Part 24 (1/2)

Before the age of railroads and sanitary reformers, the pastoral life of the Arcadians was a beautiful myth, The Blue Book men have exploded it for ever. The agricultural labourers have not decent houses,--only miserable huts, to live in. They have but few provisions for cleanliness or decency. Two rooms for sleeping and living in, are all that the largest family can afford. Sometimes they have only one. The day-room, in addition to the family, contains the cooking utensils, the was.h.i.+ng apparatus, agricultural implements, and dirty clothes. In the sleeping apartment, the parents and their children, boys and girls, are indiscriminately mixed, and frequently a lodger sleeps in the same and only room, which has generally no window,--the openings in the half-thatched roof admitting light, and exposing the family to every vicissitude of the weather. The husband, having no comfort at home, seeks it in the beershop. The children grow up without decency or self-restraint. As for the half-hearted wives and daughters, their lot is very miserable.

It is not often that village affairs are made the subject of discussion in newspapers, for the power of the press has not yet reached remote country places. But we do hear occasionally of whole villages being pulled down and razed, in order to prevent them ”becoming nests of beggars' brats.” A member of Parliament did not hesitate to confess before a Parliamentary Committee, that he ”had pulled down between twenty-six and thirty cottages, which, had they been left standing, would have been inhabited by young married couples.” And what becomes of the dispossessed? They crowd together in the cottages which are left standing, if their owners will allow it; or they crowd into the workhouses; or, more generally, they crowd into the towns, where there is at least some hope of employment for themselves and their children.

Our manufacturing towns are not at all what they ought to be; not sufficiently pure, wholesome, or well-regulated. But the rural labourers regard even the misery of towns as preferable to the worse misery of the rural districts; and year by year they crowd into the seats of manufacturing industry in search of homes and employment. This speaks volumes as to the actual state of our ”boasted peasantry, their country's pride.”

The intellectual condition of the country labourers seems to be on a par with their physical state. Those in the western counties are as little civilized as the poor people in the east of London. A report of the Diocesan Board of the county of Hereford states that ”a great deal of the superst.i.tion of past ages lingers in our parishes. The observation of lucky and unlucky days and seasons is by no means unusual; the phases of the moon are regarded with great respect,--in one, medicine may be taken, in another it is advisable to kill a pig; over the doors of many houses may be found twigs placed crosswise, and never suffered to lose their cruciform position; and the horseshoe preserves its old station on many a stable-door. Charms are devoutly believed in; a ring made from a s.h.i.+lling, offered at the communion, is an undoubted cure for fits; hair plucked from the crop on an a.s.s's shoulder, and woven into a chain, to be put round a child's neck, is powerful for the same purpose; and the hand of a corpse applied to the neck is believed to disperse a wen. The 'evil eye,' so long dreaded in uneducated countries, has its terrors among us; and if a person of ill life be suddenly called away, there are generally some who hear his 'tokens,' or see his ghost. There exists, besides, the custom of communicating deaths to hives of bees, in the belief that they invariably abandon their owners if the intelligence be withheld.”

Sydney Smith has said, with more truth than elegance, that in the infancy of all nations, even the most civilized, men lived the life of pigs; and if sanitary reporters had existed in times past as they do now, we should doubtless have received an account of the actual existence and domestic accommodation of the old English ”swains” and ”shepherds,” very different from that given by Phineas Fletcher. Even the mechanics of this day are more comfortably lodged than the great landed gentry of the Saxon and Norman periods: and if the truth could be got at, it would be found that, bad as is the state of our agricultural labourers now, the condition of their forefathers was no better.

The first method of raising a man above the life of an animal is to provide him with a healthy home. The Home is after all the best school for the world. Children grow up into men and women there; they imbibe their best and their worst morality there; and their morals and intelligence are in a great measure well or ill trained there. Men can only be really and truly humanized and civilized through the inst.i.tution of the Home. There is domestic purity and moral life in the good home; and individual defilement and moral death in the bad one. The schoolmaster has really very little to do with the formation of the characters of children. These are formed in the home, by the father and mother,--by brothers, sisters, and companions. It does not matter how complete may be the education given in schools. It may include the whole range of knowledge: yet if the scholar is under the necessity of daily returning to a home which is indecent, vicious, and miserable, all this learning will prove of comparatively little value. Character and disposition are the result of home training; and if these are, through bad physical and moral conditions, deteriorated and destroyed, the intellectual culture acquired in the school may prove an instrumentality for evil rather than for good.

The home should not be considered merely as an eating and sleeping place; but as a place where self-respect may be preserved, and comfort secured, and domestic pleasures enjoyed. Three-fourths of the petty vices which degrade society, and swell into crimes which disgrace it, would shrink before the influence of self-respect. To be a place of happiness, exercising beneficial influences upon its members,--and especially upon the children growing up within it,--the home must be pervaded by the spirit of comfort, cleanliness, affection, and intelligence. And in order to secure this, the presence of a well-ordered, industrious, and educated woman is indispensable. So much depends upon the woman, that we might almost p.r.o.nounce the happiness or unhappiness of the home to be woman's work. No nation can advance except through the improvement of the nation's homes; and these can only be improved through the instrumentality of women. They must _know_ how to make homes comfortable; and before they can know, they must have been taught.

