The Sun.
London, England, 1867-04-03 00:00:00

ter. Both sides may derive some profit from
the interchange of opinions, and if one is induced
to concede more, and the other inclined to demand
less, the country must be the gainer. We wish the
Government success in the arduous endeavour before
them, and we think that wish will be echoed by all
impartial politicians of every denomination, for they
hare shown themselves anxious to do their beet,
and arrange things to meet the general convenience
of the house and fulfil the expectations of the
people.

The subject which Mr. DENT last evening
brought under the notice of the House of Com-
mons is one of those social grievances which have
been left too long unredressed. The condition of
our agricultural labourers and their families has
indeed been often discussed, and probably there are
few who have examined the subject even cursorily
without arriving at the cowiction that many
changes are necessary. The dwellers in towns and
cities find it difficult to realise the actual condi-
tions of life in the agricultural districts ; and the
picture, so forcibly drawn last night by Mr. DENT
and some other gentlemen familiar with the sub-
ject, must have surprised while it shocked a good
many of his hearers. Almost all the evils which
produced the Factory Acts are still in active opera-
tion in the fields, while in a moral point of view the
effects of the work are far worse. The gang
system, in which men and women, boys and girls,
are indiscriminately employed, is most disastrous
in its effects on the young females. They become
brutalised and degraded, totally unfit either for
regular employment elsewhere or for the duties of
domestic life. The evil effects of employing
women in field-work have been summed up by a
gentleman who has seen much of it as "loss of
self-respect, dirty and degraded habits, slovenly
and slatternly households, the alienation of
husbands by the discomfort of their homes,
the great neglect of the education of
children, drunkenness among the men, and
the consumption of opium among the
women." At first sight the physical effects seem
less injurious, for, thanks, no doubt, to the one
great blessing of fresh air, which atones for so
much else, the young children employed are gene-
rally healthy ; but if we look further we find the
case assume a different aspect. The death rate of
infants in such districts is something extraordinary.
In Wisbeach the death of children under one year
was the same as in Manchester ! In other parts
it was 21 and 23, and in the district of Chatteris,
out of 72 burials in the year, 30 were those of
children one year old and upwards. The brutal
conduct of the degraded mothers towards their
children, and the custom of drugging them with
opium. The unnatural mothers look upon their
deaths with so much indifference, if not worse, that
it is a common saying, when a woman who has lost
one or two children has another, " Oh, that won't
last long." Mr. DENT said truly he could not con-
ceive a more fatal or hardening influence coming
over the women of this country ; and, as another
gentleman observed last night, what but wretched-
ness and drunkenness can result when a labouring
man takes a wife from this class? There may be
here as elsewhere honourable exceptions, but that
the general tendency of such rough employment in
mixed company is to degrade and harden young
women and girls cannot for a moment be doubted.
When we look at the employment of children in
these gangs we shall find it very oppressive in its
agency. Upon an analysis being made of the ages
of those employed in the Lincolnshire gang=, it
appeared that out of 4,600, 871 were children
under 13 years of age, 765 grown females, making

a total of 1,636 young persons; there were about
1,000 other children of various ages, and 388 adult
females. One person stated that in his district 20
children under the age of seven years were sent out
in gangs, some of them being only five or six years
of age ; and that both boys and girls had to go a
distance of five or six miles from their homes to
their place of work. They were obliged to go to
work as early as half-past five in the morning,
and did not get back to their homes till seven or
eight at night, their employment being often in
heavy, wet ground. The wages paid to these
children is only a few pence a day, and the labour
of the women is, of course, very much cheaper
than that of men. At the same time the savinf,

to the employers is in a great measure more appa-
rent than real. In some parts they complain that
the labourers are emigrating on account of the
lowness of the wages they receive, and it is the
competition of women and children that keeps
down the rate of wages. It is always the
cheapest way in the end to secure good
work, and the agriculturists might as well
go back to the old clumsy machines they
formerly employed, because they were less
immediately costly than the newer and more effec-
tive ones. A long day's labour in the fields is un-
doubtedly the work of a man, not of a woman or
a girl, and if women force themselves into the
sphere properly belonging to men they will inevi-
tably lose more than they gain. It is fair to the
employers generally to say that they are for the
most part in favour of a change, and in some in-
stances have expressed themselves strongly on
behalf of the suppression of the gang system.
The lack of cottages has a peat deat deal to do
with the employment of these gangs, and this in
the Fen districts is partly attributable to
the recent reclamation of the land. Seve-
ral large farmers have given up employing
the public gangs, and they also disapprove of the
employment of children in private gangs. On one
point in reference to this gang system there seemed
to be no difference of opinion, and that was the neces-
sity of a strict supervision over the gang masters of
the public gangs who take their gangs about to dif-
ferent parts of the country. Sometimes the gang-

master has under him 100 young children and
women. lie contracts with the farmer for EO many
of them, and takes for his payment the profit
which he makes out of their labour. Under
these circumstances it may easily be sup-
posed that great cruelty and tyranny is
often exercised by these men, more especially
as they are many of them of the lowest character.
Many of them have even been convicted felons;
and in any case it is plain, as Mr. POWELL ob-
served, that it is only by the oppression of the
younger members of their gang that they can re-
ceive a profit beyond the ordinary pay of day
labourers. The Royal Commission suggested, very
properly, that no middleman should be allowed to
take out gangs without a license from a magis-
trate; and this very sensible suggestion ought to
be immediately acted upon. Mr. DENT proposed
that no girl under 17 should be allowed to work
in the fields, and several other members supported
this view; one speaker saying that in that case
he did not believe they would work there at all,
a consummation to be very much desired.

The truck system, with all its attendant evils, also

prevails in some of these parts, and should certainly
come under the notice of the Legislature. We can
imagine nothing more cruel and unjust than to com-
pel a labourer, instead of receiving the money he
has fairly earned, to take out of his wages in drink
a large part, and yet this is done in certain districts.
The whole question iz one which demands a full in-