R17RAL INNOCENCE.
ABOUT fifty years ago, prices for corn being very high, the landowners of the districts of Lincolnshire near Louth began enclosing the Fen on a great scale. Cottages not paying, they did not build many, and the farmers gradually collected bands of children of both sexes, and set them to work under an overseer. The system was found profitable, particularly to- owners of close parishes, who were thus enabled to pull down cottages and so completely abolish poor-rates, and it gradually spread over other parts of the county, and then into parts of Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Nottinghamshire, till it became a regular trade. Men out or work, or without characters, or nomad by instinct, went about from village to village, hiring children at so much a week, and then re-letting them out to the farmers at an advanced but still moderate rate, till, at the present time, it is believed that upwards of three hundred of these "public gangs" are in existence, each with its gang-master and about twenty children of both sexes. The farmers, moreover, finding the supply of cheap and organized labour convenient, adopted the system for themselves, and organized private gangs among their own.
cottagers, till the total number of children thus employed amounted to many thousands more. Certain evils connected.
with the practice seem at last to have struck the local clergy, Parliament was induced to stir, and the Home Office ordered an official inquiry into the system. The Report of the Com- missioners has been received and printed with the evidence, and the latter confirms the worst stories current. The gang system, as at present carried on in these counties, is declared by witnesses of all kinds and classes—clergymen, farmers, labourers, old gang-masters, mothers of girls who are in the gangs, and decent labourers' wives—to be fatal alike to health, to civilization, and to morality. Children of both sexes and of all ages, from five up to sixteen, axe, in fact, sold by the- wretched labourers to the gang-masters at so much per head per week, generally, we are bound to add, out of the direst poverty. The ganger having collected his children, takes them away to his job, forcing them to walk, or, if need- ful, to carry each other, for distances which often involve of themselves great cruelty. Five miles out and five back is thought nothing of, in addition to almost continuous labour for at least ten hours a day. This labour is generally weeding or picking stones, perhaps the most exhausting kinds of toil a child can be called on to perform. They involve stooping for hours at a time, and some of the most efficient gang-masters.
choose out the strongest of the children, and calling him by- the significant name of the "back-breaker," make the re- mainder keep up with him in the furrow. The gang-masters are not generally cruel,—though there are exceptions,—as notorious cruelty would rliminigh their supply of serfs, but the children are disorderly and disinclined to toil—imagine your child of ten stooping ten hours a day at weeding irt the open fields in all weatheral—and work is forced on with the strap, administered impartially to boys and girls. These- latter "ought to be strapped," the mothers say, and nobody complains. The effect of the labour is not, however, the- same upon both sexes. There is strong evidence to prove that,. except in occasional cases, it hardens the boys, who, if they do, not die, grow up in the open air and amid the incessant strain of their muscles into tall, athletic men, the districts described sending an unusual number of recruits to the wander- ing bands of navvies, notoriously the best labourers in the world. It is on the girls that the cruelty falls. They cannot stand the exposure, their limbs give way under the toil, till one poor woman testified that "ironing with a hot warming- pan alone enabled them to sleep, and even their very dress. is against them. Like true Britons, who, when not civilized, are without exception, or with the exception only of Digger Indians, the most helpless of living races, they stick to the petticoat, which, amidst wet standing corn, as scores of wit- nesses complain, gets wet, and clinging round them through a day of stooping gives them an acute form of rheumatism, "aches," and pulmonary disease. The moral effect of this incessant toil among children, half grown girls and boys, herded together, weary with monotonous labour, and controlled only by the worse kind of agricultural labourers, men little better than the tramps, may readily be imagined. The labourers in many English parishes are coarse enough, but among these poor wretches civilization disappears. Upon this point there is an overwhelming consensus of evi- dence, even from the few farmers who pronounoe that the sys- tem is indispensable to their tillage. The single amusement is obscene talk, which becomes so shocking that the very labourers are revolted, and declare they would sooner turn out of the road than meet the gangs returning. All the offices of nature, say twenty witnesses, are performed in public by both sexes, without the faintest effort at concealment. Boys and girls of all ages bathe together stark naked, and the most infamous actions are boasted of with a shamelessness rarely found among savages. The gangs are the special resort of all girls who have lost their characters, and the gang-masters often set themselves to deliberate corruption. One witness, a bookseller, who had belonged to one of these gangs, informed the Commissioner distinctly that the gangers set the children to sing obscene songs to enliven the long road home, and it is clear from all manner of incidental testimony that the dinner-hour is often the signal for horseplay, which degenerates into deliberate obscenity. No doubt much of all this is due to an excessive coarseness of manners still un- eradicated in many parts of the country, and, indeed, ineradi- cable until the English peasant has been rehoused; and it is quite possible to confuse a low civilization