THE NEW SUFFERING OF THE POOR.
MOST Tory writers—and, indeed, most writers of all parties, for literature is, as against labour, instinctively conservative—are apt to accuse the Poor of our day of seeking in all their movements for "Equality," which subsequently is always shown to be "impossible." It is not impossible at all, on certain conditions, one of which is that society shall be brigaded and subjected to orders as severely as any army ; but, for purposes of discussion, the assertion may be allowed. Men, if they desire equality at all, always desire to be "free and equal," and, as equality and freedom cannot be obtained together, their request may fairly be pronounced impossible. But is it true that the thirst of the modern poor—the poor of 1833—is for equality ? It was once, when the world, and more especially the world of the European Continent, was oppressed by the regime of privilege to a degree of which we have happily lost even the memory ; bat is it now ? It seems to us, watching with somewhat hopeless eyes the new move- ment from below, as it breaks out in country after country, that the grand desire of the poor, the desire which Anarchists, Collectivists, Communists, Socialists, dreamers and agitators of all descriptions use as their lever, is not so much for equality in any far-reaching sense, as for security. There are fanatics of all kinds, of course, among the poor, as among the well-to-do, and the fanatics for equality are numerous ; but they base their demand upon an idea, the inherent dignity of man, and not upon a suffering, and are bat a group, though very often the group which leads. It is with a suffering that the poor sym- pathise, and though the absence of equality may produce one, they as .a body usually look for something more concrete and positive. They are certainly acting all over the world as if they felt some new pain, which is not legal,—for they are less -oppressed than ever before,—nor economic,—for their material condition is on the whole advancing,—and we cannot resist the impression that it is to be sought in a lately developed con- sciousness of the insecurity which, far more than any positive want of means, differentiates them from the possessors of property. The indications of this are to be found on every hand. The country in which Socialism and kindred beliefs are weakest, is England, where inequality is most perfect, but where insecurity is robbed of some of its terrors by the operation of the Poor-law. The only poor class on the Continent which does not rebel is the only one which is secure, and cannot be deprived of its position, lowly as that may be, the peasant-pro- prietary. The strongest desire of the tenantry in Ireland, in England, in Spain, in Italy, is for protection against eviction. The most serious movements among the artisans in France, Germany, and the cities of Austria are those which have for their object the vesting of the power to employ labour in the Communes, which the artisans would control, and through which they would indirectly be able to protect themselves from dismissal. Even in England, it is proposals for a kind of security, security against accident, sickness, and the pecuniary consequences of death, which elicit the greatest financial efforts from the opera- tives, and excite their warmest enthusiasm. The resentment caused by dismissal, especially arbitrary dismissal, is notori- ously—after jealousy and agrarian disputes—the most frequent -cause of violent crime ; and the leader of any violent move- ment, especially in Germany and Italy, is almost invariably a " dismissed " man. Of coarse, in all social movements the movers hope for concrete gain also, for more wages, for a lighter stint of work—the latter on the Continent an honest and well-justified demand—or for fairer promotion ; but the propelling force, the sting which makes men's minds so bitter, is still the sense of insecurity. The man can bear his life ; what he cannot bear is the sense that it may by no fault of his own be suddenly made infinitely worse, that he has no protection against sickness, falling trade, accident, or what he deems his employer's caprice.
