THE EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYED. 
 
 THE CHAMBERS’ PHILOSOPHY REFUTED. 
 
 " Ill fares the land—to hastening ills a prey,— 
 Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.” 
 
 “ If England, with her proper power at home, 
 Cannot defend her own door from the dog, 
 Let us he worried; and our nation lose 
 The name of hardihood and policy.’ 1 
 
 “ A true labourer earns that he eats; gets that lie-wears; owes no man hate j envies 
 ho man’s happiness; glad of other men’s good; content under his own privations; and 
 his chief pride is in the modest comforts of his condition.”—S hakespeare, 
 
 “ Hereditary bondsmen 1 know ye not, 
 
 Who would he free, themselves must strike the blow.” 
 
 To the Working Classes. 
 
 My Friends,—I liacl intended to preface tlie following dialogue, 
 my Reply to a very iniquitous Tract recently published by the Chambers of 
 Edinburgh, with a conversation between an infant operative, her mother, 
 arid her grand-mother. For the present, however, I am compelled, for want 
 of space, to abandon my original intention, and I am sorry for it, because 
 I think I had matter enough to have produced a very interesting dialogue 
 between those three parties. I shall take another opportunity of allowing 
 them to speak for themselves, and, for the present, shall content myself with 
 the defence of your order which will be found in the following pages; 
 offering, as a substitute for my own preface, the admirable letter of Mr. 
 Duncombe, in which is set forth the means by which the labouring classes 
 may yet be put in the full possession of their rights. 
 
 Feargus O’Connor. 
 
 "The Albany, Dec. 23, 1844.. 
 
 Dear Sir, —I am nirich pleased if anv information that I can aflord to 
 the working classes should lead them ser^isly to reflect upon their Hue 
 position; for you may rest assured, that thought in the right direction, arid 
 acted upon wisely-, is all that the Trades and industrious classes require, to 
 obtain for them not only political emancipation, but some oLthosepraMeidy 
 remedies which the: men of Sheffield have so sagaciously adopted j—I »Tlp^<i V j 
 
2 
 
 principally to tlieir plan of restriction, to which my attention was more 
 immediately directed during the discussions of last session upon the“ Factory" 
 and “ Masters and Servants ” Bills. If my former note, in which I announced 
 to you the probability of a similar attack upon Labour being made next 
 session, shall have forewarned the Trades and working classes, by stimulating 
 them to such means as through union may make their opposition irresistible, 
 I shall consider myself amply repaid. I think we may draw some conclusions 
 as to the tactics likely to be pursued in Parliament by the representatives of 
 wealth, from certain speeches, letters, and publications that have recently 
 appeared, and which leave little doubt in my mind no time should he lost by 
 the working classes to prepare for a bold and vigorous stand. I fear you 
 over-rate my powers of resistance. I am only strong when I represent the 
 organised strength of your order ; and from my limited knowledge ol the 
 machinery by which Trades Unions are managed, I cannot venture to give 
 you an opinion that should carry weight with it, upon the subject of an im¬ 
 proved organization and consolidation of our various national trades; hut, if 
 such an object is required, I know of no course (excluded as the working 
 classes are from the Parliamentary franchise) better calculated to give effect 
 to that object than that which you suggest, viz., that the wise and virtuous 
 from all parts of the empire should meet by delegation at a conference in 
 London, where, co-operating with the metropolitan trades, they shall endea¬ 
 vour to deuse such means as shall not only obtain protection to the sons of 
 toil from that oppression and persecution of which they have so long and so 
 juslly complained, hut shall also tend to disubuse the public mind of those 
 prejudices, which I regret to see are now so industriously encouraged against 
 every combination but that of capital and of power. 
 
 As to the lime when this conference should be held, I should recommend 
 about Easter, as by that time all ministerial measures, whether affecting 
 trade, commerce, or labour, either will, or ought to be, before the country, and 
 it could not then be said that it was either premature to discuss them, or too 
 late to resist them. As to the contemplated demonstration on the opening 
 of Parliament, I know nothing of it beyond rumour, aud what I read in the 
 public prints; but if it is solely intended as a compliment to myself, and a 
 mere parading through the streets, upon the same day as the Queen, without 
 any definite object or possible benefit to the working classes, I beg to say 
 that, as far as I am concerned, I will he no party to it, and no man shall 
 leave his employ, or lose his day’s wage, on my account. 
 
 I am rejoiced to find that you attach some importance to my intended 
 motion for the repeal of the rate-paying clauses, and I certainly think that 
 petitions, numerously signed, and presented by the members lepresenting 
 the localities from which they emanate, will have a most beneficial effect, for 
 I have yet to learn why borough electors—men whom I have always found, 
 if not superior, at all events equal in intelligence and education to county 
 electors—should be compelled to pay their taxes by a certain day as a 
 condition of their registration, while the small freeholder, and the servile 
 tenant-at-will of an aristocratic landed proprietor, is exempted from any such 
 condition. 
 
 1 heg to conclude by assuring you that my untiring and unflinching 
 advocacy of the rights of the industrious classes shall he continued, until, 
 with their assistance, Labour, which is their property, shall be placed upon . 
 perfect equality with the property of all other classes in the state. I have 
 the honour to be, Dear Sir, 
 
 Your’s very faithfully, 
 
 Thomas S. Dcncombe. 
 
 To Mr. John Drury, Secretary to the Committee 
 of the Central United Trades of Sheffield.- - 
 
LABOUR PLEADING ITS OWN CAUSE. 
 
 IN A DIALOGUE. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 Speakers—Hr. James Smith, a factory mill-owner, and Mr. Richard 
 Jackson, a cotton-spinner. 
 
 Smith.—I am glad to see you, Mr. Jackson; step in to my house, and let 
 us have a little conversation on the present unhappy differences on the 
 subject of wages. Perhaps I may show you that the ideas entertained 
 respecting employers are not, by any means, just. At all events, let us hear, 
 what each has got to say—you on the part of the operative class generally, 
 and I on the part of the mill-owners and others, who are in the habit of 
 giving employment. 
 
 Jackson.—Thank you, sir; I am a plain-spoken man, and have no 
 objections to say what I and others think about our condition as workmen: 
 so I very willingly accept your invitation. 
 
 Smith.—Now, Mr. Jackson, sit down : and, if you please, begin by telling 
 me exactly what the workmen.want. 
 
 Jackson.—Why, sir, the great matter is this—our condition is much less 
 comfortable than we think, in justice, it should he. We are poor, and not 
 getting any richer. Few among us can get more than 22s. a week for our 
 labour. The average wage is about 14s. or 15s.; and we do think it a hard 
 case that a man, with a wife and family, should have to live on any sum of 
 that kind, when we see the masters so well off, and they, as one may say, 
 living by our hard and continued labour. What we want is, “ a fair day’s 
 wage for a fair day’s work.” 
 
 Smith.—The statement apparently is—that the employers give lower wages 
 generally than they ought to give. Is not that the substance of your charge ? 
 
 Jackson.—Yes; we think you should give at least 25 per cent. more. If 
 a man now gets 20s., he should get 2os., and so on. 
 
 Smith.—Very well. Now, he so good as tell me on what ground you 
 rest this demand. 
 
 Jackson.—Because you are making large profits, and can afford to pay 
 more than you .do. The profits should be more equally divided. 
 
 Smith.—Now, I believe, we understand each other, f like your candour'; 
 and I think I shall answer you. You claim more wages on the score of 
 your contributing to the production of profits. Let us take my own establish¬ 
 ment as an example, and let us suppose you are a workman in it. I wish to 
 know how much you put into the concern. 
 
 Jackson.—Me! why, I give you my labottv from Monday morning till 
 Saturday night. 
 
 Smith.—This labour, then, is your contribution of means. You receive 
 20s. for the week’s labour; and therefore it is just the same thing as if you 
 were to give me 20s. every week, so that I might lay it out in hiring somebody 
 to do your work. 
 
 Jackson.—I think much the same thing. 
 
 Smith.—It is then allowed that you contribute to the extent of 20s. 
 weekly to my concern. May I now ask if you think every one should be 
 paid according to the extent of his in-put and risk ? 
 
 Jackson.—That certainly would he fair. 
 
Smith.—I shall then explain to you what I have put in, and how I have 
 been enabled to do so. The cost of the buildings, the ground, the machinery, 
 and other things required to begin the manufactory, was £80,000; and the 
 money necessary for buying raw material, and giving credit till sales could 
 he effected, and also for paying wages, came to £10,000 more. You un¬ 
 derstand I did not start till I had 90,0001. ready to he laid outandrisked on 
 the undertaking. If I had begun with less, the concern would have been 
 unsuccessful. It could not have gone on. To raise this large sum of 90,0001. 
 was a very serious matter. My father was a working-man, like yourself. 
 His wages were never above 18s. a week. On this sum he brought up his 
 family, for my mother was very economical. I got a little schooling; was 
 taught to read, write, and cipher. At fourteen years of age I was sent into a 
 cotton-factory, where for several years I had no higher wage than 5s. a week. 
 I afterwards, by dint of some degree of skill and perseverance, rose to be a 
 spinner, and received 25s. a week; but off this I had to pay a boy-assistant 
 5s; and therefore my real wage was only 20s. a week. I was at this em¬ 
 ployment four years and a half, during which time I saved £30, which I 
 deposited in a bank for security. One day, when I was at work, a party of 
 foreigners visited the factory; they were in want of a few steady and skilful 
 hands to go to St. Petersburg, to work in a factory there. I volunteered for 
 one, and, being chosen, I went to that distant city, which you know is in 
 Russia, and there I received for a time about double my former wages. In 
 three years the overseer died; I was promoted to his situation, and now re¬ 
 ceived as much as £250 yearly. I still made a point of economising my 
 gains; and, on reckoning up, found, that when I was twenty-eight years of 
 age I had saved £700. At the recommendation of a friend I laid out this 
 money on a mercantile speculation—in short, I risked its entire loss. I 
 was successful, and made my £700 as-much as £1,000. Again I risked 
 this sum, for it seemed a sure trade; and so on I went for several years, in¬ 
 creasing my capital both by profits and savings. ■ When I married, which 
 was not till thirty-five years of age, I had realised one way and another 
 £20,000. I now returned to England, was for several years a partner in a 
 concern where I again risked my earnings, and at the end of fifteen years 
 retired with £90,000. With this large sum I built my present factory, and 
 entered into the hazardous business in which I am now engaged. I ask any 
 man if I did not earn my money by hard industry, by self-denial, by serious 
 risks, by a long course of pains and anxieties ? For having done all this, I 
 consider I am entitled yearly— first, to an interest on my money equal to 
 what I could have obtained by lending it; second, to a profit that will cover 
 any losses which I may incur by bad debts; third, to a per-centage to pay 
 the tear and wear of machinery and deterioration of property; mi, fourth, 
 to a salary for my personal trouble—in other words, my wages; and all 
 this over and above the ordinary expenses of the concern. Let me assure 
 you that nothing is more certain than that, taking the working classes in the 
 entire mass, they get a fair share of the proceeds of the national industry. 
 We may take a few facts. To begin with my own mill. I spent, as I have 
 said, £80,000 on the building and apparatus. Now nearly the whole of 
 this was dispersed in wages to working people. See what a number of men 
 must have been employed in fashioning the raw materials into the house and 
 its machinery—brickmakcrs, limeburners, coal-miners, waggoners, wood¬ 
 cutters, sailors, carpenters, builders, slaters, plasterers, glass makers, glaziers, 
 iron-smellers, engineers; and not only these, but the persons who supplied 
 them with food and clothing. In short, if we were to go into a minute 
 calculation, we should probably discover, that out of my £80,000, as much 
 as £75,000 went to the working-classes, the remaining £5,000 going to the 
 
proprietors of the raw materials, and to intermediate dealers. If people 
 would reflect a little on such matters, they would perceive what an enormous 
 share of the cost of almost every article goes to operatives. It is ascertained, 
 by careful calculations, that out of £ 100 worth of fine scissors, the workman 
 have £96 as wages; of £ 100 worth of razors, they have £90; of £ 100 worth 
 of table-knives and forks, they have £6-5 ; of £100 worth of fine woollen 
 cloth, they have £60; of £ 100 worth of linen yam they have £48; of £100 
 worth of ordinary earthenware, they have £40; and so on with most articles 
 of manufacture. In the making of needles, pins, trinkets, watches, and other 
 delicate articles in metal, the proportion of wages rises to within a trifle of the ' 
 price of the article. In the working of collieries the expences are almost 
 entirely resolvable into labour; there being few cases in which the coal¬ 
 miners receive less than £90 out of every £100 of the current expenditure. 
 
 I trust it is not necessary to dwell longer on the notion, that working-men 
 do not get their fair share of the proceeds of the labour on which they arc 
 engaged. And, as you might imagine that there is some kind of mystery 
 under the term capital, I will explain the meaning of it in very few words. 
 Capital is anything which is of value. It may consist of labour, of houses 
 and lands so far as they are productive, of machinery, manufactured goods, 
 or money. Everything is capital which possesses an exchangeable value, 
 and can be made directly available either to the support of human existence, 
 or to the facilitating of production. Capital or property is a sheer result of 
 labour, if not labour itself; and tbat it is the accumulated savings of years, 
 say, in some cases, of centuries. He who possesses capital in the form of a 
 large sum of money, for instance, can give employment to others. You 
 know quite well that, before I planted my factory here, there was little work 
 in the town. Now, see how many workmen and their families are supported. 
 
 I was not, mark you, obliged to come here and set up a factory. I could 
 have gone somewhere else. Then look at the sum which I distribute weekly 
 in wages. I give employment to 100 men, 146 women and girls, and seventy 
 boys—altogether 316 individuals; and the entire sum paid on an average, 
 weekly, for wages, amounts to £290. I say I pay £290 to my work-people 
 weekly in exchange for their labour; surely you must now see that capital 
 js a good thing; good for the working-classes. It is capital which hires and 
 employs them; it is capital which pays their wages; it is capital which keeps 
 them busy when often the market is glutted with goods; it gives them work 
 till better times. And yet tberc are workmen so short-sighted as to wage 
 war on the very thing which supports them. They attack capital as an 
 enemy. It is their best friend. Now I put it to you, Richard Jackson, as 
 a straightforward man, and answer me, if I, by these risks and obligations, 
 and personal attentions, be not justly entitled to take a vast deal more out of 
 the business than you, who put in only 20s. in the shape of weekly labour ? 
 
 [So far we have given the points of the dialogue as set forth in the Tract of 
 the Messrs. Chambers, and as this portion of the dialogue may be taken 
 as the terms upon which the parties join issue, the declaration and plea 
 will be somewhat varied from the manner in which they are set out in the 
 original pleadings.] 
 
 Jackson.—Now, Mr. Smith, I think I understand you, and we can join 
 issue; you undertaking to defend the rights of capital, and I to defend the 
 rights oflabour p 
 
 Smith.—No, no, no. You mistake me; the whole hearing of my 
 illustrations have gone to show that capital is the best defender of the rights 
 of labour, while you would place them in antagonism. 
 
 Jackson,—If such be your office, you have strangely discharged your 
 
duty to your clients, for, upon re-consideration, l think you must come to the 
 conclusion that the tendency of your observations would go to prove, firstly, 
 that the employed was a mere passive instrument in tile hands of the employer; 
 that the capitalist with a family, or without a family at all, underwent all the 
 risks, suffered all the mental torture, and deserved great sympathy for the 
 risks, the endurance, and the mental agonies that lie underwent during the 
 process of money making. 
 
 Smith.—Well but, Jackson, yon seem to forget that I have been 
 endeavouring to refute the absurdities of tliose grievance-mongers who would 
 throw all the odium of the hardships that your class complain of, upon the 
 shoulders of the masters. 
 
 Jackson.—Well, I understand you to occupy that position, and I am going 
 to establish the fact. 
 
 Smith.—Yes, yes; going to do a thing, and doing a thing, are two 
 very different tilings. I tell you, you can't establish the fact, unless you 
 doubt the narrative that you have just heard of my life, and unless you 
 believe that there is something magical about me which has conferred peculiar 
 advantages upon one individual above another. 
 
 Jackson.—C'ome, come, one swallow doesen’t make a summer. I am 
 talking of a system, and not of a charmed man ; and you no more represent 
 that system, than Newton, because he was a great luminary, represented the 
 sun, moon, and stars. 
 
 Smith.—Mr. Jackson, I invited you to this discussion because I looked 
 upon you as a straightforward, blunt, honest man, that would discuss the 
 question oflabour and capital familiarly with me; drawing your conclusions 
 as to my rights to what I possess from the risks, the hardships and the mental 
 agonies I endured; while you would mystify the whole subject by plunging 
 into the gulpli of “system.” There, there, Mr. Jackson, in that consists the 
 great error of your class; instead of receiving instruction and admonition 
 from your best, indeed your only friends, you allow your minds to be 
 contaminated, and your better judgments to be warped, by the interested 
 misrepresentations of hired, restless, and designing demagogues. 
 
 Jackson—Upon that subject we will have a word by-and-bye; and now, 
 as you wish to make yourself the representative of a system, I will see if 1 
 cannot illustrate its viciousness from your own lips and from your own position. 
 
 Smith (wriggling).—Pooh, pooh, Mr. Jackson, it’s impossible I tell you. 
 Jt is this flying in the face of the masters with your political economy, rights 
 oflabour, and trades’ combinations to defend them, that has, more than any 
 other circumstance, led to that rankling feeling in the minds of the masters 
 of which your class complains. 
 
 Jackson.—[f I mistake, correct me ; but, as I didn’t interrupt you, give me 
 leave to state my own case. 
 
 Smith.—Well, well, go on, but be brief, for really these mysterious 
 calculations about demand and supply, and new doctrines about the rights 
 of labour, and all that stuff, are so complicated that they puzzle me. 
 
 Jackson.—The puzzle has been of your own making; to solve it, is my 
 intention. 
 
 Smith.—Well, well, do go on. 
 
 Jackson.—Well, then, I take you from your departure for Russia, up to 
 which period you have saved the sum of £30. Your division of lime from 
 the period when you had attained your fourteenth year till you had arrived 
 at the age of twenty-eight, is so very abstruse and enigmatical, being divided 
 into periods of “ several years” working for 5s. a week ; the “ number of 
 years" that you were earning 30s. a week ; the " three years” that you worked 
 for “double wages” in Russia before the overseer died and you got his place. 
 
7'Vl 
 
 and from tliat event till your twenty-eighth year, when you took stock and 
 found yourself to be worth £700; these several periods, 1 say, are so jumbled 
 together that I can establish no scale of your saving up to that time. 
 
 Smith.—What have you to do with that ? that’s my business. I had 
 £700—and I saved it by my earnings, and 1 suppose I had arighuo do so ? 
 
 Jackson.—A perfect right, Mr. Smith; and I am very glad, for your sake, 
 that the Russian spinner could afford, in a comparatively untaxed country, 
 to give you £2 a week, double the wage that you can give me, and out of 
 which I have to pay very heavy taxes. 
 
 Smith.—Pooh, pooh, nonsense; haven’t I to pay the income-tax P—taxes 
 for my house, for my carriage and horses, and servants; taxes for’ 
 paving, cleansing, tithes, poor-rates, church-rates; taxes for my wine, my 
 tea, and my sugar—in short, for every thing I eat and every thing T drink ? 
 
 Jackson.—No, sir; you make a profit upon them. I pay them, or help to 
 pay' them, and I’ll show you how, presently. However, to resume: when 
 you were 35 years of age yon had amassed the sum of £20,000, which, you 
 tell us, you had put together one way or another; and as it was all made in 
 Russia, I don’t stop to inquire how, but shall come to the consideration as to 
 how you augmented it in fifteen years to £90,000, during which time you 
 trafficked in English labour. 
 
 Smith.—“Traffic !" what do you call “ traffic ?’’ I exchanged it for labour. 
 Traffic is a sordid word : a term ever in the mouth of those who would degrade 
 the high-minded employer to the rank of the grovelling low-minded huckster. 
 
 Jackson.—Well, Mr. Smith, we won’t quarrel about terms. You bartered 
 it for English labour. 
 
 Smith.—Say exchanged it, Mr. Jackson. Its a much less offensive term. 
 
 Jackson.—Well, you exchanged it, Mr. Smith. 
 
 Smith.—Now, come, we are getting into good humour again. Gu on 
 with your narrative. 
 
 Jackson.—Well,you embarked your £20,000 in manufacturing, and in 
 fifteen years, during which time you supported your family and lived, you 
 realised the sura of £90,000; and now, Mr. Smith, if you please, a word 
 about a very important branch of political economy'— distribution. 
 
