FROM

THE

MILLENNIAL HARBINGER.

SERIES III.

VOL. V.	B E T H A N Y, FEBRUARY, 1848.	NO. II.

      My dear Clarinda--THERE are yet many matters of interest to you and my readers in England, which I have not as yet noted. Before I pass over the Tweed I will, therefore, note a few of the most interesting.

      I informed you of my visit to Manchester and of our labors in that busiest of human hives; but of the magnitude and population of that metropolis of manufactures I said nothing. Situated some 200 miles from London and some 30 from Liverpool, on the banks of the Irwell, having Salford on the other side, standing in the same relation to it as Southwark to London--two great boroughs--this very old town is a theatre of great importance to the world. It is the best development and illustration of the varied power of manufactures in creating wealth, and in changing the conditions of society in almost every point of view, that stands upon the map of the world.

      This town, said by some writers to be centuries older than the Christian era, occupied but little space in the history of England itself, and as little conspicuity in the annals of Europe, until the era of manufactures by scientific power dawned upon its hitherto humble condition. In 1801 Manchester in its thirteen townships contained only 81,290 souls. Salford, on the other side of the river, in its four townships, 18,525; and Chorlton, in its sixteen townships, 18,640. In 1841 they contained in all 354,142 souls.

      In the year 1775 the entered report of cotton from America to Liverpool was 5 bags, and in twelve years thereafter it only grew into 108 bags in one year. In 1840 it amounted to 528,000,000 of pounds, or one million three hundred and forty thousand bales!

      To manufacture this enormous amount of cotton in one year a corresponding increase of power looms and all other apparatus is naturally to be expected. From the statistics that have fallen under my eye, from the invention of the power loom in 1785 till now, there has been a constant annual increase in the English empire of the number of looms employed. In 1813 there were only 2,400; in 1835, 115,801; now, more than 150,000 power looms in the whole empire.

      Mills also have increased in corresponding ratios. In the district of which Manchester is the centre, there are 1164 mills; of these there are those that work 69 hours per week, 887; less than 69 there are 139; not at work in 1843, there were 138. The horse power in steam is equal to 35,901, and in water to 3,994. Employed [83] and unemployed in steam and in water, there is more than 48,000 horse power devoted to cotton; and this gives actual employment to more than 200,000 persons, and supports almost a million and a half of human beings, including the various trades connected with these establishments, and all the old and infirm persons and children depending upon the actual operants!

      To form an adequate idea of this great manufacturing capital, it must be noted that in 1831, in twelve American States,--Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia,--there were in all 801 mills, 33,432 looms, and 77,457,316 lbs. of cotton consumed, employing in capital 49,612,984 dollars. In Manchester alone and its environs, in 1838, seven years after, there was a capital employed of £62,961,082, or 304,611,636 dollars and 88 cents.

      The influence of so much capital so employed may be illustrated in many ways. Take an example in a single case: Sir Oswold Mosley, Bart., in the year 1790-1, sold for £28 or 135 dollars per annum, a certain lot near the Infirmary, containing 2400 superficial yards. Transient buildings were occasionally put upon it, but when last sold they had all been cleared away. In twenty years it was again sold for £5000, more than 25,000 dollars. In a few years afterwards it sold for 11,000 guineas. In 1841 it was sold for £25,500, or 125,000 dollars. The buildings on the premises being all removed by the last purchaser shows that the price paid was for the land itself, or for the site; and thus in fifty years it has increased about sixty fold!

      But what is the financial, moral, and religious condition of the manufacturing population? This is a question of profound interest to even the political economist--much more to the philanthropist and the Christian. We, indeed, saw little of it--talked little about it; but were so curious on the subject as to gather up the best printed statistics of their condition we could find on the spot. Into these you would not expect me to enter with any great interest or at great length. A few facts and a few hints must, then, suffice for the present.

      Within a radius of twelve miles around Manchester it is said there are one million of human beings, of which the much greater proportion is engaged, directly or indirectly, in manufactures. First, then, as respects their wages or means of subsistence.

