William Dodd

“ Capital may have given the soft pillow to your head, and a flowery path to your footsteps; to us it has made an easy transition from the factory to the prison and the poor-house! The doctrine, "that capital owes no allegiance to the soil," is one of the finest illustrations that ever presented itself to the mind, of the gross principle of selfishness pervading the thoughts, feelings, and visions of the millocracy. Capital has increased beyond the means of profitable employment—it has increased to overflowing ”

“ Stand on the quays of Ireland, and see the full freighted vessels leaving her noble rivers and coves. You will there see, that, so far from Ireland being utterly, radically and incurably poor, barren and unprofitable, she is one of the great feeders of England; nay, its chief purveyor. Ireland does this out of her poverty, besides feeding, after a manner, an immense population. It is this that adds so painful an interest to her miserable state; that she should 'make many rich,' and yet remain herself so poor, and be the author of an abundance which she is not permitted herself to enjoy. ”

“ The thought—the thought alone brings tears!
⁠They labor—they, the darlings of our lives!
⁠The flowers and sunbeams of our fleeting years;
⁠From whom alone our happiness derives
⁠A lasting strength, which every shock survives;
⁠The green young trees beneath whose arching boughs
⁠ (When failing Energy no longer strives,)
⁠Our wearied age shall find a cool repose;—
They toil in torture!—No—the painful picture close.
XLIII.
⁠Ye shudder,—nor behold the vision more! ”

“ The busy world lay outside the workhouse gates, and those he was seldom permitted to pass. He was too young to understand the necessity of the restraint to which he was subjected. Like a bird newly caged, that flutters from side to side, and beats its little wings against its prison walls, in hope of obtaining its liberty; so young Smith, weary of confinement, and anxious to be free, often watched the gates of the house, in the vain hope that some favorable opportunity might facilitate his escape. ”

“ Prayer—slumber—fondness—smiles—and hours of rosy mirth.
VIII.
⁠And therefore when we hear the shrill faint cries
⁠Which mark the wanderings of the little sweep;
⁠Or when, with glittering teeth and sunny eyes,
⁠The boy-Italian's voice, so soft and deep,
⁠Asks alms for his poor marmoset asleep;
⁠They fill our hearts with pitying regret,
⁠Those little vagrants doomed so soon to weep—
⁠As though a term of joy for all was set,
And that their share of Life's long suffering was not yet.
IX.
⁠Ever a toiling child doth make us sad ”

“ Thus we behold in a Christian country, a land which boasts of being the glory and admiration of the world, thousands of human beings, mutilated and crippled, emaciated, ruined in health, their spirits broken, their minds and reasoning powers toppling from their seats, and many of them catching, like drowning men, at straws, to save themselves from what would be a happy release from their miserable situation ”

“ In ancient times, when capital abounded, the fine arts sprang into vigorous existence. The statuary made the marble all but breathe. The painter with his exquisite art, touched the canvass into life. The philosopher taught his spiritual and humanizing doctrines. The poet, fresh from nature and glowing with divine conceptions, awoke impassioned eloquence in the listening crowd. Capital produced these effects! Capital was encouragement, and owned an allegiance to every thing that was grand, refined, or elevated in nature. ”

“ A factory conducted thus was not a very desirable place to train up a child in, and many a time did it grieve the heart of his mother to hear him, in answer to her inquiries as to how he had come by a bruise or cut on the head or back, tell how he had been beat by the overlooker or spinner, and how he swore he would kill him if he did not work faster. Anxiously did she inquire of her friends for some more suitable employment, for her boy; but on account of his deformity, which had become now quite conspicuous, none could be found. ”

“ A person going through a silk mill, and viewing the operations of the various branches of the manufacture, would suppose that no human beings could be deformed and crippled by such light, clean, and beautiful work; consisting of little more than knotting threads of silk, clipping the edges of ribbon, and other things, which seem to a casual observer, more suitable for a lady's parlor than a factory. But when we look more narrowly into the matter, we find causes for the awful effects of factory labor in silk mills. ”

“ But I must say this, that you and I may take counsel together and spend money; but if you forget the men whose labor gets all for you, you are acting ungratefully. I therefore, in three words say, 'Raise your wages.' I have done it myself, and I tell all my friends to do it. I tell you all to raise your wages, and I tell you this—there never was a man in your employ who ever struck a stroke for his master, but struck that stroke with redoubled force and energy (and if he does this, who profits?) when he knows he is well used. ”