 Smith—What do you mean ? Your “ equal distribution,” I suppose. 
 Do you want to distribute my property for me P 
 
 Jackson.—No, sir; it is not “ equal distribution;” nor do I want to 
 distribute your property. It is equitable distribution; and I want the laws y 
 of my country—which should he “ equally” protective of the rights of all— 
 equitably to distribute the property of all. 
 
 Smith.—Equal, equitable, equally, equitably—what’s the difference ? 
 You want to rob me ? 
 
 Jackson.—I do not, sir; but I desire that you should not roh me. I 
 apply the term equal to the laws, and equitable to the distribution of pro¬ 
 perty. Equal, to the law’s protection of your equitable share which you 
 claim under the head, interest for your money, guarantee against bad debts, 
 wear and tear of machinery, and wages for your labour; and also to my 
 equitable share of whatever the surplus may he, after guaranteeing those 
 several amounts to you. 
 
 Smith.—Well, but what have you to do with it more than receiving your 
 pound a week P What do you know of the surplus—wasn’tit my own ?’ 
 
 Jackson,—As Sir Robert Peel said in discussing the appropriation clause, 
 let us have the surplus before we talk of its application. And now I shall pro¬ 
 ceed to show you where I find that surplus, and what I find it to be. You 
 invested £20,000 at the age of thirty-live years, and when you were fifty, 
 you had increased it to £90,000. You tell us that the investment of 
 
8 
 
 £90/ 00 led to the employment of 816 hands. If, then, the employment of 
 £90/00 capital led to the employment of 316 hands, the employment of 
 the £20,000 would lead to the employment of seventy hands; that is, if 
 there was.another partner with you who invested an equal amount of capital 
 you would employ 140 hands; if three partners, with equal shares, about 
 210 hands; if four partners, with equal shares, about 280 hands—leaving 
 the surplus of thirty-six pair of hands unemployed against the £10,000, the 
 amount by which your accumulated capital" exceeded the £80,000 em¬ 
 ployed by you, and three other partners who invested £20,000 each. 
 Upon your £20,000 you realised £70,000 in fifteen years— and had then 
 £90,000; and you very fairly demand your profit upon the £20,000 in 
 the shape of interest, compensation lor bad debts, wear and tear, and wages 
 for labour. Now this is fair: indeed I may call it equitable distribution, 
 and I will proceed to my calculation. I allow four per cent, for the interest 
 of capital; two per cent, for had debts; two per cent, for wear and tear; 
 two per cent, for wages: that is, in the lump, ten per cent., or £2,000 per 
 annum. As you and your family lived out of £20,000 during the fifteen 
 years, I will place it against the compound interest that you might have 
 realised ; and as you say you lived savingly, I will allow you two per cent, 
 in lieu of the compound interest, taking your total profits upon your 
 £20,000 at twelve per cent; to which add the support and education of 
 your whole family—and for fifteen years, at twelve per cent, upon your 
 £20,000, you would have realised the sum of £36,000, which, added to your 
 original capital of £20,000 would make £06,000, leaving the surplus of 
 £34,000, or within a fraction of £-500 each for the seventy hands em¬ 
 ployed in working your £20,000 of capital. Now, sir, to the sub-division 
 of the £34,000 surplus, after allowing you twelve per cent, upon your 
 capital, and all the expense of education and the support ol your family, I 
 apply the term “ equitable distribution;” and the term " equal protection,” 
 1 apply to those laws which should guarantee to me my £000 with equal 
 security as to you your £36,000, or twelve per cent, upon your capital of 
 £20,000 for fifteen years: whereas the law has enabled you to take the 
 whole of the twenty-four per cent, made upon the £20,000 by labour, 
 and has thrown many, if not all, the seventy hands engaged in making it, 
 into the cold bastile, or compelled them to begin anew to make another 
 £20,030 into another retiring salary of £90,000 for another master, 
 while they have added fifteen years to their lives. And now, sir, 
 to satisfy you upon all points, allow me to contrast your position at the end 
 of fifteen ye ars, with that of an individual of any other class commencing 
 business with £20,000. 111 allow you compound interest at four per cent, 
 it would have taken many years more than the fifteen, even to have 
 doubled your capital; that is, without charging you anything for living, or the 
 education of your family, you would not have made your £20,000 capital 
 into anything like £40,000 in the fifteen years. Had you invested your 
 £20,000 in the purchase of land, allowing you four per cent., you could not 
 have supported your family and augmented your capital as you have done 
 in the trade of cotton spinning; while, although as a landlord, you might 
 have left your social duties undischarged, the law would have compelled you 
 to bear a certain amount of taxation which you could not possibly have sh oved 
 upon the shoulders of others. Had you commenced the trade ofshop-keeper, 
 and retired in fifteen years, after having educated and supported your family, 
 with an addition of £36,000 to your original capital of £20,000, you would 
 have been a phenomenon in that line—in fact, an exception; while, as a 
 cotton-spinner, your case is the rule, instead of an exception. In short, sir, the 
 laws have been made for the government, management, and arrangement of a 
 
" 9 
 
 social state, over winch the pvesent process of steam production has passed, 
 as it were, by a hop, step, and jump ; aud what 1 and my class—who, 
 together with the shopkeepers, have been the great sufferers—require is, the 
 enactment of such a code of laws as shall legally protect and equitably 
 distribute the surplus property of the country; after having awarded to money 
 capital, speculation, risk, and industry, that fair amount of protection which 
 labour, if equally protected, would neither deny, murmur at, nor with-hold. 
 Poverty, sir,is the rule of my class—it is the exception with yours; and, 
 however you may try, by hired advocacy and purchased philosophy, to 
 convince me that reliance is better placed in the money capitalists than in 
 labour capitalists, you will fail, until you first .succeed in convincing me that • 
 the wolf is the best protector of the lamb, the cat of the mouse, or the kite of 
 the lark. For, if you do not devour our bodies as well as the produce of 
 our labour, it is because your mechanical arrangments are not yet complete 
 as a subsitute for our labour upon the one hand, and because the old school 
 of sympathisers recognise in us that value, as consumers, which gives an 
 increased value to their landed property. To the law then, and not to 
 sympathy or charity, we look for protection. 
 
 Smith.—The law!—what have I to do with the law ? I made the money. 
 The capital was mine, and 1 paid every man his lawful wages. 
 
 Jackson.—I grant it, sir; you have nothing to do with the law, but you 
 did not pay every man his lawful wages, nor was the capital yours. 
 
 Smith.—The capital not mine ! whose was it, then P This is more of your 
 political economy and equal distribution. 
 
 Jackson.—Hold, hold, Mr. Smith ; my assertion has nothing to do with 
 political economy, nor has it any reference to distribution; what I am now 
 stating is a fact admitted by yourself. In your endeavour to shew the 
 patronising qualities of the capitalists, you have made some valuable 
 admissions, You have stated, that out of a £100 expended in the manu¬ 
 facture of fine scissors, £96 is the value of the labour, and £4 the capital 
 invested ; that in every £100 worth of razors the labour amounts to £90 and 
 the capital to £10; and so on, until you come to the manufacture of needles, 
 trinkets, &c., in the manufacture of which you admit nearly the whole 
 investment to be labour. In soft wares, you tell me that in the article of fine 
 woollen cloth the proportions are £60 for labour aad £40 for capital, and as 
 your trade of cotton spinning appears to have been very profitable, I think 
 we may assign to the respective capitals employed in the manufacture about 
 the same relative proportions by which you measure their application to the 
 fine woollen cloth. 
 
 Smith.—Respective capitals! What do you mean ? Have I not told 
 you that all the capital was mine ? 
 
 Jackson.—You have told me no such thing, sir. You have told me that 
 everything that bore an exchangeable value was capital; and you particularly 
 instanced labour; and if we can agree upon your calculation as to the res¬ 
 pective amounts of money-capital and labour-capital, expended in the manu¬ 
 facture of £100 worth of linen yarns,—and that description most nearly 
 represents the fabric produced by your money and my labour,—you will sec 
 how nicely and how truly the result is produced; £34,000 of the £70,000 
 accumulated by you, belongs to the hands that made it, and £36,000 to the 
 parties that employed them. Your calculation is, that £100 worth of linen 
 yarns consistr of £48 in labour and £52 in capital. Now, sir, you will find 
 that, as nearly as we can balance, the £36,000 that I assigu to you repre¬ 
 sents the fifty-two per cent, of your capital, and the £34,000 represents the 
 forty-eight per cent, of labour;—that is, £34,000 is to £36,000 almost frac¬ 
 tionally what forty-eight is to fifty-two. 
 
10 
 
 Smith.—0,1 don’t understand your figures and your fractions. 
 
 Jacltson.—Perhaps, sir, you can only bring your mind to bear upon in- 
 . terest for your capital, compensation for bad debts, allowance for wear and 
 tear of your machinery, amount of salary for overlooking, and an indefinite 
 surplus,—in which is included my labour,—for mental anxiety. Now, Mr. 
 Smith, I think I have shown you, according to all the laws of nature and of 
 justice, that while you ought to be satisfied with adding £36,000 to your 
 capital in fifteen years, that all the hands that realised that capital were, as 
 well as yourself, entitled to a retiring salary. 
 
 Smith.—Well, they may retire if they like. 
 
 Jackson.—Now, sir, you talk nonsense, and mock us in our poverty. You 
 call your labour, honourable labour; and tell us that it is augmented by dis¬ 
 traction of mind, bard industry, self-denial, serious risks, and a long course 
 of pains and anxieties. I admit it all, sir; but sufferings of bodily torture 
 and the pangs of mental endurance are qualified and soothed by the cheering 
 reflection that each passing hour of suffering hastens that happy period when, 
 if not impelled by the sordid desire to heap more riches to your already ex¬ 
 travagant store, you may quit the busy bustle of life, and thus release yourscif 
 at will from all your sufferings; while those who commenced at an equal age 
 with yourself, and who assisted in augmenting your treasure, are at the age 
 of fifty,—when you have become independent of the world—deteriorated in 
 strength, and their labour reduced in value, compelled to merge into what is 
 called the “ surplus population," and are heartlessly told at that age to search 
 for a new habitation and strange associates in a foreign clime; that the land 
 at home which yields forth its abundance is too small for their sustenance; 
 and that the machinery and new inventions which have displaced their labour 
 are the pride of the country whose system confers all the proceeds upon the 
 privileged, and all anguish, care, and sorrow on the unprotected. 
 
 Smith.—Unprotected! what do you mean ? You can protect your family 
 as well as I can protect mine. What protection have mine beyond what my 
 own industry gave them ? 
 
 Jackson.—Not so first, Mr. Smith. Ucrollcct we are starting from a 
 point; and that point is when you embarked £20,000 in manufacturing 
 speculations, and when you employed seventy bands to turn it into a market¬ 
 able commodity; and recollect, that while your capital, worth 52 per cent., 
 was protected by a vote, that my labour, worth 48 per cent., was wholly un¬ 
 represented. 
 
 Smith.—Now there you are in error. I will show you that your class has 
 nothing to complain of on that score. There were five out of.the seventy, or 
 one in fourteen, of the hands that worked for me, who were voters for the 
 borough of Devil’s Dust—while I, representing the whole of the capital, bad 
 but one vote. 
 
 Jackson.—What gave them the vote ? 
 
 Smith.—A £10 house, to be sure. 
 
 Jackson.—And whose were the £10 houses ? 
 
 Smith.—Why mine, to be sure; I built them. 
 
 Jackson.—Then they were capital, Mr. Smith—because they possessed 
 an exchangeable value: and they were of an amount that ought to be 
 represented 1 
 Smith.—Yes, certainly. 
 
 Jackson.—Well, Mr. Smith, by a loose calculation just made in my head, 
 
 I find that in the fifteen years that you employed seventy men, you made a 
 profit of £990 by the labour of each, or £66 per year profit upon each 
 man's labour: a profit, the onc-sixth of which, if in a house, instead of 
 being in labour, would have entitled the labourer to a vote. But as you 
 
11 
 
 liave in your opening speech included very many topics, I shall with-hold 
 my reply on this important subject for another interview, when I undertake 
 to prove the injustice of that system which enables you and your family to 
 appropriate to yourselves what belongs to me and my family. 
 
 Smith.—I have nothing to do with your family—I pay you your wages, 
 and look to my own. 
 
 Jackson.—I have a family as well as you: they are dear to me as yours 
 are to you. I have laboured from youth upwards to support them. I have 
 wrought with you for the last fifteen years, and to-morrow, what must be my 
 anguish, my sorrow, aye, and my vengeance too, when I see my pallid wife, 
 and stunted, not half-clad children—emaciated, without the blush of youth' 
 in their faces, or the suppleness of youth in their limbs—withoutthe gay and 
 childish look in their sunken eyes—what, I say, must be my reflection and 
 theirs, when, to-morrow, they and I look upon the fresh hlood that flows 
 through your children's veins—the lively and playful glances that beam 
 in their eyes—the rich dresses in which your family are decked; and when 
 they see your splendid equipage, with pampered horses and well-fed menials, 
 ready to convey your family to the princely mansion that you have pur¬ 
 chased with their young blood/ and amassed by their sweat— 
 
 Smith.—Hold, hold, Jackson—you do, you do, you do me injustice. 
 You have roused a feeling that never touched my heart before. Is that your 
 wife, and are those your children ? 
 
 Jackson (embracing his wife and drawing the children to him).—Yes: 
 these are mine, and the workhouse now must be their portion; and to-morrow, 
 as you move along from our village, lolling in your stately equipage, and 
 carried by your prancing horses, you will be cheered on your way by the 
 reflection that your traces are made of infants’ sinews, and your carriage 
 wheels are oiled with the blood of the impoverished babes that now surround 
 you; and when you enter that splendid mansion that you have purchased 
 by my sweat and theirs—when you are about to oiler up your prayers to 
 God in the morning when you arise—when you ask that Omnipotent Being 
 who created you and me, your children and mine, to “ give you your daily 
 bread,” think of those who are without bread. 
 
 Smith.—Jackson, there’s the error. It is a fault of the landed monopo¬ 
 lists, and not of the Almighty, that you have, to complain. It is they who 
 rob you. Join with your masters for the repeal of those unjust laws which 
 put an additional price on your bread, that monopolists and idlers may live 
 in luxury. 
 
 Jackson.—Sir, I have exhibited my case, and the poverty of my family; 
 and yet, while you deny that laws have anything to do with the poverty of \j 
 the poor, you would now make me infer that all our sufferings are a conse¬ 
 quence of one had law: alaw—the only law—of which your order complains., 
 and, strange to say, under its operation you have become wealthy and we 
 have become poor. 
 
 Smith—Poor ! I tell you that you have the same opportunities that I had, 
 and instead of stuffing your head with politics, if you had minded your 
 business as I have done, you would have been as successful as I have been. 
 
 Jackson.—Then, sir, if I had been as successful as you have been, un -\j 
 less the poor can all become money capitalists,—my success would have 
 been hut a substitute for another’s failure—or another cog in that artificial 
 wheel which grinds the faces of the poor. 
 
 Smith.—Jackson, again I tell you that we are your greatest friends, and 
 you are your own greatest enemies. Give over politics, and those crude 
 and silly notions about laws that your head appears to be stuffed with; and 
 henceforth devote your time to forwarding those great improvements which 
 
12 
 
 are now everywhere in process of completion for the benefit of the working 
 classes. The establishment of baths, improvement societies, the opening of 
 pleasure grounds, the advantages of emigration, and the benefits of better 
 ventilation, are the all-important considerations that should occupy the at¬ 
 tention of the working classes-; while the mystery of law-making should be 
 left to those who have received an education to fit them for the task, and 
 whose independence, in a pecuniary point of view, places them above sus¬ 
 picion on the one hand, and makes them independent of party interests and 
 party strife on the other. 
 
 Jackson.—Mr. Smith, if I bad my £500 that is now in your pocket, 
 and which rightfully belongs to me, I should require neither charity, gra¬ 
 tuity, nor sympathy. If, then, my family or myself required cold baths, I 
 could procure them out of my own resources; if they were ignorant or un¬ 
 educated, I should then stand justly chargeable with a neglect of parental 
 duties; if they were naked, as you now behold them, and if I dissipated the 
 means of giving them comfortable clothing, the finger of scorn would be 
 pointed at me, as an unfaithful father, a bad man, and an unworthy mem¬ 
 ber of society. JBut now, sir, their every want to which you would recon¬ 
 cile them by bits of charity and sympathy, are consequences of oppression 
 and misrule, and not characteristics of my nature. Baths and riEASUKio 
 grounds, sir!—ah, ah, ah, what mockery! Immerse that perished 
 withering child, from whose young veins you have extracted the hot life’s 
 blood, in a cold bath ! and exhibit that crippled child with twisted limb in 
 your pleasure grounds, as a mockery to your order for the injury they have 
 inflicted upon my child! Baths, sir—behold their rags. The tender 
 mother who bore them, reared them, and loves them, has enough to do to 
 pin their rags together once a day, without imposing a double hardship on 
 her. Emigrate, sir! Have you not learned that commandment from the 
 God above us, which enjoins us to “ honour our father and our mother, that 
 our days may be long in the land which the Lord outt God has given us.” 
 Come, my children! come, my wife—I would willingly have spared you 
 the knowledge of those facts, which known, must but increase your ven¬ 
 geance. Go, sir, to that lordly retirement that you have purchased by the 
 sweat and blood of those children ; and should one pang of remorse enter 
 your callous breast for the injury that you have done, .when at your com¬ 
 fortable meal you take up the morning papers and read, under the head of 
 " Melancholy catastrophe,” that in desperation, and rather than see his fa¬ 
 mily perish before his eyes for want, or rather than be inmates of three se¬ 
 veral wards in a cold bastile, Richard Jackson, unable to bear up against 
 the accumulated load of poverty that pressed upon him, in a fit of phrenzy 
 destroyed three of his children, and then put an end to himself!—then, sir, 
 remember, that YOU were his murderer, because you had in your pocket 
 his £500, the possession of which would have made him a happy man, an 
 indulgent parent, and a valued unit of the social family. 
 
 Smith.—Hold, Jackson, hold; you surely will not do as you say, or 
 think that I have led you to the rash act. Will you meet me here again 
 to-morrow, when I shall have thought over those many points that I confess 
 you have so strongly urged upon my consideration ? 
 
 Jackson,—Yes, sir, I have no objection; another day’s suffering will not 
 break the heart that has been accustomed to so many years of sorrow. 
 Farewell, sir; we meet again to-morrow, when I trust I shall be in a 
 temper to discuss your remaining propositions; and in the interim, should 
 my minute calculations have puzzled you, bear the fact in memory, that 
 during the fifteen years that you have employed your capital or exchanged 
 it for labour, that I have made you and your family, in point of profit, equal 
 
13 
 
 to the seventy men and their families, and have given you £2,000 additional 
 into the bargain. Remember, sir, that if your family consists of five, that 
 we and our families consisted of 350; and while you complain of the decline 
 and desolation that aflects the shopkeeping classes to reconcile us to our 
 more forlorn condition, do not lose sight of the fact that the poverty of the 
 shopkeepers is also a consequence of your unjust competition, which is only 
 made profitable by a reduction of wages. Your cousin, Mr. Smith, the 
 grocer, asked me but yesterday how it was, that while trade was so good 
 his business was on the decline ? and should he ask you the question, sir, 
 as you boast ol so much candour, tell him that his receipts would have beeti 
 greater if the seventy men who have worked for you had received their . 
 weekly proportion of the £34,000, which you have invested in the purchase 
 of an estate. As you have invited me to another interview and further dis- 
 cussion, and as you have introduced a great variety of topics in your nar- 
 rative, upon all of which you say jou would wish to he convinced ; and as 
 you are an educated man, and I am no scholar; and as you have laid 
 great stress on the value of machinery, perhaps you would condescend to 
 hear what old Robin, the shoemaker, who has lived ninety years in the 
 village, has to say upon the subject. 
 
 Smith.—Robin, the shoemaker! what has the shoemaker to do with 
 machinery ? Machinery doscn’t make shoes. 
 
 Jackson.—That’s just what Robin says, sir. But, he says, in his own 
 way, that" since them there Hying devils, made of wood and steel, set about 
 doing the work of men, that he believes that folk sin’ then is born without 
 feet;” and poor as I am, I can’t hut laugh sometimes when I hear old 
 Robin question the shopkeepers somehow after this fashion :—“ Ah, weel, 
 Maister Smith, did that 'ae fine cast-iron man coorne on the Saturday ncet, 
 when he got the wage, for a pound of sugar or tea, or owt of that sort ?” 
 and then lie goes to Sparerib, the butcher, and says to him, " Weel, Mr. 
 Sparerib, and what sort of a customer is that there stranger as has come 
 to visit Maister Smith, the cotton-spinner; and how is his digestion ?” 
 And so he takes his rounds, and goes to Twist the hosier and there he tells 
 him how he supposes, that, as the stranger works without stockings, the 
 poor folk that are obliged to work with him are obliged to do without 
 stockings too. Will you see Robin, sir ? 
 