      So late as June, 1842, from statistical reports of high authority we learned that in the cotton spinning mills, employing some 450 [84] or 500 hands, the wages for boys and girls, young men and women, range according to the kind of employment. Boys and girls, from 5 to 7 shillings per week; young men and women, from 8 to 9; a few men and women, from 12 to 13 shillings per week. Piecers, as they are called, persons who work by the piece, make more wages, especially mule spinners. In one mill in Manchester, employing 959 persons, and spinning very fine numbers only, the average weekly earnings of each person were, in December, 1841, 11s. 3d. In another mill, working 357 persons, the weekly earnings of each person at the same time were 9 shillings and 6 pence. Counting a shilling at 24 cents, this would be $2,28 per week. These were comparatively good times.

      But often manufacturers are obliged to work their mills every day at a certain loss. For example, there are some mills standing idle at the expense of £7000 a-year. There is one in Manchester which employs a thousand hands, and were it to stand idle for a year, its wear and tear, interest on capital, and expenses to supervise it, would amount to over 7000 pounds sterling per annum.--Of course, then, it is better to work it all the year at a loss of £6500 than to let it stand idle at a loss of £7000. Such occurrences oblige a reduction of wages and greatly afflict the operatives.

      The usual hours of employment for clerks and operatives in most of the factories and business houses, vary from twelve to sixteen hours a-day. The ordinary cotton factory hands are, however, now reduced to sixty-nine hours per week, or eleven and a half hours per diem.

      It is confidently asserted that the morality of the manufacturing population of Manchester is at par with that of the same number of persons living in the small towns and villages--nay, even in the country itself. Of this matter, of course, I can say nothing from my own observation. But from the statistics and published reports of the circumstances of the manufacturing population that have come into my hands, I must infer, at least, that a very large proportion of them are placed in very miserable circumstances: From a work published in Manchester itself, in 1842, I cull the following extracts:--

      "The agent of the statistical society, in 1834, visited 37,724 of the dwellings of the working classes in Manchester and Salford, which he thus classified:--

Houses, - - - -	- - - - - -	29,037	}	37,724 [85]
Single Rooms,	- - - - - -	4,270
Cellars, - - - - -	- - - - - -	4,417

      Of this number, 27,381 were found to be comfortable, and 10,443 uncomfortable. The average weekly rent paid for these 37,724 dwellings was 2s. 11d. per week, making an annual rental of two hundred and eighty-six thousand and seventy-three dollars.

      More than one-third were uncomfortable! That is, somewhat above 60,000 persons were living; in miserable abodes--most likely similar to those just described. In the cellars enumerated, upward of 18,000 people were crammed! To depict the misery of their abodes, would excite no emotions but those of pain.

      There exist also in Manchester, many low lodging houses, which are graphically described in a pamphlet recently published. The author says--

      'Let the reader imagine herself introduced into a damp cellar, or dark and dirty garret, where he sees as many beds as it will hold, (from six to fourteen in number,) ranged side by side, and closely adjoining one another; that in each of these beds he discovers from two to four persons, of either sex, and of all ages and characters, who are, however, hidden from his view by the mass of clothes taken from those in bed, and now hanging on lines in various directions about the apartment, and he will form some conception of the scene which a lodging house at first view presents. Let him imagine that the temperature of this room is at a fever heat, owing to the total absence of all means of ventilation, and in consequence of so many persons breathing and being crowded together in so small a space; let him imagine himself assailed by a disgusting faint, and sickening effluvia, to which the pure breath of heaven is a paradise, and he may then conceive the effects produced, on entering these crowded dormitories, by the vapor and steam floating about them. Let him remember that the bed-linen is rarely changed--once in six months--and that in these beds, meanwhile, have been located an over changeful race of diseased and sick, as well as convalescent persons and let him imagine these beds to be likewise visibly infested with all manner of vermin, and he will form a conception, far short however, of the reality of the horrible spectacle presented, not by one, but by many hundred lodging houses in Manchester.'