“ Let the street beggar or the London thief be followed to his home, (if he have one,) and mankind will be seen existing in degradation as great, enduring misery as sharp, as the South Sea Islanders, or the South Africans in their worst aspect. Amongst them, poverty, vice, ignorance, have no contrast to heighten their effects; but here in England—in London, perhaps at our own back door, wretchedness the most acute, infamy the most shocking, exist upon the same square acre with a high condition of luxury and wealth ”

“ XXIII.
⁠Oh! shall it then be said that Tyrant acts
⁠Are those which cause our country's looms to thrive?
⁠That Merchant England's prosperous trade exacts
⁠This bitter sacrifice, e'er she derive
⁠That profit due, for which the feeble strive?
⁠Is her commercial avarice so keen,
⁠That in her busy, multitudinous hive
⁠Hundreds must die like insects, scarcely seen,
While the thick-thronged survivors work where they have been? ”

“ There can be no doubt that America is destined to become the first manufacturing country in the earth. If through the good influence of the valuable institutions of this highly favored land, its inhabitants are led to choose the good and avoid the evil, as I am happy to perceive is the case in New England, the factory system, so far from being a curse, will be one of its greatest blessings. ”

“ The stranger who surveys
⁠The little natives of that dreary place
⁠ (Where squalid suffering meets his shrinking gaze,)
⁠Used to the glory of a young child's face,
⁠Its changeful light, its colored sparkling grace,
⁠ (Gleams of Heaven's sunshine on our shadowed earth!)
⁠Starts at each visage wan, and bold, and base,
⁠Whose smiles have neither innocence nor mirth,—
And comprehends the Sin original from birth. ”

“ A poisonous atmosphere and cheerless poverty await us in our miserable abode. You are a new order, influential from your wealth. We are an old order, who have become beggared and exhausted in giving birth to you. ”

“ The slightest semblance of evidence is often sufficient with them to support a deceit which elsewhere would not have the smallest chance of escaping detection. If we look for a moment at the absurdities and inconsistencies practised by Thoms, it appears at first utterly inconcievable that any person out of a lunatic asylum could have been deceived by him. That an imposture so gross and so slenderly supported should have succeeded, must teach us, if any thing will, the folly and danger of leaving the agricultural population in the debasing ignorance which now exists among them. ”

“ Reader, imagine you see before you a young man, whose body forms (when he is standing, supported by a stick on one side and is holding by a table on the other) a curve from the forehead to the knees, similar to the letter C, his legs twisted in all manner of ways by standing at the frames, and you will have a tolerable picture of our friend J—— R——, of Cromford.
Here is a person just entering upon manhood, who was evidently intended by nature for a stout, able bodied man, crippled in the prime of life, and all his earthly prospects gone. Such a cripple as this man, I have seldom met with. ”

“ Knowing these facts, who can wonder at there being 10,000 cripples in the factory districts?
There is no provision made by the manufacturers for the support of these unfortunate persons, after being rendered useless. Had they sustained their injuries while fighting for their country, they might have looked forward to Chelsea or Greenwich Hospital; but in vain we look for such asylums for the mutilated factory cripples. There are no such institutions throughout the length and breadth of the land. The Union workhouse and the grave, are the only asylums for such cases. ”

“ It would be presumption to suppose that the modern system of manufacturing industry, which concentrates hundreds of individuals in the same apartments, can be divested of its inevitably contingent evils and disadvantages by an act of Parliament; and that the dense manufacturing population of England can be reduced to a primitive state of simplicity and innocence of manners by a bill which leaves them in the very midst of all that is opposite and counteracting. ”

“ In all the advancing stages of his factory life, from a boy standing on a wooden block, to a clerk in his master's counting room, Jimmy had to comply with the evil and pernicious practice of paying footing; that is, at every step a person takes in his upward progress, one or two shillings are demanded to be spent in drink, by the work people, to which they contribute a small sum in order to make up a jollification. ”

“ Poor Ireland exports more food than any other country in the whole world—not merely more in proportion to its people, or its area, but absolutely more. Its exports of food are greater than those of the United States, or of Russia, vast and inexhaustible as we are apt to think the resources of those countries are. Such a fact as this is very compatible with a people being poor; but it at least shows that one ought to inquire what sort of a poverty it is. ”