Women must, therefore, have sufficient training to fit them for their duties in real life. Their education should be conducted throughout, with a view to their future position as wives, mothers, and housewives.

But amongst all cla.s.ses, even the highest, the education of girls is rarely conducted with this object. Amongst the working people, the girls are sent out to work; amongst the higher cla.s.ses, they are sent out to learn a few flashy accomplishments; and men are left to pick from them, very often with little judgment, the future wives and mothers of England.

Men themselves attach little or no importance to the intelligence or industrial skill of women; and they only discover their value when they find their homes stupid and cheerless. Men are caught by the glance of a bright eye, by a pair of cherry cheeks, by a handsome figure; and when they ”fall in love,” as the phrase goes, they never bethink them of whether the ”loved one” can mend a s.h.i.+rt or cook a pudding. And yet the most sentimental of husbands must come down from his ”ecstatics” so soon as the knot is tied; and then he soon enough finds out that the clever hands of a woman are worth far more than her bright glances; and if the s.h.i.+rt and pudding qualifications be absent, then woe to the unhappy man, and woe also to the unhappy woman! If the substantial element of physical comfort be absent from the home, it soon becomes hateful; the wife, notwithstanding all her good looks, is neglected; and the public-house separates those whom the law and the Church have joined together.

Men are really desperately ignorant respecting the home department. If they thought for a moment of its importance, they would not be so ready to rush into premature housekeeping. Ignorant men select equally ignorant women for their wives; and these introduce into the world families of children, whom they are utterly incompetent to train as rational or domestic beings. The home is no home, but a mere lodging, and often a very comfortless one.

We speak not merely of the poorest labourers, but of the best-paid workmen in the large manufacturing towns. Men earning from two to three pounds a week,--or more than the average pay of curates and bankers'

clerks,--though spending considerable amounts on beer, will often grudge so small a part of their income as half-a-crown a week to provide decent homes for themselves and their children. What is the consequence? They degrade themselves and their families. They crowd together, in foul neighbourhoods, into dwellings possessing no element of health or decency; where even the small rental which they pay is in excess of the accommodation they receive. The results are inevitable,--loss of self-respect, degradation of intelligence, failure of physical health, and premature death. Even the highest-minded philosopher, placed in such a situation, would gradually gravitate towards brutality.

But the amount thus saved, or rather not expended on house-rent, is not economy; it is reckless waste. The sickness caused by the bad dwelling involves frequent interruptions of work, and drains upon the Savings Bank or the Benefit Society; and a final and rapid descent to the poor-rates. Though the loss to the middle and upper cla.s.ses is great, the loss is not for a moment to be compared with that which falls upon the working cla.s.ses themselves, through their neglect in providing wholesome and comfortable dwellings for their families. It is, perhaps, not saying too much to aver, that one-half the money expended by benefit societies in large towns, may be set down as pecuniary loss arising from bad and unhealthy homes.

But there is a worse consequence still. The low tone of physical health thereby produced is one of the chief causes of drunkenness. Mr. Chadwick once remonstrated with an apparently sensible workman on the expenditure of half his income on whisky. His reply was, ”Do you, sir, come and live here, and you will drink whisky too.” Mr. Leigh says, ”I would not be understood that habits of intoxication are _wholly_ due to a defective sanitary condition; but no person can have the experience I have had without coming to the conclusion that _unhealthy_ and unhappy homes,--loss of _vital_ and consequently of _industrial_ energy, and a consciousness of inability to control external circ.u.mstances,--induce thousands to escape from miserable depression in the temporary excitement of noxious drugs and intoxicating liquors. They are like the seamen who struggle for awhile against the evils by which they are surrounded, but at last, seeing no hope, stupefy themselves with drink, and perish.”

It may be said, in excuse, that working people must necessarily occupy such houses as are to be had, and pay the rental asked for them, bad and unwholesome though they be. But there is such a thing as supply and demand; and the dwellings now supplied are really those which are most in demand, because of their lowness of rental. Were the working cla.s.ses to shun unwholesome districts, and low-priced dwellings, and rent only such tenements as were calculated to fulfil the requirements of a wholesome and cleanly home, the owners of property would be compelled to improve the character of their houses, and raise them to the required standard of comfort and accommodation. The real remedy must lie with the working cla.s.ses themselves. Let them determine to raise their standard of rental, and the reform is in a great measure accomplished.

We have already shown how masters have done a great deal for the better accommodation of their work-people--how the benefactors of the poor, such as Mr. Peabody and Lady Burdett Coutts, have promoted the building of healthy homes. Yet the result must depend upon the individual action of the working cla.s.ses themselves. When they have the choice of living in a dwelling situated in a healthy locality, and of another situated in an unhealthy locality, they ought to choose the former. But very often they do not. There is perhaps a difference of sixpence a week in the rental, and, not knowing the advantages of health, they take the unhealthy dwelling because it is the cheapest. But the money that sickly people have to pay for physic, doctors' bills, and loss of wages, far more than exceeds the amount saved by cheaper rental,--not to speak of the loss of comfort, the want of cleanliness, and the depression of spirits, which is inevitable where foul air is breathed.

