The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-06-20 00:00:00

EVENING CLASSES FOR ADULTS
HOW FAR DESIRABLE, POSSIBLE, AND
SOUGHT FOR.

(PROM A. CORRESPONDENT.)

Ix speaking of adult classes, we must bear in mind that
every adult has been a youth ; so that the man will require
little or much education, in the same proportion as the
boy has received much or little. But some suppose that
all are educated, more or less, in our day ; one hears so
much of schools, and education societies, and improved
class-books, and the association of crime with ignorance.
Yet there are many thousands who cannot read; there are
thousands of others who can read, but not fluently ; who
would never do so of their own choice, or for pleasure, but
who can make out the sense as a school-boy would gather
the meaning of a Latin Father. Beyond these, a still
larger number cannot write, but sign with their mark
when they sign at all.

The causes of this state of things are two-fold :-Ist,
deficient means, and 2nd, deficient use of existing means.
The former cause may be exemplified as follows :—ln the
town of Liverpool there are so many as 39,000 poor in
five ecclesiastical districts ; yet protestants of all classes,
churchmen and dissenters, do not provide for the educa-
tion of a single individual of them, young or old. Those
parts of the town display not only the greatest ignorance,
but the greatest poverty, and the lowest grade of morals ;
so that, practically, we are like men who labour to heal
the convalescent, while we leave the sick and sorrowing
to die.

The second cause of ignorance is the result partly of
necessity and partly of choice. In the former case, a boy
can carry his father's dinner, or deliver a message, or
relieve guard in an humble outer office. A girl can go to
a neighbouring shop, or can look after the baby. From
that moment, education is interfered with ; and the inter-
ruptions to study increase, as the boy or girl progresses
in years and in capability of discharging household or
other ties. Now, it is well known that attainments
which lave not reached a certain point are rapidly for-
gotten; and this is no doubt the reason why many men
are unable to write, except to sign their own names. But
where ignorance is not of necessity, it is usually the
parent who is to blame. He has never required education
himself, perhaps, and therefore does not value it. He
regards it as desirable when it comes in course—a sort of
luxury, which may or may not be possessed, like what
are called the " extras," in the schools of more fashionable
life. Such a man may live next door to a school, yet still
his children will be ignorant.
Let us next turn from the nor to the MIN. Assuming
that it is intended I should speak of the labouring classes
only, I shall divide them into skilled labourers and
unskilled labourers.. Between the two there- is. a wide
distinction, and the severance is becoming wider every
year. The skilled labourer serves an apprenticeship,
learns a trade, unites- himself with a class for purposes of
mutual interest, is bound by voluntary laws which do not
always harmonise with the laws of the land, and fixes a
limit to the number of those who shall ascend to the plat-
form on which he stands. The unskilled labourer may be
intelligent, but he brings to the market merely his
physical strength,, and disease or privation sometimes
leaves him little even of that. Though there are certain
gradations, such as foreman, overlooker, employer, con-
tractor ; and though such names as Brindley, Stephenson,
and Dargan do occur in peculiar times, the law is that the
unskilled labourer remains- so from the beginning to the
end. The position into which he falls at twenty years• of
age is usually that from which he descends into his grave,
the few exceptions to this only serving to prove the rule..
If he attempt to rise into the atmosphere of skilled labour;
he is met by prohibitory regulations, enacted by those
who are perpetually railing at " class legislation ;" and.
the man who comes nearest, to him in the brotherhood of
rank, denies him that free. trade and liberty of action.
which both of them claim from all above them. Hence, it
has occurred within the last three months, and in this
town, that the skilled labourer has earned 18s., and in,
special circumstances, I have been told, even 225. per day;.
while the unskilled labourer, though industrious, intel-
ligent, and honourable, has been starving, and utterly
unable to procure employment at 10s. per week !
There is a third class which exists in large numbers in
this county, but is scarcely known in Liverpool, viz., the•
factory hands. Their occupations necessarily require a '
minute division of labour ; and yet recent events have
shown, at Preston, that paupers from the workhouse, and
rustics from the fields, were not long in acquiring all the-
manual dexterity that was-necessary.
The class in which the mere physical labourer is in-
cluded, embraces an unusually large number in the town.
of Liverpool. Including wives and families, and widows,
and families, it is very far within the truth to say one-
third of the gross population. It becomes an important
question, therefore,. what are the inducements and what
the obstacles to self-improvement, in the adults of this-
class. At present I may take for granted that facilities
for their education in evening classes exist all over the
town ; or at all events, that where they do not exist, with
willing minds they might easily be provided. My object
has been mainly to ascertain how far these would be likely
to be made use. of, by the persons who, in one- sense,
mainly require them..
In addition to the fact that the mere labourer is bound
to his position by a law almost as rigid as the Indian one
of caste, the hours of occupation in this town, and the dis-
tances, interfere with many good resolutions. What we
call Liverpool is a tract five miles long and more than two
broad; so that a man who succeeds in obtaining employ-
ment in what he calls " his own town," may reside at the
distance of one, two, or three miles from his occupation.
His hours in summer are nominally from six tos six ; but
practically he leaves his home a little after five, and seldom
reaches it before seven. The early call of to-morrow's
duties compels him to retire soon ; so that if we subtract
a brief interval for bodily rest, for the evening meal, and
for the most casual conversation with his wife and children,
it becomes next to impossible that he can set apart even
one hour definitely, for any purpose which is altogether
optional or of only possible advantage. In the winter
season, the case is somewhat different ; he is not obliged
to retire to rest so early, yet such is the force of habit that
little difference is made; but if the advantages of instruc-
tion were obvious, he might possibly snatch a definite
interval, between the termination of labour and the com-
mencement of repose.

