XLIII. 1847. CHAP. meals-that is, to ten hours per day of actual work, for five days in the week, and eight hours on Saturdays. This alteration to be carried out by restricting the hours of actual labour to sixty-three hours in the week until May 1, 1848, and after that to fifty-eight hours; and that these restrictions shall apply to females above eighteen years of age."-"I ask for this change," said Mr Fielden," because the people employed in factories have long wished for it, and have long petitioned the legislature to concede it to them, and because the ministers of religion, medical practitioners, and, indeed, all classes who have opportunities of observing the consequences of the present system, deprecate it as destructive of the moral and physical condition of a vast and most important class in the community. It is a question which involves the very existence of thousands, who are, I am afraid, annually sacrificed for the want of those due and sufficient regulations, without which, the late Sir Robert Peel asserted, an improved machinery would become our bitterest curse."1 1 Parl. Deb. Ann. Reg. 111. 87. In support of this motion Mr Fielden quoted several Continued. most important facts, disclosed in the Registrar-General's Reports, bearing with decisive force on the present question. "The population of the extra-metropolitan districts of Surrey was, in 1841, 187,868; and the population of the town sub-districts of Manchester was 163, 856; and yet in Manchester, with less population, the deaths registered in seven years (1838-44) were 39,922, and those in Surrey only 22,777, making a difference of 16,165. The population of Surrey exceeded that of Manchester, yet in seven years 16,000 persons died in Manchester over and above the deaths in Surrey. The difference between the mortality of young children in the two districts is still from alarming. There were, in 1844, 23,523 children under five years of age in Surrey, and the deaths of children of that age in the same period were 7364; the children in Manchester were in the same year 21,152; the deaths, XLIII. 1847. 20,726. In the seven years, 13,362 children in Man- CHAP. chester alone fell a sacrifice to known causes, which, it is believed, may be removed to a great extent; and the victims in Liverpool were not less numerous. Other parts, and particularly the towns of England, are similarly affected." The Registrar-General adds : "The returns of the first quarter prove that nothing effectual has been done to put a stop to the disease, suffering, and death by which so many thousands perish. Thousands of the men and women themselves perish of the diseases formerly so fatal, for the same reasons, in barracks, camps, jails, and ships. Children suffer from every kind of neglect while the mother is employed in factory labour, while their health is undermined by the use of opiates and by the ill-kept state of their homes. These results exceed the horrors of war, and cannot be justified on any assumed plea of necessity." 88. "In May last, when the subject was under discussion, Mr Cobden said, that, if the measure were put off for a Concluded. year, the feelings of the working classes on the subject would change. The measure has been put off for a year; but the only effect of that delay has been, not a weakening, but a strengthening of their convictions on the subject. The only argument adduced on the subject is the tyrant's plea '-the plea of necessity. But even that plea fails here: nay, it is rolled over to the other side. The only effect of working the factory girls and women to death, is over-production, which speedily necessitates a diminution of supply to arrest the fall of prices; and thus the pendulum oscillates between over-labour and under-time. All the mills at Manchester are now at short time-some six, some eight, some ten hours. Would this have been the case if a uniform ten-hours bill had been introduced last session? You have limited the labour of the slaves in the West Indies to forty-five hours a-week; can you refuse to restrain that of your own female operatives to fifty-eight hours-that is, thirteen XLIII. 1847. CHAP. hours more? Is the white slave, toiling in rooms at 80° of Fahrenheit, less our object of pity, or less entitled to protection, than the black slave, working in the open air under a similar temperature? It is in vain to allege, that the market for the produce of our factories will be injured if this bill passes. The same thing was said when the agitation first began in 1815, at which time the children were working from twelve to fourteen hours a-day. It was said, We shall be ruined if you prevent the children working fourteen hours a-day.' Well, the thing was done; the working hours were reduced from seventynine hours a-week to sixty-nine hours for adults, working young persons in the night was prohibited, and young children were not allowed to work more than six hours a-day. And yet the cotton trade, so far from being thereby in1 Parl. Deb. jured, has enormously increased, and 25,000,000 pounds 489, 491- more of cotton yarn were exported last year than in Ann. Reg. any previous year. After such an example, it is idle to speak of the present bill as having any tendency to lessen the market for our cotton manufactures." 