The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-03 00:00:00

to large, in a country so circumstanced as Ireland is
now. Were it summarily practicable to get rid of all the
minor tenements of land in Ireland, and peacefully
to re-distribute the soil into farms of Norfolk size, we
should deprecate the attempt as rash and mischievous,
because, sooner or later, doomed to utter and ruinous
failure. But convinced as we are, that nothing of the
kind can generally be carried into operation, we re-
gard the partial attempts to effect it as only calculated
to aggravate human suffering needlessly, to sow the
seeds of a new field of pteedial crime, and for a time
to obstruct and impede the legitimate working of the
poor-law.

Tae condition of too many among the labouring
classes in the manufacturing districts is, no doubt, de-
plumble—physically, intellectually, and morally. It
is unnecessary at present to repeat the details which
every free-trade and every short-time orator, and
every report of parliamentary commiLee on the state
of these districts has: been dunning into us for years
past. But there is one fact connected with the sub-
ject which is almost if not entirely overlooked, and
that is :—One hundred years ago, when the factory
system was in its infancy, matters were far worse.
If any one will take the trouble to turn over the
autobiography of Ilttrrete (the historian of Birming-
ham), he will find a description of the factory system
as it existed at the time we refer to; from which it is
obvious that the hours of labour were then longer, the
number of children employed and the overtasking of
their little powers proportionally greater than now,
and the unrestrained brutality of overseers towards
those under them, and of all towards each
other, such as cannot now be paralleled. Yet
the poor people of those days were glad to find
refuge for themselves and their children within the
walls of these factories from the starvation and idle-
nese to which, but for their introduction, they would
have been bound down; and but for the extension of
the factory system since, where would the increasing
millions to whom it has given employment have
found the means to keep them front inanition or rot-
ting alive ? The millions who find employment
in our factories have not been called into existence
by them ; their existence has rendered the factory
system possible, and that system has found bread for
many—bread scanty enough, and hardly earned, it
need not be denied, but bread which they must other-
wise have gone without.
We write neither as partisans of the factory system,
nor as eulogists of the mill-owners. We take these
men as we find them. Hard-headed, shrewd men
they are, eager in their pursuit of wealth, often
deficient in general education, coarse in their sen-
timents, apt at times, in the absorption of their
schemes, to forget ;he difference between theirhumaa
and their steam engines. But even the least elevated
natures among them have, in following out their
purely selfish speculations, been unwittingly but neces-
sarily the means of enabling many a man and many a
family to support themselves who otherwise would
have found that impossible. Nor has the advance of
the last century in liberality and humanity left
this class unaltered any more than their neigh-
bours. It is easy to count up hundreds of masters
in the factory districts who take a pride and pleasure
not only in caring for the animal comfort of their
labourers, but for their intellectual and moral eleva-
tion. The reign of the " billy-roller" is over in all
our factories—ventilation, cleanliness, and seem ity
against exposed machinery are cared for—the chil-
dren scarce grown out of infancy no longer are started
at five in the winter mornings front the Hoek bed
upon which they cast themselves after midnight, to
find their way through the storm to a renewal of
stupefying and demoralising drudgery.
For this change we are indebted, is part, to the
more humanised sentiments of the age, acting indi-
rectly both on masters and men ; in part, no doubt, to
the direct interference of the legislature. The past
history of the system has shown that legislative
interference with factory arrangements has not, at
all times, been either uncalled for or injurious. But
it is a delicate matter legislating on industrial rela-
tions, and ought to be cautiously and heedfully set
about.
With the restriction of the hours of labour for
children, or with the exclusion of children below a
certain age from factories, no rightly constituted mind
can quarrel. It is but an extension of the principle recog-
nised by the laws of all civilised nations with regard to
young people not emerged from the years of pupilage.
But it is a different affair when parliaments take upon
themselves to prescribe a maximum or minimum of
wages, or to enact that adults shall not labour beyond
a certain number of hours daily. The rate of wages
—the amount of labour which must be gone through
within a given time—are matters beyond the control
even of the parties engaged, whether employers or em-
ployed. They are dictated by circumstances entirely
independent of masters or men, and continually
shifting. The labour which is sufficient this week or
year, may be inadequate, or may be more than is
wanted, the next. 'flie profits and wages which the
returns of a business have enabled master and men
to divide between them in 1847 may be more or less
than what will remain for partition in 1848. A con-
tract voluntarily entered into by the parties them-
selves this month might require to have its terms
altered a month hence. How can a legislative body,
most of whose members are entirely inexperienced in
trade, lay down permanent regulations for what the
parties engaged in it cannot themselves foresee from
one months end to another ?
Now is the time to press these considerations upon
the attention of the factory operatives. The eleven
hours act will soon pass into a ten hours act. Now
is the time for them to ask themselves what the ope-
ration of that measure, so far as it has gone, augurs
of its future effects.
Even under the eleven hours system, numbers who
formerly found work in the factories are being thrown
out of employment. In some mills the masters are
preparing to remove the women from their weaving
sheds, with a view to substitute men who can work
as long as they please. There are mills now working
thirteen and fourteen hours a day in Manchester, and,
what is more, the men will leave any other mills and
go to these in preference. The way in which it is
contrived to keep these mills going so long is this:—
the carding and roving departments, in which
women and children are employed, are enlarged,
so as to enable them, without working beyond
legal hours, to keep pace with the spinners;
and what are called self-acting mules being
adopted in the spinning department, children
are there being dispensed with altogether. Thus,
everywhere throughout the cotton district, women are
either being thrown out of employment, or about to
be. Some theorists say : " Well, woman's natural
sphere is keeping everything right and tight within
doors ; so much the better." But in this country the
number of the sexes is nearly equal ; if anything, the
women are the more numerous. Every woman can-
not have a house of her own, or the means of keeping
it, unless she has employment from without ; nor do
homes find full employment for all the women who
have. The greatdifficulty in the present state of society
is to find honest remunerative employment for females;
and how the condition of our working classes is to
be bettered by withdrawing one of the few kinds of
employment fit for women from the hundreds of
thousands who are not needed to keep houses in
order and cannot get engagements as domestic ser-
vants, surpasses our comprehension.
For altering their factory arrangements so as to
get rid of the female hands, no one can blame
the masters. They are compelled to do it by
the 'fen Hours Act hanging over them. They can
only keep their factories going by meeting their
foreign rivals in the market of the world on at least
equal terms. Now the foreign manufacturer can
have cotton as cheap as the English ; he can have
machinery as good and cheap; power as cheap. And
if, standing on a footing of equality in all these
respects, the foreign manufacturer can get operatives
to work thirteen or fourteen hours a day, while the
English manufacturer is prevented by legislative
enactments from getting more than ten hours work
in the day from hie hands, the latter must, of neces-
sity, be driven from the market, and compelled to
shut up shop.
If the Ten Hours Act is allowed to come into ope-
ration, the workmen must make up their mind to one
of three consequences : either now inventions in ma-
chinery will be devised, by which the masters will be
enabled to dispense with a great many of their hands;
or the act will be evaded with the connivance of the
workmen ; or our factories will be ruined and stopped.
Many of the workmen are already aware of this :
more are apprehensive of it. The only thing that
threatens to retard a movement on the part of the
operatives themselves to prevent the ten hours system
coming into operation, is the premature movement of
the masters' association in Manchester. Instead of leav-