the French people for the events of 1789. . . . At this moment, while English workmen with their wives and children are dying of cold and hunger, there are millions of English gold -- the produce of English labour -- being invested in Russian, Spanish, Italian, and other foreign enterprises. ? --Reynolds' Newspaper, January 20th, 1867.
75 James E. Thorold Rogers. (Prof. of Polit. Econ. in the University of Oxford. ) --A History of Agriculture and Prices in England. ? Oxford, 1866, v. 1, p. 690. This work, the fruit of patient and diligent labour, contains in the two volumes that have so far appeared, only the period from 1259 to 1400. The second volume contains simply statistics. It is the first authentic --History of Prices? of the time that we possess.
76 --Reasons for the Late Increase of the Poor-Rates: or a comparative view of the prices of labour and provisions. ? Lond. , 1777, pp. 5, 11.
77 Dr. Richard Price: --Observations on Reversionary Payments,? 6th Ed. By W. Morgan, Lond. , 1803, v. 11. , pp. 158, 159. Price remarks on p. 159: --The nominal price of day-labour is at present no more than about four times, or, at most, five times higher than it was in the year 1514. But the price of corn is seven times, and of flesh-meat and raiment about fifteen times higher. So far, therefore, has the price of labour been even from advancing in proportion to the increase in the expenses of living, that it does not appear that it bears now half the proportion to those expenses that it did bear. ?
78 Barton, l. c. , p. 26. For the end of the 18th century cf. Eden, l. c. 79 Parry, l. c. , p. 86.
80 ibid. , p. 213.
81 S. Laing, l. c. , p. 62.
82 --England and America. ? Lond. , 1833, Vol. 1, p. 47.
83 London Economist, May 29th, 1845, p. 290.
84 The landed aristocracy advanced themselves to this end, of course per Parliament, funds from the State Treasury, at a very low rate of interest, which the farmers have to make good at a much higher rate.
85 The decrease of the middle-class farmers can be seen especially in the census category: --Farmer's son, grandson, brother, nephew, daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece"; in a word, the members of his
? ? 494 Chapter 25
own family, employed by the farmer. This category numbered, in 1851, 216,851 persons; in 1861, only 176,151. From 1851 to 1871, the farms under 20 acres fell by more than 900 in number; those between 50 and 75 acres fell from 8,253 to 6,370; the same thing occurred with all other farms under 100 acres. On the other hand, during the same twenty years, the number of large farms increased; those of 300-500 acres rose from 7,771 to 8,410, those of more than 500 acres from 2,755 to 3,914, those of more than 1,000 acres from 492 to 582.
86 The number of shepherds increased from 12,517 to 25,559. 87 Census, l. c. , p. 36.
88 Rogers, l. c. , p. 693, p. 10. Mr. Rogers belongs to the Liberal School, is a personal friend of Cobden and Bright, and therefore no laudator temporis acti.
89 --Public Health. Seventh Report,? 1865, p. 242. It is therefore nothing unusual either for the landlord to raise a labourer's rent as soon as he hears that he is earning a little more, or for the farmer to lower the wage of the labourer, --because his wife has found a trade,? l. c.
90 l. c. , p. 135. 91 l. c. , p. 134.
92 --Report of the Commissioners . . . relating to Transportation and Penal Servitude,? Lond. , 1863, pp. 42, 50.
93 l. c. , p. 77. --Memorandum by the Lord Chief Justice. ? 94 l. c. , Vol. 11, Minutes of Evidence.
95 l. c. , Vol. 1. Appendix, p. 280.
96 l. c. , pp. 274, 275.
97 --Public Health, Sixth Report,? 1864, pp. 238, 249, 261, 262.
98 l. c. , p. 262.
