“You talk about sending black coats among the Indians; now we have no such poor children among us; we have no such drunkards or people who abuse the Great Spirit. Indians dare not do so. They pray to the Great Spirit, and He is kind to them. Now, we think it would be better for you teachers all to stay at home, and go to work right here in your own streets, where all your good work is wanted. This is my advice. I would rather not say any more.”—Extract from Speech of the Chief of the Ojibbeway Indians.
Ah this drink, this terrible drink, which still goes on slaying its thousands and tens of thousands! No wonder that indignation has been so roused against it, that many have banished it from their tables, and even from their houses! Our poor Potteries have endured a full share of the misery and destruction that ever follow it.
During the summer the brickmaker, with the assistance of the elder members of his family, sometimes earns between £2 and £3 per week. One man informed me that he and his family had earned £2, 18s. nearly every week through the season; and yet that man’s wife and three children were shivering at my door, one bitterly cold morning in December, and begging for food and clothing. The effects of the hard work and hard drinking had been to bring on a terrible illness, and not a sixpence was left of all the money which they had earned “when the sun was shining.” After enduring privation and suffering too terrible to contemplate, the man and one of the children died, and the poor widow with the remaining children went to the workhouse.Were it not for this inveterate habit of drinking, few places would be more independent of help from without than the Potteries; but long habits of intemperance have so impoverished the people, that few can now afford to buy the pigs for themselves; they therefore fatten them “upon commission,” and in this way can gain only a miserable livelihood. Considerable sums of money, however, may be still earned by those who are careful and prudent, both by pig-feeding and brick-making. The latter work is not constant, but can be procured at only one particular time of the year. Hence in the course of the same year may be seen, in the same family, the extreme of prodigality and destitution. The effect of an increased income, generally, is that more money goes to the public-house, and the future is still unprovided for. I have often told these labourers that their memories seemed much shorter than the bees’, birds’, and ants’. These little creatures never forget that winter will return, and make the most ample provision for it. But any stranger would think that the present was the first winter which these human beings had ever known; that it had come upon them unexpectedly, and found them unprepared for it.
The only means by which many of them get food for the winter is by pawning the little furniture that they have, or by “going on tick,”—in other words, by getting trusted at the shops. Those, however, who manage to pay for their things as they buy them, do it in such a manner as to be little better off than under the “tick” system. The child is sometimes sent to the shop three times a-day, to obtain the supplies for each meal as it is wanted. Of course, the shopkeeper cannot give so much time, paper, and string without being paid for them. After a careful calculation, I feel convinced that, whether the poor man’s wants are supplied through the “tick system,” or the “hand-to-mouth” system, in either case he gets the value of only fourteen shillings for his pound. This proves the justice of the saying, that poverty perpetuates itself.
The winter of 1856–57 was one of unusual distress. Less casual work than usual turned up in the neighbourhood; and had it not been that several of the women found employment as charwomen and laundresses, many would have had no resource but the workhouse.
