Morning journal and courier., 1891-11-14

ploded.
This is interesting not only because the
real occurrence is quite as strange as the
imagined one, but because the fact came
after the fiction and paralleled it so close
ly.
MIR. wAKEMAN,S JOURNEYINGS.
At Crick, England-A Home.Spot of
Rest-Gcorge Smith of CoaIvfIle-
Brick-Yard and Canal-Roat Chill
dren-The Factory and workshops
Amendment Act.
CRIcK, England, Nov. 2.
To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND CouRIKR:
Here in this little ancient English vii
lage, six miles of sunny way from the no
BILE school-town of Rugby, lives one of the
most noted and certainly one of the worth
lest men of England. 1 am his friend and
guest.
1t is an humble abode, three three-cen-
tury old cabins merged into one, with ga
bled roof, huge freplaces, low ceilings,
tiny windows, and all manner of mysteri
Gus cubby holes, hooks and passages; and
with three of the sweetest women in Eng
land, mother and two lovely maidens, to
give the quaint old place unceasing light
and joy.
1t is not the first time have been here
at Crick. 1t is my only home-spot in q
foreign land. When tired of wandering
up and down the face of Britain here is
where 1 come for rest There are both
rest and delight in old, old Crick; rest, be-
cause it is one of the few of English VII
lagos which stands just as it always stood;
where the roar of the workaday worlds
activities never comes; where the old par
ish church, the graveyard, the deeayed
manor houses, the huge stone dove-cotes
which house five hundred families of doves,
the matched farm laborers' cottages, the
ivies and mossy walls, and the simple vii
lage folk, all invite to repose; and of de-
light because, with my host and friend,
George Smith of Coalville, sage, philoso-
pher and philsnthropist, we wander
among English lance, find old paths over
English fields, hunt out English antiqui-
ties. visit English battle grounds, talk of
and visit the gipsies and all the other low
ly we both know and love; and altogether
lead life, for the few days we are happi-
ly together, unmi1ed with envy, untainted
by ambition and idyllic in the loftiest
friendship and humblest content.
All good men and women who believe in
the bettering of the world through the
saving of its -forsaken and almost
God forsaken children, should know some
thing of this man, George Smith of Coal
vile, as he is everywhere in England
called. No other English, perhaps no 9th
er man, ever accomplished SO much for
helpless children. He was born to brick
workers life in 1881. His father before
in the misery and drudgery of the Eng
lish brickyards. While still lad of sew
en- years his labor, like thousands of other
brickyard children, was to continually
carry forty pounds of clay on his head
from the brick-pile to the table on which
the bricks were made. Before his father
had reached eighteen years of age he had
travelled nearly four times the distance
around the earth in the came toll.
He realized the brutality and misery
which he suffered, and with which all
brickyard children were surrounded, with
a purpose With every cuff, kick and
oath administered was again clinched q
determination to emancipate himself and
his kind. From the extra fee secured by
Watching the brick kilns two nights of
each week he got four years of night
schooling and few books. When he had
reached mans estate he became the
"George Smith of Coalville," whose name
all England now knows almost as house
| hold word, by securing the management
of small red-brick yard at that place.
He made the owners rich, but eventually
| lost his position through his ceaseless agi-
| tation in behalf of the brickyard children.
1t is long, heart-breaking story, that of
| his starvation, suffering, contumely and
sacrifices, until he made all England hear
| him. His grand battle for these helpless
ones was made along all lines in marvel
GUS and sympathetic simplicity, but with
the tremendous force of personal convic-
ton from personal suffering. He will car
ry to his grave the scars of hurt and
| wrong that the children for whom Ne
| pleaded were enduring. He had some
| thing to tell of ongoings in English brick,
| fields and brick yards; and he "bulked il
| out" as he himself says in his work, "The
| Cry of the Children From the rick-yards
of England" in all ''its largeness and
| shame"
In brief, he found, as lad of sever
years, thirty thousand boys and girls
many more youthful than himself, in {
| condition of abuse, horrible slavery vice
ignorance and misery impossible for tn,
pen of even genius to describe. 81,
| worked, starved and battled thirty wear,
for these children, and finally on the 16tt
of August, 1871, heard the voice of tn,
speaker of the House of Commons rims
out, 1.-THE ayes have It'll" on the passage o.
bill, which became the fifth clause of tn,
"Factory and Workshops Amendment
Act" gave him the enthusiastic congratu
lations of the greatest men of England
led Lord Shaftsbury to eIclaim, ''Bles
God for his grace on your eflorts;" and haC
achieved for him the first great victory o
his life. Alone and unaided one brick
yard graduate had rescued thirty thousant
fellows from the slavery and degradation
of this inconceivably brutal and blightinI
form of child labor; while the actual re
suit was to send, on January 1st, 1872
twenty Thousand half naked children ou
of the brick and tile yard to school, ant
forever prohibited girls under sixteen be
ing employed in this form of labor.
| buU Ohllu VI SOhlfllIe ndQ OIL
begun. His second crusade was in behal
of the canal-boat children. AS boy slav
he had toiled in brick-yards abutting tn
canals. In these boats and barges he So,
thousands more children employed in
drudgery equally murderous, and living i
condition infinitely more degrading
, Perhaps one hundred and twenty-fiv
thousand persons, men, women and chil
dren; were employed in navigating som
twenty-five thousand boats, over nesrl
five thousand miles of canals and navigs
, BILE rivers in England. They did nc
throng railway stations. They were in &c
cluded places; and even literature ha
woven poetic glamor about them. Thei
poor children had dropped out of sight
They were growing up in the stuffy cabin
almost like wild beasts. Thrashed, kicked
beaten with ropes, sticks and heavy iro
boots, many became as stupid as the ssse
which they drove. Blasphemy, drunker
= ness, thieving, incenst and inconceivabl
, degradation among these folk were univel
sal. This childrens' friend determined I
rescue these lost heathens as he had rel
3 cued the canal-boat children.
4 He wrote thousands of letters and eli
, culars; tramped hundreds of miles alon
Q canal-banks; stormed the newspapers an
: besieged parliament; and all the whi