Part 10 (1/2)
It is said that there is a skeleton in every household. The skeleton is locked up--put away in a cupboard--- and rarely seen. Only the people inside the house know of its existence. But the skeleton, nevertheless, cannot long be concealed. It comes to light in some way or another. The most common skeleton is Poverty. Poverty, says Douglas Jerrold, is the great secret, kept at any pains by one-half the world from the other half. When there is nothing laid by--nothing saved to relieve sickness when it comes--nothing to alleviate the wants of old age,--this is the skeleton hid away in many a cupboard.
In a country such as this, where business is often brought to a standstill by over-trading and over-speculation, many masters, clerks, and workpeople are thrown out of employment. They must wait until better times come round. But in the meantime, how are they to live? If they have acc.u.mulated no savings, and have nothing laid by, they are comparatively dest.i.tute.
Even the Co-operative Cotton-mills, or Co-operative Banks, which are nothing more than Joint-stock Companies, Limited,[1] may become bankrupt. They may not be able, as was the case during the cotton famine, to compete with large capitalists in the purchase of cotton, or in the production of cotton twist. Co-operative companies established for the purpose of manufacturing, are probably of too speculative a character to afford much lasting benefit to the working cla.s.ses; and it seems that by far the safer course for them to pursue, in times such as the present, is by means of simple, direct saving. There may be less chance of gain, but there is less risk of loss. What is laid by is not locked up and contingent for its productiveness upon times and trade, but is steadily acc.u.mulating, and is always ready at hand for use when the pinch of adversity occurs.
[Footnote 1: ”The new cotton factories which have been called co-operative, and which, under that name, have brought together large numbers of shareholders of the wage cla.s.ses, are all now in reality common joint-stock companies, with limited liability. The so-called co-operative shareholders in the leading establishments decided, as I am informed, by large majorities, that the workers should only be paid wages in the ordinary manner, and should not divide profits. The wages being for piecework, it was held that the payment was in accordance with communistic principle, 'each according to his capacity, each according to his work.' The common spinner had had no share in the work of the general direction, nor had he evinced any of the capacity of thrift or foresight of the capitalist, and why should he share profits as if he had? The wage cla.s.s, in their capacity of shareholders, decided that it was an unjust claim upon their profits, and kept them undivided to themselves.”--_Edwin Chadwick, C.B._]
Mr. Bright stated in the House of Commons, in 1860,[2] that the income of the working cla.s.ses was ”understated at three hundred and twelve millions a year.” Looking at the increase of wages which has taken place during the last fifteen years, their income must now amount to at least four hundred millions.
[Footnote 2: Speech on the Representation of the People Bill.]
Surely, out of this large fund of earnings, the working cla.s.ses might easily save from thirty to forty millions yearly. At all events, they might save such an amount as, if properly used and duly economized, could not fail to establish large numbers of them in circ.u.mstances of comfort and even of comparative wealth.
The instances which we have already cited of persons in the humbler ranks of life having by prudential forethought acc.u.mulated a considerable store of savings for the benefit of their families, and as a stay for their old age, need not by any means be the comparatively exceptional cases that they are now. What one well-regulated person is able to do, others, influenced by similar self-reliant motives, and practising like sobriety and frugality, might with equal ease and in one way or another accomplish. A man who has more money about him than he requires for current purposes, is tempted to spend it. To use the common phrase, it is apt to ”burn a hole in his pocket.” He may be easily entrapped into company; and where his home provides but small comfort, the public-house, with its bright fire, is always ready to welcome him.
It often happens that workmen lose their employment in ”bad times.”
Mercantile concerns become bankrupt, clerks are paid off, and servants are dismissed when their masters can no longer employ them. If the disemployed people have been in the habit of regularly consuming all their salaries and wages, without laying anything by, their case is about the most pitiable that can be imagined. But if they have saved something, at home or in the savings bank, they will be enabled to break their fall. They will obtain some breathing-time, before they again fall into employment. Suppose they have as much as ten pounds saved. It may seem a very little sum, yet in distress it amounts to much. It may even prove a man's pa.s.sport to future independence.
With ten pounds a workman might remove from one district to another where employment is more abundant. With ten pounds, he might emigrate to Canada or the United States, where his labour might be in request.
