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THE evils in large manufacturing establishments arise not from want of money, but from a want of foresight and economy. The employment requires no thought. The labourers' lives are almost inconsistent with mental action. What time have they for reflection? If they are lost in a moment's thought, their limbs may be lacerated or torn off, or their work is ruined. The husbandman may lean upon his hoe, or, when wearied, sit down beneath the shade, and give himself up to the impulse of his own soul, to thoughts called forth by the life and freshness of surrounding objects; or, if the season have changed, and the rejoicings of spring-time are over, and the sere and yellow leaf give indication of the wide-spread desolation that is at hand, his occupation leads him to reflect upon these things, and to give place to those serious thoughts and feelings which rise unbidden at such times and amid such scenes. Not so with the manufacturing labourer. "With the year, seasons return; but not to him returns the sweet approach of" spring, "or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, or flocks, or herds;" months and years present one unchanging prospect. Each day is passed in waiting upon the untiring motions of matter, without a moment for anything else; and when the labours of the day are over, he returns to his crowded boarding-house, 31

VOL. I.

with mind and body worn down by his stagnant activity; without heart or strength, or any of the external means and pliances for the improvement of his soul, for reflection upon the duties of life or the claims of religion. He is brought up in ignorance of the great object of his existence; he almost forgets that he has a higher duty than to wait upon machinery, or any purer pleasure than sensual indulgence. In the strong, but hardly too strong, language of a reviewer, "One might suppose that the great fabric of national prosperity rested upon cotton; that the two purposes for which human beings are brought into the world are to manufacture it and to wear it; that the proper definition of Man is a Manufacturing Animal; and that the use for which children are created is to feed power-looms."

Think, for a moment, upon the homes which receive these beings, when their day's work is done. The country cottage and its smiling inmates, poor, but neat and contented, which give such a charm to the simplicity of rural life, compare this with what must be the habitations of mill-labourers in a densely-peopled manufacturing town. We would not now speak of the dens of Manchester, in which (if we can at all credit eye-witnesses) the wild beasts of the desert would scorn to dwell, – the damp cellars in which no other men or brutes than the lowest Irish labourers and their inseparable four-footed companions will consent to take up their abode, these we would pass by. Our hearts have grown sick at the recital. They are extraordinary evils, and therefore not proper data for an argument. But put upon the matter the best possible aspect, and what sort of homes receive, and must, from the nature of the case, receive, the common operatives, when their day's work is done?

It is not, indeed, necessary nor probable that it should ever be common here, as among the lowest labourers in Manchester, for six-four children and their parents to sleep in the same bed; or for some dozens, of different ages and sexes, to be crowded into the same room. But it is the inevitable tendency of such institutions to congregate large numbers into small places, where they can have little opportunity for mental improvement; no chance to cultivate the social affections by an unreserved and unbroken intercourse with a few friends; still less can they enjoy the luxury of solitude, and the moral and religious improvements which it affords.

"The great evil," after all, "has arisen from the separation of families, the breaking-up of households, the disruption of

all those ties which link man's heart to the better portion of his nature; namely, the instincts and social affections, and which can alone render him a respectable and praiseworthy member of society, both in his domestic relations and in his capacity of a citizen, and which have finally led him to the abandonment of the joys of home, and to seek his pleasures and excitements in pursuits fatal alike to health and to moral propriety."

Let any one of us imagine himself placed in such a situation, even with all his present tastes and habits. He might not be corrupted; but how would he contrive to improve his mind, and keep alive his religious feelings? Are we to be surprised that the uncultivated and undisciplined should fail to make the improvements, which we, in like circumstances, should find it impossible to keep? Learning flies from them in terror. The pure and holy impulses of religion can find no home with them; but, like the dove hanging with trembling wing over the agitated waters of the deluge, seek a refuge in some more peaceful bosom, and leave them occupied solely by their own impure sensations."

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The account to which the labour of children * may be turned holds out a strong inducement to parents to impose upon them the confinement of a factory life before their physical system is sufficiently developed to endure it without great and permanent injury. Thus the time and means of education also are curtailed. The consequence is, not only that children are thus brought up with minds and bodies dwarfed, but a species of hostility is cherished between them and their parents; the parents regarding them as servants, whose duty it is to labour for their support, and they considering the parents severe, interested, and unjust taskmasters.

The daughters, especially, are brought up without skill in domestic affairs, and wholly unfit to perform the important duties of wife and mother. Some idea may be formed of the maternal providence in Manchester, from the fact that more than two thirds of all the children born in the place are brought into the world by the aid of public charity. As soon as the mother is able to work she puts the child under the charge of some old person, who can do nothing else, and attends it herself only when she comes out for her meals.

* In Fall-River we understand that about one tenth of the hands are under ten years old, and in some of the factories nearly one fourth. In Lowell none are received under thirteen. In both these places parents are anxious to have their children admitted as soon as possible.

But enough and perhaps too much of these evils. The causes may be summed up in few words. Large manufacturing towns injure morals; for they destroy domestic labour; they congregate their victims into densely peopled neighbourhoods; they break up families; they lessen the demand for human strength, reducing man to a machine, or rather to the slave of a machine; they place large classes of the poor entirely under the control of the rich; they lessen individual responsibility; and diminish the facilities of moral and intellectual education.

But why dwell on these points, in a dissertation on the influence of manufactures upon pauperism? Because they are inseparably connected with it. Whatever tends to the introduction of physical, moral, or intellectual depravity, tends also to the introduction of pauperism with its most hateful attendants. Whatever tends to produce a class of men physically, mentally, and morally degraded, discourages the honourable spirit of independence, which would provide a competency for casual emergencies, and, at the same time, generates the most oppressive sufferings and evils to which poverty is exposed. What matters it to us, whether the sufferings of a brother man be occasioned by absolute starvation, or by the labour and deprivations to which he is reduced in order to drive away starvation? What matters it to us, whether his mind lose its lofty character, its provident sagacity, its towering hopes, its manly independence, in consequence of the actual pressure of cold and hunger, or in consequence of the narrow and narrowing employments, in which he is obliged to engage to prevent freezing and starving? In each alike it is poverty that acts. To the cold-blooded political economist, who regards the acquisition of wealth as the great end of human existence, these things seem otherwise. To the narrow-souled politician, who sees no higher object than to save the people's money, these things seem otherwise. So long as no contributions are levied upon him, either directly by the clamorous beggar, or indirectly by the public pauper, he is aware of no distressing cases of poverty. His neighbour and his neighbour's children may be engaged in an occupation which renders existence little better than a living death,—an occupation beneath which the flower of health is crushed, the buoyancy of youthful spirits sunk, the nice sense of moral distinctions obliterated; still they are comfortably fed and clad; and our friend sees among them no marks of suffering

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