Bahan Skripsi

exploitation of the poor

THERE is no more shameful stain on British history than the sickening treatment of the nation's poor worker-children during the Industrial Revolution.

Entire generations of youngsters lost their precious childhood as they were sacrificed to the Moloch of the Mills - suffering and often dying because of the indifference of Government, the greed of mill-owners, the sadistic cruelty of factory overseers and the acquiesence of parents.

The long quotation later in this section, by a mill worker turned journalist and novelist, encapsulates the horror of it all.

He was writing nearly a century after some of the worst excesses. We, another century down the line, in an age which practically deifies children, find it almost impossible to comprehend such a cynical conspiracy against that section of society least able to defend itself.

Make no mistake, it was a conspiracy. It would have been the work of a moment for the Government to outlaw child labour, or to halt the worst excesses of it. But instead, for too long they turned a blind eye, all too happy to believe the claptrap they were fed by the manufacturers about mill conditions being idyllic.

So the millowners were allowed to carry on growing rich and fat at the expense of lost innocence, rationalising their exploitation of toddlers as young as four and five by claiming that industry, and therefore the country, could not survive without it.

If the manufacturers were bad, their enforcers were worse. At best callous, at worst frighteningly sadistic, the spinning-room overseer had the task of maintaining production.

He did it by instilling fear and inflicting pain - children were beaten simply to keep them awake towards the end of their 14 or 15-hour day. What man could live with himself knowing that he had to beat and frequently maim babies for a living?

And then there were the parents. Over the decades, many apologists have claimed that parents had little choice in the matter: They either allowed their children to work in the mill, or the family starved. But this is over-simplification.

The pittance earned by even three or four children was not enough to keep a family - there had to be an adult breadwinner and the money the youngsters brought home too often found its way via the father into the tavern-keeper's pocket. And anyway, what right-minded man or woman would want to bring children into such a world?

Exploitation of youngsters began in the very first days of the industrial revolution and it then took the form of the wholesale "deportation" of what were known as "parish" children.

Thousands of boys and girls, their only "crime" being that they were workhouse inmates, were uprooted from London and other big cities to become the virtual slaves of Northern millowners.

JUST how badly were poor parish children treated by cotton masters in the early days of the Industrial Revolution? The interviews here give some idea of the extent of their misery.

Although there were good masters as well as bad, even the best of them left much to be desired.

Sir Robert Peel Snr (right) was among the worst of these employers, importing children from London workhouses for his mill in Tamworth.

He later changed his stance and argued vociferously against child exploitation in Parliament. But not before he had made his fortune.

The result of his endeavours was the 1802 Health and Morals of Apprentices Act, which was intended to prevent pauper children from working more than 12 hours a day in mills.

However the act was ineffective and Peel, backed by other mill owners such as Robert Owen, continued to press for changes. The outcome was the 1819 Factory Act, which barred children under the age of nine from working in mills, and reduced to 12 the hours that could be worked by children aged between nine and 16.

But statistics tell only a fraction of the story. To know the truth, one must hear the testimony of the children themselves. These are the words of Sarah Carpenter, a factory worker from Derbyshire, when she was interviewed later in life by Joseph Rayner Stephens. Sarah's account of her life at Cressbrook Mill appeared in The Ashton Chronicle on 23rd June, 1849.

"My father was a glass blower. When I was eight he died and our family had to go to the Bristol Workhouse. My brother was sent from Bristol workhouse in the same way as many other children were - cart-loads at a time.

My mother did not know where he was for two years. He was taken off in the dead of night without her knowledge, and the parish officers would never tell her where he was. It was the mother of Joseph Russell who first found out where the children were, and told my mother.

We set off together, my mother and I, we walked the whole way from Bristol to Cressbrook Mill in Derbyshire. We were many days on the road.

Mrs Newton fondled over my mother when we arrived. My mother had brought her a present of little glass ornaments. She got these ornaments from some of the workmen, thinking they would be a very nice present to carry to the mistress at Cressbrook, for her kindness to my brother.

My brother told me that Mrs Newton's fondling was all a blind; but I was so young and foolish, and so glad to see him again; that I did not heed what he said, and could not be persuaded to leave him. They would not let me stay unless I would take the shilling binding money.