When the mother has to go out to work that she may obtain the necessary food for herself and children, the effects to the family are often most disastrous. On her return, wearied out in earning her hard-won half-crown, she finds that the baby has been crying for hours (as well it might, poor thing!); that another child has been scalded by hot water from the kettle; that another, perhaps, has wandered away, and has not come home, and that she herself must go and seek for it; while the “little girl” left in charge of the whole is severely scolded, if not beaten, for her many shortcomings. In the midst of all these annoyances, the father returns for the hundredth time, without having found work, exhausted and footsore in his fruitless search; and, sorer still in spirit, as he feels that he is not wanted in the world, that the labour-market has no demand for him, he enters the wretched hovel which he is obliged to call “home.” He hears the crying of the children, the scolding of the mother; and sees everywhere the destruction which children left to themselves will cause. The wife throws her half-crown at him as he enters, crying, “There! much good may that do yer. Here’s a shilling’s worth of things broke,—Johnny’s coat is burnt, and Sally’s pinafore; the children have eat up the tea out of the paper; and yer’ll have to pay for a sight o’ doctoring afore this scalded leg is well.” A man already angry would, with less aggravation than this, return railing for railing; and so the angry words are given back again with interest. Blows occasionally follow, according to the temper of the moment, sometimes inflicted on the provoking wife, sometimes on the poor victim whose negligence is supposed to have caused all these misfortunes. The cravings of hunger oblige some one at last to pick up the half-crown, and “the girl” is despatched with many threats to the nearest places where bread and cheese and porter can be procured, and charged at the same time to get “two penn’orth of gin,” to give to the baby to make it sleep. This expensive food consumes the greater part of the half-crown. Three pennyworth of bread, two pennyworth of vegetables, two pennyworth of barley or rice, and four pennyworth of meat well cooked would have supplied all the family with a good nourishing supper, leaving something for the mid-day meal of the morrow; but there has been no one at home to cook, and in their excited and miserable state it is not food they care for, so much as something that will dim the perception of their extreme wretchedness—anything that will make them sleep and forget. So they drink the porter, and the baby has the gin, and, in spite of the moan of the scalded child, they sleep; but in such an atmosphere, surrounded with such dirt within and stench without, that should they all awake with burning fever the next morning, no one can wonder. They tell me that, on the mornings after such nights, they suffer from intense depression, so much so, that whatever remains of the half-crown is spent on drink, in order to drag themselves up to a repetition of their daily toil.
Now, the earnings of the family just described (for I have drawn a picture from real life) averaged for five months in the summer £2, 10s. per week. They could, of course, have lived very well upon twenty-five shillings. If we reckon ten shillings for paying off old scores, buying new clothes, furniture, and sundries, there would still be fifteen shillings left, which might have been put into the Savings’ Bank to meet the demands of the ensuing winter. But instead of doing this, the man in his distress confessed to me, that the cost of what he and his wife drank each week of their prosperity would amount to at least a pound. The usual quantity of beer that a brickmaker takes during the hours of work is seven pints. This expenditure is looked upon simply as necessary: and when money is plentiful, there must be the drinking for luxury as well as necessity.
The only excuse which can be made for this recklessness is that the toil of the brickmaker is excessive. In the summer, he is expected to work from four or five o’clock in the morning till eight o’clock in the evening. This pressure of work necessitates the drying of sand on Sunday for the next week’s work. The Sabbath is no day of rest to him. He is expected even on that day, and during his short night, to be watchful over the bricks, and cover them up on the approach of rain. Should he oversleep himself, (which is at least possible after such a day’s work,) or be away at a place of worship on a Sunday, and the bricks in the meantime be injured by wet, he would lose some part of his wages, of which a portion is always kept back by the master.
I had a conversation, recently, with a man who has for the last seven or eight years acted as a kind of leader in a brick-field. During all this time he has been a “teetotaller;” and though his work has been as hard as that of any man in the field, and sometimes even harder, he is in perfectly good health, and what is still more unusual, retains the full possession of his intellectual faculties. I say, unusual; for in most cases when this hard work is accompanied with hard drinking, the brickmaker does actually very nearly realise the old woman’s complimentary description of, “He has no more sense than the clay he works on.” His life thus literally resembles that of the brute: every bone, muscle, and sinew is exerted to its utmost extent. The only change from work is eating, drinking, and sleeping; and when this has gone on for several years, all intellectual power seems extinct.
The man to whom I have just referred has for some years past rented a house near the Potteries, for which he pays seven shillings per week. The eldest girl, now fourteen years old, has been in a place for the last four years, and is so fond of it, (the father tells me,) that when she comes home for a holiday, nothing can induce her to stay a minute beyond the time appointed for her return.
“I got a holiday,” said he, “last autumn, and I took my wife and children to the Crystal Palace. We had a beautiful day there, and see’d enough in that little time to give us something to talk about ever since. The only trouble we had was, my girl was in a kind of a fidget, for fear she shouldn’t get back to her place in time.”
