the savage opposition of vested interests, the words of Richard Oastler rang forth undauntedly to the working classes of Yorkshire: "Let no promises of support from any quarter sink you to inactivity. Consider that you must manage this cause yourselves. Collect information and publish facts. and a time book." 1 Let your politics be: Ten hours a day, § 228. Ten Hours' Day and Mr Sadler. At this time Oastler was living at Fixby Hall, Huddersfield, and from his position as a Tory and a Churchman, as he describes himself, could not at first see his way to working actively among the mill hands, who were mostly "Radicals, and Dissenters." But now he saw that no barriers of class, or creed, or politics could be allowed to interfere in this cause, and from henceforth decided to throw in his lot with the factory workers, come what might. He was assisted, from the political side, by men like J. Hobhouse and M. T. Sadler, both Members of Parliament, warmly attached to his cause, and it was decided that Sadler should lead the question in the House of Commons. It would be tedious to go through all the phases of the great Ten Hours' Agitation in and out of Parliament, and therefore it must suffice to mention that Sadler at length introduced a Ten Hours' Bill into the Commons late in 1831, and moved its second reading in March 1832, in a speech 3 of eminent moderation and judgment. He pointed out the existence of childslavery in England, and the causes of it, mainly in the poverty, but partly in the inducements to laziness, of the parents. Many parents were unable to get work themselves, and thus were compelled to hire out their children to the brutalities and hardships of factory work. Some parents, demoralised by the old Poor Law, selfish and brutalised by custom, purchased idleness for themselves at the cost of their children's health and strength. In some 1 Alfred's History, i. 122. 2 See Alfred's History, i. 125 8qq. Cf. Taylor, Factory System and Factory Acts (1894), p. 64. The speech is given in full in Alfred's History, i. 151 879. districts, so great was the demand for children's labour, that an indispensable condition of marriage among the working classes was the certainty of offspring,1 whose wages-beginning at six years old-might keep their inhuman fathers and mothers in idleness. Well might Sadler exclaim: 2 "Our ancestors could not have supposed it possibleposterity will not believe it true that a generation of Englishmen could exist, or had existed, that would work lisping infancy of a few summers old, regardless alike of its smiles or tears, and unmoved by its unresisting weakness, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, sixteen hours a day, and through the weary night also, till, in the dewy morn of existence, the bud of youth was faded and fell ere it was unfolded." But, to our eternal disgrace as a nation, that generation of Englishmen existed, and Mr Sadler told the House, detail by detail, of the evils and outrages of the whole abominable system. Excessive hours, low wages, immorality, ill-health, -all were enumerated, and then he continued: "Then, in order to keep them awake, to stimulate their exertions, means are made use of to which I shall now advert, as a last instance of the degradation to which this system has reduced the manufacturing operatives of this country. Children are beaten with thongs, prepared for the purpose. Yes, the females of this country, no matter whether children or grown up-and I hardly know which is the more disgusting outrage-are beaten, beaten in your free market of labour as you term it, like slaves. The poor wretch is flogged before its companions-flogged, I say, like a dog, by the tyrant overlooker. We speak with execration of the cartwhip of the West Indies, but let us see this night an equal feeling rise against the factory thong in England.' $229. The Evidence of Facts. Of course, it is needless to say that such an equal feeling did not arise, not, that is, with anything like the cry of horror that arose over negro slavery. The hours of black slaves' labour in our colonies were at that very time carefully 1 Alfred's History, i. 158. 2 Ib., i. 161. (Ib., i. 183. limited by law1 to nine per day for adults, and six for young persons and children, while night work was simply prohibited. But for white slaves no limit was to be fixed, nor was the arm of the law to interfere. Though Sadler's bill was read a second time, and was referred to a committee, nothing much was done. But the evidence given before this committee at length produced some effect. Oastler's tactics of publishing the facts had now been taken up unwittingly by Parliament itself, and the facts given before Sadler's committee 2 were terrible enough to cause a shudder of shame to run through the country. Yet, after all, the shame was only felt by a minority; the nation, as a whole, was not yet touched. And very soon Mr Sadler lost his seat in the House of Commons, in the election after the great Reform Bill of 1832, and the factory hands were thus left without a Parliamentary advocate of any influence. But now a new leader appeared in the person of Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl Shaftesbury, who undertook to bring forward once more the Ten