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and milk, and soup, public benevolence makes up the deficiency. The extensive establishment of such institutions, well organised and well looked after, would remove one of the greatest stains upon the social and industrial system produced by the cotton manufacture. The crèche would knock over the Godfrey bottle at a blow; and for a far smaller amount than is often paid to nurses, the children would be really attended to, wholesomely fed, and would grow up in that health and strength to which so many are strangers. If, however, the necessity for young mothers to work in the mills could be got over, the change would be, in many respects, more auspicious still. The ignorance of the millgirls in domestic matters was long a subject of regret, and a matter of household discomfort. Their notions of cooking were of the rudest and the least economical nature; and few or none could do anything for themselves with the needle. We have heard of an instance of a Manchester mill-girl after her marriage cooking her first dinner, and which was to be eaten at one o'clock, putting the potatoes on to boil at nine, and never looking into the pot until her husband had arrived, when, to her utter astonishment, she found that the water had somehow disappeared, and that the potatoes lay a brown and strongly smelling mass on the half-burnt-through bottom of the saucepan! Since the Ten Hours' Bill, however, a change for the better is becoming apparent. The girls have a long evening to themselves; and people accustomed to Manchester are recognising a decided improvement in the style of dress of the operative female population-the result of having time to learn and put in practice the use of the needle. The writer was once invited to inspect a little display of the evening handiwork of the girls in one of the largest mills in Manchester, where a long counter was heaped over with dresses, bonnets, and specimens of crochet-work; knitting, netting, samplersewing; Berlin wool-working; and a vast series of copy-books, blackened from end to end-all the production, the exhibiters were unanimous in declaring, of the Ten Hours' Bill.

An inevitable feature of life amid the drawing-frames and spindles, is the early break-up of domestic ties. Practically, it will be found that, all over the world, a family seldom or never remains united in one domicile after the younger members of it can support themselves. The feeling of personal independence is very frequently roused by some casual disagreement, and separation is the result. In Manchester, this result takes place sooner than in other districts, simply because independence can be sooner achieved than in other districts. Boys and girls of fourteen and sixteen can and do habitually earn their own living. Their development hitherto has been precocious. Notions of mutual attachment and impulses of passion come early into play. They perceive they are giving more to the household than the household renders to them; and even if marriage does not ensue, it is very common for boys and girls to withdraw from the parental roof and control, and live

unchecked and at liberty in lodgings of their own. And these separations are regarded as things of course. There is no sentimental grief wasted upon them. The father and mother expect that their children will go out into the world as they did themselves, and there is an end to it. In a moral point of view, there is much to be regretted in this system; and in a physical and sanitary aspect, the matter is still worse. Early marriages produce weakly children; while, from the ease of their contraction, they swell the population with a far greater than the average annual increase of the entire country. The number of marriages, in fact, is augmented in proportion to the earliness of the age at which marriage is practicable in the cotton districts, over that prevailing generally in the kingdom. For this state of things, there seems no better remedy than that of educating and elevating, as much as possible, the minds of the population, and heightening the comforts of their homes. Were there no such unions, the births would merely be illegitimate, instead of legitimate; and to take away the means of early marriage, would be simply to destroy the whole manufacturing system and the whole manufacturing population.

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The working of the Ten Hours' Bill in the cotton factories is now, and has been for some years, on trial, and, on the whole, as it would seem, with success. The law stands thus: The hours in which it is lawful to work a cotton-mill are from half-past five o'clock A. M. to half-past eight o'clock P. M.-a total of fifteen. Within these hours, the period of labour is restricted specially in respect to three classes of workers, and indirectly, and ‍by a sidewind, in respect to the remaining class. Children, young persons, and women, are the protected classes. Children are individuals between the ages of eight and thirteen. They must not be worked more than six and a half hours, and must attend school for three hours. The phrase, young persons,' signifies boys and girls between thirteen and eighteen. They are restricted to ten hours; and all women fall under the same regulation. Thus, only adult labour is left nominally uninterfered with. A male above eighteen may work the whole fifteen hours of the factory day, if he and his employer please; but as the adult labour cannot be carried on without that of children, young persons, and women, the restriction is practically universal. Various clever expedients have been invented to elude the law, by devices called 'shifts.' In some cases, the requisite number of juvenile and female workers was transferred from one mill to another; in others, by a most ingenious and complicated arrangement of hours, very difficult to understand, two hands are made to relieve each other in such a manner, that while each only works ten hours, he or she is in attendance fifteen, the machinery-except at meal hours, which are always the same-being in motion for that time. The principle is very much the same as if a coach should advertise to change horses every hour, and start with four horses, two pulling and two accompanying, the latter forming the first relay, and so on