 Smith.—Yes, Jackson, if you let me bring Mr. Quill, the lawyer, with 
 me, as two to one is not fair. 
 
 Jackson.—With pleasure, sir,—as many as you please. It’s just what 
 we want to get your class to hear what poor folks have to say, for the news¬ 
 papers, and all the writers, ■ will only publish one side of the question. 
 Good morning, sir. 
 
 Smith.—Good morning, Jackson. Farewell; you are a clever fellow, 
 and I begin to think, now that I am about to enter into another sphere, that 
 my class have evinced a sound judgment, if not a just one, in refusing to 
 hear the cause of the people advocated by themselves. And now you have 
 solved a riddle that puzzled me. I was always astonished why so shrewd 
 a man as Sir Robert Peel should have refused to hear the people explain 
 their own grievances at the bar of the House of Commons. 
 
 Jackson.—Ah, but as shrewd as he is, he was a fool then, for it only 
 increased that inflammable feeling which he’ll have to hear louder in the 
 long run. Folks get angry, when they won’t be even listened to. 
 
 Smith.—Farewell, Jackson! Farewell. We meet again to-morrow, 
 before I start for “ Shoddy” Hall. 
 
• u 
 
 PART II. 
 
 [Mr. Smith and Mr. Jacob Quill receive Old Robin and Richard 
 
 Jackson , in a private room in the “ Stranger's Home" public house.] 
 
 Mr. Smith.—Well, Jackson, you see I am not unmindful of my appoint¬ 
 ment. I am glad to see you; liotv is Eohin to-day ? 
 
 Robin.—Thankye, thankye, Maister Smith, I he’s a jogging on for ninety 
 years come Martinmas. I have nothing to complain of, on health account, 
 thank God. 
 
 Quill.—Well Robin, and how do do ? 
 
 Robin.—^ty, dear life, Maister Jacob Quill, I am not so strong as when I 
 and thy father used to go to Sunday school four score years sin’, long enough 
 before thou wert born or thought of. 
 
 Quill.—Hem, hem. Robin, I’m told that you and our good friend 
 Jackson here, and some other of the town-folk, have taken it into your heads 
 to think that machinery is a very injurious thing to the working classes. 
 
 Robin.—E’cod then, Maister Quill, that’s a notion I have had this many a 
 year. 
 
 Quill.—Well now, Robin, my time is precious; hut always anxious to 
 confer any service in my power on the working classes, I have consented, at 
 the request of Mr. Smith, to forego the most pressing aud important 
 engagements for the purpose of destroying this hobgoblin that you have got 
 in your head about machinery; and, as I know that all the young chaps look 
 to your opinions on the subject, I think it a duty that I owe to you, to 
 myself, to society at large, and especially to my misguided townsmen, to 
 convey to them, through you, my notions on this all important subject, at 
 any sacrifice to myself. So now, Robin, let us begin. 
 
 Robin.—Well, Mr Quill, that’s just what I want. You may he sure 
 though, that though my time is not as valuable as thine, ninety years 
 isn’t fond of long-winded speeches. So, go on : we he’s here to hear what 
 thou hast to say in favour of lliy client. 
 
 Smith.—Nay, nay, Robin, you are Mr. Quill’s client. He has come 
 
 Robin.—E’cod, I thank him. Lawyers don’t oft plead for poor folk for 
 nowt. So I’ll hear what Maister Quill has to say for me. 
 
 Smith.—Well, come, shan’t we have a drop of something to cheer us 
 before we begin ? What will you have, Mr. Quill ? 
 
 Mr. Quill.—Well, a glass of brandy and water—“cold without.” 
 
 Smith.—Robin, what will you take ? 
 
 Robin.—I’ll have nowt, thankye, Mr. Smith. 
 
 Quill.—0, come, Robin, I hear you’re fond of a glass of ale. 
 
 Robin.—Aye, I could take my glass after a day’s work, when I could 
 brew it myself; but I have no fancy for that theie stuff they froth with 
 “ fettling." It always gives me the gripes. 
 
 Smith.—Well, Jackson, what will you have P 
 
 Jackson.—Thankye, sir, I’m a teetotaller. 
 
 Quill.—0, damn yonr teetolalism—that’s another of the crotchets that 
 you working men have got into your heads. 
 
 Robin.—Now, then, Maister Quill, as they say in the law courts, “just 
 open thy case." 
 
 Quill.—Well now, Robin, what I say is this.—Though I am not 
 as old a man as you, I can well recollect the state of society in the village 
 of Devil’s Dust before the introduction of machinery; and every man 
 who has had eyes to see, and brains to understand, the rapid progress 
 that this village has made, even within the last fifteen years, when Provi- . 
 
15 
 
 dence put it into tlie head of Mr. Smith to settle amongst us, must, if he is 
 a candid man, admit that we have progressed rapidly in wealth and civiliza¬ 
 tion ; and you, as the father of a family, must have partaken, to a consider¬ 
 able extent, of the general advantage. For instance; things that were wholly 
 out of your reach when you were a working man, are now articles in com¬ 
 mon use with the working classes generally. The produce of machinery, 
 from .the facility of producing so much more goods than could be produced 
 by manual labour, has so increased the supply of that description of produce 
 as to compel the masters who vest their capital in those descriptions of fabrics, 
 actually to he obliged, as it were, to invite the purchaser to take them at any . 
 price. And then, again, see the extent to which this much-reviled machinery 
 gives employment to the whole family of the working classes. Surely, 
 Robin, you remember the time,—for I am younger than you, and I remem¬ 
 ber the time myself—when all those new streets behind Mr. Smith’s, and 
 Mr. Twist’s, and Mr. Cobh’s, and Mr. Grab’s, and Mr. Screw’s, and Mr. 
 Bait’s, and Mr. Thimble’s, and Mr. Rigg’s, were all open fields, and children 
 used to he there of eight, nine, ten, eleven, aye, and twelve years of age, 
 idling their time at play, at cricket, and trap, and marbles, and ball, and hop- 
 step-and-jump, and running, and leap-frog, and doing all sorts of mischief 
 from morning till night: now, all those, even to the very youngest, are em¬ 
 ployed in the mills, instead of passing their time in idleness and vieiousness, 
 and wickedness, that brings them to the gallows at last. 
 
 Robin.—E’cod, stop; not so fast, maister. We hadn’t a lawyer in those 
 days nearer than York, twenty-three miles from Devil’s Dust; so folk wasn’t 
 very wicked : now we have twenty-seven in Devil’s Dust alone. 
 
 Quill.—Well, well, Robin, that has nothing to do with it; if you have 
 twenty-seven in Devil’s Dust they spend their money there. 
 
 Robin.—Nay, they spend other folks’. We could manage to do without 
 them. 
 
 Quill_Well, come, Robin, we won’t dispute that point: hut to return to 
 
 machinery. Had you a Town-hall sixty years ago ? Had you a Me¬ 
 chanics’ Institute ? Had you three banks ? Had you a railway coming up 
 to your very door to convey your produce to all parts of the world ? Had 
 you such hospitals, infirmaries, and cemeteries as you can boast of now ? 
 Had you such a refuge as stands on yonder hill, the union workhouse, where 
 the unemployed may live at ease, aye, and in luxury too—I say in luxury, 
 notwithstanding all the foul-mouthed denunciation of demagogues P Has 
 not the occupant of every £10 house a vote ? and is not that within the 
 reach of every man of good character and common industry ? Have you 
 not shops with fronts fine enough to dazzle the passenger, especially when 
 lit up at night ? Don’t they look like fairy palaces ? Have you not now 
 fourteen churches built by all denominations of Christians, instead of the one 
 miserable little parish church that stands prominently conspicuous as a me¬ 
 mento of our former poverty, when compared with the splendour of those 
 grand edifices which mark the progress of civilisation ? Have you not all 
 these things—and are they not one and all the result of machinery P Then 
 again, see the amount of capital that it annually circulates among the working 
 classes. See the number of foreigners that frequent this formerly almost 
 unknown, out-of-the-way village; and think, that after bestowing all this 
 grandeur and these improvements at home, it enables us to export the surplus 
 to all the countries of the world: and further, that if our mad rulers would 
 untrammel it of those restrictive laws which limit its produce, and thereby 
 necessarily limits the employment of the working classes, it would he an 
 unalloyed, unmixed, and undeniable—aye, I repeat it, undeniable source of 
 profit to all classes of the community, and to the working classes in particu- 
 
16 
 
 lar. Those restrictive laws, Robin, once removed, would open every pore of 
 industry; would create an amount of competition among the masters that 
 would lead to the employment of thousands and tens of thousands of unem¬ 
 ployed hands that are now competitors against their own class, or obliged to 
 be supported on the industry of those at work; and thus could we make the 
 whole population one united, happy family, all units in the social circle, 
 instead of, as now, setting labourer against master and master against labourer, 
 Robin, what was England before the introduction of machinery, and what is 
 she now P Not to draw our conclusion from this one isolated spot, let U3 
 cast a glance at the great national improvements that have taken place. See, 
 then, the great improvement in navigation, whereby you apply the steam- 
 engine,—the mainspring, we may call it, of machinery,—to the transmission 
 of the produce of British industry to the remotest parts of the habitable globe. 
 See the substitution of gas for tallow; and the printing machine for the old 
 dull system of printing by hand. See the stupendous railways, annihilating 
 both “ time and space”—passing, as it were, through the bowels of the earth, 
 levelling mountains, and flying with an astounding exactitude over a mere 
 line, as it were, running between two terrible precipices, conveying a moving 
 village by this mainspring, as I before called it;—this moving power of 
 machinery —the triumphant steam engine, that never tires. 
 
 Robin.—Has’t done, or nearly done, Maister Quill ? for, e'cod, lliou’st 
 spun such a long yarn that I can scarce keep the tale in my old head. 
 
 Quill.—Done, Robin ! No; it is a theme upon which I could expatiate 
 for hours, days, weeks, aye, months, together. What man of common 
 feeling can reflect on this national boon without feeling a meritorious desire 
 to explain it to those who arc too dull to comprehend its advantages ? and 
 surely a sensible man like you, Robin—the very mind and organ of the 
 working classes (I say it without flattery)—cannot be indifferent to the vast 
 advantages that machinery has conferred upon the working classes. At all 
 events, you, and several other different trades, such as Carpenters, Builders, 
 Ironmongers, Potters, Cutlers, Cabinet-makers, and so forth, can have 
 nothing to complain of, as it hasn’t interfered with your labour: and yet, 
 strange to say, those very parties are most vehement declairaers against the 
 present system, and loudly complain of their present poverty. 
 
 Robin.—Well, now, Mr. Quill, when so many folks complain, as they 
 say, “ there’s never smoke without lireso there can’t be so much com¬ 
 plaint without cause. 
 
 Smith.—Well but, stop, Robin : don’t interrupt Mr. Quill: he hasn’t 
 finished; and I am sure if you came here to learn, you must be equally 
 delighted as myself—and I think I may say as our friend Jackson appears 
 to be—with the lucid, clear, candid, and I will add unanswerable, exposition 
 of our friend. I thought that you came to hear, and to be convinced; and 
 surely it would be a waste of your time and mine to attempt to urge any¬ 
 thing against the philosophical and philanthropic reasoning of our friend. 
 
 Robin.—Maister Smith, Maister Quill knows that if one side had all the 
 talk, there would be but little call for judges or juries; and, as I am an 
 old man, I have got in my head now as much as I can think on for a bit. 
 So, with your leave. I'll just have a word. 
 
 Quill.—Well, come, let us hear what Robin has to say. 
 
 Smith.—Well, if you wish it, with all my heart. 1 merely interposed 
 for Robin’s own benefit, and for the benefit of his class. Now, go on, 
 Robin; but be brief, for its twenty minutes after eleven now, and I have 
 ordered my carriage to be at the door at one. 
 
 Robin.—Well, Maister Quill, I seed a blind man many a year sin’ a 
 taking notes, as they call it, of what folks said, by knotting a piece of 
 
17 
 
 suing; and I have tied down what thou hast said on this here ; and, e’cod, 
 thou scest it full. Now, I’ll begin where thou began; and all thou’st done, 
 Maister Quill, is just to show me all the changes that have taken place sin’ 
 machinery was introduced; and thou hast put them all down to machinery. 
 Why, Maister Quill, I reads a bit of history now and then, and I reads of 
 the time when the poor was “ serfs;” and 1 read of the revolutions; and I 
 read of the kind of bouses that folks and kings lived in, and of our rude and 
 uncivilised manners and customs; and I have lived to see what the historians 
 call the improvements in the arts and sciences, and in living, and in 
 civilisation, and these going on year after year, before the world ever thought' 
 of the steam-engine. I seed them, and noticed them, aye, and felt them 
 myself too, Maister Quill; hut now thou would put down all the improve¬ 
 ments that have taken place within the last fifty years, and twenty-nine of 
 them in peace too, to machinery. Now, Maister Quill, what I say is this: 
 in them there old times, when folks felt that they were born with fingers to 
 do summut for one another, we hadn’t so many classes; and whenever any 
 improvement took place, aye, even at the top, in the palace, another would 
 take place in the poor man’s house. I remember the times that thou call’st 
 the wicked times, when young folk used to run about the fields; when faither 
 and the older children used to do the work, and when the mother used to 
 tend all, and had all under her own eye; if a call come for one of the 
 young ones to bear a hand, he was always ready and willing; and now, 
 Maister Quill, I’ll tell ycu the change I’ve seen in my time, and all has been 
 brought about by them there flying devils doing the work of young and 
 old. I remember when there was—say a population of about 2000 in this 
 parish. There would be about twelve maisters, big and little, and about 
 200 Hand-Loom Weavers. Then there were Shoemakers, and all the other-"' 
 trades. There was no cotton-mill always running by steam ; there was no 
 banker in the parish; there wasn’t a lawyer, Maister Quill, nearer than 
 York; there was no Town-hall then, no Mechanics’ Institute, no hospital, 
 no infirmary, no union bastile. No, nor no police, Maister Quill, except 
 Bumble, the beadle, and me, and the like of me, that all had an interest 
 in the peace of the parish. Then, Maister Quill, Bumble’s staff earned 
 authority with it, and he never had to use it; for he knew every man in the 
 parish, and knew where to find him in his own house if the justice wanted 
 him. At that time there was only the little parish church, and old parson 
 Flower, to preach in it, and the Catholic chapel, that the Rev. Mr. Faithful 
 used to attend. We hadn’t the fourteen churches then, Maister Quill. 
 
 Mr. Smith.—Robin, what has all this to do with machinery ? Machinery 
 didn’t build the churches. 
 
 Robin.—’Ecod! it did though—and made the parsons too. 
 
 Smith.—Well, Robin, what is it you are driving at ? Politics, I am afraid, 
 Robin. 
 
 Robin.—Noa, Maister Smith, nor at religion neither. We can talk of 
 churches and parsons now-a-days without thinking of religion. I am an 
 old man; you must give me my own way; Maister Quill has drawn a 
 picture of what Devil’s Dust was, and what it is now, and he says machinery 
 made all the difference; and I am going to shew him that all them there 
 things, aye, ’ecod, every one of them, that he calls “ improvements” is all 
 t’other way for the working classes. 
 
 Smith.—Ah ! ah ! ah ! 
 
 Quill.-He! he! he! 
 
 Robin.—Well, wait a bit. I am saving, that, at that time, there were 
 the two churches, and two religions; and Master Flower and Master Faith¬ 
 ful would go down and preach: and they’d meet after in the street and 
 
IS 
 
 shake hands, and all folks would see them and think that howsomevev they 
 differed in the pulpit, they met like friends outside, and that other folk should 
 do the same. But now ’ecod we have the Wesleyans, the Unitarians, the 
 Methodists, the New Connection, the Old Connection, the Baptists, the 
 Ana-Baptists, the Ranters, the Puseyites, and the Infidels. ’Ecod, its no 
 wonder that folks’ brains should be bothered when there’s fourteen different 
 parsons all at work together, every one telling folk that there’s only one 
 road to heaven and that’s their own. 
 
 Quill.—Come, come, Robin, let us not enter into questions of religion ; 
 those are subjects between man and his Maker; and, no doubt, those four¬ 
 teen pious men are, one and all, in quest of truth. 
 
 Robin.—In quest of the devil! They are in quest of the brass, Maister 
 
 Quill. 
 
 Smith.—Robin, my time is too precious to listen to such infidelity. If 
 you have anything to say to the point, I am ready to hear you. 
 
 Robin.—Then come to the point. Maister Quill says as how machinery 
 has been a blessing to the poor; and Maister Jackson axed me here to shew 
 what effect it had upon them there trades that it didn't do the work of yet. 
 
 Smith.—Non', that’s it—that’s coining to the point. 
 
 Robin.—Well then, now let us sec what was the condition of the people 
 of Devil’s Dust before all those blessings, and What it is now. ’Ecod, but 
 you have roused me, Maister Smith. In those days I was a Shoemaker, 
 and I had a wife and live children ; and all the allairs of the parish were so 
 nicely balanced that I could calculate within a trifle of what the Saturday 
 ueet would bring. There was no “ fluctuations” then to give us a good week, 
 a bad week, and no week at all. My eldest son Robin was put to the loom, 
 
 • and the wife and children, when they were growing, would card and spin, 
 and wind, and reel, and get bobbins ready, and all that ; and I’d work at 
 my trade, and all at home. Well, if Robin’s Maister got a fresh order, or 
 wanted a piece finishing in time, he’d come to the lad and say, “ Well, 
 Robin, how does’t get on, lad ; can’si finish thy piece by Saturday nect ?” 
 and if Robin would say "Noa, Maister Fairplay, not without a few extra 
 hours then Maister Fairplay would tap him on the shoulder, and, giving 
 him five shillings, would say, “ Well, come, llohin, there’s extra for theeand 
 Robin would finish the piece, and whistle and sing all the after hours, all 
 the family lending a cheerful hand,because the live shillings went into mother’s 
 purse on Saturday neet. And when Robin took the work home on Saturday 
 neet, there was no balings, nor jinn, nor damning his eyes, hut aglass of home¬ 
 brewed ale, and a shake o’ the hands, and a “ Thankee, Robin, thou art a 
 good lad.” And so it was with all the men: if there was brisk demand 
 they had their share, and if it was slack they never were the ones to mur¬ 
 mur. In that wav Robin would bring home, the wages of himself and the 
 help the little ones would give him, from 30s. to 30s. per week. 
 
 Smith.—Well, hut, Robin, what can they all earn now—live of them. 
 
 Robin (weeping).— Nowt now, maister Smith. Robin will never earn no 
 more. 
 
 Quill.—Well hut, Robin, I’m told that was his own fault—that he died 
 from the effects of drink, a confirmed drunkard. Surely that wasn’t the 
 fault of machinery. 
 
 Robin.—Damned, it was machinery killed him. 
 
 Smith.—Why, how do you make that out, Rubin P 
 Robin.—Well, up to twenty-five years he worked at home, under my 
 roof, and for that time no man ever see’d Robin the worse for drink. He’d 
 rather make the week’s wage more, and laugh when he’d tell l’arson Flower, 
 on Sunday, what he made for fuither and mother. But machinery took the 
 
19 
 
 loom from Robin, and forced him into a damned “ rattle-box,” to work >• 
 sixteen hours a day; and then at the end of the week, with fines, and 
 batings, and reductions, he was brought down, and down, and down, in 
 health, in body, and in spirits, with only sometimes 9s., sometimes 8s., and 
 sometimes only 6s. 6d. a week, till at last he got ashamed of coming home 
 at all. 1-Ie got into company with others that were broken-hearted like 
 himself; and he’d drink a day, and work a day, and play a day, till he 
 broke his mother’s heart. He died sure enough, but it was the damned 
 “ rattle-box” that killed my lad. I could well afford to make twelve pair _ 
 of shoes a-year for my own family out of Robin’s pay put along with 
 theirs; hut I lost that house-trade; and according as them there “ rattle- 
 boxes" came here, T lost all my old customers, one after the other, until at 
 last them there cast-iron men of Maister Smith’s, that works without shoes 
 or stockings, e’cod, drove my old feet to these here clogs: for I couldn’t 
 afford to make shoes for mvself. 
 
 Smith.—Come, come, Robin, you are going a little too fast. Surely 
 there are more shoes sold in Devil’s Dust now, fifty to one, than there were 
 in your lime. So somebody has got the trade ! 
 
