Part 39 (1/2)

Upon one point, however, which was new to me, he was very fierce--the customs of landlords letting the cottages with their farms, for the mere sake of saving themselves trouble; thus giving up all power of protecting the poor man, and delivering him over, bound hand and foot, even in the matter of his commonest home comforts, to farmers, too penurious, too ignorant, and often too poor, to keep the cottages in a state fit for the habitation of human beings. Thus the poor man's hovel, as well as his labour, became, he told me, a source of profit to the farmer, out of which he wrung the last drop of gain. The necessary repairs were always put off as long as possible--the labourers were robbed of their gardens--the slightest rebellion lost them not only work, but shelter from the elements; the slavery under which they groaned penetrated even to the fireside and to the bedroom.

”And who was the landlord of this parish?”

”Oh! he believed he was a very good sort of man, and uncommon kind to the people where he lived, but that was fifty miles away in another country; and he liked that estate better than this, and never came down here, except for the shooting.”

Full of many thoughts, and tired out with my journey, I went up to bed, in the same loft with the cobbler and his wife, and fell asleep, and dreamt of Lillian.

About eight o'clock the next morning I started forth with my guide, the shoemaker, over as desolate a country as men can well conceive. Not a house was to be seen for miles, except the knot of hovels which we had left, and here and there a great dreary lump of farm-buildings, with its yard of yellow stacks. Beneath our feet the earth was iron, and the sky iron above our heads. Dark curdled clouds, ”which had built up everywhere an under-roof of doleful grey,” swept on before the bitter northern wind, which whistled through the low leafless hedges and rotting wattles, and crisped the dark sodden leaves of the scattered hollies, almost the only trees in sight.

We trudged on, over wide stubbles, with innumerable weeds; over wide fallows, in which the deserted ploughs stood frozen fast; then over clover and gra.s.s, burnt black with frost; then over a field of turnips, where we pa.s.sed a large fold of hurdles, within which some hundred sheep stood, with their heads turned from the cutting blast. All was dreary, idle, silent; no sound or sign of human beings. One wondered where the people lived, who cultivated so vast a tract of civilized, over-peopled, nineteenth-century England. As we came up to the fold, two little boys hailed us from the inside--two little wretches with blue noses and white cheeks, scarecrows of rags and patches, their feet peeping through bursten shoes twice too big for them, who seemed to have shared between them a ragged pair of worsted gloves, and cowered among the sheep, under the shelter of a hurdle, crying and inarticulate with cold.

”What's the matter, boys?”

”Turmits is froze, and us can't turn the handle of the cutter. Do ye gie us a turn, please?”

We scrambled over the hurdles, and gave the miserable little creatures the benefit of ten minutes' labour. They seemed too small for such exertion: their little hands were purple with chilblains, and they were so sorefooted they could scarcely limp. I was surprised to find them at least three years older than their size and looks denoted, and still more surprised, too, to find that their salary for all this bitter exposure to the elements--such as I believe I could not have endured two days running--was the vast sum of one s.h.i.+lling a week each, Sundays included. ”They didn't never go to school, nor to church nether, except just now and then, sometimes--they had to mind the shop.”

I went on, sickened with the contrast between the highly-bred, over-fed, fat, thick-woolled animals, with their troughs of turnips and malt-dust, and their racks of rich clover-hay, and their little pent-house of rock-salt, having nothing to do but to eat and sleep, and eat again, and the little half-starved s.h.i.+vering animals who were their slaves. Man the master of the brutes? Bah! As society is now, the brutes are the masters--the horse, the sheep, the bullock, is the master, and the labourer is their slave. ”Oh! but the brutes are eaten!” Well; the horses at least are not eaten--they live, like landlords, till they die. And those who are eaten, are certainly not eaten by their human servants. The sheep they fat, another kills, to parody Sh.e.l.ley; and, after all, is not the labourer, as well as the sheep, eaten by you, my dear Society?--devoured body and soul, not the less really because you are longer about the meal, there being an old prejudice against cannibalism, and also against murder--except after the Riot Act has been read.

”What!” shriek the insulted respectabilities, ”have we not paid him his wages weekly, and has he not lived upon them?” Yes; and have you not given your sheep and horses their daily wages, and have they not lived on them?

