The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 | Page 8

later, with the conquest of
foreign markets and the extension of trade, did not yet press upon
wages. There was, further, a constant increase in the demand for the
home market, keeping pace with the slow increase in population and
employing all the workers; and there was also the impossibility of
vigorous competition of the workers among themselves, consequent

upon the rural dispersion of their homes. So it was that the weaver was
usually in a position to lay by something, and rent a little piece of land,
that he cultivated in his leisure hours, of which he had as many as he
chose to take, since he could weave whenever and as long as he pleased.
True, he was a bad farmer and managed his land inefficiently, often
obtaining but poor crops; nevertheless, he was no proletarian, he had a
stake in the country, he was permanently settled, and stood one step
higher in society than the English workman of to-day.
So the workers vegetated throughout a passably comfortable existence,
leading a righteous and peaceful life in all piety and probity; and their
material position was far better than that of their successors. They did
not need to overwork; they did no more than they chose to do, and yet
earned what they needed. They had leisure for healthful work in garden
or field, work which, in itself, was recreation for them, and they could
take part besides in the recreations and games of their neighbours, and
all these games--bowling, cricket, football, etc., contributed to their
physical health and vigour. They were, for the most part, strong, well-
built people, in whose physique little or no difference from that of their
peasant neighbours was discoverable. Their children grew up in the
fresh country air, and, if they could help their parents at work, it was
only occasionally; while of eight or twelve hours work for them there
was no question.
What the moral and intellectual character of this class was may be
guessed. Shut off from the towns, which they never entered, their yarn
and woven stuff being delivered to travelling agents for payment of
wages--so shut off that old people who lived quite in the
neighbourhood of the town never went thither until they were robbed of
their trade by the introduction of machinery and obliged to look about
them in the towns for work--the weavers stood upon the moral and
intellectual plane of the yeomen with whom they were usually
immediately connected through their little holdings. They regarded
their squire, the greatest landholder of the region, as their natural
superior; they asked advice of him, laid their small disputes before him
for settlement, and gave him all honour, as this patriarchal relation
involved. They were "respectable" people, good husbands and fathers,

led moral lives because they had no temptation to be immoral, there
being no groggeries or low houses in their vicinity, and because the
host, at whose inn they now and then quenched their thirst, was also a
respectable man, usually a large tenant farmer who took pride in his
good order, good beer, and early hours. They had their children the
whole day at home, and brought them up in obedience and the fear of
God; the patriarchal relationship remained undisturbed so long as the
children were unmarried. The young people grew up in idyllic
simplicity and intimacy with their playmates until they married; and
even though sexual intercourse before marriage almost unfailingly took
place, this happened only when the moral obligation of marriage was
recognised on both sides, and a subsequent wedding made everything
good. In short, the English industrial workers of those days lived and
thought after the fashion still to be found here and there in Germany, in
retirement and seclusion, without mental activity and without violent
fluctuations in their position in life. They could rarely read and far
more rarely write; went regularly to church, never talked politics, never
conspired, never thought, delighted in physical exercises, listened with
inherited reverence when the Bible was read, and were, in their
unquestioning humility, exceedingly well-disposed towards the
"superior" classes. But intellectually, they were dead; lived only for
their petty, private interest, for their looms and gardens, and knew
nothing of the mighty movement which, beyond their horizon, was
sweeping through mankind. They were comfortable in their silent
vegetation, and but for the industrial revolution they would never have
emerged from this existence, which, cosily romantic as it was, was
nevertheless not worthy of human beings. In truth, they were not
human beings; they were merely toiling machines in the service of the
few aristocrats who had guided history down to that time. The
industrial revolution has simply carried this out to its logical end by
making the workers machines pure and simple, taking from them