I asked this man a great many questions about his mode of life. He said:—
“Our trade would do very well, if it wasn’t for the number of hours we have to work, and if we could get our Sundays to ourselves. There is just now a strike among the men; they want to get sixpence a thousand more upon the bricks than they at present receive: and as I know how to reckon very well, I know that the masters could give us that, and still get a handsome profit for themselves. If we could get that, then we should only work from six to six; and we shouldn’t, in that case, have to dry our sand on Sundays; we could then get all that we wanted ready on Saturday evening. I don’t hold with these strikes, ma’am; they are not the right sort of thing. It isn’t much use, either, for men to stand out against their masters; for until they have learnt to save money, they can’t hold out no time hardly without hurting themselves dreadful. The day the men turned out, a gentleman was riding by, and he stopped and asked me what it was all about; and so I told him. He says to me, ‘Do you take any part in it?’ And I says, ‘No, sir, I don’t feel comfortable about it at all; but, sir, for all that I don’t like this way of doing it, I don’t think the men are asking for more than they should; they only want the masters to be as considerate of them as they are of their horses.’ ‘What do you mean?’ the gentleman says. ‘Why, sir, I mean this, that the horse employed in our brick-field is brought in at six o’clock in the morning, he has a proper time for rest in the day, and he is always taken off again at six in the evening; but the men must work fifteen and sixteen hours to get a living out of it; and this hurts their bodies and souls too, sir; for it isn’t many men can think much as works like that. I am a stronger man than most, sir, and I save myself a deal by not drinking; but it hurts me, I find, and as soon as I can get a little money in hand, I shall try and get out of it, and take to selling coals, or something of that kind.’ You know, ma’am,” the man continued, “I think over all these things a deal, and I do wish masters would listen to what we have got to say; for though we ain’t so wise, like, as they are, we think we could make some things plainer to them. When this was first talked of among the men, I did wish master would let me talk to him about it. I think, if he would have heard how we ’splained all, things wouldn’t have been as they are now. It seems to me, that God have planned out this world for us all to depend upon one another, and we ought never to stand to one another as we do now. You know, ma’am, when we working-men look at all these fine houses and gardens about, and see all the fine furniture that goes into them, we know that it is all done by our labour, and that the great people couldn’t do without us, any more than we could do without them. And it do seem to me, the world would be a deal happier, and better, too, than it is, if we felt that sort of thing to one another; felt, I mean, that we were all wanted, like, to make the world go on right.”
I told him, I thought many masters of the present day felt just what he said, and honoured and valued their servants, and wished very much that they should have proper time for improving themselves, and making their own homes comfortable; “but,” I said, “you know as well as I do, that when men get this time, they do not always make a right use of it.”
“Ah, that’s how it is, you see, ma’am; and I am always a-telling ’em how they do stand in their own way, and hurt theirselves. Though we can’t have everything we want to get, there is a good many of ’em needn’t be half so bad off as they are; but you see, ma’am, there is a great deal of bad management at home, sometimes, and that always keeps a man down. I have looked after this thing so long, that I can pretty well tell whether a man has got a good home or not, afore I ask him. He always holds up his head, and doesn’t seem afraid of anybody; and if things do go cross with him, he does not get reckless, like, about it, and he takes the world kinder, like, than other people. I am so thankful to have this nice place to myself here, and to be able to send my children to school, and see ’em growing up the right way, that I never envies nobody. If master were to offer me his carriage, and to change places with him, I wouldn’t; for I know I’m happy now, and I mightn’t be then.”
I asked him what he supposed to be the cause why so many working-men had such wretched homes.
“Why, ma’am,” he answered, “there is so many things, I hardly know what to say. The drink seems the chief thing; but there is many a man that wouldn’t drink, if he could bear himself without it. There are so many women who don’t seem to know how to manage no more than nothing; and when they take to drinking and going to the pawn-shop, then there is nothing but misery for them all. There’s many a woman in our place who has only one decent gown, and that’s most always in the pawn-shop; she just gets it out of a Saturday night, when the money comes in, and by Monday sometimes the money is a’most gone, and she puts it in again. Some of our poor fellows have got but one shirt; and I have known a man give it to his wife on Monday morning to wash, and she has taken it off to the pawn-shop, and got some drink with the money she got. Sometimes when the wife does try to go on right, the man don’t; he takes to all the bad ways, and leads her a dog’s life: it is only when they both pull one way that it all goes right.”