      "The reduction in the rate of the wages of the operative is strikingly exhibited in the following extract. The Chairman of the Anti-Corn Law Conference, held in 1841, puts the following question to an operative named Moore: 'Can you tell the difference between the rate of wages now, and in 1815?' This is the reply:--

      MOORE:--"It is impossible for me to mention all the different fabrics of works, but I will take one--the hundred reed. In 1775 the hundred reed was paid 1s. and 8d. In 1800, it was 1s. and 4d.; in 1812 it was 10d.; and in 1815, it was 9d. What was it in the year 1816? It was fourpencehalfpenny. The corn laws were put on then. Very well, what is it now? Twopence farthing, or less. I was out of employ for three months this summer; and I have got a warp of the same sort as I was speaking of--fifty yards for ten shillings. It will take a fortnight to do it; J cannot do it under; there is threepence to go out of every shilling, which leaves me 3s. 9d. a-week. I have not got, on an average, for these four years, 3s. 6d. a-week, [86] one week with another. But still I live; and there are people far worse situated than I am. Suppose I had a wife and three or four children, how were they to he kept out of that! Hundreds there are who are so situated. How they live, I cannot tell. They do not live--they only exist on water gruel and dry potatoes. It is starvation and nothing else.

      'The Rev. Mr. Watson asked, Does it take as much time to weave a piece now as it did at the period referred to?' Moore: 'I find the twist to be worse now than in the year 1815; it was very good in 1815; it is now very bad; consequently it is more difficult to weave a piece now than it was then. I have been a weaver fifty-three years. I began weaving cotton when it was in its infancy; and I can trace the price from that time until now.'"

      But that you may not think that these are extreme cases, or that Manchester is, in these respects, worse than many other places in Great Britain, I will state a few facts gathered on my travels in other places.

      From a "Report on Mining Operations," published about the same time, I will give a few short extracts. 1st. Colleries. "I wish to call the attention of the Board to the pits about Brampton. The seams are so thin that some of them have but two feet headway to all the working. They are worked altogether by boys from 8 to 12 years of age, on all fours, with a dog-belt and chain. The passages are neither ironed nor wooded, and often an inch or two thick with mud. In Mr. Barne's pit these poor boys have to drag the barrows with a hundred weight of coal or slack, sixty times a-day, sixty yards, and the empty barrow back, without once straightening their backs, unless they choose to stand under the shaft, and risk having their head broken by a falling coal." p. 67:

      In these pits there are frequent visits of the "choke damp," "wild fire," "sulphur and water," that often occasion instant death to their unhappy inmates. Pits are worked in Shropshire only twenty inches deep. Children are frequently put to work here at 5 and 6 years old, in some form. Eight and nine years is the common time of commencement. The wages paid are, in our currency, from $2,50 per month to $7,50, according to age and ability.

      In the calico printing establishments children are employed from the age of five years, and some are kept at work 13 to 14 hours per day.--Report on Children, page 50, 1841.

      From Lord Brougham's speech, July 11th, 1842, we quote one passage declarative of much that we learned from various sources. His Lordship says, "There have been found such occurrences as 7, 8, and 10 persons in one cottage, I cannot say for one day, but for whole days, without a morsel of food. They have remained in their [87] beds of straw for two successive days under the impression that in a recumbent posture the pangs of hunger are less felt."

      As to education and morals, we are in possession of still more melancholy facts; many of which are so frightful and appalling as to forbid their inscription upon these pages. At a public examination to ascertain the intellectual and moral attainments of some of these miners and manufacturers, the following answers were given. Robert Churchlow, aged 16. "I do not know any thing of Moses." "I never heard of France." "I dont know what America is." "Never heard of Scotland or Ireland." "Can't tell how many weeks make a year." "There are twelve pence in a shilling, and twenty shillings in a pound," and "eight pints in a gallon of ale."

      Ann Eggley. "I walk about and get fresh air on Sundays." "I never go to church or chapel." "I never heard of Christ at all."

      From answers given by others I extracted, I will quote only two or three:--"The Lord sent Adam and Eve on earth to save sinners." "I dont know who made the world;" "I never heard about God." "I dont know Jesus Christ--I never saw him; but I have seen Foster who prays for him."

