THE TESTIMONIAL TO MR. MUNDELLA.
THE proceedings in the Manchester Town Hall on Saturday had a biographical and a social interest. From the former point of view they marked a stage in a remarkable career. The Vice-President of the Council was not born in the political purple. He is an example of the English version of Napoleon's saying about the French soldier. Among us the soldier, as a rule, carries nothing in his knapsack but his kit ; but the workman carries a Minister's box in his basket. No doubt it needs exceptional powers to get the box out. Mr. Mundellas are not met with every day. But that men who have these exceptional powers are not kept back from using them is shown by Mr. Mundella's life. Before he was ten years old he was at work, and he was at work as a full-timer ; before he was twenty he was managing a mill ; before he was thirty he owned mills ; and at forty-two he entered Parlia- ment. These dates seem to follow one another by a natural and easy gradation, but each interval represents a wonderful amount of patient energy. With many of us the difference between twenty and ten is little more than physical. The young man is bigger and stronger than the boy, but he is scarcely more intelligent. In Mr. Mundella's case, those ten years brought out qualities which convinced his employers that the true material of his work was not cotton, but human beings. Early success is a very great help to later success ; but ten years of management do not often lead to mill-owning. From that point onwards the progress is less exceptional. A man who is a mill-owner at thirty may fairly be in the House of Commons at forty-two. But Mr. Mundella's appearance in Parliament was not, as it often is, the crown of a life. It was the beginning of a life of greater usefulness. He had made the most of his opportunities as a child and as a young man, and they had yielded him sympathy for others, as well as advancement for himself. Nor was this sympathy allowed to run to waste in vague desires that the condition of the working-classes were other than it is.. Mr. Mundella's sympathy was what class-sympathy so often is not—intelligent. He had seen how greatly the working-class suffer from want of education, and he had seen further that educa- tion is largely a question of physical health, and that with the artisans physical health is largely a question of hours of labour. Why is it that hours of labour count for more with artisans than with other classes ? There is no question that it is so. A professional man's day is often longer than the day of a mill hand ; his work is often more exhausting ; his liability to excitement and worry is far greater. Yet long
days and exhausting work do not lower the physical standard over the whole professional class, as it did in the case of the artisan. Barristers and journalists are not known, as the Lancashire operative was known, by bowed back and dwarfed stature, though their labour is often quite as unwholesome. The reason is that in one case the work is shared by the
wives and children of the workers, while in the other case it is not so shared. It is not a man's own labour that injures the class to which he belongs ; it is seldom, indeed,
that it injures even himself. The source of the harm done to the class is the labour of the women and, children, the labour
of present wives, of future parents. Before the Factory Act of 1874, children employed in silk mills became full-timers at eleven. " I used "—so Mr. blundella told the meeting on Saturday—" to see little creatures of eleven years of age cons-
ing out of the mill having worked sixty hours a week. I saw THE POST OFFICE AND THE TELEPHONE. when there was an attempt to teach them on a Sunday, or in excessive had undergone during the week ; and I knew that this physique, and stopping the education of thousands of children." In those days, moreover, it was thought that a child more impressed the public mind than the telephone. To need not go to school till he went to work, " and so the pressure scientific men it is no doubt merely one—though by far the came upon the little creature at eight, when he went into theinill most original—of many improvements in telegraphy which to work as a half-timer in the morning, and went to school in are continually being made. But to the outside public, the the afternoon for the first time." Both these evils have now possibility of actually speaking to a person miles away seems disappeared. There are no more inequalities in the hours of to be an altogether new gift of science. If the comparison between the telephone and other forms of telegraph is pursued the cotton mill and the silk mill, and children no longer go to
,work at eight years old. The reformation had begun before into details, no doubt the distinction becomes less marked Mr. Mundella's time. There was present on Saturday " the than it appears at first-sight. For instance, the ticking of an ordinary telegraph instrument inside a sounding-board actually last living member of the Committee of 1833, one who entered
the factory at six years of age, not as a half-timer, but as a speaks to the skilled telegraphist who can write down what the full-timer." The Act which made this impossible came into instrument is saying. But this, after all, is a very different thing from hearing the voice of your friend speaking not only operation just fifty years ago, and the movement was crowned forty years later by the Factory Act of 1874. As Mr. Mun- della first shaped the Bill, the limit of the week's work for peculiar to him individually. women and children would have been fifty-four hours a week ; There is no other instrument of which we are aware which as the Bill was actually passed, the limit was fixed at fifty-six so palpably annihilates space, or which for practical purposes and-a-half hours. The echo of the doleful anticipation with brings together so immediately and rapidly two persons who which even this qualified relief was received has not yet wholly wish to communicate with each other. It was inevitable that died away. We still hear from time to time that the industrial such an invention must have a future, that no improvements supremacy of England is at an end, because her artisans work in other forms of telegraphic instruments could hope to corn- shorter hours than their fellows on the Continent. Even if the Pete with it for certain purposes, and that the telephone must statement were true, it ought not to make us retrace our steps. take its place in any complete system of telegraphy. Yet the Even industrial supremacy is dearly bought at the price of Post Office, with that curious disposition which seems to haunt physical and mental degradation. Nor, we may hope, will the a bureaucracy, to overlook broad and striking facts and dwell Continental workman be always content to work the hours he upon small details,—generally christened practical difficulties, works now. That he does so at present is due to the in- —neglected the invention in its infancy, and left it to be nursed and reared by private enterprise. The official expectation that feriority of Continental trade organisation and to his own false belief that an improvement in his condition is to follow from the telephone would have no practical success was, of course, political, rather than social changes. But the alleged indus-