If this conjecture is correct, and, for ourselves, we have little doubt of it, the evidence would be worth probing to the bottom, for there would be hope in such a theory. It would be, in the first place, something to know that the social rebellion of which the world is growing so full is not aimless, not unfounded, not wholly irrational, or even "sentimental," but is provoked by a real, perhaps a removable cause. Nothing makes rulers so hope- less and in the end so cruel, as the idea that they are encounter- ing petitioners who are not reasoning beings, whose desires are vague ; who revolt they know not why, and keep quiet without a cause; who, in fact, are lunatics to be restrained, rather than subjects to be heard. If the desire of the Proletariat can only be formulated, so that the class itself comprehends it, then, even if it be unattainable, a child's cry for the moon to play with, still, comprehension is possible, and with comprehensior, compromise. And it is even more to know that the workers grievance is not something separate and unaccountable, something as peculiar as their dress, but one well known to those above them, and whether removable or not, tangible and solid. The poor—if the insecurity of their lives is their great torment—are but waking up to a perception which has bur- dened the lives of those above them for generations, to an anxiety which more than any other embitters the lives of the educated who do not possess property. The English middle-class, of all working grades, are not often bitter; but they are anxious and suspicions, and their burden is insecurity. Till they have saved or acquired something, be it only a year's income, they are never free from a form of care which, in a majority of them, poisons happiness. They may fail, or grow sick, or be dismissed. They value an "independence," however small, above all earthly possessions, and strive for it with an earnestness which often materially affects the character, till in England alone in the world the old are far gentler and more liberal than the middle-aged. They are free in old age of a mental thorn. The handicraftsmen were formerly not like that. They suffered from everything except a poisoned forethought. Education, however—we mean the education of circumstance, rather than of any School Board—has done its work, and with much of the better qualities of the middle-class there has come to many of them the middle-class fear of the future, the restlessness of pecuniary apprehension, the im- patience of a position in which nothing is or can be secure. Workmen with children can hardly save, and with one-half of them, three months' suspension of labour, from sickness, acci- dent, or dismissal, means acute privation. It is far worse on the Continent, where there is no Poor-law, where giving credit is much less practised, and where the landlords, if not more grasping, are far more rigorous and exact. There the sense of insecurity rises in certain classes to a positive horror, especially in the artisans who live by luxury, and those far below them, wiu) are really artisans' servants, till thousands of men welcome any attack on a society which, as they conceive, leaves them in such a position. They are not anarchists or agitators, but they sympa- thise with the objects of dreamers till their leaders can denounce in the Chamber the trials of Anarchists, with a certainty that they are making effective electoral speeches. The basis of the horror, too, is for them a real one. The difference of position on the Con- tinent between a man who owns a pound a week and the man who earns one is simply infinite. The -latter is never safe, and it is safety which is the root of sweetness in life. If he takes to saving, the penury of forty years, while saving half his whole income, only brings him up to his rival's position. Ten shillings a week saved for forty years yields a pound a week in Rents. If, as most usually happens, he does not save, a sprained ancle, a heavy fall, the failure of an employer, a quarrel with the foreman may reduce him to the position of a savage in a desert, without food, home, or the means of procuring either. Insecurity of that kind bites, and turns men with any tinge of natural bitterness in them —and even those who write or read this are not all fall of sweet- ness and light—into rancorous enemies, or at best cynical critics of everything that exists. It is not the absence of " extrys," as an American writer has just defined luxuries, which makes modern men savage, or even the poorness of the necessaries obtainable, but the haunting fear of the hour when the necessaries will not be there. Nothing embitters like terror, and it is, we are convinced, in the new consciousness that there is cause for terror in the present arrangements of society that the origin of the new violence of the poor is to be sought. We ask what they can hope from assassination or arson, and forget how blindly the terrified hit out. What does the servant-girl hope for who leaps out of window at the cry of fire It is not our business here to discuss political remedies, though we would fain hope that a wiser Poor-law is approach- ing all over Europe, a law under which not only will property- owners be taxed, but they and the poor will unite to form the reserve fund of industry ; and of mental relief, we see little hope. Christianity; at least on its feminine side—the side which teaches resignation—is not gaining ground, and of purely intellectual help we can as yet discern no trace. There never was so little stoicism anywhere, except among the rich, who, Carlyle said were full of it, and who, we should say, if we wanted to be cynical, show much fortitude in bearing others' miseries. Everybody who suffers now-a-days either rages or whines in a way which our grandfathers would have pro- nounced shameful, but which is possibly not the result of weaker hearts, but of nerves more highly strung. We suppose that last is, in part at least, the explanation of the precise time of the change which has passed over the poor. They feel more acutely, not so much because they have learned more, though that has something to do with it, as because, in the altered con- ditions of the world, their nerves have become less hard. Life is a little less of a battle, and because it is less, because the danger is intermittent, and even avoidable, its approach seems indefinitely more formidable. The countryman who has lived in London for ten years undergoes some change which, when he re- turns, makes him percipient of the previously unperceived loneli- ness of the country-side, and percipient with a certain alarm. That a change is passing over the temper of the "dim, common popula- tions," as well as over their opinions, is certain ; and it may well be that the cause is the increase of sensitiveness which- comes of increased comfort. They have felt, however slightly, the effect of the warmer air, and the cold seems to them not only dan-
gerone, but unendurable, till they rage with any one who even appears to keep the door ajar.
Previous page
