improvement in the condition of the working people. They have not applied the principle of Reform to themselves. They have not begun at home. Yet the end of all Reform is the improvement of the individual. Everything that is wrong in Society results from that which is wrong in the Individual. When men are bad, society is bad.
Franklin, with his shrewd common sense, observed, "The taxes are indeed very heavy; and if those laid on by the Government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed quite as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement."
Lord John Russell once made a similar statement to a body of working men who waited upon him for the purpose of asking relief from taxation. "You complain of the taxes," he said; "but think of how you tax yourselves. You consume about fifty millions yearly in drink. Is there any Government that would dare to tax you to that extent? You have it in your own power greatly to reduce the taxes, and that without in any way appealing to us."
Complaining that the laws are bad, and that the taxes are heavy, will not mend matters. Aristocratic government, and the tyranny of masters, are nothing like so injurious as the tyranny of vicious appetites. Men are easily led away by the parade of their miseries, which are for the most part voluntary and self-imposed—the results of idleness, thriftlessness, intemperance, and misconduct. To blame others for what we suffer, is always more agreeable to our self-pride, than to blame ourselves. But it is perfectly clear that people who live from day to day without plan, without rule, without forethought—who spend all their earnings, without saving anything for the future—are preparing beforehand for inevitable distress. To provide only for the present, is the sure means to sacrificing the future. What hope can there be for a people whose only maxim seems to be, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die"?
All this may seem very hopeless; yet it is not entirely so. The large earnings of the working classes is an important point to start with. The gradual diffusion of education will help them to use, and not abuse, their means of comfortable living. The more extended knowledge of the uses of economy, frugality, and thrift, will help them to spend their lives more soberly, virtuously, and religiously. Mr. Denison was of opinion that much of this might be accomplished "within two generations." Social improvement is always very slow. How extremely tardy has been the progress of civilization! How gradually have its humanizing influences operated in elevating the mass of the people! It requires the lapse of generations before its effects can be so much as discerned: for a generation is but as a day in the history of civilization. It has cost most nations ages of wars, before they could conquer their right of existence as nations. It took four centuries of persecutions and martyrdoms to establish Christianity, and two centuries of civil wars to establish the Reformation. The emancipation of the bondsmen from feudal slavery was only reached through long ages of misery. From the days in which our British progenitors rushed to battle in their war-paint—or those more recent times when the whole of the labouring people were villeins and serfs, bought and sold with the soil which they tilled—to the times in which we now live—how wide the difference, how gratifying the contrast. Surely it ought not to be so difficult to put an end to the Satanic influences of thriftlessness, drunkenness, and improvidence!
CHAPTER IV.
MEANS OF SAVING.
"Self-reliance and self-denial will teach a man to drink out of his own cistern, and eat his own sweet bread, and to learn and labour truly to get his own living, and carefully to save and expend the good things committed to his trust."—Lord Bacon.
"Love, therefore, labour: if thou should'st not want it for food, thou may'st for physic. It is wholesome for the body, and good for the mind; it prevents the fruit of idleness."—William Penn.
"The parent who does not teach his child a trade, teaches him to be a thief."—Brahminical Scriptures.
Those who say that "It can't be done," are probably not aware that many of the working classes are in the receipt of incomes considerably larger than those of professional men.
That this is the case, is not, by any means, a secret. It is published in blue-books, it is given in evidence before parliamentary committees, it is reported in newspapers. Any coal-owner, or iron-master, or cotton-spinner, will tell you of the high wages that he pays to his workpeople.
Families employed in the cotton manufacture are able to earn over three pounds a week, according to the number of the children employed.[1] Their annual incomes will thus amount to about a hundred and fifty pounds a year—which is considerably larger than the incomes of many professional men—higher than the average of country surgeons, higher than the average of the clergy and ministers of all denominations, higher than the average of the teachers of common schools, and probably higher than the average income of the middle classes of the United Kingdom generally.
[Footnote 1: A return of seven families employed by Henry Ashworth, New Cayley Mills, Lancashire, is given in the Blue Book, entitled, "Report of the Paris Universal Exhibition, 1867, containing the Returns relative to the New Order of Reward," p. 163. Of the seven families, the lowest earnings per family amounted to £2 14s. 6d.; and the highest to £3 19s. a week.]
An employer at Blackburn informs us that many persons earn upwards of five pounds a week—or equal to an average income of two hundred and sixty pounds a year. Such families, he says, "ought not to expend more than three pounds weekly. The rest should be saved. But most of them, after feeding and clothing themselves, spend the rest in drink and dissipation."
The wages are similar in the Burnley district, where food, drink, and dress absorb the greater part of the workpeople's earnings. In this, as in other factory districts, "the practice of young persons (mill-workers) boarding with their parents is prevalent, and is very detrimental to parental authority." Another reporter says, "Wages are increasing: as there is more money, and more time to spend it in, sobriety is not on the increase, especially amongst females."
The operatives employed in the woollen manufacture receive about forty shillings a week, and some as much as sixty,[1] besides the amount earned by their children.
A good mechanic in an engine shop makes from thirty-five to forty-five shillings a week, and some mechanics make much larger wages. Multiply these figures, and it will be found that they amount to an annual income of from a hundred to a hundred and twenty pounds a year.
[Footnote 1: See the above Blue Book, p. 57, certifying the wages paid by Bliss and Son, of Chipping Norton Woollen Factory.]
But the colliers and iron-workers are paid much higher wages. One of the largest iron-masters recently published in the newspapers the names of certain colliers in his employment who were receiving from four to five pounds a week—or equal to an annual income of from two hundred to two hundred and fifty pounds a year.[1]
[Footnote 1: Richard Fothergill, Esq., M.P. He published a subsequent letter, from which we extract the following:—
"No doubt such earnings seem large to clerks, and educated men, who after receiving a costly education have often to struggle hard for bread; but they are nevertheless the rightful earnings of steady manual labour; and I have the pleasure of adding that, while all steady, well-disposed colliers, in good health, could make equally good wages, many hundreds in South Wales are quietly doing as much or more: witness a steady collier in my employment, with his two sons living at home, whose monthly pay ticket has averaged