 Robin,—’Ecod, l wish them joy of it. Its like your calico, Maister 
 Smith : thev are obliged to make them “ cheap,” to tempt folk to buy them. 
 They make them by dozens, and paste and peg them together any how; 
 and after all, “ cheap” as they are, poor folk- can’t buy them. Well now, 
 at the time that I speak of, it was a rare thing to see an idle man in the 
 parish; and if wages were too low, why the old Poor Law came in and 
 made it up : so that one could spend with another. I had a brother, a 
 tailor, and he had his customers; and he would nearly guess wlntl his wage 
 would be every Saturday neet; for, somehow or other, the old Poor Law 
 and the parish interest levelled those things all through. Well, in those 
 days the working classes could support one another. They had a share of 
 all that was going. They’d brew a bit, and give the cooper work. Young 
 folk, when they went a courting, or company keeping, would have a watch. 
 Then every man’s house was well stocked with plenty of provisions. We’d 
 have a bit of cutlery, and the cutler would have a pair of shoes. And we’d 
 have a dresser, and delph-case with crockery; and meal-kest, and all other 
 furniture fitting for poor folk. 
 
 Smith.—Well but, Robin, surely you can get all those things now for 
 less than a third of their former price. 
 
 13 ibin.—Tlcod, I know it; but I can't get the money to buy them; and 
 when I get them they’re not'worth a tenth part of the things that I gave 
 more money for. So you see, Maister Smith, if you get machinery to do 
 man’s labour, the man won’t be worth as much ; he won’t have as much to 
 spend in the market. And now mark me; Richard Jackson tells me that 
 if you and your men made a fair division of your profits for the last fifteen 
 years, the men would have £34,000 more than they have got; and if they 
 had that, they’d have better houses, the building of which would employ 
 Stonemasons, and Bricklayers, and Tilers, and Plasterers, and Joiners, and 
 Plumbers, and Painters, and Glaziers, and Labourers, and Nailmakers, 
 and Brickmakers, and Quarrymen, and Limebumers, and Colliers, and 
 Iron Miners, and Smelters, and, in short, doing every thing for the seventy 
 families that Jackson tells me that you say your £80,000 spent in that way 
 did so much good to. Now the people employed in all those works would 
 he better customers to the Grocer, and the Tobacconist, and the Chandler, 
 and the Shoemaker, and the Idatter, and the Tailor, and the Hosier, and 
 all the rest of them: and then, if the seventy men—mind, only your 
 
20 
 
 seventy, Maister Smith—and although they he but few, their ease applies 
 to the whole system ; well, if the whole of the poor devils who have heeu 
 lobbed of £500 a-pieee had better houses, they’d have more furniture, a 
 little education for their children, a few books, and so on: they’d be 
 customers to one another; and, Maister Smith, its the pence of the many 
 going through the hands of the many, and not the pounds of the few going 
 into banks, and railways, and mortgages, and all those sort of speculations, 
 that makes a full till and a cheerful face on a Saturday neet for the shop¬ 
 keeper, and a good exchequer for the Government too. Now there isn’t 
 one of them there trades that I have mentioned as works by machinery, and 
 they are one and all crying out and complaining. 
 
 Smith.—Pooh, pooh ! They are always complaining—and they have 
 nothing to complain of. 
 
 Robin.—E’cod, when men complain, and are able to give a £100,000 
 to relieve themselves, and able to pay (as they say) the national debt if they 
 liked, poor folk needn’t be blamed: for they wouldn’t complain if they 
 had’nt some reason. 
 
 Quill.—Well, and what is the reason, Robin ? 
 
 Robin.—Why, machinery is the reason, Maister Quill—machinery that 
 does the work of man, and eats nothing, and wears nothing, and uses no¬ 
 thing while it’s at work, but a drop of oil. 
 
 Quill—Well but, Robin, the landlords and the farmers, and the parsons, 
 and the agricultural labourers, complain as well as you, and surely machi¬ 
 nery doesn’t affect them. 
 
 Robin.—By gow, but it does ! Aye, and it will make them lads squeal 
 out yet. Why, Maister Quill, if yon reduce the value of labour you re¬ 
 duce the value of every thing—I beg pardon— except the national debt and 
 mortgages, and fixed salaries, and “ dead weight ’’ and pensioners, Maister 
 Quill. ’Ecod, these are like the leech ; they’ll fasten somewhere : and if 
 machinery leaves nowt for them in the working-man’s carcase, they’ll fasten 
 on to the landlords and the farmers, and the parson — aye, and on the 
 Queen too, or on the devil himself, Maister Quill, before they’ll go without. 
 As LONG AS THEY HAVE THE IUYONETS THEY’LL SCREW IT OUT, NO 
 matter where it oojiEs from ! So that you see, Maister Quill, rather 
 than let folks starve, Sir Robert Peel was obliged to set his wits to work to 
 see how he could get “ cheap” provisions to square with the “ cheap” 
 wages; and the landlords are beginning to find out that the inanimate non¬ 
 consuming producing power,—them there cast iron men, and wooden boys, 
 and little wire girls, that Maister Smith is so fond of; they are beginning 
 to find out that them there cats nothing; and that those whose work the 
 cast iron men do, must get their food as “ cheap” as possible. So the land¬ 
 lords and the parsons, that measured the value of their estates by the neces¬ 
 sity of putting “ Honey” and the “ Jacobins” down, must come down them¬ 
 selves in turn. Thai puzzler, the great Wizard of the North, would be 
 puzzled to pay the £50,000,000 a year, and all them there gambling debts 
 and money owing to the Jews, out of what machinery leaves to the work¬ 
 ing classes after living, and, Maister Quill, the £50,000,000 a year must 
 be paid. That mun go, it mun go, Maister Quill; or thou, and them 
 like thee—them folk that has got all the produce of labour,— mun pay it. 
 Aye, thou may look, and thou may laugh, and thou may wink at Maister 
 Smith, but thou mun pay it, or the folk that gets it on quarter day mun do 
 without it. 
 
 Quill.—No, Robin, I was only laughing at the idea of my being sup¬ 
 ported by labour, when I assure yon, on my honour, I have never had a 
 woiking-man in my ofiice, except to do him a service, in the way of recom- 
 
21 
 
 mending him to settle any dispute he might have with his master; I never 
 got a guinea from labour. 
 
 Robin.—The devil you didn’t! 
 
 Quill.—No, not a farthing. 
 
 Robin.—And who are your customers, Maister Quill. 
 
 Quill.—Why landed proprietors, master manufacturers, and some of the 
 parsons, Robin. 
 
 Robin.—Well, and how do the landlords pay you, Maister Quill. 
 
 Quill.—0, in money to be sure. 
 
 Robin.—Would ye take it in grass, Maister Quill. 
 
 Quill.—0, no, no, no. Not in grass—not in grass, Robin ; I am not tt 
 Nebuchadnezzar. I’ll tell you what, Robin—if there was necessity for it 
 I’d take it in hay. 
 
 Robin.—’Ecod, that’s labour, Maister Quill. 
 
 Quill.—Well, come, Robin, I'd take a good fat pig; that’s not labour 
 surely. 
 
 Robin.—’Ecod then, it must be grass-bacon. 
 
 Quill.—Why, how ? what do you mean ? 
 
 Robin.—Why mustn’t the pig have summat to eat,-meal, or barley, 
 or ’taters, or summat of that sort ? 
 
 Quill.—Yes, to be sure, but then they can be bought. 
 
 Robin.—Aye; hut they must be •produced before they are bought, 
 Maister Quill. 
 
 Smith (aside to Quill). Yotf had better not go into detail. Keep him 
 to the question of the improvement in Devil’s Dust, and the increased 
 wealth of the country. 
 
 Quill.—Well but, Robin; to come from the ’taters to the public 
 buildings and the present appearance of Devil’s Dust, and the improve¬ 
 ment in the condition of the working classes. 
 
 Robin.—0, very well. In the times that I speak of, every family was 
 happy, and every man in the parish was known to one another. I had five 
 children, all of different ages; and although all, thank God, healthy—of 
 different constitutions. The mother watched them; and if they were 
 careless about playing with other children, or if they did their work 
 negligently, she’d give them their supper a bit earlier, and let them lie-a¬ 
 bed a bit longer. All were treated according to their health and consti¬ 
 tution. No scrambling for a candle then; no rushing and crushing about 
 the house when the big bell rung at five o’clock of a winter’s morning, to 
 rouse all folks, old and young, sick and well, weak and strong, to get up 
 at the same minute. No rdnning of the poor mother to the bed full of 
 children, shaking all of them out of sleep, dealing the most tired a box on 
 the ear, and a “ damn thee, thou lazy baggage,” or “ thou skulking rascal;” 
 and then saluting the father and the husband with a “ get up with thee, 
 and be damned to thee; doesn’t ta hear t’ factory bell ? Give me that 
 there child ;” and then taking the child in her arms, “ come here with thee, 
 —take thy suck before I go—ay, what a bitch thou art; this is three 
 mornings I was five minutes late,—and fined threepence for thee.” Then 
 hurrying off, with the little suckling child, to the factory door, and the 
 husband with a half-awake child upon his back to briny back the baby ; 
 she goes to work, and he to the beer-shop all day, while Maister Smith’s 
 strangers is doing his work. 
 
 Smith.—0 you exaggerate; you talk nonsense. 
 
 Robin.—No, Maister Smith, I don’t! I see it every day of my life. 
 Well then, I say, we had nowt of that sort when paid more money for 
 every thing that we used, because they were good ; and when, after we had 
 
22 
 
 paid more for every thing we wanted, we had more at the end of the week. 
 
 In those times good character was the best fortune a poor man could have, 
 and if a man or a lad in the whole parish was seen drunk, or did a bad 
 thing, or said owt wrong of a neighbour, I’ll warrant me he’d be marked, 
 and he’d have a visit from Parson Flower. Sunday was a day of rest, and 
 a welcome day. Folk would put on the best they had—good, decent 
 warm covering, and go to the parish church with bible and prayer-hook 
 to thank God, and hear good old Parson Flower. When the parson came 
 out of the pulpit, he’d shake hands with the old folk, and kindly inquire 
 after them and their families. He was as keen as a shepherd : if he missed 
 the littlest one of his Hock that ought to he in the fold, he’d say, “ Well, 
 Kobin, where’s Will to-day; why wasn’t he at church ?” or “ where’s your 
 dame, Robin?” And then I’d say, “ Why, please you, parson, little Bill 
 is but poorly, and mother set up with him last night.” And then Parson 
 Flower would say, “ Ay, dcaree me, dearce me; poor little Will—poor 
 little Will; I must go and see him, and see what is the matter with him 
 before I go to dine with Farmer Jones.” Well, Maister Quill, that’s the 
 way we lived when the row came down to Devil's Dust about “Boncy and 
 the Jacobins,” and “ Church and King,” and the “ Church in danger.” 
 Well, we met among ourselves, though we had no Town-hall then, Mr. 
 Quill, and wc heard what was wanted. Parson Flower and the Rev. Mr. 
 Faithful came together to the churchyard, .and they axed us if we “ would 
 defend our Church and our King.” We had good wages, and we thought 
 that the King had something to do with giving them ; and Parson Flower, 
 to us, represented the Church, and he was a good man; and we loved the 
 little church where we used all to meet in on Sundays; and so we shouted 
 “Hurrah for Church and King!” and “We’ll fight, we’ll fight and die for 
 King George and Parson Flower.” Word went off, and down came 
 waggon loads of muskets, and swords, and pikes, and drill serjeants, to 
 teach us how to shoot and stick the French. We gave a whole day in 
 every week, and a hit of every day, to learn this new trade of butchering ; 
 hut we minded nowt about it, hut still pulled up the lost time by working 
 later and earlier, and cheerfully; hut, ecod, if we had known what we 
 were working for then, and how dear were had lo pay for it since, much 
 as we loved Parson Flower, we would have left fighting to King George and 
 his soldiers. 
 
 Quill.—What, Robin, would'nt you fight now for the Queen and the 
 Church? 
 
 Robin.—Fight for Queen and Church ! Noa, noa, Maister Quill; you 
 know better than that. The Queen ? why, its King still, -Maister Quill. 
 
 Quill.—King! King! what do you mean, Robin? I mean Queen 
 Victoria and the Church. 
 
 Robin.—I mean, that the Steam-engine is King now ! and folk would’nt 
 know which of the churches to fight for. 
 
 Quill.—Which of the churches? Why the right church—the Church of 
 England to be sure. 
 
 Robin.—Maister Quill, its because so many says that this church is 
 reet, and that church is reel; and because the Church of England hasn’t 
 done what’s reet, that we hear of so many infidels that’s gone away from all 
 churches. 
 
 Quill.—What, Robin, are yon an infidel ? 
 
 Robin.—Noa, Maister Quiil, but I’m going to show you how infidels are 
 made. If 1 was a traveller, making my way to Devil’s Dust, and if I came 
 to a pass where there was another road, and if there was a finger-post 
 saying—“ this is the road to Devil’s Dust," and “ this is the road lo 
 
23 
 
 Shoddy Hall,” I should be all reet then; hut if I came on to forty or fifty 
 different turns off the one road; and if there was a finger-post to every 
 one, and if all said —“ this is the road to Devil’s Dust,” then I should be 
 regularly bewildered ; I sliould’nt know which road to take, so I might get 
 lost and go astray. And so it is with them there infidels. They hear all 
 the parsons saying that this road, and that road, and t’other road is the 
 only road to heaven, and like me, on the road to Devil’s Dust, they get 
 bewildered. 
 
 Quill.—Well hut, Robin, suppose that arms were sent down now to 
 fight for the Queen and the Chuich, do you mean to say that the peopla 
 wouldn’t take them ? 
 
 Robin.—Noa, I say nowt at sort. They’d take them fast enough, but 
 they'dfight for giiub and cottage, instead of Church and Queen. But, 
 don’t you fear, Maisler Quill; Government will never try that scheme again. 
 So now, you see, your fourteen churches are only wrong finger-posts, leading 
 us all astray : your Town-hall is never open, except for the masters and free 
 traders to put down wages, though we built it. Your banks are only to 
 discount your paper flimsies, your speculations on our labour; your rail¬ 
 roads, steam-navigation, and all those things, are but machinery for cheap¬ 
 ening our labour in all parts of the world; your hospitals and infirmaries 
 are built for fear that your sort should take tire infection front our sort, since 
 you huddled scores of filthy starving paupers into garrets and cellars; and 
 your big Bastile is a grinding machine to grind the faces of the poor, and 
 to make them work for nowt rather than go into one of them; your M echanics’ 
 Institute is only to enable you to fight “genteel" laeouii against poverty ; 
 and your cemetery is your Free Trade burying-ground, by which you get 
 as much as you can from poor folk when they are dead. It never will be 
 looked on with the veneration, reverence, and respect, Maistcr Quill, that 
 attaches to yon little old church-yard, where rich and poor lie buried to¬ 
 gether alongside, as they lived together, in harmony and fellowship. There 
 used to be no doubly sanctified grave, here and there, railed in and beautified, 
 making one man better than another. And as for that Parson Barebones, 
 that has £2,000 a year for preaching sermons all about the “ improvidence” 
 of the poor, and for flattering up them that gives him good dinners, and all 
 that sort of stuff,—ay, my God Almighty, when I sees him slapping through 
 the street, not minding to ride over poor folk, and when I sees his wife and 
 family turning tip their noses when poor folk pass; and when I think of 
 poor Parson Flower upon £200 a year, praying for the poor, I no longer 
 wonder that there should be a “ high ’’ and a “ low" church. I tell thee 
 what, iUaister Quill, if a rich man has a shepherd he’ll run from his dinner 
 or his bed if he hears there’s a sheep on his back in a furrow; and the 
 herdsman will sit up all night with a sick cow, Wc arc told that Parson 
 Barebones is our shepherd; and I should like lo see him leave his bottle at 
 the " Squire’s,” to take one of the poor flock of Devil’s Dust off his back : 
 or see him sitting up with one of his sick flock all nect. Maister Quill, 
 when poor folk see more respect paid to the dumb animals of the rich than 
 to the flesh and blood of beings with souls to save, they don’t like it, 
 maister Quill. 
 
 Smith.—Y'ell now, Robin, it's my time—I must be off; and as yon 
 have appealed to me as one of the jury to decide between you and Hr. Quill, 
 
 I think I shall convince you that 1 am neither prejudiced nor partial, I 
 confess that I did think my friend Quill's arguments were unanswerable; 
 hut I also candidly confess that many of the points you have so shrewdly 
 urged have presented a new view’ of the case to my mind, especially what, 
 you have stated as to the likelihood of the land being compelled to satisfy 
 
24 
 
 those demands which have heretofore been supplied to the Government by 
 labour: and now, Robin, as I have still a hankering after the old spot, if 
 you will meet me here after the market on Tuesday next,—Mr. Quill and 
 Jackson, I’m sure, will attend,—I’ll have great pleasure in hearing the con¬ 
 clusion of your reply. 
 
 Robin.—Well, I’ll meet you: I’m told thou’st purchased “ Shoddy 
 Hall" and the estate from Squire Gambler. E’cod, what "comes over the 
 devil’s back goes under his belly and thon’lt find that the tax-sucking- 
 folk will be after “Shoddy Hall” when the panic comes: and it’sa- 
 cooming! 
 
 Smith.—Well, well, Robin, don’t suppose me so sordid as to have made 
 the appointment from an interested motive; but be punctual, and I’ll 
 attend. 
 
 Robin.—I’ll be there; and when I’ve done thou'It hear Jackson about 
 machinery, for I can only speak to one point. 
 
 Smith.—Yes, yes. I think it quite right to hear what every man has to 
 say on his own behalf. It’s what I should like to have myself. My motto 
 has always been, “ Ho as you would be done by.” 
 
 Jackson.—Then I ant sure, Mr. Smith, as you’d like to get £300 from 
 me, if I had it of yours, perhaps, according to your maxim, you will give 
 me back mine. 
 
 Smith.—Good morning, Jackson. Good bye, Robin—shake hands: you 
 are a wonderful man of your age. Come, Quill. 
 
 Robin.—E’cod, I remember when there were many men betwixt four 
 and five score in the parish of Devil’s Dust before machinery came here : 
 but now a man of forty is almost a wonder. Good bye to ye. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 [According to appointment the four parties to the dialogue respecting 
 the Employer and the Employed, met in the room of the “Stranger’s 
 Home" public-house, in the town of Devil's Dust, after the close of 
 Tuesday’s market; and the dialogue was thus resumed ]— 
 
 Robin.—Well, Maister Quill, is there owt strange since we met last P 
 ’Ecod, but Maister Smith looks ten years older. 
 
 Smith.—Aye, Robin, aye, I can feel for the woes of others. 
 
 Robin.—Why, what’s up now ? Owt bad in the market ? 
 
 Smith.—Market, market! It’s anything but a market. 
 
 Robin. —Why, Maister Smith, what’s the matter ? 
 
 Smith.—What’s the matter? Why, just as I predicted. They’ve 
 overdone it. 
 
 Robin.—Overdone what, Maister Smith ? 
 
 Smith.—Why the China and India market. They are all glutted: the 
 worst news that’s come into Devil’s Dust since the last panic. 
 
 Robin.—'Ecod, but I thought there was summat gone wrong; for all 
 them there mills that was busy building a week ago, as folks said for the 
 India and China market, are all give up: and there’s a wonderful to do among 
 the Bricklayers and Stone-masons, Carpenters and Joiners, and, in fact, all 
 the trades. I don’t go out to read the papers now', Maister Smith ; but 
 Maister Sparerib, the butcher, came to me on Saturday neet, and axed how 
 it was that so much meat was left on his hands more than other weeks ? But 
 
25 
 
 as lie is a grumbling in the best of times, I didn’t mind him much ; but he 
 was lamenting over the case of poor folk, and saying as bow them as would 
 have a nice joint on Saturday neet, said they’d try a scrag of mutton; and 
 others would take a lot of broken meat; and them there as had a scrag, would 
 be content with a pluck; and the good workmen that would have an extra 
 joint, to feast their friends at Christmas, would wait for a week; and so on. 
 ’Ecod, Maister Sparerib said he wished that sheep were all scrags and 
 plucks; for folk wanted nowt else on Saturday. He axed me the reason, 
 and I told him that it was all machinery—them there flying devils that folk 
 with money was building palaces for—brought the Stone-masons and 
 Bricklayers, and all the rest of them, Joiners, and Carpenters, and Nail- 
 makers^ (locking here, and Tailors to make clothes for them, while all the work 
 was done afore they came; while them warehouses and big pawnshops was 
 full of as much as would fit the world : and so instead of nature we had 
 everything fiction-like. And, ’ecod, sure enough, but I hear Maister 
 Squcczegul, overseer of that there fine refuge for the paupers, says that Ac’s 
 like to have custom enough 1 for, ’ecod, he hasn’t house room for all that’s 
 applying for relief. 
 
