little time for schooling or for home life. Recent inquiries 1 have made evident that the ignorance and brutality of the rural population are in large part due to the conditions of agricultural labor. Parliament has done something toward meeting this demand. In 1867, a law was passed regulating the employment of women and children in gangs. Every gang-master must be licensed, no child under eight years may be hired, women are not allowed to go to the field in the same gangs with men, and the distance the laborers may be obliged to walk is limited. The Agricultural Children's Act, 1873, was repealed almost as soon as passed, but the requirement of school attendance insures a primary education to the children, and various efforts in the direction of sanitary dwellings have rendered living conditions more tolerable. The Agricultural Union. The greatest obstacle to the advancement of the agricultural labor, viz. inadequate earnings, may not be so easily overcome. The wages paid for field work are lower than in any other employment. Ablebodied men are customarily paid seven, nine, and eleven shillings a week, a sum that leaves little opportunity for saving after living expenses are paid. Among men so scattered and so ignorant, coöperative effort is difficult, but a trade union of agricultural laborers has been attempted. In 1872, Joseph Arch, a hedger of Warwickshire, set on Joseph Arch. foot a movement to demand shorter hours and better pay. The farm laborers of Suffolk struck for higher wages in Bright, IV, the summer of that year, and though they did not obtain 504. all they asked, they succeeded in impressing the farmers. with the wisdom of avoiding another such demonstration by timely concessions. The affair attracted universal attention. Since the days of Wat Tyler, the tillers of the soil had made no organized effort to improve their lot. The movement seemed to threaten the foundations of the social order and was strenuously opposed by the landed interest. 1 E.g. report of Parliamentary Commission, 1873. Small Hold ings Act, 1890. The Agricultural Union found champions, however, among the Liberal leaders. The extension of the 10 householder suffrage to the rural districts (1884) gave the agricultural laborer his first opportunity to influence legislation. The additional vote (870,000) was twice that of the landlords and farmers combined. Joseph Arch was sent to the House of Commons, and a strong pressure was brought to bear upon that body by the newly enfranchised. The Small Agricultural Holdings Act (1890) enabled laborers to purchase plots of land large enough for market gardening or small farming. The county councils were empowered to buy estates and divide them into small tracts for sale or rent, while the government undertook to loan capital at low rates of interest to would-be purchasers. The arrangement has not produced any considerable effect.' Landowners were unwilling to sell, and laborers hesitated to burden themselves with a debt in this era of low prices. Pauperism. Any review of the social and industrial conditions of modern England would be incomplete without some notice of the growth of pauperism and the efforts made to check this menace to the nation's health. The industrial upheaval of the past hundred years has been attended by results both good and bad. An immense gain in material wealth has been achieved at the expense of the well-being of the laborers immediately concerned. Improved farming, no less than machinery, has deprived thousands of the means of self-support and driven them to seek aid at the hands of parish officers or private almsgivers. From 1750 to 1820, the years in which the factory system was becoming estab 1 In 1895 allotments had been provided in only eight counties of England, Scotland, and Wales, and but 483 acres sold. In forty-one of the eighty-four remaining counties applications had been made. 2 Poor-rate per head of population: lished and enclosures were being made, the growth of pauperism was appalling. The poor-rate augmented till it reached the alarming proportions of one-fourth the national revenue, and the burden on the taxpayer was intolerable. The phenomenal increase in the number of paupers was due in part to unwise methods of relief, in part to the disturbing effects of the Napoleonic wars, in part to the Bright, III, mischievous corn laws that not infrequently raised the price 1228, 1229. of bread to famine rates; but the main cause was the industrial change that rendered opportunity for employment uncertain and left laborers dependent on precarious wages. No legislation can reach the fundamental difficulty. Parliament has undertaken little more than the regulation of relief. The burden of the poor-rate is now but one-third of what it was in 1834, and the number of paupers has been Booth, In greatly reduced, but there is still the problem of the "sub- Darkest merged tenth." The most hopeful feature of the times is the awakening of the social conscience. People's Palaces, improved tenements, university extension, these and many more generous efforts to better the conditions of life and labor for the working classes bear witness to the new spirit of brotherhood that controls the thought of to-day. The new ideal astir in England has found noble expression in the writings of Kingsley, Carlyle, Ruskin, and William Morris. Principal Inventions Fly-shuttle, Kay, 1738. Spinning-jenny, Hargreaves, 1767. Throstle, Arkwright, 1769. Spinning-mule, Crompton, 1779. Steam-engine, Watt, 1775. Power-loom, Cartwright, 1785. Cotton-gin, Whitney, 1793. Steamboat, Symington, 1802. Locomotive engine, Stephenson, 1825. England. CHAPTER XVI THE BRITISH EMPIRE Books for Consultation SPECIAL AUTHORITIES Cotton and Paine, Colonies and Dependencies. Lyall, Rise of British Dominion in India. De Walker, Australasia. Stanley, etc., Africa, its Partition and its Future. Parkin, Imperial Federation. Russell, Dampier. Besant, Captain Cook. IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE Thackeray, The Virginians. British America. - The region that remained loyal to the mother-country after the secession of the thirteen colonies lay, for the most part, north of the St. Lawrence River, and in a sub-arctic climate. Canada has developed slowly as compared with the United States, both industrially and politically. The eighteenth-century population was largely French and Indian. Even to-day, after one hundred and thirty years of English rule, the Saxon element is in the British North minority in the oldest province of Quebec. From the outset, however, the bulk of intelligence and enterprise was with the English settlers. Under their influence, a full measure of self-government has been secured. Taught by her unhappy experience with the seaboard colonies, England has conceded representative institutions to Canada without serious protest. A rising of the French population, in 1837, led to the reorganization of the government. Que- Payne, bec and Ontario were then united for purposes of general Colonies, European legislation. In 1867, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick ch. XI. came into the federation, Manitoba in 1870, British Colum- Bright, IV, bia in 1871, and Prince Edward Island in 1873. New- 6-13,434. foundland alone remains outside. By the British North American Act (1867), a constitution similar in principle to that of Great Britain was conceded. The House of Commons of the Canadian Parliament is made up of representatives elected by the property-owning citizens; in the Senate, or upper house, sit life members, appointed by the crown. The governor-general remains the representative of the queen, but the real responsibility is vested in the ministry, and the composition of the Cabinet depends, in Canada as in England, on the party having a majority in the lower house. Each of the seven provinces in the Dominion has its own legislature and executive, administering the local government. American Pacific Rail way, 1885. The latent resources of British America are being rapidly opened up under a wise system of colonization.1 The Canadian Pacific Railway (completed in 1885) binds the Canadian old Atlantic colonies to the mining settlements of British Columbia, and carries immigrants to the wheat and ranch lands of the Northwest Territory. Under the liberal administration of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the commercial interests of the country are being developed. Improvements in the transatlantic steamship service receive official encouragement, special advantages are accorded to trade with the 1 Population of Canada (1891): English, 3,428,265; French, 1,404,974; Indian, 102,275. |