99 l. c. , p. 17. The English agricultural labourer receives only 1/4 as much milk, and 1/2 as much bread as the Irish. Arthur Young in his --Tour in Ireland,?
at the beginning of this century, already noticed the better nourishment of the latter. The reason is simply this, that the poor Irish farmer is incomparably more humane than the rich English. As regards Wales, that which is said in the text holds only for the southwest. All the doctors there agree that the increase of the death-rate through tuberculosis, scrofula, etc. , increases in intensity with the deterioration of the physical condition of the population, and all ascribe this deterioration to poverty. --His (the farm labourer's) keep is reckoned at about five pence a day, but in many districts it was said to be of much less cost to the farmer? [himself very poor]. . . . --A morsel of the salt meat or bacon, . . . salted and dried to the texture of mahogany, and hardly worth the difficult process of assimilation . . . is used to flavour a large quantity of broth or gruel, of meal and leeks, and day after day this is the labourer's dinner. ? The advance of industry resulted for him, in this harsh and damp climate, in --the abandonment of the solid homespun clothing in favour of the cheap and so-called cotton goods,? and of stronger drinks for so-called tea. --The agriculturist, after several hours' exposure to wind and rain, pins his cottage to sit by a fire of peat or of balls of clay and small coal kneaded together, from which volumes of carbonic and sulphurous acids are poured forth. His walls are of mud and stones, his floor the bare earth which was there before the hut was built, his roof a mass of loose and sodden thatch. Every crevice is topped to maintain warmth, and in an atmosphere of diabolic odour, with a mud fioor, with his only clothes drying on his back, he often sups and sleeps with his wife and children. Obstetricians who have passed parts of the night in such cabins have described how they found their feet sinking in the mud of the floor, and they were forced (easy task) to drill a hole through the wall to effect a little private respiration. It was attested by numerous witnesses in various grades of life, that to these insanitary influences, and many
? ? 495 Chapter 25
more, the underfed peasant was nightly exposed, and of the result, a debilitated and scrofulous people, there was no want of evidence. . . . The statements of the relieving officers of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire show in a striking way the same state of things. There is besides --a plague more horrible still, the great number of idiots. ? Now a word on the climatic conditions. --A strong south- west wind blows over the whole country for 8 or 9 months in the year, bringing with it torrents of rain, which discharge principally upon the western slopes of the hills. Trees are rare, except in sheltered places, and where not protected, are blown out of all shape. The cottages generally crouch under some bank, or often in a ravine or quarry, and none but the smallest sheep and native cattle can live on the pastures. . . . The young people migrate to the eastern mining districts of Glamorgan and Monmouth. Carmarthenshire is the breeding ground of the mining population and their hospital. The population can therefore barely maintain its numbers. ? Thus in Cardiganshire:
Dr. Hunter's Report in --Public Health, Seventh Report. 1865,? pp. 498-502, passim.
100 In 1865 this law was improved to some extent. It will soon be learnt from experience that tinkering of this sort is of no use.
101 In order to understand that which follows, we must remember that --Close Villages? are those whose owners are one or two large landlords. --Open villages,? those whose soil belongs to many smaller landlords. It is in the latter that building speculators can build cottages and lodging-houses.
102 A show-village of this kind looks very nice, but is as unreal as the villages that Catherine II. saw on her journey to the Crimea. In recent times the shepherd, also has often been banished from these show-villages; e. g. , near Market Harboro is sheep-farm of about 500 acres, which only employs the labour of one man. To reduce the long trudges over these wide plains, the beautiful pastures of Leicester and Northampton, the shepherd used to get a cottage on the farm. Now they give him a thirteenth shilling a week for lodging, that he must find far away in an open village.