To build a wholesome dwelling costs little more than to build an unwholesome one. What is wanted on the part of the builder is, a knowledge of sanitary conditions, and a willingness to provide the proper accommodation. The s.p.a.ce of ground covered by the dwelling is the same in both cases; the quant.i.ty of bricks and mortar need be no greater; and pure air is of the same price as foul air. Light costs nothing.

A healthy home, presided over by a thrifty, cleanly woman, may be the abode of comfort, of virtue, and of happiness. It may be the scene of every enn.o.bling relation in family life. It may be endeared to a man by many delightful memories, by the affectionate voices of his wife, his children, and his neighbours. Such a Home will be regarded, not as a mere nest of common instinct, but as a training-ground for young immortals, a sanctuary for the heart, a refuge from storms, a sweet resting-place after labour, a consolation in sorrow, a pride in success, and a joy at all times.

Much has been done to spread the doctrines of Sanitary Science. There is no mystery attached to it, otherwise we should have had professors teaching it in colleges (as we have now), and graduates practising it amongst the people. It is only of recent years that it has received general recognition; and we owe it, not to the medical faculty, but to a barrister, that it has become embodied in many important Acts of Parliament.

Edwin Chadwick has not yet received ordinary justice from his contemporaries. Though he has been one of the most indefatigable and successful workers of the age, and has greatly influenced the legislation of his time, he is probably less known than many a fourth-rate parliamentary talker.

Mr. Chadwick belongs to a Lancas.h.i.+re family, and was born near Manchester. He received his education chiefly in London. Having chosen the law for his profession, he was enrolled a student of the Inner Temple in his twenty-sixth year. There he ”ate his way” to the Bar; maintaining himself by reporting and writing for the daily press. He was not a man of an extraordinary amount of learning. But he was a sagacious and persevering man. He was ready to confront any amount of labour in prosecuting an object, no matter how remote its attainment might at first sight appear to be.

At an early period in his career, Edwin Chadwick became possessed by an idea. It is a great thing to be thoroughly possessed by an idea, provided its aim and end be beneficent. It gives a colour and bias to the whole of a man's life. The idea was not a new one; but being taken up by an earnest, energetic, and hard-working man, there was some hope for the practical working out of his idea in the actual life of humanity. It was neither more nor less than the Sanitary Idea,--the germ of the sanitary movement.

We must now briefly state how he worked his way to its practical realization. It appears that Mr. Morgan, the Government actuary, had stated before a parliamentary committee, that though the circ.u.mstances of the middle cla.s.ses had improved, their ”expectation of life” had not lengthened. This being diametrically opposed to our student's idea, he endeavoured to demonstrate the fallacy of the actuary's opinion. He read up and sifted numerous statistical doc.u.ments,--Blue Books, life-tables, and population-tables. He bored his way through the c.u.mbrous pile, and brought an acc.u.mulation of facts from the most unlooked-for quarters, for the purpose of ill.u.s.trating his idea, and elucidating his master-thought.

The result was published in the _Westminster Review_ for April, 1828.

Mr. Chadwick demonstrated, by an immense array of facts and arguments, that the circ.u.mstances which surround human beings _must_ have an influence upon their health; that health _must_ improve with an improvement of these circ.u.mstances; that many of the diseases and conditions unfavourable to human life were under man's control, and capable of being removed; that the practice of vaccination, the diminution of hard drinking amongst the middle and upper cla.s.ses, the increase of habits of cleanliness, the improvements in medical science, and the better construction of streets and houses, _must_, according to all medical and popular experience, have contributed, _a priori_, to lengthen life; and these he proved by a citation of facts from numerous authentic sources. In short, Mr. Morgan was wrong. The ”expectancy of life,” as is now universally admitted, has improved and is rapidly improving amongst the better cla.s.ses; but it was never thoroughly demonstrated until Edwin Chadwick undertook the discussion of the question.

Another article, which Mr. Chadwick published in the _London Review_, in 1829, on ”Preventive Police,” was read by Jeremy Bentham, then in his eighty-second year, who so much admired it, that he craved an introduction to the writer. The consequence was the formation of a friends.h.i.+p that lasted without interruption until the death of the philosopher in 1832. Mr. Bentham wished to engage the whole of his young friend's time in a.s.sisting him with the preparation of his Administrative Code, and he offered to place him in independent circ.u.mstances if he would devote himself exclusively to the advancement of his views. The offer was, however, declined.

Mr. Chadwick completed his law studies, and was called to the bar in November, 1830. He was preparing to enter upon the practice of common law, occasionally contributing articles to the _Westminster_, when he was, in 1832, appointed a commissioner, in conjunction with Dr.

Southwood Smith and Mr. Tooke, to investigate the question of Factory Labour, which Lord Ashley and Mr. Sadler were at that time strongly pressing upon public attention. The sanitary idea again found opportunity for expression in the report of the commission, which referred to ”defective drainage, ventilation, water supply, and the like, as causes of disease,--acting, concurrently with excessive toil, to depress the health and shorten the lives of the factory population.”