JAMES KAY The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes ...
in Manchester (1832)
(SOURCE: From James Phillips Kay, The
Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes Employed in the Cotton
Manufacture in Manchester (London: Ridge way, 1832), pp. 6-12, 19, 25-27,
42-43, 49, 55-56, 71-72.)
The township of Manchester chiefly consists of dense masses
of houses, inhabited by the population engaged in the great manufactories of
the cotton trade. Some of the central divisions are occupied by warehouses and
shops, and a few streets by the dwellings of some of the more
wealthy in- habitants; but the opulent merchants chiefly reside in the
country, and even the superior servants of their establishments inhabit the
suburban [sic) townships. Manchester, properly so called, is chiefly inhabited
by shopkeepers and the laboring classes. Those districts where the poor dwell
are of very recent origin. The rapid growth of the cotton manufacture has
attracted hither operatives from every part of the kingdom, and Ireland has
poured forth the most destitute of her hordes to supply the constantly
increasing demand for labor. This immigration has been, in one important
respect, a serious evil. The Irish have taught the laboring classes of this
country a pernicious lesson. The system of cattier farming,' the demoralization
and barbarism of the people, and the general use of the potato as the chief
article of food, have encouraged the population in Ireland more rapidly than
the available means of subsistence have increased. Debased alike by ignorance
and pauperism, they have discovered, with the savage, what is the minimum of
the means of life, upon which existence may be prolonged. They have taught this
fatal secret to the population of this country.... Instructed in the fatal
secret of subsisting on what is barely necessary to life, the laboring classes
have ceased to entertain a laudable pride in furnishing their houses, and in
multiplying the decent comforts which minister to happiness. What is
superfluous to the mere exigencies of nature, is too often expended at the
tavern; and for the provision of old age and infirmity, they too frequently
trust either to charity, to the support of their children, or to the protection
of the Poor Laws. When the example is considered in connexion
with the unremitting labor of the whole population engaged in the various
branches of the cotton manufacture, our wonder will be less excited by their
fatal demoralization. Prolonged and exhausting labor, continued from day to
day, and from year to year, is not calculated to develop the intellectual or
moral faculties of man. The dull routine of a ceaseless drudgery, in which the
same mechanical process is incessantly repeated, resembles the torment of
Sisyphus-the toil, like the rock, recoils perpetually on the wearied operative.
The mind gathers neither stores nor strength from the constant extension and
retraction of the same muscles. The intellect slumbers in supine inertness; but
the grosser parts of our nature attain a rank develop- ment.
To condemn man to such severity of toil is, in some measure, to cultivate in
him the habits of an animal. He becomes reckless. He disregards the
distinguishing appetites and habits of his species. He neglects the comforts
and delicacies of life. He lives in squalid wretchedness, on meagre food, and expends his superfluous gains on
debauchery.
The population employed in the cotton factories rises at
five o'clock in the morning, works in the mills from six till eight o'clock,
and returns home for half an hour to forty minutes to breakfast. This meal
generally consists of tea or coffee with a little bread. Oatmeal porridge is
sometimes, but of late rarely used, and chiefly by the men; but the stimulus of
tea is preferred, and especially by the women. The tea is almost always of a
bad, and sometimes of a deleterious quality, the infusion is weak, and little
or no milk is added. The operatives return to the mills and workshops until
twelve o'clock, when an hour is allowed for dinner. Amongst those who obtain
the lowest rates of wages this meal generally consists of boiled potatoes. The
mess of potatoes is put into one large dish; melted lard and butter are poured
upon them, and a few pieces of fried fat bacon are sometimes mingled with them,
and but seldom a little meat. Those who obtain better wages, or families whose
aggregate income is larger, add a greater proportion of animal food to this
meal, at least three times a week; but the quantity consumed by the laboring
population is not great. The family sits round the table, and each rapidly
appropriates his portion on a plate, or, they all plunge their spoons into the
dish, and with an animal eagerness satisfy the cravings of their appetite. At
the expiration of the hour, they are all again employed in the workshops or
mills, where they continue until seven o'clock or a later hour, when they
generally again indulge in the use of tea, often mingled with spirits
accompanied by a little bread. Oatmeal or potatoes are however taken by some a
second time in the evening.