 Smith,—Well, well, but Robin, how could we have foreseen all those 
 things? Don’t you see there was a demand ; and shouldn’t we, as a matter 
 of course, and as good Christians, endeavour to supply the wants of others? 
 
 Robin.—’Ecod, Maister Smith, thou needn’t look so blue about it. 
 Thou’st quit Devil’s Dust in good time. 
 
 Smith.—Confound it, Robin, " good time” do yon call it ? Look here. 
 Here’s a notice I have just received of a public meeting of landed proprietors 
 to be held in the Town Hall this evening, to take into consideration the best 
 and speediest means of relieving the present distress of the working classes, 
 by voluntary contributions, or such other means as shall prevent an 
 additional levy on landed property. 
 
 Robin.—’Ecod, Maister Smith, but that's just what I said; and thou’It 
 find that “ Shoddy Hall ” will have to pay its share! Maister Sparerib 
 axed me to come and move an amendment for “ protection for labour, ” as 
 he says his eyes are opened to the infernal system, as he calls it, that wont 
 allow hard-working folk to fcuy a bit of meat on Saturday neet. May be, 
 Maister Quill, tliou’lt second it. 
 
 Quill.—I tell you what, Robin, you may depend upon it that all those 
 things are better left to the management of the monied classes. A good 
 petition, founded on a sensible resolution, setting forth the prevailing dis¬ 
 tress, will have much move effect on the Government than all your ridicu¬ 
 lous and absurd propositions about “ protection for labour.” Hasn’t Mr 
 Smith clearly poiuted out to you that his situation is just as pitiable as 
 yours; and shown you that in the long run the grievances of the people 
 must ultimately fall upon the shoulders of their superiors ? 
 
 Robin.—That’s what I’m hearing every year. It’s all alike: untL 
 something pinches themselves, they care nowt far the condition of the 
 xvorking classes; and then when they meet, it’s all to “PROTECT” them¬ 
 selves from the burthen! But I’ll [ell thee what, Maister Quill; who are 
 they to petition ? 
 
 Quill.—Why, Sir Robert Peel and the House of Commons, to be sure. 
 
 Robin.—’Ecod, but Peel and them folk will have enough to do to get 
 taxes now ! and its hard to think that folk that wouldn't hear poor people 
 telling (heir own distress will give owt for others to make a story for them ! 
 Bless my life; don’t I remember what all them landlords and capitalists 
 said when Maister Ferrand axed them for £1,000,000 for poor folk ? and, 
 ’ecod, £1,000,000 will be nowt amongst them all, shortly. 
 
26 
 
 Quill.—Well but, Robin, tbe case is different when Mr. Ferrand asks 
 for a grant of £1,000,000, and when the capitalists petition for relief. 
 
 Robin.—What’s the difference, Maister Quill ? Doesn’t see that ma¬ 
 chinery has enabled its owners to collect most of the money in the country 
 into their own hands ? and, ’ecod, Peel has but to look out for the scra¬ 
 pings wherever lie can catch them. Time was, Maister Quill, when Govern¬ 
 ment had the cream and folks had the milk between them; but them there 
 flying devils and cast-iron men have lapped up all the cream and left the 
 Government only the skim milk, and the licking of the pan for poor 
 folk. I’ll tell ’you what, Maister Quill, you told me to look at all the 
 churches, and all the improvements that machinery had made lor Devil’s 
 Dust: and, ’ecod, when panic comes they’ll none of them put a bit on the 
 poor man’s platter! Then where’s all your great boast about the “ cheap¬ 
 ness’’produced by machinery ? 
 
 Quill.—Well but, surely, Robin, under any circumstances, it would be 
 better to have things “ cheap ” than “ dear ?” 
 
 Robin.—Maister Quill, that’s another piece of wisdom we have long 
 heard of; and when you complains of demagogues and philosophers, and 
 will hear nowt that they say, we must come to common sense, and common 
 reason, and ask you what you mean by “ cheap ” and “ dear ?” 
 
 Quill.—Now, Robin, you speak like a man ol sense. 
 
 Robin.—Wait till you hear what I’ve to say. Well then, I remembers 
 eighty years. I remembers all the years that things were “ dear,” and all 
 the years that things were " cheap.” And, Maister Quill, in the “ dear ” 
 years! could get the" dear” food, and “ dear” cloth, and “ dear" every thing, 
 and have more money at the end of the week than I had when all things were 
 “cheap.” I remembers when the quartern loaf was two shillings in Devil's 
 Dust; and, ’ecod, “dear” as it was, poor folk could have it. Now it’s 
 sixpence; and, ’ecod, it’s a scramble, and agod-send to get it. 
 
 Quill.—How do you account for that, Robin ? 
 
 Robin.—Account for it ? why can’t thou account for it ? Doesn’t see 
 that while every thing is being “ cheapened,” labour has been made cheapest 
 of all; and, ’ecod, thou’st made it so cheap, that thou must give folk sum- 
 mat to eat to tempt ’em to take it loike. So thou giv’st their labour to 
 foreigners to tempt them to take it at all. 
 
 Quill.—Well but, Robin, don’t you see its not fair to ascribe all these 
 evils to machinery ? Machinery and its blessings arc, asitwetc, but half 
 developed. Restrictions, as I may say, of which those upon human food 
 are the most barbarous, sit as an incubus, nay, press as a night-mare, on 
 the breast of machinery, and withhold all those benefits, which would other¬ 
 wise freely flow from it, from the working classes. Once unshackle industry 
 and untrammel trade, by allowing the produce of English labour to be 
 exchanged with those who would give us food in return, and then— 
 
 Robin.—Ecod, and then we’d he worse off than ever! What would’st ’ta 
 call Free-trade, Maister Quill ? Why, it’s free enough to have turned the 
 little village of Devil’s Dust into a great city, to send two members to 
 Parliament ! And hasn’t seen mill piled on mill, and house on house, one 
 after ’tother; and hasn’t every additional mill been a bit of “extension,” 
 as they call it? and don’t I tell thee that every “extension” has been fol¬ 
 lowed by a reduction of wages ? Well then, here’s a question, Maister 
 Quill: if the end of all them “extensions” has been a bigger reduction in 
 wage, can’st tell me how much reduction the great “ extension” of ail would 
 bring about? Why, Good God of heaven, just look at all them there 
 Indians, and them there Chinese, that folk tell us is nigh hand one half 
 the world; and see how soon them there flying devils has completed all 
 
27 
 
 orders from those parts. Aye, aye, Maister Quill; you say trade with 
 those who would give US food in return. Bcod, it’s Mr. Smith and the 
 cotton lords that would get the “ food in returnand, if we may judge by 
 the past, we might see big warehouses full of wheat at one sided of the 
 street, and warehouses full of cloth and calico at 'tother side and those that 
 made the one that bought the oilier walking naked and hungry between 
 both! 
 
 Smith.—Pooh, pooh, Robin; you talk nonsense. How is it possible 
 that masters would he so dead to their own interest as not to exchange the 
 wheat that they got in return for produce, for labour to produce more ? Not 
 hut I admit, Robin, that you have considerably staggered my notion in. 
 favour of a free-trade in corn. 
 
 Robin.—Yea, Mr. Smith, you’d exchange it sure enough, hut then you’d 
 exchange all: you’d he maister of the wage of labour and the price of 
 wheat; and you’d tell the labourer that competition compelled you to give his 
 produce so " cheap,” and competition' for corn made you buy it so “ dear,” 
 that you have to get Chambers, and Chadwick, and Muggeridge, and 
 Jemmy Graham, and Johnny Russell, and that there damned ould fooil, 
 ould Brougham, and that there ould woman, Joey Hume, and Frankey 
 Place, with two or three doctors, to draw outa table with figures that would 
 reach from here to York, shewing the amount of food that folk could live on 
 and work, and how " low lining'' and "frugality" was good for health ! and 
 how good living led to dissipation and idleness, and brought bastards! We 
 should have cart-loads of books, and waggon-loads of“ reports” fronf commit¬ 
 tees of capitalists and commissioners o! bankers and cotton lords!—new-fan¬ 
 gled stuff, and coroners’ inquests, telling us the length of poor folks’, guts, 
 and how much bind poor folk owt to have, and all kind of stuff, as if poor folk 
 hadn’t as many guts as rich folk, and wern’t made like ’em ! Why damn it, 
 Maister Quill- 
 
 Quill—Hold, hold, Robin; swearing is no argument. 
 
 Robin.—It’s enough to make folks swear to sec the way poor folk is talked 
 about, and wrote about,, and treated now-a-days; and to see Maister Smith 
 and his sort, and thee and thy sort, supporting newspapers by advertising to 
 get £4 or £3 per cent, for “ thy” money, and covering the walls with specu¬ 
 lations and prosucetuses as to how thou might make more of it; and boast-- 
 ing that in ten 'years thou’st invested as much “ brass” in one damned 
 speculation and another as would pay the interest of the national debt; and 
 then leaving poor folk to pay the debt after all ! ’Ecod, Maister Quill, I tell 
 thee what; thou may’st bring down all the books in thy shop and read them 
 all, and tlioul’t never convince the working people that the laws are just that 
 allow thee and the capitalist to do these things, and leaves the poor to starve. 
 And I’ll tell thee more too; that whatever price free trade allows the 
 master to purchase corn at, no law that thou can make will ever regulate the 
 price of the loaf that comes on the poor man’s table. And I tell thee more 
 than that too, that landlords alone will have to pay taxes and the interest on 
 the national debt, unless they look about. 
 
 Quill,—Aye, aye, that’s it. The landlords are the men ! Hare at them ! 
 They must enable the working classes to live. 
 
 Robin.—Ecod, but not by “ cheap” bread, though. 
 
 Quill.—What then, Robin ? 
 
 Robin.—Why, good wage to be sure Let them work on the land, and 
 then they wont cave what price bread is. They’ll have it out of their own 
 sweat—and “ dearer” and better. They’ll eat enough; and get more for 
 surplus, and be good customers in the manufacturing market. 
 
 Quill.—What, Robin; then you are opposed to machinery altogether ? 
 
 Robin.—Noa, nowt of the sort! I remembers reading after Cobden, when 
 
•28 
 
 he was at Bradford, and he axed a Hand-loom Weaver that opposed him if 
 lie was against machinery P The poor man’s name was BiUterworth, and his 
 answer was : “ Noa, Mr. Cohden ; I am not opposed to machinery. You 
 may go to bed by machinery, and get up by machinery, and eat by 
 machinery, and drink by machinery, and put on your clothes by machinery; 
 aye, pick your teeth by machinery; if your machinery doesn't take my bed 
 from under me, the coat off my back, and the loaf off my table." Ecod, but 
 that was wisdom ! It was worth all the tons of tracts that ever was issued by 
 that skin-flint of a League. 
 
 Quill.—Well hut, Robin, why talk of tilling the land at home, when we 
 can get corn so much “ cheaper” from abroad ? Besides, you know that the 
 very best authorities tell us that the land of England does not produce, and 
 indeed is not capable of producing, enough of corn for the people ? 
 
 Robin.—There you go again, Maister Quill, with your “ better to get 
 ‘cheap’ corn from abroad, than grow it at home.” I say that the man that 
 grows it at home toill be able to have enough of it, independent of all laws 
 and restrictions; and he’ll be a better customer in the market with his sur¬ 
 plus, than all the Chinese and Indians and other folk in the world. And 
 it’s all gammon about England not being able to produce enough ! Why, 
 there’s nearly twice as many folk now in England as there was sixty years 
 ago; and there’s just as much land as when we had only a half of the popu¬ 
 lation ; and then I remember, some folk would talk that foolish stufl', that 
 England couldn’t feed them all. But now we see this very year, that the 
 same land is capable of supplying the whole population! Aye, Maister 
 Quill, and if we had four times the population we have, we’d find that the 
 land would produce six times as much as it docs now. 
 
 Smith.—Well but, Robin, how would you make the land produce more P 
 Surely men that expend their capital in land arc more conversant with the 
 subject than you are; and they make it produce as much as it can ? 
 
 Robin.—Nay, nay, Maister Smith ; let the population " press on the 
 landthen folk will begin to see that the land was of no value till labour 
 was applied to it; and if labour was applied to it, thou would not find it so 
 easy to make £90,000 of thy £20,000 in fifteen years, as thou didst when 
 thy cast-iron men and wooden women, and wire children, “ pressed hardly 
 on the means of subsistence.” 
 
 Smith.—Well, Robin, you appear to wish to check honourable speculation 
 altogether. 
 
 Robin.—Nay, Maister Smith, not so; but I’d stop that speculation that 
 allows the few to put the money that belongs to all into their pockets, and 
 compels the many to starve, or petition Parliament for relief; or to ax the 
 Queen to write a begging letter to Parson Barebones to beg for charity to 
 keep them alive that keeps her, and feed that German husband of her’s, and 
 all them young half-German princes and princesses. And now, Maister 
 Quill, dost think thy father ever remembers the lime in Devil’s Dust when 
 maister and men wrought together, that maisters were buying land and 
 spending in speculations; while the King was begging, and Parson Flower 
 preaching charity sermons for poor folk ? Aye, Maister Qmll, we had no 
 Town-Hall then, sure enough, because folk didn’t want to do what Bess’s 
 old Poor Law did for them ! And then thou talkest of “ dissipation,” and 
 improvidence," and “ discontent” of the working classes. I’ll tell thee what, 
 Maister Quill: just thou get Peel and the Government to shut up the gin 
 palaces, public-houses, and beer-shops, and see where the National Debt 
 will go to ! and see where the sailors’ pay, and the soldiers’ pay, and the 
 pensioners’ pay; aye, ’ecod, and the Queen’s pay, too, will come from ! 
 Why, bless my old life, talk of “dissipation !" don’t I live down there in 
 
29 
 
 West-street, between a mall that sells penny publications that folk can only 
 buy on Sunday, and a big public-house; and isn’t my brain addled on 
 Sunday neet with drunken folk in the public-house, while Maister Smith 
 and the bench of magistrates fines the poor devil that sells penny tracts on 
 Sunday, to try and get a living ? Who makes them “ dissipated,” Maister 
 Quill ? Why its the Government that lives on them, and the maisters that 
 encourage them; and I’ll be bound for it, thatbefore machinery came to Devil’s 
 Dust, thy faither never saw “ Jolly Sailors” open after nine o’clock on any 
 neet in the week and never on Sunday. Nay, if poor old Maister Grudge, that 
 keptitfor fifty years, allowed a lad to drink, or a man to get drunkthere, Bumble, 
 the beadle, would be at him, and parson Flower would be about his ears. And 
 then about the “ discontent;” I’ve seen famine, or nearly like it; I’ve seen 
 when thy faither and I were put to shifts to get a bit for the children; and 
 we warn’t “ discontented ” then; for it ions all famine alike. It came from 
 God, then, Maister Quill; and it came on all without distinction. King 
 would come down something, aud Duke come down something, and Lord 
 of the Manor, and Squire; but no begging letters; no praying for the poor 
 alone, but praying to avert the famine from all. And then parson Flower 
 knew what every man in the parish had to spare. He was book-keeper, like; 
 and many’s the neet, Maister Quill, I, and my wife and children went to bed 
 without supper; and we thanked God we had dinner, and we blest God, and 
 blest the King, and blest parson Flower, and blest the laws too : we wern’t 
 “ discontented” then, Maister Quill: but now I see poor folk working four¬ 
 teen hours a day, skulking down the lanes wi’out stockings, and lying a bed a 
 Sundays, and cursing, and damning, and blaspheming at the laws that lets 
 the rich grind the faces of the poor. They sees one set of folk rich and 
 happy, and with plenty every day in the year; in " good harvest,” and 
 “ bad harvest; mi' “ good trade” and " bad trade; AND the famine is 
 ALWAYS ON FOLK THAT MAR'S THEM RICH AND FAT. So tllOU Seest, Mais- 
 ter Quill, it would be a strange thing if poor folk were otherwise than “dissi¬ 
 pated ” and "discontented.” 
 
 Quill.—Yes but, Robin, I tell you it’s all a consequence of their “ impro¬ 
 vidence ;’’ they might be better off. 
 
 Robin.—I’ll try that with thee, Maister Quill. It’s always very easy to 
 lay the burden on poor folk's shoulders. “ One man may steal a horse, 
 while another must not look over the wall.” And now, Maister Quill, just 
 see here. I’ll take poor folk, and thou shall take rich folk; and let’s see 
 whether rich folk is so “provident” and “careful.” Now, let’s begin with a 
 lump ; rich folk owe a national debt of near eight hundred millions of 
 money! The Queen, they say, is cutting down her establishment because 
 she’s in debt. Working folk had to pay the Duke ofYork’s debts. The 
 
 King of Belgium left poor folk to pay his debts. The Duke of D- 
 
 owes two millions. My God ! and all the poor folk together only axed for 
 
 half that to carry them over the bad season ! Marquis of A-owes a 
 
 million and a half. Lord C-owes two millions. The Lord of the 
 
 Manor here has sold off “ Shoddy Hall,” and “ Twist Castle,” and a whole 
 parish, to pay the interest of his debts. In short, they owes among them 
 four thousand millions to the Jews; and then they talk of poor folk being 
 “ improvident!” ’Ecod, when they set about building a bouse they mort¬ 
 gage the walls to put the roof on ! Aud then see how folk compound and 
 begin again; but poor folk man always pay twenty shillings m the 
 pound! Now, Maister Quill, have I proved that folk were better off befove 
 machinery come to Devil’s Dust ? ( Loud shouts without.) 
 
 Smith and Quill ( speaking together.) What’s that? What noise is 
 
30 
 
 that ? (Procession passes with bands and banners; on the first flag, "Pro¬ 
 cession of the Unemployed.") 
 
 Smith.—0 ! it’s only a muster of the damned tag-rag-aud-bob-tail 
 Chartists. 
 
 Robin.—(Standing at the window.) ’Ecod, all folks are Chartists when 
 they are hungry: but Isee many a score, and many a hundred too, among 
 them that never before was known as Chartists. (Shouts of, “ To the Town- 
 hall !” “Down with the Bastile !” “Bread or blood !”) 
 
 Quill.—Do you hear that, Robin ? They are calling for bread. 
 
 Robin.—Ay, but not for “cheap” bread, Maister Quill. Sec that there 
 flag, “ Down with the League !" See ’tother, “ More pigs and less 
 parsons." ’Ecod, I hope Parson Barebones will see that. See here, 
 Maister Smith, coom and look. 
 
 Smith.—Nay, Robin, I don’t wish to he seen. 
 
 Robin.—’Ecod, hut here! here's all the men that's worked for thee 
 passing now: coom and see. 
 
 Smith—No, thank ye, Robin ; I’d rather not. 
 
 Robin.—Ah, there it is, Maister Quill; in them times, before machinery 
 washere, the maister was never ashamed or afraid to look his men in the face! 
 
 Smith.—Aye, Robin ; hut it is the men that have grown “ impatient” 
 and insolent now-a-days. They can’t have been hungry longer than since 
 Saturday last, and they're crying out already. 
 
 Robin.—’Ecod, Maister Smith, in former times, if it were not a down¬ 
 right famine, we could stand a quarter or more before we’d complain, because 
 we hadsummat laid up; hut now folk cry out when they are hunary, for 
 hunger comes slap on them. They can’t wait. See here, Maister Quill, 
 “ Down with the bastile." “Equal rights." Fair day’s wage for a fair 
 day's work." “Annual Parliaments." " Universal Suffrage.” Vote by 
 Ballot." “ Equal representation." “ No property qualification," and 
 “ Payment of members." 
 
 “THE CHARTER IS OUR BIRTHRIGHT 
 
 “ Well die or have it." 
 
 Smith.—Yes, yes ; I was right, they’re Chartists, never satisfied. 
 
 Robin.—’Ecod, then it was machinery that made thorn Chartists, as well 
 as made the churches, the banks, and the bastile. (Shouts of “ To the 
 Town Thill /”) 
 
 Smith.—Robin, will you accompany us? 
 
 Robin.—Thankee, Maister Smith, I’m over old to make my way through 
 a crowd now ; hut you and Maister Quill can go down. 
 
 Quill.—No, I certainly shan’t. I’ve nothing-' to do with it. 
 
 Smith.—I thought it was to be a meeting of landed proprietors and rate- 
 
 Pa Robin. —’Ecod, and so it is; the folks there ought to be the proprietors, 
 as they are the rate-payers: so coom and hear what they have 1 to say, 
 Maister Smith. 
 