You wanted to work them; and they could not work, you know, unless they were alive. But here lies your iniquity: you gave the labourer nothing but his daily food--not even his lodgings; the pigs were not stinted of their wash to pay for their sty-room, the man was; and his wages, thanks to your compet.i.tive system, were beaten down deliberately and conscientiously (for was it not according to political economy, and the laws thereof?) to the minimum on which he could or would work, without the hope or the possibility of saving a farthing. You know how to invest your capital profitably, dear Society, and to save money over and above your income of daily comforts; but what has he saved?--what is he profited by all those years of labour? He has kept body and soul together--perhaps he could have done that without you or your help. But his wages are used up every Sat.u.r.day night. When he stops working, you have in your pocket the whole real profits of his nearly fifty years' labour, and he has nothing. And then you say that you have not eaten him! You know, in your heart of hearts, that you have. Else, why in Heaven's name do you pay him poor's rates? If, as you say, he has been duly repaid in wages, what is the meaning of that half-a-crown a week?--you owe him nothing. Oh! but the man would starve--common humanity forbids? What now, Society? Give him alms, if you will, on the score of humanity; but do not tax people for his support, whether they choose or not--that were a mere tyranny and robbery. If the landlord's feelings will not allow him to see the labourer starve, let him give, in G.o.d's name; but let him not cripple and drain, by compulsory poor-rates, the farmer who has paid him his ”just remuneration” of wages, and the parson who probably, out of his scanty income, gives away twice as much in alms as the landlord does out of his superfluous one. No, no; as long as you retain compulsory poor-laws, you confess that it is not merely humane, but just, to pay the labourer more than his wages. You confess yourself in debt to him, over and above an uncertain sum, which it suits you not to define, because such an investigation would expose ugly gaps and patches in that same snug compet.i.tive and property world of yours; and, therefore, being the stronger party, you compel your debtor to give up the claim which you confess, for an annuity of half-a-crown a week--that being the just-above-starving-point of the economic thermometer. And yet you say you have not eaten the labourer! You see, we workmen too have our thoughts about political economy, differing slightly from yours, truly--just as the man who is being hanged may take a somewhat different view of the process from the man who is hanging him. Which view is likely to be the more practical one?

With some such thoughts I walked across the open down, toward a circular camp, the earthwork, probably, of some old British town. Inside it, some thousand or so of labouring people were swarming restlessly round a single large block of stone, some relic of Druid times, on which a tall man stood, his dark figure thrown out in bold relief against the dreary sky. As we pushed through the crowd, I was struck with the wan, haggard look of all faces; their lackl.u.s.tre eyes and drooping lips, stooping shoulders, heavy, dragging steps, gave them a crushed, dogged air, which was infinitely painful, and bespoke a grade of misery more habitual and degrading than that of the excitable and pa.s.sionate artisan.

There were many women among them, talking shrilly, and looking even more pinched and wan than the men.

I remarked, also, that many of the crowd carried heavy sticks, pitchforks, and other tools which might be used as fearful weapons--an ugly sign, which I ought to have heeded betimes.

They glared with sullen curiosity at me and my Londoner's clothes, as, with no small feeling of self-importance, I pushed my way to the foot of the stone. The man who stood on it seemed to have been speaking some time. His words, like all I heard that day, were utterly devoid of anything like eloquence or imagination--a dull string of somewhat incoherent complaints, which derived their force only from the intense earnestness, which attested their truthfulness. As far as I can recollect, I will give the substance of what I heard. But, indeed, I heard nothing but what has been bandied about from newspaper to newspaper for years--confessed by all parties, deplored by all parties, but never an attempt made to remedy it.

--”The farmers makes slaves on us. I can't hear no difference between a Christian and a n.i.g.g.e.r, except they flogs the n.i.g.g.e.rs and starves the Christians; and I don't know which I'd choose. I served Farmer * * * *

seven year, off and on, and arter harvest he tells me he's no more work for me, nor my boy nether, acause he's getting too big for him, so he gets a little 'un instead, and we does nothing; and my boy lies about, getting into bad ways, like hundreds more; and then we goes to board, and they bids us go and look for work; and we goes up next part to London. I couldn't get none; they'd enough to do, they said, to employ their own; and we begs our way home, and goes into the Union; and they turns us out again in two or three days, and promises us work again, and gives us two days'

gravel-picking, and then says they has no more for us; and we was sore pinched, and laid a-bed all day; then next board-day we goes to 'em and they gives us one day more--and that threw us off another week, and then next board-day we goes into the Union again for three days, and gets sent out again: and so I've been starving one-half of the time, and they putting us off and on o' purpose like that; and I'll bear it no longer, and that's what I says.”