I took the shilling and I was very proud of it. They took me into the counting house and showed me a piece of paper with a red sealed horse on, which they told me to touch, and then to make a cross, which I did.

This meant I had to stay at Cressbrook Mill till I was 21. Our common food was oatcake. It was thick and coarse. This oatcake was put into cans. Boiled milk and water was poured into it. This was our breakfast and supper. Our dinner was potato pie with boiled bacon in it, a bit here and a bit there, so thick with fat we could scarce eat it, though we were hungry enough to eat anything.

Tea we never saw, nor butter. We had cheese and brown bread once a year. We were only allowed three meals a day though we got up at five in the morning and worked till nine at night. We had eightpence a year given us to spend: fourpence at the fair, and fourpence at the wakes. We had three miles to go to spend it. Very proud we were of it, for it seemed such a sight of money, we did not know how to spend it.

THE master carder's name was Thomas Birks; but he never went by any other name than Tom the Devil.

"He was a very bad man - he was encouraged by the master in ill-treating all the hands, but particularly the children. Everybody was frightened of him. He would not even let us speak. He once fell poorly, and very glad we were. We wished he might die.

"There was an overlooker called William Hughes, who was put in his place whilst he was ill. He came up to me and asked me what my drawing frame was

"A little boy that was on the other side had stopped it, but he was too frightened to say it was him. Hughes starting beating me with a stick, and when he had done I told him I would let my mother know. He then went out and fetched the master in to me. The master started beating me with a stick over the head till it was full of lumps and bled.

"My head was so bad that I could not sleep for a long time, and I have never been a sound sleeper since.

"There was a young woman, Sarah Goodling, who was poorly and so she stopped her machine. James Birch, the overlooker, knocked her to the floor. She got up as well as she could. He knocked her down again. Then she was carried to the apprentice house. Her bed-fellow found her dead in bed.

"There was another called Mary. She knocked her food can down on the floor. The master, Mr Newton, kicked her where he should not do, and it caused her to wear away till she died.

"There was another, Caroline Thompson. They beat her till she went out of her mind.

"We were always locked up out of mill hours, for fear any of us should run away. One day the door was left open. Charlotte Smith said she would be ringleader, if the rest would follow. She went out but no one followed her. The master found out about this and sent for her. There was a carving knife which he took and grasping her hair he cut it off close to the head.

"They were in the habit of cutting off the hair of all who were caught speaking to any of the lads.

"This head shaving was a dreadful punishment. We were more afraid of it than of any other, for girls are proud of their hair.

"I was there ten years and saw a great deal more than I can think of. My brother, after he was free, came to Cressbrook and stole me away. But I was so frightened and dateless with the punishment I had received, that for a long time I was like a person with no wits. I could hardly find my way from one street into another. They said at Wright's Factory where I worked that they were sure that I was "none right".

THERE are many contemporary accounts of the plight of poor working children, but time seems to lend weight to this one, by millworker turned journalist Allen Clarke in his 1899 book, The Effects of the Factory System.

"WHEN I read the accounts of the factory cruelties at the beginning of this century I rage between roaring wrath and tears of pity; I feel ashamed of my countrymen, of my county; I cry, that the Lancashire people were never fit to be parents; I say, that the factory system was a system of torture and murder, as dreadful as any massacres of Christians by Turks; a disgrace in the story of any race or age; a big, ghastly, horrible stain of blood on the history of England. As I write, pictures of the past rise before me; pictures for the present to weep over, and for the future to shudder at.

"I see the little innocents rudely dragged from bed to be pitched into the factories at the early age of three and four; I see them stunted, sickly, with sad eyes imploring mercy from parents and masters in vain;

"I see them pining, failing, falling, struggling against hell and death, knowing not what to do for relief, knowing not where to ask for aid, dying by agonising inches, and blest when the end comes;

Wondering dully, no doubt, in their day-long torture and night-long feverishness, what they are, and where they are, and how they came to this fate, and what these tormentors called fathers and mothers and overseers brought them here for, and what they ultimately mean to do with them;

"And thus they exist - alive, but breathing and eating slow death, sleeping in death, with no flowers, nor grass, nor toys, nor any childish joy in their young lives;

"Not knowing, and therefore unable to take any pride in the fact, that they are being crushed into the mortar wherewith to build the commercial glory of England, that shall rise to such admirable splendour over their dust;

"Not thinking that there must be sacrifice and victims, as in all noble causes, and thus they, being unable to help themselves, might as well be slaughtered as any other, so that in years to come a rich manufacturing aristocracy may rule and govern the debilitated offspring of such of them as survive to breed more slaves ... "

DAVID ROWLAND worked as a piecer at a textile mill in Manchester. He was interviewed by Michael Sadler and his House of Commons Committee on July 10, 1832.