Without this little store of savings, he might be rooted to his native spot, like a limpet to the rock. If a married man with a family, his ten pounds would save his home from wreckage, and his household from dest.i.tution. His ten pounds would keep the wolf from the door until better times came round. Ten pounds would keep many a servant-girl from ruin, give her time to recruit her health, perhaps wasted by hard work, and enable her to look about for a suitable place, instead of rus.h.i.+ng into the first that offered.
We do not value money for its own sake, and we should be the last to encourage a miserly desire to h.o.a.rd amongst any cla.s.s; but we cannot help recognizing in money the means of life, the means of comfort, the means of maintaining an honest independence. We would therefore recommend every young man and every young woman to begin life by learning to save; to lay up for the future a certain portion of every week's earnings, be it little or much; to avoid consuming every week or every year the earnings of that week or year; and we counsel them to do this, as they would avoid the horrors of dependence, dest.i.tution, or beggary. We would have men and women of every cla.s.s able to help themselves--relying upon their own resources--upon their own savings; for it is a true saying that ”a penny in the purse is better than a friend at court.” The first penny saved is a step in the world. The fact of its being saved and laid by, indicates self-denial, forethought, prudence, wisdom. It may be the germ of future happiness. It may be the beginning of independence.
Cobbett was accustomed to scoff at the ”bubble” of Savings Banks, alleging that it was an insult to people to tell them that they had anything to save. Yet the extent to which savings banks _have_ been used, even by the humblest cla.s.ses, proves that he was as much mistaken in this as he was in many of the views which he maintained. There are thousands of persons who would probably never have thought of laying by a penny, but for the facility of the savings bank: it would have seemed so useless to try. The small h.o.a.rd in the cupboard was too ready at hand, and would have become dissipated before it acc.u.mulated to any amount; but no sooner was a place of deposit provided, where sums as small as a s.h.i.+lling could be put away, than people hastened to take advantage of it.
The first savings bank was started by Miss Priscilla Wakefield, in the parish of Tottenham, Middles.e.x, towards the close of last century,--her object being mainly to stimulate the frugality of poor children. The experiment proved so successful that in 1799 the Rev. Joseph Smith, of Wendon, commenced a plan of receiving small sums from his paris.h.i.+oners during summer, and returning them at Christmas, with the addition of one-third as a stimulus to prudence and forethought. Miss Wakefield, in her turn, followed Mr. Smith's example, and in 1804 extended the plan of her charitable bank, so as to include adult labourers, female servants, and others. A similar inst.i.tution was formed at Bath, in 1808, by several ladies of that city; and about the same time Mr. Whitbread proposed to Parliament the formation of a national inst.i.tution, ”in the nature of a bank, for the use and advantage of the labouring cla.s.ses alone;” but nothing came of his proposal.
It was not until the Rev. Henry Duncan, the minister of Ruthwell, a poor parish in Dumfriess.h.i.+re, took up the subject, that the savings-bank system may be said to have become fairly inaugurated. The inhabitants of that parish were mostly poor cottagers, whose average wages did not amount to more than eight s.h.i.+llings a week. There were no manufactures in the district, nor any means of subsistence for the population, except what was derived from the land under cultivation; and the landowners were for the most part non-resident. It seemed a very unlikely place in which to establish a bank for savings, where the poor people were already obliged to strain every nerve to earn a bare living, to provide the means of educating their children (for, however small his income, the Scottish peasant almost invariably contrives to save something wherewith to send his children to school), and to pay their little contributions to the friendly society of the parish. Nevertheless, the minister resolved, as a help to his spiritual instructions, to try the experiment.
Not many labouring men may apprehend the deep arguments of the religious teacher, but the least intelligent can appreciate a bit of practical advice that tells on the well-being of his household as well as on the labourer's own daily comfort and self-respect. Dr. Duncan knew that, even in the poorest family, there were odds and ends of income apt to be frittered away in unnecessary expenditure. He saw some thrifty cottagers using the expedient of a cow, or a pig, or a bit of garden-ground, as a savings bank,--finding their return of interest in the shape of b.u.t.ter and milk, winter's bacon, or garden produce; and it occurred to him that there were other villagers, single men and young women, for whom some a.n.a.logous mode of storing away their summer's savings might be provided, and a fair rate of interest returned upon their little investments.
Hence originated the parish savings bank of Ruthwell, the first self-supporting inst.i.tution of the kind established in this country.
