THE ARCADIA OF THE MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS.
THE ASHLEY agitation has called forth some eloquent descriptions
of the happy lot of a class of operatives hitherto supposed to be
rather uncomfortable. As the coal-pit-proprietors last year, so the millowners now, come forward to describe in glowing terms the halcyon lives of workers in the factories—to denounce the cruelty of those who would separate the spinner or pieces from his mule-jennies an hour sooner than they are accustomed to cease trotting beside them. According to this new version of the story of the factory-labourers, they are all living in clover. Factories are the Utopias, the earthly Elysiums of the working-man. It is there, and not in any feigned Arcadia, that the _beau ideal of the industrious labourer's lot is to be met with. The pictures they draw of his life are almost enough to tempt a SENIOR from his books, or a CHADWICK from his desk, and make factory-operatives of them. One can fancy the benevolent artists, who paint the life so feelingly, murmuring, like ALEXANDER, " Were we not millouners we would be factory-workmen." Touched by their genial imagination, the factory becomes a fairy dome; a building like the conservatory at Chatsworth, in which the labourers enjoy a more genial clime; or, like Musrow's Para- dise, a haunt of wise, innocent, and happy beings, who toil no more than is necessary to aid digestion and sound sleep o' nights.
In their last manifesto, the Associated Millowners protest that
employment in the factories does not "tend to reverse the con- dition of the sexes." Perhaps not—that was probably an unwise exaggeration of some of the very unwise advocates of a Ten-hours Bill. But what, by the showing of the Associated Millowners themselves, does factory-labour do ? Among 10,721 married females employed in 412 factories, the husbands of 5,314 were also employed in the factories; the husbands of 3,927 were engaged in other employments, 821 had no regular employment, and 659- were unaccounted for. Pretty well for inquiries which the Associated Millowners "have taken advantage of the Easter recess to insti- tute." Out of 1,480 husbands of as many female factory-labourers, they now know that 821 are without employment, and they have not been able to discover that the remaining 659 have any em- ployment. Then with regard to the remaining 9,241 married couples, the- husband being away at work all day, and the wife being away at work all day, what becomes of their children ?
The females themselves, says the manifesto of the millowners,
"prefer mills to most other occupations, and even to domestic ser- vice." This declaration is meant to operate out of the manufac- turing-districts. There, the ready comment would be, " Who would receive as a domestic servant a girl bred in the mills?" It may be, that in addition to the disinclination of all but the poorest and least respectable families to receive mill-girls into their houses, the slatternly love of finery, the bold unwomanly dispositions, ac- quired by these poor creatures in the mill, may render themselves averse to the restraints of a well-regulated household. It is these unfortunate creatures who, rushing into premature matrimony— when not to a worse fate—keep up the number of child-neglecting mothers, of whom the Associated Millowners boast, and whose luckless children are left to grow up to share in turn their mothers' fate.
The Associated Millowners are equally successful in proving that
factory-occupation has not a tendency to shorten life. " The percentage of persons above forty engaged in mills is only 7 2-5ths per cent : this does not arise so much from superannuation, as from the number of mill.hands who are enabled by their savings to enter into superior occupations." Their inquiries have extended to mills employing between 140,000 and 150,000 operatives, and appear to have gone at least as far as thirteen years back. Out of this number, in this time, they have traced 197 who have at one time or another worked in factories, and of whom 14 have become master-spinners and manufacturers, 61 shopkeepers, 42 publicans and beer-retailers, 11 grocers and tea-dealers, and the rest have found other respectable means of obtaining a livelihood. It is as- sumed that savings made in the mills have enabled these persons to become what they are : but no proof is offered. From any thing that appears, these persons may be flourishing, not because they once worked in mills, but because they had the good fortune to change their employment in time. But, above all, the circum- stance of 197 persons out of nearly 150,000 having in the course of thirteen years risen to comparative affluence, (it may be by the assistance of friends, by unlooked-for inheritances, &c.,) does not prove that to be a healthy occupation in which the proportion of persons employed above forty years of age is only 7 2-5ths " To stun the whole, the close of all" : the Associated Mill- owners state, as the result of their inquiries, that the average wages of persons employed in mills is 10s. 3Sd. per week ; and that this cannot be earned by any shorter labour than eleven-and-a-half hours for six days in the week. This they speak of complacently, as all that ought to be desired for working-men and their families. Their benevolence goes no further than to wish that all poor people may have as much work and as much wages. They say that shorter hours would so raise the price of our manufactures as to render them incapable of competing with those of foreigners. They look forward to no improvement in machinery which will enable themt to pay better wages for less human work. When they speak of the abolition of the Corn-law and the general introduction of free trade as likely to give an impetus to manufactures, they only think of more mills being built, those mule-jennies set in motion, and more operatives obliged to walk backwards and forwards along with these untiring iron spinners—mothers leaving their children to grow up like weeds by the wayside—until nature is incapable of ought else than repose, for 10s. 30. a week.
The Utopia of the Associated Millowners is not to our taste. Without dissenting from their Free-trade doctrines, we must main- tain that something more is required to make men and women really men and women—something of which, it is clear from their last manifesto, they entertain not even a suspicion.
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