The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-20 00:00:00

THE FINALE OF PRE i',,IcTORY

DEBATE.
(From the _examiner )
The defeat of Lord Ashley's amendment by the large ma-
jority of 158 is no triumph of principle, no sign that on un-
proved knowledge and reflection the error of the former votes
on the same question has been discovered and corrected ; it
is merely the result of subserviency to the Ministry, whose
existence is preferred to all other objects and considerations.
There is a majority for imposing restrictions on labour, and
for confiscating a portion of the capital invested in mills ;
but those who would not scruple to overthrow our manufac-
turing system are restrained by the fear of upsetting an Ad-
ministration. The principles, if the name be given to them,
are under suppression, but their bias will probably appear
before this Parliament is dissolved, and in that case the
great Conservative rally and triumph will have given the
first representative to doctrines worthy of Jack Cade, and
breaking in at once on the rights both of industry and pro-
perty.

- The division of Monday night will not remedy any of the
mischief that has been done by the preceding votes; it will
not put down or discourage the Short Wages agitation. The
delusion is now fixed in the minds of a large portion of the
work-people, and the cruelty is done which cannot be undone,
of adding an unreal cause of discontent to a lot which is
hard enough without imaginary grievances. The notion has
been sanctioned that Parliament can regulate wages, that it
can abridge labear without diminishing the remuneration for
it, and this insane idea will spread through all the provinces
of industry. Sir Robert Peel, in his masterly speech on
Monday night, produced an example of the working of the
delusion—

" Here is a circular issued by a body as important as the
workers in cotton factories, The Miners' Association of
Great Britain and Ireland.'—(Hear, hear.) They make these
demands.—e Hear, hear,' from Mr. Ferrand.) To which, it
appears the Hon. Gentleman, of course consistently upon his
principles, is prepared to yield, but to which I am not.
They are urged, however, upon the same principles as those
on which we are now appealed to ; and, if the presumption
be that those who are employed know best their own inte-
rests, of course our yielding in the present case would but
provide a precedent for repeated concessions to all similar
demands in future periods.—(Hear, hear.) This, then,
is the address of the turned-out miners; they enumerate
their grievances, and thus enunciate their proposed reme-
dies We ask, yea, we would say, demand, first, these
boons, as the redress of those grievances—first, we wish
to work eight hours per day and no more—(Assenting cheers)
—secondly, we wish to receive 4s. a-day wages—(Laughter,
andllear, hear)—thirdly, we wish to be,paid weekly—(Hear,
hear)—fourtkly, we wish to be united for our security.'
Friends and fellow-countrymen, we now appeal to your
sympathy, and ask you, in the name of justice, whether to
be buried in the caverns of the earth, inhaling the most
noxious air for eight hours a-day, be not enough ?'—(Loud
cries of 'Hear, hear.') Whatever is morally wrong, cannot
be pelitically right.—(Laughter from the supporters of the
Ministry, cheers from others.) We ask you is 4s. a-day too
much for digging out of the bowels of the earth so useful a
commodity as coal, our lives all the while in the most immi-
nent peril—(Hear very moment threatening us with the
most honllble death—(Hear)—and no provision for our wives
and children?'"

It is remarkable that, throughout the debates on the Fac-
tory question, not a syllable has been said in defence of the
millowners' rights against the proposed confiscation of a sixth
of their properties.
It seems as if it had been agreed that if reducing the hours
of work would improve the condition of the operatives, the
improvement should be effected at the cost of the capitalists.
No one protested against robbing Paul if it could be made
certain that Peter could get twelve hours' pay for his ten
hours' work. _ _ _

For nights the discussion was, whether wages would or
would not fall with diminished production, as if upon a con-
clusion in the negative a clear case would have been made
out for taking from the millowners a sixth of their profits, or
for ruining many of them altogether.
Mr. M. Milnes, indeed, remarked with infinite coolness
that, if Lord Ashley's amendment were carried, the manu-
facturers would make up for the shortened time by improved
machinery, as if the millowner could afford to provide him-
self with now machinery as an idle gentleman purchases a
trinket or piece of furniture of a new fashion. The machi-
nery in many factories has cost more than a hundred thou-
sand pounds, and would require as large an outlay to substi-
tute improved machinery for that which legislative restric-
tions had made unequal to the remunerating production.
Manufacturers cannot all afford to be in the newest fashion
of machinery; their means of refurnishing their mills do not
keep pace with mechanical improvement ; and hence the
greater number of factories are now worked with inferior
machinery, which would be utterly inadequate if there were
a further reduction of the working hours. To tell these pro-
prietors that they must make up for shorter time by im-
proved machinery would be much the same as advising a
man who complained of the sacking of his house that he could
set it all right by employing a fashionable upholsterer.
If some of these fine gentlemen who talk so glibly of fac-
tories would take the trouble to go and look at one, they
would find that its machinery was not to be thrown aside
and renewed as easily as a toothpick.
Lord Howick advocates the Short Wages project as a check
to the too eager pursuit of wealth :
"If a too eager pursuit of wealth put to hazard the moral
condition of the people and impeded their moral improve-
ment, that pursuit it was the duty of Government to mode-
rate. The people should not be allowed to follow the pursuit
of wealth to the neglect of still higher objects."
He would impoverish spinners, weavers, and millowners for
their moral advantage. Ile is shocked that people in earning
ten shillings a week neglect higher objects than money-get-
ting, and accordingly he would mulct them of a sixteeth of
their little incomes, to give them leisure for moral cultiva-
tion, which it is absolutely certain will occupy the time
hitherto devoted to work.