      Enough! and more than enough, you will say. And yet these are among the people who declaim against "American slavery;" who tell us of "the half-fed, over-wrought, and uneducated three million of African slaves owned by American Republicans?" I apologize for neither American nor English slavery, starvation, oppression, nor ignorance. They are all beyond the pale of my communion; but certainly there is occasion, good and relevant, for reminding our trans-Atlantic brethren of an old proverb, which, it would seem, is either not in their Bible, or not read by them--"Physician, heal thyself."

      I will not tell you of Temperance Societies in Manchester, or of churches and church-going people. Of these I learned but little; but that Temperance Societies are much wanting, we had many proofs. Intemperance in ale-drinking and in strong drink is a tremendous curse almost every where apparent in England and Scotland.

      All that enter into the bands of matrimony are obliged, at least once in their lives, to go to church. It would appear from some of our readings that very many of those who attend church on these occasions are decidedly not a church-going people. An extract from a "Home Tour through the Manufacturing Districts, in the summer of 1835, by Sir George Head," will intimate something of this sort:-- [88]

      "I attended the Old Church at Manchester one Monday morning, in order to witness the solemnization of several marriages I had reason to suppose were then and there to take place. I had heard on the preceding Sunday the banns proclaimed as follows:--'For the first time of asking, sixty-five; for the second time, seventy-two; for the third time, sixty. Total, one hundred and ninety-seven.

      "Having been informed that it would be expedient to be on the spot at eight in the morning, I repaired thither at that hour.--Operations, however, did not commence before ten. The latter is the usual time of proceeding to business, although, in cases of persons married by license, eight o'clock is the hour.

      "When all was ready and the church doors opened, the clergyman and clerk betook themselves to the vestry, and the people who were about to be married, and their friends, seated themselves in the body of the church, opposite the communion table, on benches which were placed there for the purpose. Not less than fifty people were assembled, among whom I took my seat quietly, without being noticed. A party who had arrived in a narrow vis-à-vis fly, most exclusively paraded in the mean time up and down (as if unwilling to identify themselves with the humbler candidates of matrimony) in another part of the church. The people at first took their seats in solemn silence, each one inquisitively surveying his neighbor; but as the clergyman and clerk were some time in preparation, the men first began to whisper one to another, and the women to titter, till by degrees they all threw off their reserve, and made audible remarks on the new comers. There was little mauvais honte among the women; but of the men, poor fellows! some were seriously abashed; while among the hymeneal throng there seemed to prevail a sentiment that obtains pretty generally among their betters--namely, the inclination to put shy people out of conceit with themselves. Thus, at the advance of a sheepish-looking bridegroom, he was immediately assailed on all sides with, 'Come in man; what art afraid of? Nobody'l hurt thee.' And then a general laugh went round in a repressed tone, but quite sufficient to confound and subdue the new comer.

      "Presently a sudden buzz broke out--'The clergyman's coming,' and all was perfectly silent. About twelve couples were to be married,--the rest were friends and attendants. The former were called upon to arrange themselves all together round the altar. The clerk was an adept in his business, and performed the duties of his office in a mode admirably calculated to set the people at their ease and direct the proceedings. In appointing them to their proper places, he addressed each in an intonation of voice particularly soft and soothing, and which carried with it more of encouragement, as he made use of no appellative but the Christian name of the person spoken to. Thus he proceeded:--'Daniel and Phoebe; this way, Daniel; take off your gloves, Daniel. William and Anne; no, Anne; here, Anne; t'other side, William. John and Mary; here, John; oh! John." And then addressing them altogether,--'Now, all of you, give your hats to some person to hold.' Although the [89] marriage service appeared to me to be generally addressed to the whole party, the clergyman was scrupulously exact in obtaining the accurate responses from each individual."