He came down, and a tall, powerful, well-fed man, evidently in his Sunday smock-frock and clean yellow leggings, got up and began:

”I hav'n't no complaint to make about myself. I've a good master, and the parson's a right kind 'un, and that's more than all can say, and the squire's a real gentleman; and my master, he don't need to lower his wages.

I gets my ten s.h.i.+llings a week all the year round, and harvesting, and a pig, and a 'lotment--and that's just why I come here. If I can get it, why can't you?”

”Cause our masters baint like yourn.”

”No, by George, there baint no money round here like that, I can tell you.”

”And why ain't they?” continued the speaker. ”There's the shame on it.

There's my master can grow five quarters where yourn only grows three; and so he can live and pay like a man; and so he say he don't care for free trade. You know, as well as I, that there's not half o' the land round here grows what it ought. They ain't no money to make it grow more, and besides, they won't employ no hands to keep it clean. I come across more weeds in one field here, than I've seen for nine year on our farm. Why arn't some of you a-getting they weeds up? It 'ud pay 'em to farm better--and they knows that, but they're too lazy; if they can just get a living off the land, they don't care; and they'd sooner save money out of your wages, than save it by growing more corn--it's easier for 'em, it is. There's the work to be done, and they won't let you do it. There's you crying out for work, and work crying out for you--and neither of you can get to the other. I say that's a shame, I do. I say a poor man's a slave. He daren't leave his parish--n.o.body won't employ him, as can employ his own folk. And if he stays in his parish, it's just a chance whether he gets a good master or a bad 'un. He can't choose, and that's a shame, it is. Why should he go starving because his master don't care to do the best by the land? If they can't till the land, I say let them get out of it, and let them work it as can. And I think as we ought all to sign a pet.i.tion to government, to tell 'em all about it; though I don't see as how they could help us, unless they'd make a law to force the squires to put in n.o.body to a farm as hasn't money to work it fairly.”

”I says,” said the next speaker, a poor fellow whose sentences were continually broken by a hacking cough, ”just what he said. If they can't till the land, let them do it as can. But they won't; they won't let us have a sc.r.a.p on it, though we'd pay 'em more for it nor ever they'd make for themselves. But they says it 'ud make us too independent, if we had an acre or so o' land; and so it 'ud for they. And so I says as he did--they want to make slaves on us altogether, just to get the flesh and bones off us at their own price. Look you at this here down.--If I had an acre on it, to make a garden on, I'd live well with my wages, off and on. Why, if this here was in garden, it 'ud be worth twenty, forty times o' that it be now.

And last spring I lays out o' work from Christmas till barley-sowing, and I goes to the farmer and axes for a bit o' land to dig and plant a few potatoes--and he says, 'You be d--d! If you're minding your garden after hours, you'll not be fit to do a proper day's work for me in hours--and I shall want you by-and-by, when the weather breaks'--for it was frost most bitter, it was. 'And if you gets potatoes you'll be getting a pig--and then you'll want straw, and meal to fat 'un--and then I'll not trust you in my barn, I can tell ye;' and so there it was. And if I'd had only one half-acre of this here very down as we stands on, as isn't worth five s.h.i.+llings a year--and I'd a given ten s.h.i.+llings for it--my belly wouldn't a been empty now. Oh, they be dogs in the manger, and the Lord'll reward 'em therefor! First they says they can't afford to work the land 'emselves, and then they wain't let us work it ether. Then they says prices is so low they can't keep us on, and so they lowers our wages; and then when prices goes up ever so much, our wages don't go up with 'em. So, high prices or low prices, it's all the same. With the one we can't buy bread, and with the other we can't get work. I don't mind free trade--not I: to be sure, if the loaf's cheap, we shall be ruined; but if the loafs dear, we shall be starved, and for that, we is starved now. n.o.body don't care for us; for my part, I don't much care for myself. A man must die some time or other. Only I thinks if we could some time or other just see the Queen once, and tell her all about it, she'd take our part, and not see us put upon like that, I do.”