alternately, the pullers of one stage trotting alongside in the next. These tricks, however, have been put down by magisterial decisions and the force of public opinion; and the regular hours of factory labour are now ten. As a general rule, the Bill is popular among the work-people. The better disposed go to regular eveningschools; and the women, besides learning to read and write, get some knowledge of household and needle work; while both sexes of course have more inclination and vigour for self-improvement after ten, than they had after twelve hours of mill-labour. Still, the fall in the wages made many grumblers. The result of Mr Horner the factory inspector's inquiries was, that about 63 per cent. of the male operatives went for ten hours, 12 per cent. for eleven hours, and 25 per cent. for twelve hours. Since that period, however, the popularity of the short time is understood to have materially increased-in evidence of which may be cited the determined opposition of the working-people to the shift-system. That the Bill has produced the morally regenerating effect which many of its supporters expected, is certainly not the case. No opportunity for self-cultivation and improvement would induce persons not naturally inclined in the direction, to avail themselves of it; but in those instances in which the natural inclination existed, the extension of leisure time was hailed as a great boon, and no doubt has effected great good. Schools, particularly writing-schools, received the first impulse. The venders of books and cheap publications did not, to their surprise, find any increased demand for their wares, except in the matter of copybooks, which became so much the vogue, that the former price of 2d. was reduced to 1d. Evening amusements, however, received a vast impulse. The singing-houses, cheap theatres, and exhibitionbooths, with which Manchester abounds, became crowded. This, unfortunately, was to have been expected; but a far more satisfactory symptom, that of the new parks, swarming on every pleasant evening with vast throngs of the released operatives with their wives and children, has been regularly exhibited since the opening of these agreeable and healthful places of resort. It is not generally known that a favourite pursuit of the Manchester operative, when a holiday enables him to indulge it, is botanising. The people have a peculiar taste for the study; and collections of plants and herbals, arranged with no mean skill, are very often to be found among the most prized articles of the household. Zoology and entomology are also studied; the city-pent and smoke-dried people appearing to turn with a natural longing to anything which reminds them of nature and her productions. There are,' says the authoress of that most affecting and instructive story, Mary Barton-there are botanists among them equally familiar with either the Linnæan or the Natural System, who know the name and habitat of every plant within a day's walk from their dwellings, who steal the holiday of a day or two when any particular plant should be in flower; and tying up their simple food in their pocket

handkerchiefs, set off with single purpose to fetch home the humble-looking weed. There are entomologists who may be seen with a rude-looking net, ready to catch any winged insect, or with a dredge with which they rake the green and slimy pools-practical, shrewd, hard-working men, who pore over every new specimen with real scientific delight. Nor is it the common and more obvious divisions of entomology or botany that alone attract these earnest seekers after knowledge. Perhaps it may be owing to the great annual town-holiday of Whitsun-week falling so often in May or June, that the two great beautiful families of Ephermidæ and the Phryganida have been so much and so closely studied by Manchester workmen, while they have in a great measure escaped general observation.' Mathematics is another branch of study considerably in vogue among the more thinking of the working-people; and during the long hours passed watching the twining threads and whirling spindles, it may be well conceived that those politically and speculatively inclined muse almost unceasingly on social and industrial questions, frequently arriving at conclusions, the fallacy of which a very little scientific instruction would have enabled them to avoid, but to which they cling with an obstinate devotion which sets argument and fact alike at naught. The temperament of this class of the people is hard, dry, and shrewd. Their notions are narrow, but clear. They possess strong convictions and great earnestness, with a tendency to veneration, and a serious and religious bearing. In these respects, indeed, the northern cotton population possess many Scotch qualities; but they lack one of the best-the general ambition of the working-man north of the Tweed to bring his son up to a loftier sphere than he fills himself. It may be observed, by the way, that studious and thinking individuals of the class specified are almost always the product of a light and tranquil occupation. Among the ironworkers, the coal-miners, and so forth, such instances are very rare. The muscles are developed with them, hardly ever the brain; and cases of brutal outrage are common in iron and coal districts, particularly the former, which are never heard of among the weaker and the meeker toilers by the mule and the loom.