103 --The labourers' houses (in the open villages, which, of course, are always overcrowded) are usually in rows, built with their backs against the extreme edge of the plot of land which the builder could call his, and on this account are not allowed light and air, except from the front. ? (Dr. Hunter's Report, l. c. , p. 135. ) Very often the beerseller or grocer of the village is at the same time the letter of its houses. In this case the agricultural labourer finds in him a second master, besides the farmer. He must be his customer as well as his tenant. --The hind with his 10s. a week, minus a rent of ? 4 a year . . . is obliged to buy at the seller's own terms, his modicum of tea, sugar, flour, soap, candies, and beer. ? (l. c. , p. 132. ) These open villages form, in fact, the --penal settlements? of the English agricultural proletariat. Many of the cottages are simply lodging-houses, through which all the rabble of the neighbourhood passes. The country labourer and his family who had often, in a way truly wonderful, preserved, under the foulest conditions, a thoroughness and purity of character, go, in these, utterly to the devil. It is, of course, the fashion amongst the aristocratic shylocks to shrug their shoulders pharisaically at the building speculators, the small landlords, and the open villages. They know well enough that their --close villages? and --show-villages? are the birth-places of the open villages, and could not exist without them. --The labourers . . . were it not for the small owners, would, for by far the most part, have to sleep under the trees of the farms on which they work. ? (l. c. , p. 135. ) The system of --open? and --closed? villages obtains in all the Midland counties and throughout the East of England.
104 --The employer . . . is . . . directly or indirectly securing to himself the profit on a man employed at 10s. a week, and receiving from this poor hind ? 4 or ? 5 annual rent for houses not worth ? 20 in a
? ? ? ? ? ? 1851
? ? ? 1861
? ? Males
? ? ? 45,155
? ? ? 44,446
? ? Females
? ? ? 52,459
? ? ? 52,955
? ? ? ? ? ? 97,614
? ? ? ? ? 97,401
? ? ? 496 Chapter 25
really free market, but maintained at their artificial value by the power of the owner to say ? Use my house, or go seek a hiring elsewhere without a character from me. . . . ' Does a man wish to better himself, to go as a plate-layer on the railway, or to begin quarry-work, the same power is ready with ? Work for me at this low rate of wages or begone at a week's notice; take your pig with you, and get what you can for the potatoes growing in your garden. ' Should his interest appear to be better served by it, an enhanced rent is sometimes preferred in these cases by the owner (i. e. , the farmer) as the penalty for leaving his service. ? (Dr. Hunter, l. c. , p. 132. )
105 --New married couples are no edifying study for grown-up brothers and sisters: and though instances must not be recorded, sufficient data are remembered to warrant the remark, that great depression and sometimes death are the lot of the female participator in the offence of incest. ? (Dr. Hunter, l. c. , p. 137. ) A member of the rural police who had for many years been a detective in the worst quarters of London, says of the girls of his village: --their boldness and shamelessness I never saw equalled during some years of police life and detective duty in the worst parts of London . . . . They live like pigs, great boys and girls, mothers and fathers, all sleeping in one room, in many instances. ? (--Child. Empl. Com. Sixth Report, 1867,? p. 77 sq. 155. )
106 --Public Health. Seventh Report, 1865,? pp. 9, 14 passim.
107 --The heaven-born employment of the hind gives dignity even to his position. He is not a slave, but a soldier of peace, and deserves his place in married men's quarters to be provided by the landlord, who has claimed a power of enforced labour similar to that the country demands of the soldier. He no more receives market-price for his work than does the soldier. Like the soldier he is caught young, ignorant, knowing only his own trade, and his own locality. Early marriage and. the operation of the various laws of settlement affect the one as enlistment and the Mutiny Act affect the other. ? (Dr.
66 l. c. , p. 50.
67 --Public Health. Seventh Report. 1865,? p. 18. 68 l. c. , p. 165.
69 l. c. , p. 18, Note. -- The Relieving Officer of the Chapel-en-le-Frith Union reported to the Registar- General as follows: -- --At Doveholes, a number of small excavations have been made into a large
? 493 Chapter 25
hillock of lime ashes (the refuse of lime-kilns), and which are used as dwellings, and occupied by labourers and others employed in the construction of a railway now in course of construction through that neighbourhood. The excavations are small and damp, and have no drains or privies about them, and not the slightest means of ventilation except up a hole pulled through the top, and used for a chimney. In consequence of this defect, small-pox has been raging for some time, and some deaths [amongst the troglodytes] have been caused by it. ? (l. c. , note 2. )
70 The details given at the end of Part IV. refer especially to the labourers in coal mines. On the still worse condition in metal mines, see the very conscientious Report of the Royal Commission of 1864.