The comparatively innutritious qualities of these articles
of diet are most evident. We are, however, by no means prepared to say that an
individual living in a healthy atmosphere, and engaged in active employment in
the open air, would not be able to continue protracted and severe labor,
without any suffering, whilst nourished by this food.... But the population
nourished on this aliment is crowded into one dense mass, in cottages separated
by narrow, unpaved, and almost pestilential streets; in an atmosphere loaded
with the smoke and exhalations of a large manufacturing city. The operatives
are congregated in rooms and workshops during twelve hours in the day, in an
enervating, heated atmosphere, which is frequently loaded with dust or filaments
of cotton, and impure from constant respiration, or from other causes. They are
engaged in an employment which absorbs their attention, and unremittingly
employs their physical energies. They are drudges who watch the movements, and
assist the operations, of a mighty material force, which toils with an energy
ever unconscious of fatigue. The persevering labor of the operative must rival
the mathematical precision, the incessant motion, and the exhaustless power of
the machine....
The artisan has neither moral dignity nor intellectual nor
organic strength to resist the seductions of appetite. His wife and children,
too frequently subjected to the same process, are unable to cheer his remaining
moments of leisure. Domestic economy is neglected, domestic comforts are
unknown. A meal of the coarsest food is prepared with heedless haste, and
devoured with equal precipitation. Home has no other relation to him than that
of shelter few pleasures are there-it chiefly presents to him a scene of
physical exhaustion, from which he is glad to escape. Himself impotent to all
the distinguishing aims of his species, he sinks into sensual sloth, or reveals
in more degrading licentiousness. Hi house is ill-furnished, uncleanly, often il ventilated, perhaps damp; his
food, through want of forethought and domestic economy, is meager and in
nutritious; he is debilitated and hypochondriacal,
and falls the victim of dissipation.
These artisans are frequently subject to... disease. . . .
We cannot wonder that the wretched victim ... invited by those haunts of misery
and crime, the gin shop and the tavern, as he passes to his daily labor, should
endeavor to cheat his sufferings of a few moments, by the false excitement
procured by ardent spirits; or that the exhausted artisan, driven by ennui and
discomfort from his squalid home, should strive, in the delirious dreams of a
continued debauch, to forget the remembrance of his reckless improvidence, of
the destitution, hunger, and uninterrupted toil, which threaten to destroy the
remaining energies of his enfeebled constitution....
Some idea of the want of cleanliness prevalent in their habitations, may be obtained from the report of the number
of houses requiring white-washing; but this column fails to indicate their
gross neglect of order, and absolute filth. Much less can we obtain
satisfactory statistical results concerning the want of furniture, especially
of bedding, and of food, clothing, and fuel. In these
re- spects, the habitations of the Irish are the most
destitute. They can scarcely be said to be furnished. They contain one or two
chairs, a mean table, the most scanty culinary
apparatus, and one or two beds, loathsome with filth. A whole family is
sometimes accommodated in a single bed, and sometimes a heap of filthy straw and
a covering of old sacking hide them in one undistinguished heap, debased alike
by penury, want of economy, and dissolute habits. Frequently, the inspectors
found two or more families crowded into one small house, containing only two
apartments, in one of which they slept, and another in which they ate; and
often more than one family lived in a damp cellar, containing only one room, in
whose pestilential atmosphere from twelve to sixteen persons were crowded. To
these fertile sources of disease were sometimes added the keeping of pigs and
other animals in the house, with other nuisances of the most revolting
character. ...