After the distress of the winter, to which I have before referred, I thought it a good time to endeavour to make some impression upon them as to the urgent necessity of making provision for the future, so that there might not be a constant repetition of such terrible calamities. I therefore addressed the following letter to them, and sent a copy to each man in the Potteries:—
“TO THE WORKING-MEN
OF THE
KENSINGTON POTTERIES.
“My dear Friends,—
“I have seen with much concern and sorrow, during the past winter, how greatly most of you have suffered. Work has been unusually scarce and difficult to obtain, and you have found it almost impossible to maintain your families in any degree of comfort. Perhaps you have been tempted sometimes to look with envy on your richer neighbours, and have thought that they cared nothing for all your sorrow and suffering; but, indeed, many of them have cared a great deal about it, and have talked over it, and have tried to think of some means to prevent this sad state of things from happening so often.
“Some of you think, I dare say, that rich people should help you, by giving you more of their money; and so they should, perhaps, in times of sickness and calamity: but I have watched these things now for many years, and I have not observed that those do best who have most given to them; but the prosperous people are generally those who resolutely set about to help themselves.
“Now, we have been thinking over various ways by which you could do this better than you have hitherto done; and one thing that has occurred to us is, that as many of you earn more money in the summer than you actually need to spend, it would be a good plan to put by some of it for your use during the winter. We all find it very difficult to take care of our money ourselves, and most of us have recourse to some bank or other to take care of it for us. It is much to be regretted that there is no Savings’ Bank in this neighbourhood nearer than Kensington, and it would take up too much of your time to carry your money there often. The excellent Penny Savings’ Bank established at the Notting Dale School-room is most valuable, but it at present confines itself to rather small sums of money; and some of you—young men especially, who have not yet begun the expense of housekeeping—could, with good management, save a considerable sum of money every week. If young men only knew what future misery, degradation, and sorrow they would save themselves by being determined not to involve themselves in the expense of a family until they had at least fifty pounds in the Savings’ Bank, I am sure they would try hard for it
“It would give me much pleasure to do something to help you over this difficulty; and if you do not object to trust me with your money, I propose being at the Infant School-room, Princes’ Place, every Saturday evening, from eight till nine o’clock, to receive from you any sum you may have to spare from your weekly earnings. You would have a little book in which to keep your own account, which you could at any time compare with mine. One of your kind friends in this neighbourhood, Mr —, has kindly consented to take care of the money. By giving a week’s notice, you can have out what you put in, at any time you like.
“I think I can tell you of one way that would enable you to save a good deal of money. There are thousands of workmen in this country who are doing some of the hardest work that is ever done, such as working at iron-foundries, &c., and who do it all without the aid of intoxicating drink. With the money thus saved they are able to get better food, better clothing, and more comfortable homes; and, consequently, are better, stronger, and happier. I wish very much that you would give this a trial. At the end of the week, you can reckon how much you usually spend upon drink, and can bring that sum to me. I am sure you would feel the benefit of it in the winter. I have the pleasure of meeting some of your wives every week, and then we talk a great deal about the best means of making your homes comfortable; but the wife cannot do it all alone: it is her place to learn to lay out the money to the best possible advantage,—it is yours to obtain it; and it is when both husband and wife act wisely and well, that the family is usually prosperous and happy.
“But above all these things I have mentioned, I want you to be in earnest in seeking to obtain God’s blessing upon all you do. ‘Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ Perhaps you think you should like to have the good things promised without the trouble of seeking God; but those who have tried, those who have really sought God, and found Him, tell us that this is the best part of it, and that they would rather give up every earthly possession than live again without God in the world.