1 lxxxix. xc. 770; 1847, 114, 117. 89. Sir R. Peel, Graham, den. Government was at first undecided what course to Answer of follow on the subject; but at length, on the second Sir James' reading, Lord John Russell gave the bill his support, and Mr Cob- although the Cabinet were divided upon the subject. From the first, however, it was vigorously opposed by Sir R. Peel, Sir James Graham, Mr Hume, and the whole Free-trade and cheapening party in both houses. It was argued by them: "The opponents of the bill are the true friends of labour. If you diminish the hours of labour, you increase the cost of production. This additional expense must either increase the price of the article, or it must form a deduction from the profits of the manufacturer or the wages of the workmen, or be divided between them. This argument has never yet been met, and if foreign competition is as formidable as is supposed, the effect of the change will be to drive us from the foreign markets. The bill will affect the four XLIII. 1847. staple articles of manufacture—cotton, woollen, linen, and CHAP. silk. These four articles comprise £37,000,000 out of the £51,000,000 of our exports. The price of food is now higher than it has been for several years; and at such a time it is proposed, for the first time in the history of our manufactures, to limit the running of machinery in these four branches. That the cutting off of two hours' work in a day will augment the cost of production, if it is not compensated by a reduction in the wages of labour, is self-evident; and is this a time, when provisions are so high, and distress everywhere staring us in the face, to introduce a measure which, if it does not drive us from the foreign market, will undoubtedly have that effect? 90. "What are the three securities for the present prosperity of our manufactures? They are our capital, our Continued. machinery, our labour. Now, we are every day exporting our machinery; there is nothing to prevent increased investment of our capital in foreign countries; the increased facilities of locomotion and communication enable the working man to seek employment at pleasure abroad. It is under such circumstances that it is now proposed to restrict, nominally, the labour of women and children, but practically that of adult men, for they cannot work without them. Labour is to be restricted to five days out of six. Such a change appears in the highest degree dangerous. If it passes into law, you will lower the wages, and abridge the comforts of the working men, at the very time when you are making every exertion to increase their intellectual cultivation. If you do this, their enlarged information will only become a source of danger to themselves and the State. We should all work to this one point, whether by sanitary improvements or otherwise, to elevate the character, brighten the prospects, and enlarge the comforts of the working classes: the future peace, prosperity, and happiness of the country are indissolubly wound up with such measures. But how CHAP. XLIII. 1847. are we to do this if we curtail their wages? and what is a reduction of the hours of labour by a sixth in a week, but an income-tax to that extent laid exclusively upon the working classes ? Rather let us allow them to 1 Parl. Deb. continue as they now are, and by honest industry lay 814; Ann. the foundation, like the honourable member for Salford Reg. 1847, (Mr Brotherton), of a fortune which hundreds have acquired." 1 xc. 774, 116, 118. 91. The bill passes both houses. Plausible as these arguments were, they did not prevail with either house of Parliament. The bill passed the House of Commons by a majority of 104 to 46 the Peers, by 53 to 11. It was evident from these figures that some great change had taken place from former years, when the bill had been rejected in the Commons, first by a majority of 138, then by one of 10. Nor was it difficult to see what this change was. In the interim the Corn Laws had been repealed, and the county members were now determined to retaliate on the mill-owners. The whole Protectionists in both houses voted for the bill. Lord Brougham, who strongly opposed it in the House of Peers, ridiculed the idea of its having a tendency to afford the working classes leisure for mental improvement. "After ten hours' work," said he, "a man is too tired to read if the Saturday is taken as a holi2 Parl. Deb. day, it will be spent in the public-house. I have been try891; Ann. ing to educate the peasantry these twenty-five years, and the competitor and antagonist by which I have always been defeated is Sleep."2 xc. 889, Reg. 1847, 119, 121. 92. on this mea sure. Notwithstanding this sweeping and characteristic deReflections nunciation of sleep by the learned lord, there can now be no doubt that the measure was a wise and judicious one, and that the philanthropic men who had so long and so strenuously laboured for its support-Lord Ashley,* Mr Fielden, Mr Brotherton, and Mr Oastler-are to be regarded as the permanent benefactors of mankind. Now the Earl of Shaftesbury. |