We are quite ready to admit that there is too eager a pur-
suit of wealth in this country, but the factories are not more
forward in the chase than the shop, the counting-house, the
bar, and every profession and vocation that can be named ;
and we cannot think it within the province of thejLegislature
to contrive checks to this propensity, as, amongst other ob-
jections, there will always be danger of its destroying the
livelihood of people in the attempt to control the excess of
industry. There are lawyers who work their brains and
lungs for sixteen hours a day, and who kill themselves by so
doing ; but the Legislature would hardly pass a Bill appoint-
ing inspectors of chambers and courts, and prohibiting at-
tendance in them for more than ten or twelve hours a day.
The correction of the pursuit of Mammon to the neglect
of higher objects is the proper business of the Church, whose
heads so forcibly illustrate the scriptural precept that riches
are the root of all evil, by insisting that bishops cannot main-
tain their respectability without incomes of many thousands
a-year, and that 150,000/. a• year is an inadequate sum for
twenty six prelates.*
But throughout the Short Wages argument there is the
assumption that the factory work-people are in a worse
mental and bodily condition than persons of the same classes
in other employments, which is utterly false. They are
better fed, better clothed, better lodged, better educated, and
more moral than the rural labourers ; and if they have not
the advantage of working in the open air, they are, on the
other hand, spared the rheumatisms and other ailments re-
sulting from exposure to wet and the vicissitudes of weather.
Mr. Charles Buller, indeed, asks—
" Could any Hon. Member deny that labour protracted to
the period of twelve hours a-day did not greatly interfere,
and was inconsistent with the moral improvement, education,
and well-being of the people who were subjected to it?"
The condition of the factory population is the practical
denial of the question; and if the labour which is proved to
be accompanied with the greatest demoralisation, the densest
ignorance, and the worst diet and lodging, is to be put under
Parliamentary regulation, it is that of the rural population
that the landowners in Parliament should commence-their
experiments upon, by some Bill for improving the labourer's
state by the confiscation of a sixth of the landlord's estates.

If the factory work- people are deficient in morality, educa-
tion, and the comforts of the poor, let us be told in what
other province of labour the advantages wanting in their
case are to be found. Are we living in the midst of a moral,
educated, and prosperous populace ? What is it that we see
all around us ? As Mr. C. Wood remarks, " the greatest
amount of depravity and vice is displayed in the haunts of
the greatest poverty," and to make the poor poorer is the
proposal of Lord Howick, by the arbitrary confiscation of a
sixth of their property in their industry.
The truth is almost confessed that there is no peculiar oc-
casion for interference with factory labour, except that it is
so easy—that they present so inviting an opportunity for
meddling. As an idle boy throws a stone at a bird or beast,
not from any provocation or but simply because it
had the ill luck to offer so fair a mark, legislators have their
fling at factories because they are such broad objects for
interference.

We must except, however, one special argument of Mr. C.
Buller—

pdeo
el ln
etdme
aroe •r
" He referred to the necessity—the absolute importance,
of keeping the two sexes to their own distinct and proper pro-
vinces.—(Cheers.) A master manufacturer had put forth a
statement on this subject. What was that statement with
regard to the proportion of men and women employed in
the manufacturing districts ? Why, in the large town of
Manchester it was stated that of the labouring portion of
the population employed in the factories three-fifths were
females and two-fifths were males ; as three to two.—(Hear,
hear.) That was a great evil, requiring certainly legislative
interference."
This logic is borrowed from the Duke of 'Wellington. The
absolute importance of keeping the two sexes in their proper
provinces is asserted, it being assumed at the same time that
spinning and weaving and piecing slender threads are in the
indisputable province of male labour, and that women are as
much out of place in such employments as at the forge or
plough. This point being so summarily settled, it is next
found that the women in factories are to the men in the pro-
portion of three to two, and that, declares Mr. C. Buller, ex
cathedra, is a great Al. But how, in what respect a great
evil ?
If Mr. C. Buller will look about him he will find that the
women employed in rubbing and scrubbing, in private houses,
are in more than the proportion of six to one males, and to
his polite horror he will find that in the immense majority of
houses no man is employed, women blacking shoes, brushing
clothes, cleaning knives, besides sweeping, bed-making, roast-
ing and boiling, and all the rest of a household drudgery.
No Lord Ashley has yet calculated how many miles a maid
of all work paces over in the course of a day, how many
-engine does the heavier part of the
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from the whimsies weavers in a mill, and they undergo a
trouble
ratiotwativrehftnooohnlle:druovti
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sively.
If Mr. C. Buller could, as he wishes, turn the women out
of the factories, where would they find those " proper pro-
vinces" to which he is so anxious to confine them 7 Some
might get into the domestic drudgery, which they are so
glad to quit for factory employment; more would be thrown
into the workhouse, and many would fall to prostitution. Is
the workhouse or the brothel a more suitable province than
the factory ?
Mr. Hawes is too intelligent and too honest to deny that
short wages must be the consequence of short work ; but he
is for imposing the restrictions as a way in his view of get-
ting rid of the corn restrictions. But how? There is but
one way in which such an effect can be produced, namely, ,
by so damaging the manufacturing interests that for deliver-
: employment
improvedered factory,a
nd
ance from sheer ruin they must snake a struggle of des-