Music is another favourite amusement of the Lancashire cotton population. The county has produced very fine voices, particularly sopranos; and the people seem to have an inborn relish for vocal music, with a peculiar capability for part-singing. One of the most popular metropolitan concert and oratorio singers of the day, Mrs Sunderland, was a Manchester mill-girl; and the last generation still remember the delicious ballad-singing of Mrs Knyvett, née Deborah Travers, and brought up in an Oldham factory. In the country-mills, a choral society or a band, or both, is common; and the rural gatherings which in summer take place of the choirs of different churches, both in Lancashire and Yorkshire, are described by musicians who have been present as being, under the circumstances, perfect phenomena of art. At these reunions,

passages from the oratorios of Handel and Haydn are performed with a vigour and freshness of style, and a deep sentiment and veneration for the music, which are described as absolutely marvellous. In Manchester, however, the popular taste is certainly not so highly cultivated; and the musical saloons, in which drink is as much looked after as melody and harmony, are not amongst the most promising of the popular places of amusement. Yet these establishments are full of character; and we know no resorts in Manchester where so true an idea may be so soon formed of the amusements, habits of speech and thought, the tastes and the minor social peculiarities of the average workers of the mills, than in these places of evening entertainment. The better part of the operative population do not indeed frequent the saloons, and the auditory are generally young, but they are sure to be thorough Manchester folk-mill-hands from five years of age upwards. Saturday night is the best time for visiting one of these characteristic establishments. They abound in all sizes and degrees of importance and celebrity, from vast halls, got up with considerable decorative skill, to mere dens of beer-shop parlours. One of the principal and most favoured is the Apollo Saloon, in the London Road. The spectacle to be seen in its vicinity, about nine o'clock on a Saturday night, is not a thing to be missed by visitors of Manchester. The London Road is a vast thoroughfare, intersecting a purely operative portion of the town. It is noted for its cheap shops, and the extraordinary variety of articles which can be procured from its general dealers. On Saturday night, however, the street takes completely the aspect of a fair. The broad pavements are crammed with stalls, • heaped with cheap eatables, animal and vegetable, with household matters, and with coarse articles of attire. Great streams of unprotected gas flicker over the booths, and similar pennons blaze at the doors of every shop. The crowd is vast. All working Manchester seems to have assembled for the purpose of laying in its Sunday provisions; and the gabbling din of the universal chaffering mingles with the cries of the stall-keepers proclaiming the quality of their goods, the shouts of the drivers of vehicles coming slowly through the crowd, and the laughing screams of bands of mill-girls calling out to each other, and joking with their friends. You can hardly make your way into a shop; and the public-houses, streaming with light, are literally choked with customers, while the swinging-doors of the pawnbrokers have no moment of rest. Through this chaos of buying and selling, of pushing and struggling, you make your way to the illuminated sign of the Apollo Salcon, and find yourself paying your twopence to a functionary who is supported, or perhaps watched over, by a policeman. The check he gives you entitles you to two-pennyworth of malt liquor; so that if you consume this, your entrance is gratis. Mounting a broad yet steep staircase, you suddenly emerge into a long, narrow room; from which, as the doors open, will burst upon you a suffocating volume of tobacco-smoke, a bewildering

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