also was cheaper than now. The price of the best beef was sixpence to sevenpence a pound; while mutton was sevenpence to eightpence for the best joints, but for ordinary parts much less. In the country gleaning was a universal practice, and numbers of cottagers thus got a portion of their bread; while a much larger proportion than now lived in the country and had large gardens or a few acres of land. My mother often took me with her when visiting such poor cottagers as were known to her, and my impression is that there was very little difference in the kind and degree of the rural poverty of that day and this; and a few years later, as I shall show, the same may be said of the skilled mechanic. As a prime factor in this question, it must always be remembered that rent, both in villages and towns, was in most cases less than half what it is at present, and this more than compensated for the few cheaper articles of food and clothing to-day. My father and mother were old-fashioned religious people belonging to the Church of England, and, as a rule, we all went to church twice on Sundays, usually in the morning and evening. We also had to learn a collect every Sunday morning, and were periodically examined in our catechism. On very wet evenings my father read us a chapter from the Bible and a sermon instead of the usual service. Among our friends, however, were some Dissenters, and a good many Quakers, who were very numerous in Hertford; and on rare occasions we were taken to one of their chapels instead of to church, and the variety alone made this quite a treat. We were generally advised when some "friend" was expected to speak, and it was on such occasions that we visited the Friends' Meeting-House, though I remember one occasion when, during the whole time of the meeting, there was complete silence. And when any brother or sister was "moved to speak," it was usually very dull and wearisome; and after having attended two or three times, and witnessed the novelty of the men and women sitting on opposite sides of the room, and there being no pulpit and no clergyman and no singing, we did not care to go again. But the Dissenters' chapel was always a welcome change, and we went there not unfrequently to the evening service. The extempore prayers, the frequent singing, and the usually more vigorous and exciting style of preaching was to me far preferable to the monotony of the Church service; and it was there only that, at one period of my life, I felt something of religious fervour, derived chiefly from the more picturesque and impassioned of the hymns. As, however, there was no sufficient basis of intelligible fact or connected reasoning to satisfy my intellect, this feeling soon left me, and has never returned. Among our Quaker friends were two or three to whose houses we were occasionally invited, and I remember being greatly impressed by the excessive cleanliness and neatness of everything about their houses and gardens, corresponding to the delicate colouring and simple style of their clothing. At that time every Quaker lady wore the plainest of dresses, but of the softest shades of brown or lilac, while the men all wore the plain cutaway coat with upright collar, also of some shade of brown, which, with the low broad-brimmed beaver hat of the best quality, gave them a very distinctive and old-world appearance. They also invariably used "thee" and "thou" instead of "you" in ordinary conversation, which added to the conviction that they were a people apart, who had many habits and qualities that might well be imitated by their neighbours of other religious denominations. CHAPTER VI LONDON WORKERS, SECULARISTS AND OWENITES HAVING finally left school at Christmas, 1836, I think it was early in 1837 that I was sent to London to live at Mr. Webster's in Robert Street, Hampstead Road, where my brother John was apprenticed. My father and mother were then about to move to the small cottage at Hoddesdon, and it was convenient for me to be out of the way till my brother William could arrange to have me with him to learn landsurveying. As I shared my brother's bedroom and bed, I was no trouble, as I suppose I was boarded at a very low rate. As the few months I spent here at the most impressionable age had some influence in moulding my character, and also furnished me with information which I could have obtained in no other way, I devote the present chapter to giving a short account of it. Mr. Webster was a small master builder, who had a workshop in a yard about five minutes' walk from the house, where he constantly employed eight or ten men preparing all the joinery work for the houses he built. At that time there were no great steam-factories for making doors and windows, working mouldings, etc., everything being done by hand, except in the case of the large builders and contractors, who had planing and sawing-mills of their own. Here in the yard was a sawpit in which two men, the top- and bottom-sawyers, were always at work cutting up imported balks of timber into the sizes required, while another oldish man was at work day after day planing up floor-boards. In the shop itself windows and doors, cupboards, staircases, and other joiner's work was always going on, and the men employed all lived in the small streets surrounding the shop. The working hours were from six to half-past five, with one and a half hours out for meals, leaving a working day of ten hours. Having nothing else to do, I used to spend the greater part of my time in the shop, seeing the men work, doing little jobs occasionally, and listening to their conversation. These were no doubt an average sample of London mechanics, and were on the whole quite as respectable a set of men as any in a similar position to-day. I soon became quite at home in the shop, and got to know the peculiarities of each of the men. I heard their talk together, their jokes and chaff, their wishes and their ideas, and all those little touches of character which come out in the familiar intercourse of the workshop. My general impression is that there was very little swearing among them, much less than became common thirty years later, and perhaps about as much as among a similar class of men to-day. Neither was there much coarseness or indecency in their talk, far less indeed than I met with among professional young men a few years afterwards. One of the best of the workmen was a very loose character-a kind of Lothario or Don Juan by his own account-who would often talk about his adventures, and boast of them as the very essence of his life. He was a very good and amusing talker, and helped to make the time pass in the monotony of the shop; but occasionally, when he became too explicit or too boastful, the foreman, who was a rather serious though very agreeable man, would gently call him to order, and repudiate altogether his praises of the joys of immorality. But I never once heard such foul language as was not uncommonly used among themselves by young men of a much higher class and much more education.. Of course, I heard incidentally a good deal about how they lived, and knew exactly what they earned, and I am thus enabled to correct some very erroneous statements which have been made of late years as to the condition of artisans in the early part of the nineteenth century, before the repeal of the corn-laws. Perhaps the most glaring and the most numerous of these errors are due to Sir Robert Giffen, who, being considered an official statistical authority, continues to be quoted to the present day as if his statements were to be absolutely relied on. More often quoted than any other of his writings is his "Progress of the Working Classes in the last Half Century," given as a Presidential Address to the Statistical Society in 1883, and issued as a pamphlet, price threepence, in 1884, at the request of several friends, including Mr. Gladstone, who styled it "a masterly paper." It would occupy a whole chapter to expose the errors and the fallacies that pervaded this paper, and I must therefore confine myself to two points only, that of the rise of wages and of the food of skilled artisans. He gave Mr. Giffen gives the weekly wages of carpenters at Manchester as 24s. fifty years ago and 34s. in 1883, an increase of 42 per cent., but he omits to give prices for London. In the Report of the Industrial Remuneration Conference, Mr. J. G. Hutchinson gives the wages at Greenwich in 1832 as 32s. 6d., and in 1876 as 39s. 8d., a rise of only 22 per cent. Again, Mrs. Ellis, a Huddersfield pattern-weaver, told the conference that Mr. Giffen's statement in the same table, of the earnings of her fellow-workers, were grossly inaccurate. them as 25s. a week against 16s. fifty years earlier, whereas they were only earning an average of 20s. in 1883. The wages where my brother worked were 30s. a week for all the men employed. We see, therefore, that Mr. Giffen's general statement that wages have risen "in most cases from 50 to 100 per cent." is open to the gravest doubt; while even if it were nearly accurate, it would not by any means prove what he claims that these workers are very much better off than they were fifty years earlier. He certainly saves himself, verbally, by terming it an apparent rise," but he never attempts to get at the real rise, and throughout his argument hardly refers to this point again. Yet it is a most important one, on account of the fact which he notices, that, at the date of his paper as now, in all the building trades wages are reckoned and paid by the hour, instead of by the day as at the earlier period, when also men were rarely discharged except at the week end. Then, again, Mr. Giffen speaks of the shorter hours of work which from one or two scattered notices" he 66 66 |