The houses of the poor... are too generally built back to
back, having therefore only one outlet, no yard, no privy, and no receptacle
for refuse. Consequently the narrow, unpaved streets, in which mud and water
stagnate, become the common receptacle of offal and ordure.... These districts
are inhabited by a turbulent population, which, rendered reckless by
dissipation and want-misled by the secret intrigues, and excited by the
inflammatory harangues of demagogues, has frequently committed daring assaults
on the liberty of the more peaceful portions of the working classes, and the
most frightful devastations on the property of their masters. Machines have
been broken, and factories gutted and burned at mid-day, and the riotous crowd
has dispersed ere the insufficient body of police arrived at the scene of
disturbance.... The police form, in fact, so weak a screen against the power of
the mob, that popular violence is now, in almost every instance, controlled by
the presence of a military force.
The wages obtained by operatives in the various branches of
the cotton manufacture are, in general, such, as with the exercise of that
economy without which wealth itself is wasted, would be sufficient to provide
them with all the decent comforts of life the average wage of all persons
employed (young and old) being from nine to twelve shillings per week. Their
means are consumed by vice and improvidence. But the wages of certain classes
are exceedingly meager. The introduction of the powerloom,
though ultimately destined to be productive of the greatest general benefits,
has, in the present restricted state of commerce, occasioned some temporary
embarrass- ment, by diminishing the demand for
certain kinds of labor, and, consequently, their price. The hand-loom weavers,
existing in the state of transition, still continue a very extensive class, and
though they labor fourteen hours and upwards daily, earn only from five to
seven shillings per week....
With unfeigned regret, we are ... constrained to add, that
the standard of morality is exceedingly debased, and that religious observances
are neglected amongst the operative population of Manchester.
The children... are often neglected by their parents. The
early age at which girls are admitted into the factories, prevents their
acquiring much knowledge of domestic economy; and even supposing them to have
had accidental opportunities of making this acquisition, the extent to which
women are employed in the mills, does not, even after marriage, permit the
general ap- plication of its principles. The infant
is the victim of the system; it has not lived long, ere it is abandoned to the
care of a hireling or neighbor, whilst its mother pursues her accustomed toil.
Sometimes a little girl has care of the child, or even of two or three
collected from neighboring houses. Thus abandoned to one whose sympathies are
not interested in its welfare, or whose time is too often also occupied in
household drudgery, the child is ill-fed, dirty, ill clothed, exposed to cold
and neglect, and, in consequence, more than one-half of the offspring of the
poor (as may be proved by the bills of mortality of the town) die before they
have completed their fifth year....
The increase of the manufacturing
establishments, and the consequent colonization of the district, have
been exceedingly more rapid than the growth of its civic institutions. The
eager antagonization of commercial enterprise, has
absorbed the attention, and concentrated the energies, of every member of the
community. In this strife, the remote influence of arrangements has sometimes
been neglected, not from the want of humanity, but from the pressure of
occupation, and the deficiency of time....
Distrust of the capitalists has long been sown in the minds
of the working classes -separation has succeeded to suspicion, and many causes
have tended to widen the gulf over which the golden chain of charity seldom
extends. We would not have this so. The contest, thus engendered, too often
assumes an appalling aspect. Capital is but accumulated labor: their strife is
unnatural. Greed does not become the opulent; nor does turbulence the poor. The
general combinations of workmen to protect the price of labor are ultimately
destined to have a beneficial influence on trade, by the destruction of partial
monopolies and petty oppressions, but in these contests the poisonous shafts of
personal malice should not be launched....
If the higher classes are unwilling to diffuse intelligence
among the lower, those exist who are ever ready to take advantage of their
ignorance; if they will not seek their confidence, others will excite their
distrust; if they will not endeavor to promote domestic comfort, virtue, and
knowledge among them, their misery, vice, and prejudice will prove volcanic
elements, by whose explosive violence the structure of society may be
destroyed....
*cattier farming: a custom whereby a landlord rented small
plots for a year to the tenant farmers who placed the highest bids