71 l. c. , pp. 180, 182. 72 l. c. , pp. 515, 517. 73 l. c. , p. 16.
74 --Wholesale starvation of the London Poor. . . . Within the last few days the walls of London have been placarded with large posters, bearing the following remarkable announcement: -- ? Fat oxen! Starving men! The fat oxen from their palace of glass have gone to feed the rich in their luxurious abode, while the starving men are left to rot and die in their wretched dens. ' The placards bearing these ominous words are put up at certain intervals. No sooner has one set been defaced or covered over, than a fresh set is placarded in the former, or some equally public place. . . . This . . . reminds one of the secret revolutionary associations which prepared the French people for the events of 1789. . . . At this moment, while English workmen with their wives and children are dying of cold and hunger, there are millions of English gold -- the produce of English labour -- being invested in Russian, Spanish, Italian, and other foreign enterprises. ? --Reynolds' Newspaper, January 20th, 1867.
75 James E. Thorold Rogers. (Prof. of Polit. Econ. in the University of Oxford. ) --A History of Agriculture and Prices in England. ? Oxford, 1866, v. 1, p. 690. This work, the fruit of patient and diligent labour, contains in the two volumes that have so far appeared, only the period from 1259 to 1400. The second volume contains simply statistics. It is the first authentic --History of Prices? of the time that we possess.
76 --Reasons for the Late Increase of the Poor-Rates: or a comparative view of the prices of labour and provisions. ? Lond. , 1777, pp. 5, 11.
77 Dr. Richard Price: --Observations on Reversionary Payments,? 6th Ed. By W. Morgan, Lond. , 1803, v. 11. , pp. 158, 159. Price remarks on p. 159: --The nominal price of day-labour is at present no more than about four times, or, at most, five times higher than it was in the year 1514. But the price of corn is seven times, and of flesh-meat and raiment about fifteen times higher. So far, therefore, has the price of labour been even from advancing in proportion to the increase in the expenses of living, that it does not appear that it bears now half the proportion to those expenses that it did bear. ?
78 Barton, l. c. , p. 26. For the end of the 18th century cf. Eden, l. c. 79 Parry, l. c. , p. 86.
80 ibid. , p. 213.
81 S. Laing, l. c. , p. 62.
82 --England and America. ? Lond. , 1833, Vol. 1, p. 47.
83 London Economist, May 29th, 1845, p. 290.
84 The landed aristocracy advanced themselves to this end, of course per Parliament, funds from the State Treasury, at a very low rate of interest, which the farmers have to make good at a much higher rate.
85 The decrease of the middle-class farmers can be seen especially in the census category: --Farmer's son, grandson, brother, nephew, daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece"; in a word, the members of his
? ? 494 Chapter 25
own family, employed by the farmer. This category numbered, in 1851, 216,851 persons; in 1861, only 176,151. From 1851 to 1871, the farms under 20 acres fell by more than 900 in number; those between 50 and 75 acres fell from 8,253 to 6,370; the same thing occurred with all other farms under 100 acres. On the other hand, during the same twenty years, the number of large farms increased; those of 300-500 acres rose from 7,771 to 8,410, those of more than 500 acres from 2,755 to 3,914, those of more than 1,000 acres from 492 to 582.
86 The number of shepherds increased from 12,517 to 25,559. 87 Census, l. c. , p. 36.
88 Rogers, l. c. , p. 693, p. 10. Mr. Rogers belongs to the Liberal School, is a personal friend of Cobden and Bright, and therefore no laudator temporis acti.
89 --Public Health. Seventh Report,? 1865, p. 242. It is therefore nothing unusual either for the landlord to raise a labourer's rent as soon as he hears that he is earning a little more, or for the farmer to lower the wage of the labourer, --because his wife has found a trade,? l. c.
90 l. c. , p. 135. 91 l. c. , p. 134.