with a degenerated morality. But the universal testimony of the local witnesses is that the girls and boys employed in these gangs are much worse than their own brothers and sisters not so employed, that the evil is deepened by aggregation and, as we should add, by excessive toil. Gleaners going out are decent, but listen to them coming home. Women employed in the fields are everywhere the worst on the country side, and if the labour involves wandering or night work, as in the case of the hop-pickers, civilization disappears, and whole farms become temporary brothels. But among these gangs the evil strikes society at the root. These gang labourers are children, forced to labour by their parents, deprived of the possibility of education, made lustful by forced companionship, brutal by compulsory association with brutes. Mothers, themselves bred among associations which at least kill squeamishness, repeat to the Commissioners one unvarying song, "I would rather hunger"—their strongest asseveration—" than let my girls go to the field." For, be it remembered, the evil does not pass with childhood. The gipsy taste is soon aroused, and becomes one of the strongest of the passions. The girls who have been in the gangs will rarely take to other work, never go into service, and when married leave their children at home drugged with opium to go out again to the fresh, rough, " larky " labour of the fields, where there is "com- pany," and beer, and paramours at discretion. If this account is considered too strong, all we can say is, we have carefully toned it down from reports mainly guaranteed by local clergy- men, who, like the Vicar of Chatteris, doubt whether any chastity is left among villagers where ganging is common ; or, like the Bev. M. S. Jackson, assert that "the young women are utterly shameless—all female delicacy of character is utterly -gone;" or, like the Rector of Bramhall, who as a magistrate testifies that eases of indecent assault are infrequent in his district, because "little is thought of such behaviour, and it is passed over unnoticed ;" or, like Mr. George Moore Smith, who holds gang labour to be absolutely indispensable, but is so convinced of the immorality of the system that he would prohibit mixed gangs by law.
It is clear this state of things must be cured. Though the country gentlemen may not be so willing to sanction interfer- ence with labour in the field as they were to sanction the same measure in the factory, they have no interest in protecting barbarism, and will, we doubt not, accept any sufficient scheme for its amelioration. We trust, therefore, that Lord Shaftes- bury, who has taken up the question, will venture upon a scheme somewhat bolder than that of the Commissioners. They admit in terms that if gang labour were suppressed altogether the country would be benefited, but content themselves with recommending that gang-masters should be licensed—an utterly useless provision, as neither the children nor their parents will inform ; that mixed gangs should be disallowed unless the gang-master is aided by a gang-mis- tress,—a proposal at which country clergymen will shake their heads for reasons quite apparent in this very report,— that the hours of labour should be regulated ; and that no boy under eight or girl under twelve should be permitted to enter a gang. This rule as regards boys leaves them still no time for school, and as regards girls will be ridiculously inopera- tive. It is the big girls, not the little ones, who get into mischief. - Read the plain-spoken, sensible evidence of Mr. 0. G. Read, surgeon, of Stradbroke, who says distinctly that "the big boys go to the gangs because of the girls, and the big girls go because of the boys. The freedom of the work is seductive to girls, and seems to fascinate them,"—a remark which half the farmers in the Eastern Counties would endorse. Of course, beyond a certain age no free legislature would attempt to- interfere. We cannot keep people moral by Act of Parlia- ment, but we can, and must, prevent children from being compelled to immorality, and the only plan which will, we are convinced, be found sufficient, is to prohibit female labour in the gangs altogether up to the age of seventeen. They will not embrace it then, as they will not have the physical strength, and the evil will be cured at a blow without serious inconvenience either to the farmers, who out of these counties never employ gang labour, or to the cottagers, who all testify that they hate the system, and believe that, what with the waste of shoe-leather and clothing, and the rooted dislike which their girls acquire for service, ganging does not pay them. We wish, with the Commissioners, that it were possible to go a step further, and prohibit field labour to women altogether, but by the time the country is civilized enough to bear such a restriction opinion will have anticipated legislative action, and field labour will be as impossible to a cottager's wife as to a duchess. If, in addition to this, we prohibit the employment of any boy under twelve, unless he can read and write, we shall have done as much as the present state of our civilization will admit, and shall even then have done less than we have accomplished for the factoryhands. They cannot be employed up to the age of 13—an age which ought now to be extended, unless almost half their time is given to education, a law which in the Factory districts amounts to the compulsory education of the whole population, and works so effectively that in many parts of Yorkshire the children and their parents speak two different languages, people over thirty talking a broad, racy patois, and people under twenty "London English." When that change, which is of little value in itself except as a symptom, Yorkshire being on the whole as fine a language as English, takes place, we may begin to congratu- late ourselves on the possibility that in about another century or so, England will be as civilized as Prussia or Connecticut.
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