Q: "At what age did you commence working in a cotton mill? A: Just when I had turned six.

Q: What employment had you in a mill in the first instance?

A: That of a scavenger.

Q: Will you explain the nature of the work that a scavenger has to do? A: The scavenger has to take the brush and sweep under the wheels, and to be under the direction of the spinners and the piecers generally. I frequently had to be under the wheels, and in consequence of the perpetual motion of the machinery, I was liable to accidents constantly. I was very frequently obliged to lie flat, to avoid being run over or caught.

Q: How long did you continue at that employment? A: From a year and a half to two years. Q: What did you go to then? A: To be a piecer.

Q: Did the employment require you to be upon your feet perpetually? A: It did. Q: You continued at that employment for how long? A: I was a piecer till I was about 15 or 16 years of age. Q: What were your hours of labour? A: Fourteen; in some cases, 15 and 16 hours a day.

Q: How had you to be kept up to it? A: During the latter part of the day, I was severely beaten very frequently.

Q: Will you state the effect that the degree of labour had upon your health? A: I never had good health after I went to the factory. At six years of age I was ruddy and strong; I had not been in the mill long before my colour disappeared, and a state of debility came over me, and a wanness in my appearance.

JOHN BIRLEY gave this account in 1849 of his early days as a child worker at Litton Mill in Derbyshire:

"I was born in Hare Street, Bethnal Green, London, in 1805. My father died when I was two, leaving two children, me and Sarah my sister.

"My mother kept us both till I was about five years old, and then she took badly and was taken to the London Hospital. My sister and I were taken to the Bethnal Green Workhouse. My mother died and we stayed in the workhouse. We had good food, good beds and were given liberty two or three times a week.

" The same year my mother died, I being between six and seven years of age, there came a man looking for a number of parish apprentices. In a day or two after this, two coaches came up to the workhouse door. They gave us a shilling piece to take our attention, and we set off." The youngsters went by canal barge and cart to Litton Mill in Miller's Dale, near Buxton in Derbyshire.

"They brought us some supper. We were very hungry, but could not eat it. It was Derbyshire oatcake, which we had never seen before. It tasted as sour as vinegar.

"Our regular time was from five in the morning till nine or ten at night; and on Saturday, till eleven, and often twelve o'clock at night, and then we were sent to clean the machinery on the Sunday. No time was allowed for breakfast and no sitting for dinner and no time for tea.

"We went to the mill at five o'clock and worked till about eight or nine when they brought us our breakfast, which consisted of water-porridge, with oatcake in it and onions to flavour it. Dinner consisted of Derbyshire oatcakes cut into four pieces, and ranged into two stacks. One was buttered and the other treacled.

By the side of the oatcake were cans of milk. We drank the milk and with the oatcake in our hand, we went back to work without sitting down. We then worked till nine or ten at night when the water-wheel stopped. We stopped working, and went to the apprentice house, about three hundred yards from the mill.

It was a large stone house, surrounded by a wall, two to three yards high, with one door, which was kept locked. It was capable of lodging about 150 apprentices. Supper was the same as breakfast - onion porridge and dry oatcake.

All the boys slept in one chamber, all the girls in another. We slept three in one bed. The girls' bedroom was of the same sort as ours. There were no fastenings to the two rooms; and no one to watch over us in the night, or to see what we did. Mr Needham's five sons and a man named Swann, the overlooker, used to go up and down the mill with hazzle sticks. One son, Frank, once beat me till he frightened himself.

He thought he had killed me. He had struck me on the temples and knocked me dateless. He once knocked me down and threatened me with a stick. To save my head I raised my arm, which he then hit with all his might. My elbow was broken."

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