falsified ; and the Companies which had been formed to intro- trial decline has happily no counterpart in fact. Mr. Mundella duce the instrument to the public speedily attracted custom. says that he lately asked one of the largest employers of The system known as the Exchange was organised — a labour whether he had any complaint to make of the working central establishment at which any person paying for the of the Act of 1874 :—" None at all," he said, " it has necessary appliances may be put into talking communication been a blessing to everybody Our factory people with any other person in a similar position—and the _ Post Office found that it could no longer treat the are the hardest workers in the world. There is a strenu
ousness, a persistency, a rapidity which characterises their telephone with contempt. The question then arose—Whether labour, which is not equalled by the factory operatives the Exchange system could be carried on by private of any other country, and I should be sorry to add one hour enterprise without the consent of the Postmaster-General ? to their work." Mr. Hugh Mason says the same thing. " We The Courts held that in law the telephone was a telegraph, were never so able to face competition in any part of the world and that the mode in which it was used was inconsistent with as we are just now We are working shorter hours, but the Post-Office monopoly. Thus the Post Office, which had the out-turn of the spindle and of the loom is now greater itself neglected and despised the telephone, stepped in, when than it was prior to 1874." Deficient as English workmen are its forecast was proved to be wrong, to prevent those who in point of education, they make up for this want by their had formed a more correct judgment from serving the practical capacity and physical endurance. In the words of public by supplying telephonic communication on ordinary one of the largest cotton spinners on the Continent, the commercial principles.
English " are better workmen without technical instruction, This was the first stage of the controversy ; and it will be than the Continental workmen are with it." They have the admitted that it would be difficult to derive from it any right physical basis from which to start, and they have been arguments in favour of a State monopoly. But to suggest helped to get this by the shorter hours they have worked as that the Post-Office authorities wished to strangle the new in- children. vention would of course be unfair. When their control over
We wish that Mr. Mundella had said something in his very it was established they had two alternatives,—they might interesting speech about the restrictions on female labour. It take the telephone entirely into their own hands,—of course is clear that if these restrictions are to continue, the argument on fair terms ; or they might allow those who had started in their favour must be reconsidered and restated. In its old the new business to carry it on upon conditions. The latter form, it is strenuously and even fiercely opposed by thousands alternative was adopted. Licences were granted to the Tele- of working-women ; and if the women of Lancashire and phone Companies to continue their work. Conditions of two Yorkshire had votes, we suspect that they would be given distinct kinds were imposed. A royalty of ten per cent. was largely for the modification of the Factory Acts as regards levied upon the receipts of the Companies, and rules were laid their own labour. " Why," they say, " are we to be forbidden down for the conduct of the Companies' business. The object to earn money, out of some selfish care which men are supposed of these rules has scarcely been concealed. It was to prevent to feel for us ? What they really fear is not our deterioration. any development of telephonic business to such an extent as but our competition. It may be the voice of the husband or to interfere with the telegraph revenue. Thus the Companies the father, but it is the mind of the rival. What we ask is were only allowed to carry on business within towns, and not protection, but freedom—freedom to do as well for our- within certain limited areas in those towns,—in London, selves as we can, to work as long as our bodily strength allows for example, within a radius of five miles from a central and our bodily wants demand." What we want to know is, office. They were not allowed to put town and town in cora- how far the opinion of the factory districts supports or opposes munication, except on conditions dictated by the Post Office ; this doctrine. We have very little doubt that it is in favour and other restrictive rules were imposed. It is not surprising of even greater restrictions on the labour of mothers during the that the public soon began to kick at these restrictions. The infancy of their children. But we should like to know what system was one doomed to failure. If telephonic communication is, as yet, difficult to make out,—how far the restrictions on the is desired, it is obvious that in a country like England, where the labour of women, as women, is approved in those districts, and public voice can make itself heard, telephonic communication if it is approved, what answer is given to this plausible state- must be supplied. Moreover, if competition in such supply is ment of the opposite case. allowed, the public must be allowed to choose between the
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