Hours' Bill. Lord Ashley's life may be read elsewhere, but we may pause to look, though only for a moment, at the revelations of slavery brought to light by the Sadler Committee." In the first place the Committee received the satisfactory assurance from one witness that the youngest age at which children were employed was never under five." But from five years onwards it was the custom to employ them, from about five o'clock in the morning till as late as ten o'clock at night, during the whole of which time they were on their feet, with a short interval for dinner,8 The children were generally cruelly treated, so cruelly that they dare not, for their lives, be too late at their work in a morning.9 One witness stated that he had seen children, whose work it was to throw a bunch of ten or twelve cordings across their hand and take them off, one at a time, so weary as 1 By the Orders in Council of November 2, 1831. 2 Cf. Taylor, Factory System and Factory Acts, p. 65. • Ib. i. 275. 8 Ib. i. 277 (quotation from evidence). 3 Ib., p. 65. 7 Ib. i. 276. 9 Ib. i. 278. not to know whether they were at work or not, and going through the mechanical actions without anything in their hands.1 When they made mistakes in this state of fatigue they were severely beaten by the spinner whom they helped or by the overlooker. Several cases of deaths, through such beating and blows, were given in evidence. "The children were incapable of performing their day's labour well towards the end of the day; their fate was to be awoke by being beaten, and to be kept awake by the same method." 2 "At a mill in Duntruin," continued the same man, who gave this evidence, "they were kept on the premises by being locked up while at work, they were locked up in the bothies (sleeping-huts) at night; they were guarded to their work and guarded back again. There was one bothy for the boys, but that did not hold them all, so there were some of them put into the other bothy along with the girls." Sometimes the elder children tried to escape from such miserable and degraded surroundings. When caught, as they generally were, they were inhumanly flogged, or sent to gaol for breaking their contracts.4 A case is given of a young woman who was thus put in prison for a year, "brought back after a twelvemonth and worked for her meat; and she had to pay the expenses that were incurred. So she worked two years for nothing, to indemnify her master for the loss of her time." 5 § 230. English Slavery. Here, again, is the story of a Huddersfield lad who was lame. He lived a good mile from the mill, and it was painful for him to move, "so my brother and sister used, out of kindness, to take me under each arm, and run with me to the mill, and my legs dragged on the ground in consequence of the pain; I could not walk, and if we were five minutes too late, the overlooker would take a strap and beat us till we were black and blue." The worst of it was 1 Alfred's History, Vol. I. i. 278. 2 Evidence of James Paterson, quoted ib., i. 283. 3 Ib., i. 283, 284. 4 Ib., i. 284. • Evidence of Joseph Habergam, ib., i. 286. 5 Ib., i. 284. that the masters in many mills encouraged the overlookers in this kind of brutality. An eye-witness 1 relates: "I have seen them, when the master has been standing at one end of the room with the overlookers speaking to him, and he has said 'look at those two girls talking,' and has run and beat them the same as they beat soldiers in the barrackyard for deserting." A Leeds girl, who began her millwork at six years old, and toiled then from five in the morning till nine at night, gives similar evidence: "When the doffers flagged a little or were too late, they were strapped, and those who were last in doffing were constantly strapped, girls as well as boys. I have been strapped severely, and have been hurt by the strap excessively. Sometimes the overlooker got a chain and chained the girls, and strapped them all down the room. The girls have many times had black marks upon their skin." 3 This was in a Yorkshire factory, and not upon a West Indian plantation; but the slaves were white. That the dreadful exertions, produced by this forced labour, often caused death from exhaustion among children is obvious. A Keighley overseer, in giving evidence, told the story of a man who came to him, saying: "My little girl is dead." I asked, "When did she die?" and he said: "In the night, and what breaks my heart is this; she went to the mill in the morning, but she was not able to do her work. A little boy said he would help her if she would give him a halfpenny on Saturday, but at night when the child went home, perhaps about a quarter of a mile, she fell down several times on the road through exhaustion, till at length she reached her door with difficulty. She never spoke audibly afterwards; she died in the night." Tragedies like this, told in such simple, common-place words, happened in not a few homes; or instead of death, a maimed and miserable life of ill-health and disease was slowly dragged along till the grave gave a merciful release. One might give a long list of such cases, and of various forms 1 Same evidence, i. 287, 288. 2 Evidence of Elizabeth Bentley, ib., i. 297. Evidence of Gillett Sharpe, ib., i. 302. *Ib., i. 298, 299. |