[The hours of labour in Liverpool apply to more than
labouring classes. They serve to explain, in part, why
our churches are often thinly attended in the summer
months, especially by men.]

This supposes that the labourer is regularly employed ;
which, lam sorry to say, is far from the fact. Now, it is
evident that if only partially occupied, he has the more
leisure for self-improvement; but experience shows that
that is just the time at which he has least inclination for
it. He only asks an opportunity for the exercise of
honourable industry, and cannot find it ; he is occupied
with the great fact of whether he can live at all, and we
tell him of an improved manner of living; his whole
thought is how to possess, and we talk to him about
how to enjoy; so that the proposition to which he would
yield a glad assent in favourable circumstances, is
turned aside almost without a thought, under the joint
influence of blighted hopes and partial sustenance. I
am convinced, every day more and more, of the inti-
mate relation that exists between the physical con-
dition of the poor, and the success of the labours of
intellectual, moral, and spiritual agents. There are thou-
sands of men who have been intelligent, would be moral,
and might be religious, who yet sink into a condition
akin to that of the beasts which perish,—eating and
drinking when they can, and sleeping where they may.
The following facts scarcely require one word of com-
ment. Within the last four years, (1850, 51, 52, 53,) no
fewer than 1,000,487 persons arrived as deck passengers
from Ireland alone, at this port. Of these, rather more than
two-thirds were of the class of humble dealers, labourers,
and emigrants ; but nearly 300,000 were (so far as the
police could judge) absolute paupers !# Of this million, a
large number are now to be found in our colonies ; some
have passed inland and found employment ; a large num-
ber have returned, at the end of some particular season ;
not a few have died ; but after all deductions, a large
number of the most helpless remain. (I may just remark
in passing, that it is not difficult to account for the increase
of Popery in England, when a million of Irish labourers
are either absorbed in Liverpool, or filtered through it, in
the short space of four years.) But my principal object is
to show, that the condition of the humbler classes in this
town must necessarily be deplorable, when a disturbing
cause, permanent in duration, and of such enormous mag-
nitude, exists in the labour market.
* Report on. the Police Establishment in Liverpool, pre-
sented .sth April, 1554.