 Smith.—Como, then, Robin, if you’ll go I’ll go. Take my arm, Robin. 
 
 Robin.—Nay, ’Ecod. That would never do, Maister Smith, ’Ecod, 
 they’d hiss me; or happen hustle me. 
 
 Smith.—Well, Jackson, give me your arm. 
 
 . Jackson.—Thankee, sir; I’m too shabby. [Quill bolls.) 
 
31 
 
 Smith.—Good God! am I to he left here alone ? Jackson; my good 
 friend, Jackson, you were always an honest man; will you stay and take 
 care of me ? 
 
 Jackson.—Yes, Mr. Smith, I’ll stay and take care of ye. Now I trust 
 that you’ll see and understand that the working classes, howsoever oppressed, 
 never cherish vengeance in their breasts, or with-hold protection, when 
 called for, even from those who oppress them. 
 
 Smith.—I thank you, Jackson. Do you think they’ll come back ? Do 
 you think they saw me ? 
 
 Robin—Farewell, Maister Smith. A clear conscience is the best pro¬ 
 perty that a man can possess, and the best safeguard against all the dangers' 
 that threaten. I have nowt to fear: so I’ll go and face my townsmen. 
 (Shouts without of “ Old Robin,” “ honest Robin” “three cheers for 
 Robin’’ “take care of Robin," “ don’t press him," “ carry him on your 
 shoulders," “ put Robin in a chair,” “ he’sjitiesl to preside,” “ no cotton 
 lord,” “ no Free Trader,” “ three cheers for Robin,") 
 
 Jackson.—Mr. Smith, do you think old Robin would change places with 
 you now, and take “ Shoddy Hall” into the bargain ? 
 
 Dialogue bet touch Smith and Jackson resumed at “ Shoddy Hall,” by spe¬ 
 cial desire of Mr, Smith.—tackson is announced and shewn into Mr. 
 Smith's study, at one end of which is suspended a map of Shoddy Hall, 
 the property of J. Howard Percy Smith, Esq., and, orer the chimney- 
 piece at the other end, the armorial bearings of the Smiths, with a pedi¬ 
 gree underneath, proving their descent from Belled Will Howard in the 
 male, and Him Percy, sixth cousin to the second Duke of Northumber¬ 
 land, in the female line. 
 
 Smith.—Have you wiped your shoes, Jackson ? 
 
 Jackson.—Yes, sir, I have wiped them. 
 
 Smith.—0, that’s right. 'Ibis is a Turkey carpet; it cost me eighty 
 guineas, and the least footmark discolours it. 
 
 Jackson (aside, with a sigh).—- 0, my £500 ! 
 
 Smith.—Now, Jackson, sit down, and let us hear what you have to say 
 upon the subject of machinery, for, to tell you the truth, that old Robin has 
 awakened such curious thoughts in my head, that I am staggered like upon 
 the subject. He’s an astonishing man for his age, that old Robin. 
 
 Jackson.—He is so, sir. But I am told he spoke like a lad at the meeting 
 last night. 
 
 Smith.—Aye, by the bye, about the meeting ; what was done there ? 
 Any resolution ? 
 
 Jackson.—Yes, sir. Your cousin, Mr. Smith, the grocer— 
 
 Smith.—Pooh, pooh, that’s all a mistake; lie’s no cousin of mine. Jack- 
 son—lie’s merely of the name, and there are so many Smiths, hut very few 
 from the old stock of the Howards and Percys. 
 
 Jackson.—0,1 beg your pardon, sir. .Smith, the grocer then, moved a 
 resolution in favour of free trade, as the only means of averting the impend¬ 
 ing and existing distress of the country. 
 
 Smith.—Well, and was it carried ? 
 
32 
 
 Jackson.—No, sir; Samuel Bowyers, a shoemaker, moved an amendment. 
 /1 have a copy of it here; I’ll read it for you :—“ Resolved, that we, the 
 working classes and shopkeepers of the borough of Devil’s Dust, in public 
 meeting assembled, having long suffered the most galling privations, whilst all 
 other classes are daily accumulating wealth from our industry, for which they 
 find it difficult to procure an outlet, and believing the unrestricted use ol 
 machinery, as a substitute for manual labour, to have mainly led to this 
 unjust inequality, whereby the employer becomes rich, as il by magic, in 
 spite of opposing obstacles, whether they arise from natural or artificial causes 
 —from bad harvests or fluctuations in trade, from a scarcity or an abundance 
 of circulating medium in the country—while the condition of the employed 
 becomes correspondingly deteriorated, good trade, plentiful harvests, and a 
 surplus of the circulating medium having a tendency to increase rather than 
 to diminish their poverty; and that in order to correct this unnatural state 
 of things, this meeting is determined never to relax in its exertions until the 
 people’s Charter becomes the law, whereby the land of this country may, hy 
 a proper, just, and equitable distribution, be made subservient to the wants 
 of' society at large, instead of seeing it barren and unproductive, while those 
 labourers who could make it rich and fertile are desired to look to other 
 countries for a sulliciency of food, or to emigrate to foreign climes in search 
 of the means of existence, which they are denied in the land of their birth. 
 / Smith.—Good God, Jackson, who seconded that ? 
 
 Jackson.—Mr. Sparerib, the butcher, sir. 
 
 Smith.—And was it earned ? 
 
 Jackson.—Yes, sir. Old Robin tells me that only five hands, in a crowded 
 Hall, were held up against it. 
 
 Smith.—Well but, Jackson, what do they mean by the distribution ol 
 land ? Do they mean to take it themselves, and pay no rent for it ? 
 
 Jackson.—No, sir, they mean no such thing. What they mean is, that, 
 
 - having lost all controul over the labour market in its present artificial state, 
 they are determined to have recourse to a more just system, whereby those 
 who are displaced by machinery shall cease to be a competitive reserve for 
 the masters to fall back upon, as a means of keeping down wages to the mere 
 existence point. 
 
 Smith.—Well, but do you mean to say that all the machinery in the 
 country is to be destroyed, or allowed to remain idle ? 
 
 Jackson—No, sir, I do not; but I mean that those who are not able to 
 withstand that competitive system amongst the masters, in obedience to 
 which you have before told me they must look to reduced wages to make up 
 profit, and keep themselves safe even in bad times, may have some better 
 channel open for their industry than that of “cracking” stones and picking 
 oakum, in a prison dress, and under the eye of a hard-hearted gaoler! 
 
 Smith.—Well but, Jackson, what will become of the trade ol the country? 
 Where would the masters get hands? 
 
 Jackson.—In abundance, sir; but they should hire them in the cottage 
 or the homestead, instead of in the cellar or the bastile. The. people are 
 beginning to think, sir, that the man gets a better price for his pig if the 
 butcher comes to the stye to look after him than if he takes the pig to the 
 butcher to buy him, because he is necessitated to sell it. 
 
 Smith.—Well but, now, Jackson, what has all this to do with the question 
 of machinery? Iam not so dogged in my own pre-conceived notions as 
 not to be accessible to reason ; neither have I been an inattentive listener 
 in our previous discussions upon the subject; and if you have anything 
 really to urge against machinery, and your reasoning is sound, I shall 
 unhesitatingly confess my conversion. 
 
Jackson.—Sir, independently of what Robin has already said upon the 
 general topic, and apart from what I may yet say, you yourself have, though 
 perhaps unconsciously, urged so many weighty arguments against it, that I 
 think I shall only be called upon to lurmsh you with an analysis of your 
 own reasoning to bring you to a different conclusion. 
 
 Smith.—What have I urged against machinery ? Why I have been all 
 along pleading for machinery, and arguing that the causes of its unjust 
 unpopularity arise from the “ improvidence," “ dissipation," and “ vicious¬ 
 ness” of the working classes themselves. 
 
 Jackson.—That’s just the point, sir, and I am happy to have the admis¬ 
 sion ; and I undertake to prove that what you call causes are effects: that' 
 is, that machinery is the cause, and “ improvidence," “ dissipation,” “ vice,” 
 and " immorality,” are the effects. 
 
 Smith.—Jackson, let me repeat what I have previously said, and which 
 I think embodies my opinions upon the general question; what I said was 
 this 
 
 “ The thing which governs them is the general supply of hands—the supply according to 
 the demand. There is a certain quantity of work to he done here and elsewhere, and a 
 certain quantity of hands to do it. If there be much work, and comparatively few hands, 
 wages will rise; if little work, and an excess of hands, wages will fall. Without any 
 mutual arrangement, the manufacturers come to an uniformity of wages. Indeed it is 
 not the masters, hut the labourers, wlio settle the rate of wages. They settle it by com¬ 
 peting against each other. In the same way that manufacturers compete against one 
 another, so do the labouring classes compete against one another. All find it neccssaiy 
 to work, in order to live; and to get work, they accept of what wages are to be had. If 
 they, however, hear that higher wages are going elsewhere, they carry their labour 
 thither. They there compete with those who arc already settled, and perhaps bring 
 down wages to a lower level. Thus, without any mutual understanding among either 
 masters or men, hut just by a universal competition, wages get settled down at particular 
 
 Jackson.—Very well, sir, I understand you perfectly. Your proposition 
 involves three distinct considerations; namely, the governing power that 
 you ascribe to machinery; the means of correcting the evil effects that you 
 admit; and the result which must naturally flow from that correction. 
 You must admit, sir, that when the population of a whole country becomes 
 deficient in those moral excellencies which all nations, under good laws and 
 fostering government, are capable of attaining, and when immorality 
 becomes the rule, instead of the exception, of the national character (for 
 you have been unreserved and sweeping in your strictures upon the 
 working classes), I say in such case you must admit that there is a deep- 
 seated evil resting somewhere; an evil which has originated with machinery, 
 grown with its growth, and strengthened with its strength. 
 
 Smith.—Well hut, Jackson, this is all assertion. 
 
 Jackson.—It may be so, sir, hut it is assertion founded upon your own 
 admissions, and, as I shall prove, upon an incontrovertible basis. When 
 you admit that masters’ profits, and their protection against fluctuations in 
 trade, are made up by reductions in wages, and when machinery alouc en¬ 
 ables them to take this undue advantage of their hands, what other conclu¬ 
 sion can he come to, than that the working classes should consider this 
 governing power as their greatest enemy ? And what more legitimate than 
 that they should seek, by combination or otherwise, to destroy its effects; 
 and what more natural than to seek another channel for their industry, over 
 which the same anomalous power can have no controul ? 
 
 Smith.—Jackson, I tell you that in the present depraved state of the 
 working classes no controul or power can emanate from their body that must 
 not have a prejudicial effect upon their order. 
 
 Jackson.—Mr. Smith, men are born with propensities, which may be 
 
34 
 
 nourished into virtues or thwarted into vices, according to the training in 
 infancy, the education in childhood, and the treatment practised towards 
 them in manhood. 
 
 Smith.—Well hut, Jackson, that’s the very thing that I complain of. 
 Look at children now-a-days. The mother doesn’t care for them. The 
 father neglects them. They are wholly uneducated, and the gin-palace, 
 the brothel, or the workhouse, is their first introduction into society. 
 
 Jackson.—I thank you for saying “ now-a-days,” because I am arguing 
 that the governing powers, machinery the principal, are—" now-a-days” the 
 cause of the social evils. And the fact that it was not so in England in 
 olden times, when parents had the bringing up and controul of their fami¬ 
 lies, is proof that some new agency has wrought the change. And now, 
 sir, let me state my principal objections to the unrestricted use of machinery. 
 First, it places man m an artificial state, over which the best workman, the 
 wisest man and most moral person, has no controul. Secondly, while it 
 leads to the almost certain fortune of those who have capital in sufficient 
 amount to command those profits, made up, as you admit, by the reduction 
 of wages; upon the other hand, it leads to uncertainty in the condition of 
 the employed, against which he is incapable of contending. Thirdly, it dis¬ 
 arranges all the social machinery of which formerly individuals were neces¬ 
 sary items, families formed branches, and small rural districts important 
 sections of the one great whole. Fourthly, the present fluctuations give 
 rise, in good trade, to an augmentation of artificial classes, if I may so call 
 them, who have no natural position in society, hut are merely called into ex¬ 
 istence by present appearances, trade upon nothing, traffic in fiction, and, 
 like your order, speculate upon what they may retire upon when trade be¬ 
 gins to flag. Hence we find each fluctuation in trade followed by a new 
 face of shopkeepers, who are grasping in prosperity, compound when ap¬ 
 pearances change, and retire when adversity comes, leaving a vacuum to be 
 _filled up by the next alternation from panic to speculation. 
 
 Smith.—Well but, Jackson, surely you wouldn’t put restraint upon any 
 branch of commerce ? 
 
 Jackson.—Yes, Mr. Smith, I certainly would impose some restraint upon 
 that branch of commerce which enables masters to make up their losses in 
 other speculations by a reduction of wages; and I would also apply some 
 wholesome regulations to those speculations which deprive the infant of the 
 mother’s fostering care, and the child of proper education, by depriving the 
 parents of the power of conferring both the one and the other. 
 
 Smith.—Well, Jackson, how docs machinery deprive you of that power P 
 
 Jackson.—I’ll tell you, sir. I have been working for you for fif¬ 
 teen years, and during that period I have been one-sixth of the whole 
 time, or two years and a half, out of employment; while I have been com¬ 
 pelled to submit to reduction after reduction, or to merge into the idle 
 reserve. _ If there was a bad market or two in Devil’s Dust, Squint, your 
 overlooker, would come to us on Saturday night, and tell us how the mill 
 must close, if we didn’t consent to this reduction, and that reduction, and 
 the other ieduction. Sometimes it would be three per cent., sometimes 
 four per cent., sometimes live per cent., and so on, till in '42 there was 
 twelve per cent. These reductions would be always made upon the very 
 first appearance of slackness, and then, when the India market and the 
 China market were opened, and home trade became brisk, and we asked 
 for an advance, we were told that since the first reduction the masters bad 
 been losing, and that we were only employed upon charity, and that losses 
 for bad years must he pulled up out of the improvement. Well, we thought 
 that, even if our produce was warehoused, our losses and reductions 
 
35 
 
 should he made up as well as those of the masters; and when wo' met Mr. 
 Squint upon the subject, he told us that we might go to the devil, for Smith 
 and Co. had not good men that wouldn’t he always grumbling to do the 
 work of a score; that the machinery was all “ double-decked,” and that 
 spindle after spindle was to he worked by “ mules,” and that the strong 
 man that could do the work of two, with a hoy to help him, would only he 
 required to manage each, and that they would have to pay for the boy. 
 Well, what could we do ? We had families and couldn’t let them starve; 
 and so we were obliged to work on at any price that was offered ; and we 
 were too poor to support the surplus created by machinery, and so, as you - 
 observe, they became a competitive power; and when the good trade came 
 again, there was the machinery already to work, with the least possible 
 attendance, and then, when there would have been otherwise work for all 
 to supply the temporary demand, machinery competed acrainst us. 
 
 Smith.—Well but, Jackson, I assure you, upon my word and honour, 
 conscientiously, and as a country gentleman, that for some years previous 
 to '42 the masters were losing. 
 
 Jackson.—Mr. Smith, I don’t wish to contradict you, hut I beg leave to 
 differ with you upon the meaning of the term. If by losing, you mean that 
 you couldn't calculate your profit so nicely after every market-day, I may 
 agree with you ; hut, taking things in the lump, I think present appearances 
 fully justify me in coining to the conclusion that you have taken pretty good 
 caie of yourselves, and that you so managed matters, as, upon the balance 
 of the whole account, not to he losers. 
 
 Smith.—Well but, Jackson, you must not argue the case from my posi- 
 
 Jaekson.—Mo, sir, I wont. I will argue it from the general condition of 
 the master-class, and then what do I find ? Why, that immediately after 
 confidence is restored, and trade becomes good, the masters are enabled to 
 abstract nearly two hundred millions of money from trade, mind, from trade, 
 Mr. Smith, still preserving stock and capital; and to invest that sum in rail¬ 
 roads, building, mining, purchase of land, and all sorts of other speculations. 
 
 Smith.—0 but, Jackson, you are in error! The masters alone have not 
 been the parties who invested that amount in speculations. All other classes 
 have had a share in them. 
 
 Jackson.—Pardon me, Mr. Smith, the labouring class, that created all, 
 have had no share in them ; so that you see your had markets led to reduc¬ 
 tions against which we couldn’t contend, and improved machinery compelled 
 us to submit to a continuance of those reductions when trade revived. 
 
 Smith.—Well, Jackson, I confess there’s much sound reason in your 
 arguments. I have known very many large masters whose dissipation and 
 expensive families I thought must ruin them, and yet, wonderful to say, 
 they have become rich. Yes, indeed, I am sure I have been often shocked 
 when business has driven me to meet a customer at any of the hotels, to see 
 the bar-parlour at all hours of the day and night filled with masters smoking 
 cigars, and drinking glass after glass of brandy and water; and as to Man¬ 
 chester, the dissipation there is beyond all conception. 
 
 Jackson —Well, Mr. Smith, you see, then, that dissipation is not con¬ 
 fined to the working classes, and that the dissipation of the masters neither 
 reduces them to starvation nor prevents them from educating and providing 
 for their families. So, sir, yon must naturally suppose that some portion of 
 the working classes would, if able, discharge their duties to their families. 
 And just see how machinery precludes the possibility of it. You have said, 
 sir, that women ought to be instructed in domestic pursuits. Indeed I 
 think I can repeat your words; they were very forcible, you said— 
 
Along with this species of instruction, it would be of the utmost importance to teach 
 females many useful arts; In particular those which bear on domestic economy—cookery, 
 cleanlinrss, needlework, and the rearing of children. To bring up children with good 
 habits is in itself a matter demanding the most careful attention of parents. 
 
 Now, sir, I fully agree with those sentiments; hut give me leave to ash yon 
 how, under the present system, women can discharge those domestic func¬ 
 tions ? How can they possibly devote their whole day to unnatural toil in a 
 cotton mill, and discharge their family duties P 
 
 Smith.—Jackson, that’s wrong—it’s very wrong. That’s a thing that 
 shouldn’t be allowed. 
 
 Jackson.—No, sir, it should not be allowed; but then if you admit the 
 value in after-life of early training under the mother’s watchful eye, and if 
 you deprive the rising offspring of that salutary protection, can you expect 
 any other result than those abominations of which you complain, and which 
 I deplore ? And is it not machinery that drives man from the labour market, 
 and enables the master to substitute the more pliant female, when she should 
 he attending to those domestic pursuits ? Is that, then, not a cause of dissi¬ 
 pation, and is it not an effect also of machinery ? Nay more, sir, you have 
 condemned early marriages, but what can be more likely to lead to them 
 than displacing man from his natural position and placing woman in his 
 situation ? If young men may be brought to philosophize upon the evils of 
 early marriage, as you would wish them, you cannot bring young females, 
 with hot hlood in their veins, to calculate so nicely. And being made 
 valuable in the market, may it not happen that their wage, rather than their 
 affections, is the thing courted by the young man who has become a re¬ 
 luctant idler P 
 
 Smith.—Upon my word, Jackson, you astonish me ! Do you know that I 
 never gave those important subjects a thought before. 
 
 Jackson.—Well, sir, hence I shew you the impossibility of the mother 
 discharging those duties required nt her hands; and then see the injustice, 
 nay, the palpable indecency, of compelling old and young, male and female, 
 robust and weakly, to rise at the same hour, eat at the same hour, work 
 nearly the same hours, and only the same hours allowed to all for rest. 
 Now, sir, I am not an improvident man. No man ever saw me drunk. I 
 was never absent when I could get a day’s work. My wife worked in Grub’s 
 mill, and was obliged to pay a kind of step-nurse to take care of the children 
 while she was at work, and I have never been able to keep her at home, 
 never been able to spare wherewith to give my children education. Just as 
 I often hoped to do a little for them, we have been obliged to try and live 
 when we were idle, until we got employment again. And then, sir, nearly 
 every working man in England lives from hand to mouth, and are thereby 
 compelled to accept any terms that the masters choose to offer, and, as you see, 
 the working classes are not now able to stand one week unemployed; and yet 
 you wonder that hungry men, who are able and willing to work, should prefer 
 looking for some general remedy for all those grievances to starving lamely 
 while all above them have more than they know what to do with. 
 
 Smith.—Well, certainly, it is a most deplorable situation for the working 
 classes to be in, but why not look for free trade as a remedy, and open the 
 markets of the world to British industry ? Just see what an impetus the free 
 exportation of machinery has given to the mechanics’ trade ? And why not 
 give all other manufactures an equal chance. 
 