      Amongst the benevolent institutions of Manchester, we notice one of great importance--"The Society for promoting National Education." Much has been recently said on this subject in England, of which we may take some notice again. But in proof of the need of a very general investigation of this whole subject, I will give you an extract from a Report of the Rev. Baptist Noel, of whom you have heard much, and whom I heard for some minutes in his own church in London. These are spirited sketches:--

      "The Rev. Baptist Noel, in his Report of the State of Education in Lancashire, leaves a very unfavorable impression on the mind, in thus describing a Dame School he visited, frequented by children of the poor:--'I found thirty-one children, from two to seven years of age. The room was a cellar about ten feet square, and about seven feet high. The only window was less than eighteen inches square, and not made to open. Although it was a warm day, towards the close of August, there was a fire burning: and the door through which alone any air could be admitted, was shut. Of course, therefore, the room was close and hot; but there was no remedy. The damp subterraneous walls required, as the old woman assured us, a fire throughout the year. If she opened the door, the children would rush out to light and liberty, while the cold blast rushing in would torment her aged bones with rheumatism. Still further to restrain their vagrant propensities, and to save them the danger of tumbling into the fire, she had crammed the children as closely as possible into a dark corner at the foot of her bed. Here they sat in pestiferous obscurity, totally destitute of books, and without light enough to enable them to read, had books been placed in their hands.'

      "This same gentleman gives another graphic sketch:--'Not far from this infant asylum I entered a common school. It was a room on the ground floor, up a dark and narrow entry, and about twelve feet square. Here forty-three boys and girls were assembled, of all ages, from five to fourteen. Patches of paper were pasted over the broken panes of the one small window, before which also sat the master intercepting the few rays of light which would otherwise have crept into the gloom. Although it was in August, the window was closed, and a fire added to the animal heat, which radiated from every part of the crowded chamber. In the front of the fire, as near to it as a joint on a spit, a row of children sat with their faces towards the master and their backs to the furnace. By this living screen the master, though still perspiring copiously, was somewhat sheltered from the intolerable heat. As another measure of relief, amidst the oppression of the steaming atmosphere, he had also laid aside his coat. In this undress he was the better able to wield the three canes, two of which, like the weapons of an old soldier, hung conspicuously on the wall, while the third was on the table really for service. When questioned as to the necessity of [90] this triple instrumentality, he replied that the children were abrupt and rash in their tempers,' that he generally reasoned with them respecting their indiscretion, but that when civility failed he had recourse to a little severity.

      'There was no classification of the children; and the few books in the school were such as some of the parents chose to send.'

      "No doubt school-rooms like these might be found in Manchester; but it cannot be supposed that such sketches will apply to the generality of even those frequented by the poorest part of the population."

      I have been thus diffuse in my notes on the metropolis of manufactures because we Americans are likely to be the second, if not the first, manufacturing people on the globe. I am glad to say that all that I have visited any where in the United States, especially in New England, stand in the most favorable contrast with those of which we have been speaking, so far as the general appearance of all necessary comforts on the part of the operatives is concerned. But when the American people learn that the cotton growers of the United States received from Great Britain for their cotton crop of 1846 only thirty-five millions of dollars--that is, for the growth, picking, bagging, conveying to market, and selling expenses of her crop, while Great Britain received an accumulated value on the same crop for labor performed upon it, amounting to the sum of sixty-nine millions of dollars, in the ratio of two to one--that is, Britain makes two dollars for manufacturing our cotton for every one we make by growing it:--I say, when we learn that fact as a nation, we will certainly become a still more manufacturing people. If so, then, from the data here presented, and it is but a drop of a bucket full at our command, it is expedient that we profit from her experience, and timously provide for the education, intellectual and moral, the general comfort and ample remuneration of our operatives, that we may not, in creating a thousand "cotton Lords," create also a million of paupers. I cannot think that these details can be so interesting to you as they may be important to many of my readers; but we must all occasionally, at some expense to ourselves, yield a little to the instruction and comfort of others.

      Since our visit to Manchester, concerning which I gave you some information before, I was glad to learn, at the general meeting at Chester, before leaving England, that a union was formed between our brethren there and a Baptist church on the other side of the river. I know of no field of labor in Great Britain more promising of an abundant harvest, under a judicious evangelical culture, than the town of Manchester and its immense environs.

[The Millennial Harbinger, Third Series, 5 (February 1848): 83-91.]