That the minister was not wrong in his antic.i.p.ations, was proved by the fact that, in the course of four years, the funds of his savings bank amounted to nearly a thousand pounds. And if poor villagers out of eight s.h.i.+llings a week, and female labourers and servants out of much less, could lay aside this sum,--what might not mechanics, artizans, miners, and iron-workers accomplish, who earn from thirty to fifty s.h.i.+llings a week all the year round?
The example set by Dr. Duncan was followed in many towns and districts in England and Scotland. In every instance the model of the Ruthwell parish bank was followed; and the self-sustaining principle was adopted.
The savings banks thus inst.i.tuted, were not eleemosynary inst.i.tutions, nor dependent upon anybody's charity or patronage; but their success rested entirely with the depositors themselves. They encouraged the industrious cla.s.ses to rely upon their own resources, to exercise forethought and economy in the conduct of life, to cherish self-respect and self-dependence, and to provide for their comfort and maintenance in old age, by the careful use of the products of their industry, instead of having to rely for aid upon the thankless dole of a begrudged poor-rate.
The establishment of savings banks with these objects, at length began to be recognized as a matter of national concern; and in 1817 an Act was pa.s.sed which served to increase their number and extend their usefulness. Various measures have since been adopted with the object of increasing their efficiency and security. But notwithstanding the great good which these inst.i.tutions have accomplished, it is still obvious that the better-paid cla.s.ses of workpeople avail themselves of them to only a very limited extent. A very small portion of the four hundred millions estimated to be annually earned by the working cla.s.ses finds its way to the savings bank, while at least twenty times the amount is spent annually at the beershop and the public-house.
It is not the highly-paid cla.s.s of working men and women who invest money in the savings banks; but those who earn comparatively moderate incomes. Thus the most numerous cla.s.s of depositors in the Manchester and Salford Savings Bank is that of domestic servants. After them rank clerks, shopmen, porters, and miners. Only about a third part of the deposits belong to the operatives, artizans, and mechanics. It is the same in manufacturing districts generally. A few years since, it was found that of the numerous female depositors at Dundee, only one was a factory worker: the rest were for the most part servants.
There is another fact that is remarkable. The habit of saving does not so much prevail in those counties where wages are the highest, as in those counties where wages are the lowest. Previous to the era of Post Office Savings Banks, the inhabitants of Wilts and Dorset--where wages are about the lowest in England--deposited more money in the savings banks, per head of the population, than they did in Lancas.h.i.+re and Yorks.h.i.+re, where wages are about the highest in England. Taking Yorks.h.i.+re itself, and dividing it into manufacturing and agricultural,--the manufacturing inhabitants of the West Riding of York invested about twenty-five s.h.i.+llings per head of the population in the savings banks; whilst the agricultural population of the East Riding invested about three times that amount.
Private soldiers are paid much less wages per week than the lowest-paid workmen, and yet they put more money in the savings banks than workmen who are paid from thirty to forty s.h.i.+llings a week. Soldiers are generally supposed to be a particularly thoughtless cla.s.s. Indeed, they are sometimes held up to odium as reckless and dissolute; but the Military Savings Bank Returns refute the vilification, and prove that the British soldier is as sober, well-disciplined, and frugal, as we already know him to be brave. Most people forget that the soldier must be obedient, sober, and honest. If he is a drunkard, he is punished; if he is dishonest, he is drummed out of the regiment.
Wonderful is the magic of Drill! Drill means discipline, training, education. The first drill of every people is military. It has been the first education of nations. The duty of obedience is thus taught on a large scale,--submission to authority; united action under a common head. These soldiers,--who are ready to march steadily against vollied fire, against belching cannon, up fortress heights, or to beat their heads against bristling bayonets, as they did at Badajos,--were once tailors, shoemakers, mechanics, delvers, weavers, and ploughmen; with mouths gaping, shoulders stooping, feet straggling, arms and hands like great fins hanging by their sides; but now their gait is firm and martial, their figures are erect, and they march along, to the sound of music, with a tread that makes the earth shake. Such is the wonderful power of drill.
Nations, as they become civilized, adopt other methods of discipline.
The drill becomes industrial. Conquest and destruction give place to production in many forms. And what trophies Industry has won, what skill has it exercised, what labours has it performed! Every industrial process is performed by drilled bands of artizans. Go into Yorks.h.i.+re and Lancas.h.i.+re, and you will find armies of drilled labourers at work, where the discipline is perfect, and the results, as regards the amount of manufactured productions turned out of hand, are prodigious.