 Jackson.—Free trade is moonshine! Mr. Smith. Open all the pores 
 to-morrow, and by that day twelve-month machinery will have closed them, 
 and have blocked up every available avenue. The free exportation of ma¬ 
 chinery is but burning the candle at both ends. 'Ike law which allows 
 
37 
 
 free exportation of machinery is but young, and yet so great have been the / 
 improvements in manufacturing machinery by machinery, that the working / 
 mechanics are deprived of those advantages which would have otherwise I 
 flowed from the traffic. And you must also hear in mind, sir, that the ex¬ 
 tension of that trade is, day after day, limiting the great advantages which 
 British manufacturers anticipate from free trade. Surely, sir, you cannot be 
 ignorant of the progress that all the nations of the earth are making in the 
 art, and England cannot suppose that those foreign capitalists will tamely 
 submit to be ruined by cheap English produce. You must know full well 
 that the same influences produced here by a class, will be put m operation 
 by the same classes in other countries, and, further, that the influence of that' 
 class must he always greater in countries where land is cheap than where 
 land is dear P 
 
 Smith.—Then, Jackson, you don’t advocate a repeal of the Corn Laws ? 
 And do you know, that since I have had time to consider the subject, my 
 opinions upon that head have undergone great alteration. What will be 
 the effect of a repeal of the Corn Laws upon the land at home, Jackson P 
 
 Jackson.—Why, sir, a general stagnation of all pursuits. The landlords i 
 wouldn’t reduce rents until it was too late. The farmers wouldn’t employ I 
 labourers; and, as matter of course, the agricultural labourers would all ; 
 flock to the manufacturing market. There would be a general scramble, 
 and I think that, instead of shooting one another, or killing one another, 
 the working classes, operatives, and agriculturists would level every mill 
 in the country, and demand the land as the readiest means of subsistence. 
 
 Smith.—Good God, Jackson, is that really your opinion ? 
 
 Jackson.—It is, sir, my confirmed opinion; for, talk as you may and 
 reason as you will, you never can drive the belief out of the heads of the 
 people, that that which does their work, while they are starving, is their 
 greatest enemy ; and you’ll mark my words, sir, that before two years pass 
 over your head, Sir Robert Peel will be compelled to tell the fund-holders 
 that they must compound, because machinery consumes nothing, while 
 he cannot reach the profits made of it by the few. 
 
 Smith.—Well, Jackson, I hope if that time ever does come, that the 
 working classes will be forbearing, for certainly they have suffered great 
 hardships. 
 
 Jackson.—Yes, sir, I’ll warrant they’ll never kill or shoot each other when 
 that time comes. 
 
 Smith.—You see how necessary education would be, then, Jackson. 
 
 Jackson.—Yes, sir, and, while you talk of the want of it, and deplore 
 the existence of immorality, isn’t it shocking to contemplate that the English 
 Church establishment, whose principal duty it is to inculcate morality and 
 diffuse education, should receive annually the sum of £9,459,565, while 
 the people are taunted with ignorance and immorality. Tt is not wonderful, 
 sir, that the English people should be ignorant when their education costs 
 annually less than the support and education of the Queen’s horses! 
 
 Smith.—Jackson, I will once more repeat for you what I consider to be 
 the main causes of distress:— 
 
 “ I wilt speak candidly. I acknowledge, with great pain, there is a considerable amount 
 of destitution demanding compassion and alleviation. By a concurrence of causes, general 
 and particular, large numbers of the labouring population have got into a condition of 
 considerable embarrassment and suffering—from want of education, abandonment to bad 
 habits and loss of self-respect, perhaps natural incapacity to compete with more skilful 
 neighbours, also by fluctuations constantly increasing the mass of destitution in our large 
 towns. The misfortunes and imprudences of the higher order of workmen and the 
 mercantile classes, also cause much destitution, and swell the numbers of the unemployed. 
 
 It is very much owing to the offers of this unemployed and half-famishing body of 
 
38 
 
 individuals that wages are kept down or reduced. On the principle of “ better half a 
 loaf than no bread,” they will gladly take something below the current rate of payment. 
 Hence the vast crowds of poor needle-women who offer to make shirts at thrcc-haifpencc 
 each, of lads clamouring to be employed as apprentices, of wandering paupers who are 
 glad to work for the barest means of subsistence. You see that it in the mieutjiloi/eil who 
 determine the rate of wages. "Whether these unemployed be men dismissed in consequence 
 of a slackness of trade, or be new hands, the same result follows.” 
 
 Jackson.—Now, Mr. Smith, you have furnished me with a long list of 
 those causes which you admit lead to destitution, and can you point out one 
 single one that is not of an artificial nature, and created by an artificial 
 system? You would enforce them as charges against the working classes, 
 and denominate them causes ; while I contend that they are grievances which 
 they cannot resist, and are consequences ol causes over which they have no 
 controul at present, lint, sir, as you have admitted that a dependent sur¬ 
 plus, created either by had trade or improved machinery, is the great power 
 in the hands of the masters, and the greatest enemy of 'labour, I ask you, in 
 fairness and reason, according to the laws of nature, and the rules that govern 
 human transactions, even according to those self-protecting regulations by 
 which the masters make themselves sale against all contingencies, is it not 
 reasonable that the working classes should devote their undivided attention 
 to the means by which this surplus may be so provided for as to he taken 
 out of the bands of the masters ? 
 
 Smith —Well, Jackson, perhaps I may admit that, but then two questions 
 arise—first, as to how the evil is to be met; and, secondly, if correction is 
 practicable, by whom is it to be administered ? for you know the old 
 saying— 
 
 “ Better keep the ills we 1 avc, 
 
 Thau fly to those we know not of. 
 
 Jackson.—True, sir, blit can you paint a bell blacker than the present, eten 
 as depicted by yourself; lor you speak of men, whole classes indeed, receiving 
 from Jhi to £-j 10s. a week, being dissipated and wholly abandoned to vice; 
 indeed your words are— 
 
 So common, indeed, is it to sec men with moderate wages saving, and men with large 
 wages extravagant, that many persons have come to the conclusion that high wages prove 
 a curse more than a blessing. The curse, however, is brought on the workmen entirely 
 by themselves. 
 
 Now, sir, if I acquiesced in this sweeping charge, and absurd and ridicu¬ 
 lous conclusion, that high wages was rattier a curse than a blessing, we must 
 infer as a matter of course, that is, if vice is not hereditary, and the exclu¬ 
 sive patrimony of the working classes, that large fortunes also are a curse 
 rather than a blessing, and your reasoning would fully justify a recourse to 
 “equal distribution.” Then, as to the evil, sir—you admit it; and that the 
 people themselves are the only parries likely to correct it, must be inferred, 
 for this grievance does not come into that category of evils to which you 
 would apply any legal remedy; and, sir, to deal with this surplus, and to 
 make it available to national purposes, instead of to the interests of masters, 
 is now tile grand and all absorbing consideration with the working classes 
 themselves. And lienee you find all those sectional and mere class questions, 
 to which the consideration of the trades were confined, giving way to the 
 more sweeping combination by which they hope unitedly to master the evil. 
 The surplus of each craft is now pressing hardly upon the employed of its 
 class; and the very moment that the privations of that surplus, becoming 
 daily augmented, are insufferable, then, sir, will all the sections of labour 
 combine in one general struggle against their oppressors. This is the great 
 tendency of the age, sir; but the rules of your mill having denied me the 
 right to confederate for protection of my labour, I am not acquainted with 
 
30 
 
 the details of combination, the next branch of the subject to be argued—and. 
 as old Ilo.bin has been a leading man in all trades’ movements, perhaps you 
 will have no objection to hear what he has to say upon the general principle ? 
 
 Smith.—No, upon my honour, Jackson, I have not the slightest objection 
 to hear old Robin, for, as I said before, I think we ought to hear both sides 
 of the question ; and I really do see no good or sufficient reason why the 
 working classes should not combine to keep up wages as well as the masters 
 to keep up profits; especially when I remember reading in Chambers' 
 Journal, of 1833, that it was the opinion of the Messrs. Chambers, “ THAT 
 
 IT WAS NOT ONLY Till! INTEREST 01- THE WORKING MEN TO COMBINE, 
 BUT THAT IT IS A NATIONAL ADVANTAGE TO DO SO." 
 
 Jackson.—Good God, sir, you don’t mean to say that those ’were 
 Chambers’ words ? 
 
 Smith.—Yes, but indeed I do, for the convcrvation that I have had with 
 you and old Robin led me to a closer investigation of those matters, and I 
 have been since reading many admirable tracts in Chambers’ Journal upon, 
 the rights of labour, and the duty of the working men to combine. 
 
 Jackson.—Well, sir, you do astonish me. But it’s only another instance 
 of the many enemies that the people have to contend with. They nourish 
 many vipers in their breast to sting them, and, in spite of past warning, 
 they still go on, giving power and influence to their greatest foes, and look 
 coldly and suspiciously upon their best friends. 
 
 Smith.—Well, Jackson, I presume you have now closed your observations 
 upon machinery, and I shall be glad to see Robin whenever the old man 
 can toddle up to " Shoddy Hall,” or I’ll send my gig for him if he should 
 think it too far to walk. 
 
 Jackson.—Thank you, sir. And now, as the thread of our dialogue has 
 been somewhat broken, I beg to submit a summary of my objections to 
 machinery. Firstly, the application of inanimate power to the production 
 of the staple commodities of a country must inevitably depreciate the value 
 of manual labour; and every depreciation of the value of man’s labour in an 
 equal degree lowers the working-man in the scale of society, as well as in 
 his own esteem: thus making him a mere passive instrument, subservient to 
 any laws that the money classes may choose to inflict, to any rules the 
 owners may impose, and satisfied with a comparative state of existence. I 
 object to machinery, because, without reference to the great questions of de¬ 
 mand and supply, the masters can play with unconscious labour as they 
 please, and always deal themselves the trumps. I object to machinery, 
 because it may be multiplied to an extent whereby manual labour may be 
 rendered altogether valueless.' I object to machinery, because under its exist¬ 
 ing operation you admit the necessity of emigration, better ventilation, 
 education, improved morality, manners, habits, and customs of the working 
 classes, thereby showing that a state of recklessness, ignorance, want, and 
 depravity exists; which, as I before said, you admit to be consequences of 
 the present system. I object to machinery for this reason : Mr. Grab, in 
 Devil's Dust, employs 4,000 hands, and in 1841, after two bad markets, he 
 reduced the hands upon an average three shillings a week each; and he 
 has come lower since. And now observe, sir, the reduction that this one 
 master had the power to make, and that the hands had no power to resist, 
 gave him an annual sum of £31,200, without reference to any other 
 speculation; and for the three last years has given him £93,600—a sum 
 out of which those from whom it was plundered might have lived comfortably 
 through the present distress. All are alike; and if all do not employ 
 4,000 men, and cannot have an equal amount of profit upon individual 
 filching, each set of hands has its tyrant to deal with, and equally suffers 
 
40 
 
 from the infliction. I object to machinery from the injustice that it imposes, 
 even upon you, sir, in your present state. 
 
 Smith.—Upon me, Jackson ! How, how can machinery affect me 
 
 Jackson.—Why, sir, Grab, and the others that have squeezed the life’s 
 blood out of the poor, and that have coined infants’ sweat and marrow into 
 gold, now tell them to go to the land for support, and to look to the 
 poor-rates for subsistence. I object to machinery, because it leads to com¬ 
 mercial tarifl's and regulations in all tbe countries of the world, which affect 
 the price of my labour, and over which I have no control. I object to 
 machinery, because, although it cheapens produce, it cheapens labour so 
 much more, that I am less able with my earnings to buy the cheapened 
 produce. I object to machinery, because, while each improvement dimi¬ 
 nishes the value of my labour, the national debt, for the payment of which 
 that labour is pawned, increases in an inverse ratio; for every shilling 
 taken off my wages I have two additional to pay in support of this burthen. 
 I object to machinery, because it prostitutes man, and displaces him from 
 that exalted situation which nature designed him to occupy. Instead of 
 being the controller of his household, and the support of his wife and family, 
 he is as lumber in the corner, dependent upon the labour of his wife. Instead 
 of supporting his family when lie’s unemployed, the bit he eats from the 
 scanty meal of the children is grudged him, and from despair he either be¬ 
 takes himself to dissipation, which prematurely hurries him to the grave, or, 
 tired of existence, commits a crime to avoid the workhouse, which expatriates 
 him from his country. I object to machinery, because it has made one of 
 my children a dwarf and another a cripple. I object to machinery, because 
 it subverts all the rules of nature and nature’s God. With a seemly and 
 frugal life, tbe number of years promised to me is three-score and ten, and 
 how old would you take me to be, Mr. Smith ? 
 
 Smith.—Why, perhaps, turned of fifty, or handy on towards sixty. I’m 
 fifty, myself, and you look some years older. 
 
 Jackson.—Ah, sir, I am not yet thirty-four. I commenced with you at 
 nineteen; so you see, sir, what ravages that hard labour, which you tell me 
 is nothing to the toil of fox-hunting, lias made upon me; while all that 
 “ mental anxiety ” of which you complain still leaves you the gait and 
 appearance of manhood, aye, and even the blush of youth. I object to 
 machinery, because overlookers render themselves the more acceptable to 
 their employers by tyranny, coercion, lying, slander, hypocrisy, cruelty, 
 
 “ fines,” “ batings,” stoppages, and plunder of every sort. 
 
 Smith.—Yes, yes, Jackson, I do remember, I well remember, that Squint 
 was always the first to recommend a reduction, and always appeared most 
 happy when the fines, and batements, and stoppages, were largest. 
 
 Jackson.—I object to machinery, because I find that each “ extension ” 
 lead* to increased reduction; and because the cheaper the produce of my 
 own labour becomes, the more difficult I find it to purchase. I object to 
 machinery, because I cannot calculate upon any certainty, even of existence, 
 from day to day. I object to machinery, because, whilst in employment I 
 may be induced to rent a house upon the supposition that that employment 
 will continue, and because, while out of work, I am obliged to pay the same 
 rent that I compounded to pay out of constant employment. I object to 
 machinery, because it huddles thousands and tens of thousands into large 
 and filthy towns and cities, where temptation is ever in the way of youth, 
 and dissipation the only resource of the unwilling idler. I object to machi¬ 
 nery because it has made character of no value; because I am surrounded by 
 an unhealthy atmosphere; because I never see a green field, because I never 
 
41 
 
 see a tree, or licav a bird singing on its brandies. I object to machinery, 
 because it compels me to live from hand to mouth, thought of preserving a 
 wretched existence for another hour of misery absorbing all other considera¬ 
 tions. I object to machinery, because, after a bard week’s incessant toil, my 
 poor wile is compelled to bustle her way through the market, thronged with 
 slaves, to buy the refuse provisions that have been pawed through the day 
 by her betters, who had the first of the market out of her sweat, I object 
 to machinery, because, when my children have come home blistered 
 and smarting from the stripes of the overlooker’s knout, I have gnashed my 
 teeth m spite, and cherished a father’s revenge in my breast, while the 
 dread of starvation baulked me of a righteous satisfaction; I object to ma¬ 
 chinery, because I would like to reverence and adore my God, to love my 
 neighbour, to honour and obey the laws, and all who are appointed to 
 execute them; but my ragged condition forbids me to enter the house of 
 God; my neighbour sees in me a competitor in the labour market, and 
 looks upon me as an enemy; the laws crush me, and those who are appointed 
 to execute them, punish me if I complain. I object to machinery, because its 
 never-varying motion, with which I am compelled to keep pace, enforces a 
 monotonv ol labour destructive of strength, injurious to health, and blunting 
 to the faculties of man. I object to machinery, because it is man’s curse, 
 while I would hail it as a blessing if it was made man’s holiday, by lessen¬ 
 ing that toil for which it has become the substitute, without depriving me of 
 the means of existence. I think, sir, I have now accounted for female ignor¬ 
 ance of domestic duties; for the want of early n aming and after education; 
 for dissipation, dissatisfaction, immorality, and discontent; for the exist¬ 
 ence, of labour combinations; for early marriages; the necessity of emigra¬ 
 tion ; better ventilation; poor-houses, increased poor-rates, increased police 
 force, increased taxation, and increasing hostility between the classes that 
 rule and riot, and those that are ruled and starve. 
 
 Smith.—Upon my honour you have, Jackson, and you have placed the 
 matter in a light that I never saw it in before. Good bym, Jackson. Per¬ 
 haps this trifle may increase your Christmas cheer, and 1 shall expect to see 
 you and Robin at twelve to-morrow. 
 
 . Jackson.—I thank you, sir, and we’ll be with you. Good morning, sir. 
 
 Part V. 
 
 Old Robbi awl Richard Jackson visit Shoddy Hall, by special invitation, 
 and arc received by Mr. Smith in his study. 
 
 Smith.— Well, Robin, I am glad to see you at Shoddy Hall. Sit*down, 
 you seem tired. I would willingly have sent the gig for you. How do 
 you do, Jackson, sit down. 
 
 Robin.— Thank ye, Mr. Smith, I bee’s a little stiffish. I haven’t been 
 as far as “ COMMON ” for now two-score years. Aye, its more than 
 that. Let me see. It was time when rich folk frightened poor folk out of 
 their senses with " He’s a cooming ” and " They’re a Dooming.” 
 
 §mith.— Who is "lie,” and who are "they,” Robin? 
 
 Robin.— Why, God bless thy life, don’t thou know ? Why, Boney and 
 the French, to be sure. Well, that time when rich folk frightened poor 
 folk and stole all the land. ’Ecod, much the same as mesmerised like, and 
 
42 
 
 folk were expeoting to be eat up every minute, but they let the Lords and 
 Squires take the land, but ’ecod, they’ll na give it hack again This was 
 all common then, Mr. Smith. Common for poor folk y’ Devil’s Dust, to 
 keep cow on; but ’ecod. Squire Gambler represent Riding then,and Billy 
 Pitt was hard pushed to keep in, and Squire a good dodger, and folks say, 
 that when minister axed Squire for vote. Squire axed minister for 
 " commonand ’ecod, sure enough, minister got vote, and Squire got 
 common, and poor folk’s cows got road, and poor folk got hag. But ay, 
 Mr. Smith, it would take too long to tell thee all about the rows and riots 
 about inclosure of common, so, as Richard Jackson tells me, that you and 
 I bee’s met to talk about “ combination,” and “ trades unions,” we’ll have 
 that first. 
 
 Smith.—N o, no, Robin. I’m master of my time, and if you and 
 Jackson have nothing better to do, you’ll stop and have a bit of dinner with 
 me, and, upon my honour, I should like very much to hear all about the 
 “ common.” Where was the common, Rohin ? 
 
 Robin. —Where was the " common!” Why, bless my life, here, here, 
 Maister Smith, here, where thou callest “Shoddy Hall.” Doesn’t know 
 “common.” Why, I thought every child in Riding knew “common ” 
 All reet and left, up away to bastile and barracks was all common. And 
 all folk in Devil’s Dust would have a cow, or donkey, or horse on common, 
 and they’d play cricket, and have running matches, and wrestling, and all 
 sorts of games in summer time. Ay, bless my old limbs, I remember when 
 lads and lasses W'ould “ loose” work in evening and meet at market-house to 
 run up the common, ’ecod, but thou’d think that they were so many young 
 stags, and old Squire would be at the top of the hill, laughing ready to 
 crack his sides, and first lad as would put his hand on ’squire’s right foot, 
 he’d get a sixpence; and first lass as would put her hand on left foot, 
 would get another sixpence ; but ’ecod, now folk think it a great thing to 
 purchase bit of park, to let folk walk in, after they stole all land that folk 
 used to go to, and had cows on. Bless my life, I never see such change, 
 but I did stare this morning, when I see at one turn of common, “ beware 
 of dogs,” then in another place, “ man-traps and spring guns set here 
 and then, “ Any person trespassing on these premises will be prosecuted 
 according to law.” ’Ecod, trespassing on folks own land! and " combina¬ 
 tion ” of ‘ dogs,’ and “ man-traps,” and “ spring guns,” to frighten folk 
 off—that’s combination, Maister Smith, baint that combination, and weren't 
 it combination of law and soldiers, and parson was sent down here just 
 at that time, to preach up obedience to the laws that enclose common ? 
 
 Smith. —Well, Robin, but let us have common first, and combination 
 after. 
 