92 --Report of the Commissioners . . . relating to Transportation and Penal Servitude,? Lond. , 1863, pp. 42, 50.
93 l. c. , p. 77. --Memorandum by the Lord Chief Justice. ? 94 l. c. , Vol. 11, Minutes of Evidence.
95 l. c. , Vol. 1. Appendix, p. 280.
96 l. c. , pp. 274, 275.
97 --Public Health, Sixth Report,? 1864, pp. 238, 249, 261, 262.
98 l. c. , p. 262.
99 l. c. , p. 17. The English agricultural labourer receives only 1/4 as much milk, and 1/2 as much bread as the Irish. Arthur Young in his --Tour in Ireland,?
at the beginning of this century, already noticed the better nourishment of the latter. The reason is simply this, that the poor Irish farmer is incomparably more humane than the rich English. As regards Wales, that which is said in the text holds only for the southwest. All the doctors there agree that the increase of the death-rate through tuberculosis, scrofula, etc. , increases in intensity with the deterioration of the physical condition of the population, and all ascribe this deterioration to poverty. --His (the farm labourer's) keep is reckoned at about five pence a day, but in many districts it was said to be of much less cost to the farmer? [himself very poor]. . . . --A morsel of the salt meat or bacon, . . . salted and dried to the texture of mahogany, and hardly worth the difficult process of assimilation . . . is used to flavour a large quantity of broth or gruel, of meal and leeks, and day after day this is the labourer's dinner. ? The advance of industry resulted for him, in this harsh and damp climate, in --the abandonment of the solid homespun clothing in favour of the cheap and so-called cotton goods,? and of stronger drinks for so-called tea. --The agriculturist, after several hours' exposure to wind and rain, pins his cottage to sit by a fire of peat or of balls of clay and small coal kneaded together, from which volumes of carbonic and sulphurous acids are poured forth. His walls are of mud and stones, his floor the bare earth which was there before the hut was built, his roof a mass of loose and sodden thatch. Every crevice is topped to maintain warmth, and in an atmosphere of diabolic odour, with a mud fioor, with his only clothes drying on his back, he often sups and sleeps with his wife and children. Obstetricians who have passed parts of the night in such cabins have described how they found their feet sinking in the mud of the floor, and they were forced (easy task) to drill a hole through the wall to effect a little private respiration. It was attested by numerous witnesses in various grades of life, that to these insanitary influences, and many
? ? 495 Chapter 25
more, the underfed peasant was nightly exposed, and of the result, a debilitated and scrofulous people, there was no want of evidence. . . . The statements of the relieving officers of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire show in a striking way the same state of things. There is besides --a plague more horrible still, the great number of idiots. ? Now a word on the climatic conditions. --A strong south- west wind blows over the whole country for 8 or 9 months in the year, bringing with it torrents of rain, which discharge principally upon the western slopes of the hills. Trees are rare, except in sheltered places, and where not protected, are blown out of all shape. The cottages generally crouch under some bank, or often in a ravine or quarry, and none but the smallest sheep and native cattle can live on the pastures. . . . The young people migrate to the eastern mining districts of Glamorgan and Monmouth. Carmarthenshire is the breeding ground of the mining population and their hospital. The population can therefore barely maintain its numbers. ? Thus in Cardiganshire:
Dr. Hunter's Report in --Public Health, Seventh Report. 1865,? pp. 498-502, passim.
100 In 1865 this law was improved to some extent. It will soon be learnt from experience that tinkering of this sort is of no use.
101 In order to understand that which follows, we must remember that --Close Villages? are those whose owners are one or two large landlords. --Open villages,? those whose soil belongs to many smaller landlords. It is in the latter that building speculators can build cottages and lodging-houses.
102 A show-village of this kind looks very nice, but is as unreal as the villages that Catherine II. saw on her journey to the Crimea. In recent times the shepherd, also has often been banished from these show-villages; e. g. , near Market Harboro is sheep-farm of about 500 acres, which only employs the labour of one man. To reduce the long trudges over these wide plains, the beautiful pastures of Leicester and Northampton, the shepherd used to get a cottage on the farm. Now they give him a thirteenth shilling a week for lodging, that he must find far away in an open village.