“ No man can predict what they may do for us in the future. But looking, as I have always looked, and always do look, I am well convinced, as surely as I am standing in this room—most likely for the last time— (Loud cries of 'No, no,' and vehement cheering) I firmly believe we are going on in the right path—to the path which leads to the prosperity of the landlord, the prosperity of the laborer, and to the prosperity of the whole people, and even more than all, to permanent peace ”

“ As this place was one of the earliest seats of the cotton manufacture, I was anxious to see the effects of the factory system here. The people of this village seldom migrate, have very little intercourse in any way with the inhabitants of large towns, and know but little of what is going on beyond the beautiful hills by which they are surrounded.
I found the general condition of the people to be any thing but favorable to a high state of moral and intellectual culture. Long hours of labor, low wages, and hard fare seemed to be the prevailing characteristic of the factory system in that place. ”

“ Upwards of thirty years' experience and observation teaches me that the factory system of Old England and that of New England are as widely different in their results, as the two forms of government under which they are respectively carried on. Not to enter into details at present, I would simply say that the system of Old England could not exist in New England; neither could the New England system exist in Old England; the thing is impossible, so long as the systems of government remain as they are. ”

“ England stands without dispute, the first naval and commercial power in the world. It would be easy to accumulate facts; but it is not necessary for our present purpose, which is simply to show that the country exhibits, as yet, no decided symptoms of declining wealth, and that whatever may be the evils which afflict society, the want of a sufficient capital to set industry in motion, and to sustain the national burdens, is certainly not among them. ”

“ If neither the political circumstances, the financial conditions, now considered with reference only to the amount of wealth—the economical state of the country, shew any indications of decay and danger, how is it that so many serious men shake their heads with gloomy apprehensions, and at times feel tempted to doubt whether the amount of evil in the present social condition of England does not preponderate over the good. ”

“ Suppose a farmer wishes to have a particular piece of work done, which will demand a number of hands, he applies to a gang-master, who contracts to do the work, and furnish the laborers. He accordingly gets together as many hands as he thinks sufficient, and sends them in a gang to their place of work. If the work, as usually happens, be such that it can be done by women and children, as well as men, the gang is in that case composed of persons of both sexes, and of all ages. ”

“ Taking these things into consideration, it is no wonder if Miss B. should find herself at the close of the year as poor as at the beginning. Neither is it surprising to find her under the painful necessity of following her occupation till her strength fails, and she is turned off just the same as a machine of wood and iron, to be replaced with some new comer. ”

“ Even young Smith, who had been one of the ringleaders in these proceedings, was bereft of all his gaiety by the tremendous clang of the whip, and sat as demure as a truant scholar, just previous to his flogging; yet the master of the house had not uttered a single threat, nor, indeed, had he occasion, his stern and forbidding aspect, and his terrible horsewhip inspired quite as much terror as was requisite. Knowing that the apprentices from the mill were coming, this formidable being retired, to the great relief of the young strangers ”

“ It is in these departments of the trade that we see infant labor in its worst light. The number of hours these infant victims are kept incessantly at work, in confined apartments, and the tender ages at which they are put to it, would be almost incredible to a stranger. All this, however, is substantiated by facts, which place the matter beyond the possibility of a doubt. Almost all the families employed in the lace manufacture of Nottingham, are supported, more or less, by the labor of their children. ”

“ The venerable baronet spoke at great length of the advantages of agriculture, and then drew the attention of his hearers to the farm laborer, as follows.
"There is one thing I wish to tell you. You have gone far enough in fattening stock. It strikes me that you are putting too much fat on lean bones. That does no good to anybody. We have shown what we can do, and you can do what you have done, over and over again. But it is not wise and profitable to do it. If it takes away an atom of food from the poor, stop it. Breed as much as you like; breed to the top of the tree. ”

“ To avoid misconception, we will descend to particulars. Have the wages of the artisans gradually increased within the last quarter of a century? No! They have declined. Do the artisans live better? No! Many die, because they are not able to live. Do they clothe better? No! Thousands are confined at home on the Sabbath day for want of clothes. Have their dwellings become more comfortable? No! In some of the largest manufacturing towns, one seventh of the population live in cellars. Has the necessity for infant labor diminished with the accumulation of these riches? ”

“ I will not harass the feelings of my readers by going into a detail of the great hardships and sufferings endured by this class of poor people, in parting from friends and home, in their passage of 200 or 300 miles in open boats or wagons, in being herded together and lying on straw in the ware-houses of the manufacturers on their arrival, or arising from small pox, fevers, accidents by machinery, or a want of faith on the part of the manufacturers afterwards. ”