“You know, when Jesus came from heaven, He did not settle Himself in a grand house, and have a number of people to wait upon Him; but He, as the reputed son of a carpenter, worked as you do for the supply of His own wants, and spent a great deal of time, besides, in helping those who wanted help. However poor or neglected you may be, you cannot be more so than Jesus was. I do not know of anything so likely to cheer you in your daily toil, as to remember that God cares for you; that He is watching you, and inviting you to come to Him, weary and heavy laden as you are, and He will give you rest. I wish you would come to this kind Friend every day, and ask Him to make you wise to know how to manage your worldly affairs aright; and ask Him to make you holy, that your worst enemy, sin, may not triumph over you. Ask Him to make you fit for that ‘beautiful world He has gone to prepare;’ so that when you have accomplished, as an hireling, your day, and finished the work He has given you to do, you may find an entrance into that kingdom, which is not meat and drink, ‘but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’
“I hope to meet many of you at the Infant Schoolroom, Princes’ Place, on Saturday, the 1st of May. I intend to be there about a quarter before eight o’clock; and if I can help you in this or in any other way, it will give me much pleasure.
“I am,
“Your sincere friend.”
It did not surprise me at all, that for some weeks this letter seemed to be taken no notice of. I went regularly to the place appointed, but no one came. Among other reasons, no doubt the calamities of the past winter had involved in debt nearly all of those to whom I had written, and the money for the first few months after they obtained work went to pay off old scores. But the principal obstacle was, that where people have been so little accustomed to think and reason, any new proposition would, in the first place, take some time to be comprehended; and then, as the safety of their money was involved in the plan, it would require to be received with great caution. When a month had passed, a few began to bring me small sums. I had no large depositors during the summer, and the whole of my receipts did not amount to more than £25. This, however, was a beginning; and as the men received their money back again in the winter, several of them remarked that it was “all as if it was given them; the bits of money would all have been gone, if they had not been saved up in this way.”
I found that a few of them had previously made some attempts at saving money, and were much disappointed at the result. One woman told me she had once with great difficulty managed to save up seven pounds; one day, when she was absent, her little room was broken into, and all the money stolen. They said they were too far off either from Kensington or Paddington Savings’ Bank to deposit their money there; and “as to keeping it in their own places, that was impossible,—it never kept there.”
A ragged boy, about thirteen years of age, came to the school-room one evening, bringing a penny which he asked me to keep for him; and said, if I would come for it, he would bring a penny there every evening. I told him I had not time to do that; but if he would take care of it through the week, I should be glad to receive sevenpence from him every Monday evening. He said he couldn’t do that; for if he had it in his pocket, he should play pitch and toss with it. I told him, if he would bring it in the dinner-hour, the Infant School teacher would be so kind as to take care of it for him till the night came for paying it in. This he agreed to do. I asked him how it was he had just the penny every day to save. He said he was earning ninepence a-day then; and that he told his mother he earned only eightpence, and so saved a penny for himself. I said, “You shouldn’t do it in that way. I dare say, if you told your mother you wanted to save a penny a-day, she would not object to it.”
“Tell my mother, indeed!” said the boy. “Oh yes! and take her a stick at the same time to beat me with; and then it would be the sooner over.”
He then asked me what I meant to do with all the money he brought me, or rather meant to bring me.
“I shall put it in my desk, and take care of it till you want it.”
“But supposing now I should die, what would you do with it then?”
“Well, I have not thought of that. I hope you will live, and make a good use of the money.”
“But suppose I don’t?”
“Well, when you have saved two or three shillings, you can make your will, if you like, and leave it to somebody.”
“But I can’t write, and I’ve heard as how wills is ‘allus writed.’”
“Then you had better come to the Ragged School, as soon as it is opened, and learn.”“Well, I think I will. I have heard it takes a sight o’ money to bury anybody. If I should die afore I can write, you can spend the money for that.”
“Very well; but I hope you will live and learn to read and write, and grow up to be a clever and good man.”
“And do yer now?” said he, walking off with one of those inimitable whistles peculiar to ragged boys.