103 --The labourers' houses (in the open villages, which, of course, are always overcrowded) are usually in rows, built with their backs against the extreme edge of the plot of land which the builder could call his, and on this account are not allowed light and air, except from the front. ? (Dr. Hunter's Report, l. c. , p. 135. ) Very often the beerseller or grocer of the village is at the same time the letter of its houses. In this case the agricultural labourer finds in him a second master, besides the farmer. He must be his customer as well as his tenant. --The hind with his 10s. a week, minus a rent of ? 4 a year . . . is obliged to buy at the seller's own terms, his modicum of tea, sugar, flour, soap, candies, and beer. ? (l. c. , p. 132. ) These open villages form, in fact, the --penal settlements? of the English agricultural proletariat. Many of the cottages are simply lodging-houses, through which all the rabble of the neighbourhood passes. The country labourer and his family who had often, in a way truly wonderful, preserved, under the foulest conditions, a thoroughness and purity of character, go, in these, utterly to the devil. It is, of course, the fashion amongst the aristocratic shylocks to shrug their shoulders pharisaically at the building speculators, the small landlords, and the open villages. They know well enough that their --close villages? and --show-villages? are the birth-places of the open villages, and could not exist without them. --The labourers . . . were it not for the small owners, would, for by far the most part, have to sleep under the trees of the farms on which they work. ? (l. c. , p. 135. ) The system of --open? and --closed? villages obtains in all the Midland counties and throughout the East of England.
104 --The employer . . . is . . . directly or indirectly securing to himself the profit on a man employed at 10s. a week, and receiving from this poor hind ? 4 or ? 5 annual rent for houses not worth ? 20 in a
? ? ? ? ? ? 1851
? ? ? 1861
? ? Males
? ? ? 45,155
? ? ? 44,446
? ? Females
? ? ? 52,459
? ? ? 52,955
? ? ? ? ? ? 97,614
? ? ? ? ? 97,401
? ? ? 496 Chapter 25
really free market, but maintained at their artificial value by the power of the owner to say ? Use my house, or go seek a hiring elsewhere without a character from me. . . . ' Does a man wish to better himself, to go as a plate-layer on the railway, or to begin quarry-work, the same power is ready with ? Work for me at this low rate of wages or begone at a week's notice; take your pig with you, and get what you can for the potatoes growing in your garden. ' Should his interest appear to be better served by it, an enhanced rent is sometimes preferred in these cases by the owner (i. e. , the farmer) as the penalty for leaving his service. ? (Dr. Hunter, l. c. , p. 132. )
105 --New married couples are no edifying study for grown-up brothers and sisters: and though instances must not be recorded, sufficient data are remembered to warrant the remark, that great depression and sometimes death are the lot of the female participator in the offence of incest. ? (Dr. Hunter, l. c. , p. 137. ) A member of the rural police who had for many years been a detective in the worst quarters of London, says of the girls of his village: --their boldness and shamelessness I never saw equalled during some years of police life and detective duty in the worst parts of London . . . . They live like pigs, great boys and girls, mothers and fathers, all sleeping in one room, in many instances. ? (--Child. Empl. Com. Sixth Report, 1867,? p. 77 sq. 155. )
106 --Public Health. Seventh Report, 1865,? pp. 9, 14 passim.
107 --The heaven-born employment of the hind gives dignity even to his position. He is not a slave, but a soldier of peace, and deserves his place in married men's quarters to be provided by the landlord, who has claimed a power of enforced labour similar to that the country demands of the soldier. He no more receives market-price for his work than does the soldier. Like the soldier he is caught young, ignorant, knowing only his own trade, and his own locality. Early marriage and. the operation of the various laws of settlement affect the one as enlistment and the Mutiny Act affect the other. ? (Dr.