 Robin. —’Ecod, thou slialt have both together. Combination inclosed 
 common, and ’ecod, want of common made folks in Devil’s Dust combine 
 to see how they’d get substitute for loss of cow. And, I tell thee more, 
 Maister Smith, if it weren’t for damned soldiers, and parson Skinflint, they’d 
 never inclosed common, for every stone they’d lay at night would be down 
 before morning ; and then they built barrack at one end and church at 
 ’tother, and when masons wouldn’t build wall, soldiers took to building, and 
 parish were taxed for building barracks and paying soldiers, and score after 
 score was hung and transported and imprisoned, and, at last, almost all 
 folk had to sell cow, to pay Lawyer Grind, and Lawyer Squeeze, that come 
 over from York, and settled here as soon as ever the row began, and ’ecod, 
 they broke our hearts, and swallowed up cows and all, and now the son of 
 one of ’em is mayor, and t’other owns all tolls of market, and is manager 
 of bank. Aye, dearee me, many’s the honest man was hung and trans¬ 
 ported over ould common. 
 
 Smith. —Well but, Robin, just see the present fertile state of the old 
 
common, compared with what it must have been when people turned out 
 their cows indiscriminately to browse about—see now how much more it- 
 produces ? 
 
 Robin.— : Ecod, but who has it now, maister Smith—what satisfaction is 
 it to poor folk to see fine field of corn that they can’t touch, and to see 
 green field with other folks cows, and big board telling them not to trespass. 
 
 Smith. —Well now, Robin, I’ve heard all about the common, and let us 
 have a word about “ combination” end “ trades’ unions.” 
 
 Robin. —Well, with all my heart, and thou’lt begin. 
 
 Smith.— Well, Robin, my opinion of “ combinations” and " trades’ 
 unions” is, firstly, that they are illegal, and always end disastrously for the 
 working classes; secondly, that every failure places them more at the 
 mercy of their masters; thirdly, that they force persons to remain idle 
 who would be willing to work if they were allowed, and, now, if you’ll give 
 me leave, I’ll read for you an article from Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, 
 entitled “ Strikes—their Statistics”—in which an account is given of the rise, 
 progress, result, and melancholy consequences of two of the greatest strikes 
 on record, that of the Preston spinners in 1836-37, and of the Glasgow 
 cotton spinners in 1837. 
 
 Robin. —Thank ye, maister Smith, I’ve read it all. 
 
 Smith. —Well, Robin, I am glad to hear it, and that will considerably- 
 limit my exposure of the evil consequences of " trades’ unions,” '* combi¬ 
 nations,” and “ strikes.” Independently of my general objections before 
 stated, I may urge that any attempt of the working classes to force up 
 wages by strikes, or otherwise, has the inevitable tendency of setting 
 masters upon the improvement of machinery, and the invention of new 
 machines as a substitute for manual labour. I may instance the “ self 
 acting mule,” invented in 1831, by Mr. Roberts of Manchester, of the 
 firm of Sharp and Co., an invention which resulted from a strike that took 
 place in Manchester in the same year. Another objection that I have to 
 " strikes,” as well as to all legal interference in questions of wages, is, that 
 no parties can possibly be so good judges of what can be paid as those who 
 have to pay them. Again, they lead to idleness and dissolute habits, which 
 cannot be conquered or got rid of, even after the struggle has terminated. 
 
 1 have many more objections which I shall reserve, if those that I have 
 already urged should fail to convince you of the impracticability, the folly, 
 and indeed the wickedness, of endeavouring to fly in the face of those upon 
 whom alone the working classes must depend for the means of existence. 
 And even if my arguments should fail to convince you, I am strengthened, 
 as well by the whole press of the country, I may say without a single 
 exception, as by such patriots and philanthropists as the Messrs. Chambers 
 of Edinburgh, and the great O’Connell, who have in the clearest manner 
 exposed the injustice of combination, and in the boldest manner resisted 
 its pernicious influence. Now, Robin, you see, I am opposed to combine* 
 tions of all sorts, and what have you to say on their behalf. 
 
 Robin. —Nay, maister Smith, you are not opposed to all combinations. 
 Smith. —Yea, but I am, Robin. 
 
 Robin. —Well now, maister Smith, I’ll shew you that the only fair com-, 
 bination in the whole world is a combination of the working classes to 
 keep up the price of their labour, and I’ll show you more too, that if it 
 warn’t for all the illegal and cursed combinations of all other classes, sec- 
 tionally and unitedly, to keep down wage, that there never would be such 
 a thing heard of as a combination of the working classes to keep up wage. 
 So you see, maister Smith,;that, like everything else, they’re first druve to 
 do the- deed, and then, ’ecod, they’re lashed for doing it. 
 
 Smith. —Well but, Robin, who drives- them? what combination ever 
 was there except the combination of workmen to keep up wages*? 
 
Robin.— What combination ? Why combination of all devils in hell to 
 keep down wage of poor folk, and keep up their own wage. 
 
 Smith. —Well, but who are they, Robin ? 
 
 Robin.— Who are they ? Why just see here, maister Smith, what’s all 
 them there Kings of France, of Russia, of Prussia, of Saxony, andBelgium, 
 and them there Garman Princes that swarms here like lice, and all as 
 come over here to see our Queen ? ’Ecod, its not for love of her, but to see 
 how they can combine to keep wage up, by keeping poor folk wage down ; 
 what be they but combination ? And then, what be all them there bishops 
 and parsons, as call themselves trustees for their successors, and as " can’t 
 take less” than such and such wage, because it’s a duty they owe to them 
 that come after them, to give them up all property unimpaired. What’s 
 them, and parsons that call themselves trustees, and suck blud out of poor 
 folk, and swallow up all that’s for poor folk to live upon, and take all that's 
 to educate poor folk, and then call them lazy, ignorant barbarians. What’s 
 them there but combination of big devils to keep up their wage; what's 
 house of Lords but combination of Landlords to keep up their wage, by 
 making folk pay more for bread? 
 
 Smith.— Ay, ay, Robin, there it is—that’s the tax that presses upon 
 you and upon us all. 
 
 Robin. —’Ecod, it’s nowt of the sort—it’s low wage, and too many 
 looking for job that presses on us all; and folk taking and inclosing laud 
 that was intended for all. And, ’ecod, maister Smith, they didn’t press 
 hard on thee, for thou bought common with them round thy neck. Then 
 there’s Commons, what’s them but combination ? Then there’s Ministers, 
 Cabinet-ministers, what bee’s them but combination ? Then there bee’s 
 officers in the army and navy, and soldiers, and sailors, what be them but 
 combination ? Aye, ’ecod, and though thou sayest that law can do nowt to 
 keep up wage, see how it regulates wage of all them there. Aye, and how it 
 regulates price of soldiers and sailors’ food and clothing ; aye, ’ccod, and 
 gives them a retiring salary into the bargain, when they are too old for 
 butchers. And then look at lawyers and barristers, bain’t they com¬ 
 bination ? aye, ’ecod, there was poor Jem Staveley offered maister Swindle 
 sovereign to defend him at sessions t’other day, and but he said he must 
 have other shilling, as brother barrister would’t diherivi* him or speak to 
 him, if he wrought under price; what be that but combination, maister 
 Smith ? and mightn’t barrister Swindle do poor folk job just as well for 
 pound as guinea ? 
 
 Smith.— Well, Robin, that’s very suspicious—that certatnly does look 
 like combination. 
 
 Robin. —Well, there’s maister Quill tells a story, mind, I don’t believe 
 it though, as how he sent in a bill of costs to maister Crust baker, and how 
 maister Crust objected, and how he sent it'up to him they call taxing 
 officer in London, and how he put £26 odd on to Mr. Quill’s bill, because 
 it was charged underrate like—baint that combination ? 
 
 Smith.—W ell, go on, Robin. 
 
 Robin. —Well, see poor devil as kept Greyhound at Doncaster, and see 
 how, when he put out the big board, telling folk that he’d post their car¬ 
 riages at Is. 3d. a mile, instead of Is. 6d., didn’t all them innkeepers, all 
 along line of road meet, and give orders to post-boys, not to drive folk, 
 or stop, at Greyhound. And wasn’t landlord broke, and sold up; and 
 warn’t that combination, Maister Smith ? 
 
 Smith. —Upon my honour, it looks very much like it, Robin. 
 
 Robin. —Then look at bankers of Devil’s Dust, if “ Union” charges 
 five per cent, on bills, the “National,” “ the Provincial,” “ the District,” the 
 “ York County,” and ’ecod, one and all, jump up, baint that combination ? 
 And then see m asters o f Devi l’s Dus t, thou say’st they dont combine. 
 
but all in themselves see how they can reduce wage, hut then, if they can 
 manage better, and to rob folk better, each for himself, what’s thou call 
 “quittance” papers and dismissals for looking crooked, or being of any - 
 political society but their own, and one branding poor fellow, and giving 
 him good character like, wi’ some damned private mark that’s down 
 agin him in every overseer's book, and when he goes for job—“ Oh, the 
 master gives thee good character, but there’s no opening for thee,”—baint 
 that the rascalliest and deceitfullest combination that man can think of? 
 And baint it enough to force poor devil to take work at any wage, folk 
 mun please to offer ? Then see butchers, and bakers, and shopkeepers, and 
 all folk—baint they combined ? and then see here, Maister Smith, “ compe¬ 
 tition” is a great word with thy order. Oh, thou sayest, wage must be ‘ 
 regulated by competition. 
 
 Smith. —Well, what fairer mode of regulating wage, Robin ? 
 
 Robin. —Well, but baint it fair for all ? 
 
 Smith. —Yes, to be sure, and all do compete. 
 
 Robin. —Nay, nowt of sort. Its only the poor folk that’s allowed to 
 compete again each other. Why, God bless my life, look ye, Maister 
 Swaddle has £500 a year for being clerk to Poor Law Guardians, and 
 many’s the better man ’y Devil’s Dust that would he glad to take the job 
 for a hundred. And then, look at Tory and Whig folk, when they’re in, 
 they’ll give, God knows how much—£14,000 a year I’m told to Chancellor, 
 and £6,000 a year to Judge, and £2 and £3,000 a year to folk for doing 
 nothing. And ’ecod, if other folk were allowed to compete, all jobs would 
 be done for less than half of what the law gives them. And yet, ihou’lt 
 say, that the law can’t interfere to keep up wage. I'll tell thee, Maister 
 Smith, if them there folk hadn’t a slice of representation themselves, the law 
 would let them compete to ; so the law combines for them. So as poor 
 folk havn’t a slice of the representation themselves, they’re obliged to com¬ 
 bine agin law. 
 
 Smith. —Well, upon my honor, Robin, upon the general principle of 
 combination, you are most clear and lucid. I really never did see the 
 question in the same light before. But then, Robin, how do you account 
 in detail for the many failures, and the evil effects produced by those 
 strikes originating from combination? 
 
 Robin —Why, Maister Smith, there’s the rub. ’Ecod, the objection is 
 not to the principle of strikes, the objection is to their failure. But is it 
 wonderful, that combination of poor devils with all living on them, and 
 watching of them, nnd ready to pounce on them, should fail, when they are 
 ■opposed by all them therd combinations I’ve mentioned. 
 
 Smith.— Well, really,Robin, ’pon my honour there’s much in what you 
 say. But now, to'come closer to the question, what have you to offer in 
 reply to the Messrs. Chambers’ very clear and lucid illustration of the in¬ 
 justice of the strikes of Preston and Glasgow ? 
 
 Robin. —Injustice, why, God bless my life, just take up that there 
 rubbish of Chambers, and Only see how every one line in it gives lee to 
 t’other. Why, Mr. Smith, it’s all a pack of stuff, paid for by maisters to 
 make working folk thankful-like for what employers choose to give ’em, 
 and timid-like in their own power to do owt for themselves. Why, what 
 did spinners in Preston ax for, but same wage as men in Boulton hard by 
 got for doing same work; and then doesn’t that damned fool Chambers 
 prove the maisters wrong and the men right ? 
 
 Smith.— How so, how so, Robin? 
 
 Robin.— How so! how so! 1 why, didn’t maisters offer men ten per cent, 
 increase, and yet it didn’t come up to Boulton ? So that, for years, these 
 here maisters y’ Preston, that talk of rising and falling wi’ the times, were 
 robbing the hands of sistssa BSI 
 
• 46 
 
 for justice for themselves ? And ’ecod, Maister Smith, if trade get a fall, 
 wage would go wi’ it, and there it would stay; but when it got up, some 
 maisters in other parts did put on a bit, but Preston maisters kept on 
 screw, and then Boulton maisters complained; and Ashton maisters com¬ 
 plained, and maisters throughout complained, that they were giving 
 higher wage than Preston maisters, that they could’nt compete with 
 them: so that Preston folk were left to fight the battle alone. And 
 the devil mend all the operatives of Lancashire for every reduction that 
 come sin’; for, if they’d stood by the poor fellows in Preston, that they 
 put in front of battle, there would have been no more reductions. A few 
 days out, and good cheer coming in, a little from all to keep the hearts up 
 in the '* turn outs,”—and ’ecod 1 labour would be conqueror. And that’s 
 the next twist workies will take; if they be wise, they’ll “ fight the battle,’ ’ 
 as old Duke would say, ‘ with small compact army, and they'll draw sup¬ 
 plies from every quarter of the labouring world.’ Oh, my God of heaven, 
 if poor folk would only be wise as their oppressors, and just manage 
 tactics like them, and not all go scrambling every one for himself, and one 
 bidding against the other;—aye, dearee me, dearee me, if all folk, that 
 never were in such good work, supported that there dare-devil. Lawyer 
 Roberts, and his poor black colliers,—’ecod ! we’d never hear of another 
 strike. And see how them devils of maisters would cut maister Roberts’ 
 throat, because he’d fight the law again them. Aye, my God Almighty ! 
 if all trades in England would put themselves under that there chap, and 
 just let the pride of England, our Yorkshire chap, that there greatest fellow 
 that ever went into House for working men—young Duncombe, fight battle 
 in the House, aye, my God, what a position they’d soon put trades in! 
 
 Smith.— Well but, Robin, you’re blinking Preston and Glasgow? 
 
 Robin. —Nay, Mr. Smith, I shew thee that Preston men were reet, and 
 had justice on their side, and the maisters were tyrants; and now I’ll shew 
 thee that maisters do combine as a bod}', and I’ll prove it out of Chambers’ 
 own mouth. When the hands returned, 200 of the best men in the trade 
 were refused work again, because they stood out like Britons; and all the 
 maisters entered into a combination to refuse work to any of the hands 
 that wouldn’t pledge themselves never to belong to any union again— 
 wasn’t that a combination ? And agin the laws, too, that sanction combina¬ 
 tion ? And then, Maister Smith, tho’ scores deed of starvation, and work- 
 house was full, there was no violence : and a score of poor girls turned 
 prostitutes, and now tell me who killed folk ? Who made bad women of 
 poor girls ? And who robbed the poor and the shopkeepers, and them that 
 had to pay increased poor rates—who robbed them, I say, but the maisters ? 
 That proved that they were wrong, and the men reet, when they offered 
 them an increase of 3s. 4d. a week to go back to work. And then, Maister 
 Smith, you talk of the inventive genius of Mr. Roberts that forced him to 
 make that there " self-acting muleand you’d make folk believe, that it 
 was necessity that compelled tho maisters to substitute that there thing for 
 their labour. ’Ecod! you’d make angels of them, Maister Smith. But I 
 tell thee, that if every man in England was at work for sixpence a day to¬ 
 morrow, and no strikes or combinations, the inventive genius would still go 
 on to see how poor devils could be made to work for fivepence. Nay, nay, 
 Maister Smith, it’s not necessity, its avarice and love of gain—one cutting 
 against the other; and poor folk scrambling for owt they can get, that 
 governs labour market. And now, Mr. Smith, does think I have answered 
 Maister Chambers upon Preston strike, and shown that maisters were 
 wrong, and that they entered into combination when they got upper-hand 
 of poor devils. 
 
 Smith.— Why, upon my honour, Robin, you really have put a new con- 
 
47 
 
 Robin.— Nay; nowt of the sort. I have taken Maister Chambers’ own 
 construction. 
 
 Smith.— Well, Robin, what I mean is, that you have certainly put it in 
 a new light to me; for, assuredly, you have convicted the masters and 
 justified the men. And now, what have you to say in justification of the 
 Glasgow cotton-spinners. 
 
 Robin. —Why, Maister Smith, if Preston men were reet, Glasgow folk 
 were twice as reet; and now you shall hear why. ’Ecod! to read that 
 there stuff of Chambers, one would think that operatives could live like 
 princes, and that they held out for seventeen week for wage that maisters 
 couldn’t afford to give. 
 
 Smith. —Well, Robin, certainly that’s the conclusion that any man • 
 must come to who reads Chambers’ tract. 
 
 Robin —Nay, but, Maister Smith, didst read trial and read case, put 
 out by committee of Glasgow-spinners ? 
 
 Smith.— No, Robin. I certainly did not. 
 
 Robin. —Well then, Maister Smith, the Chambers say that spinners . 
 were earning 32s. a week, and men prove that they were only earning 18s. 
 a week, and so far from strike being to keep up or get an advance of wage, the 
 strike were to resist a reduction of 15 per cent., or near 3s. a week in 
 wage: and when the hands offered to come back at the end of twelve days, 
 even for the reduction of 15 per cent., maisters thought as they had them 
 down, they’d trample upon them, and then they refused to take them back 
 without a reduction of 35, 40, and even 50 per cent.; and hands said they 
 would rather starve, and they were reet. And just see here, Maister 
 Smith, mustn't maisters be wrong, when they thought 15 per cent was 
 enough to take off at first; and then, in twelve days, when things hadn’t 
 altered, and when they thought they had poor devils down, they wanted to 
 rob them of 20, 25, and 35 per cent, besides the 15. And then that there 
 Sheriff Alison and his humbugging speech, that Chambers speaks of, what 
 does it all shew?—but that starvation made folk wicked, and that he thinks 
 that the bad trade and commercial panic, under which he says country 
 were reeling, should be met by a reduction of wages. ’Ecod 1 Maister 
 Smith, poor folk were reeling from panic as well as rich folk. And then 
 see, after a long trial, what jury folks said—why seven out of fifteen said 
 spinners were innocent; and eight in fifteen said they were guilty. But 
 ’ecod! that there Chambers is worse nor whole fifteen—Judge and Sheriff 
 Alison into the bargain. And no wonder that judge and sheriffs, and all 
 press of country, and Chambers that writes—’ecod! for what he calls “the 
 honourable aristocracy of labour; ” and that there great O’Connell, ’ecod! 
 the biggest enemy ever working-men saw in this world— 
 
 Smith. —What I what do you mean, Robin ? I mean the great Liberator. 
 
 Robin. —’Ecod, thou may call him what thou likest, but I call him the 
 damnedest humbug that ever poor folk saw. ’Ecod, he’d put down 
 Trades’ Unions, that folk may send all brass into his purse. ’Ecod, he’s 
 no friend to owt that will teach folk how to do job for themselves. 
 
 Smith. —Well, Robin, you really astonish me. 
 
 Robin. —Well, hut Maister Smith, thou see’st now, that all them there 
 newspaper fellows, and sheriffs, and judges, and Chambers, and that there 
 O'Connell, that live by talking for middle classes, they must all back them, 
 or they’ll get sack. Bless my heart, they’re just as much tools as my 
 ould awl, aye, ’ecod, and like ould awl, they must work for maister. 
 
 Smith. —Well, Robin, upon'my honour, you have given me quite an 
 insight into the feelings and opinions of the working classes; but I assure 
 you, I thought that those men were your leaders. 
 
 Robin.— Leaders be damned. What we want is law to lead ourselves. 
 And. 
 
 >w, Maister Smith, I think I have, settled question.ofGfesgggstrikgt. 
 
is 
 
 and now just see how I deal with thy objections. Thou say’st, that strikes 
 always fail. ’Ecod, and so will an army without arms always fail against 
 an army with aims; and then, thou sayest. that maisters are the only 
 judges of wages that poor folk ought to get, as they pay them; ’ecod, Maister 
 Smith, if thou go to shop and ax price of article, thou’lt get it as cheap 
 as thou can, and if poor, devil of shopkeeper is hard up for rent, he’ll sell 
 as cheap as he can. I tell you, Maister Smith, Scotch folks say “ get a 
 thing as cheap as thou can, and if thou can get it for nothing so much the 
 better.” Then, Maister Smith, what I say is, let maisters get labour as cheap 
 as they can, but let them not rob poor folk, and make them so poor that, 
 ’ecod, they must work for whatever maisters like to give, or dee of hunger, 
 or go into the infernal bastile, and leave home and family, and all. ’Ecod, 
 old as I am, I would rather go to America to-morrow, than go into damned 
 bastile, built where my cow used to graze. Look ye here, Maister Smith — 
 damned ! I see it from thy window. There, Maister Smith, close up by 
 barrack, and look ye here t’other side, ’ecod the parish church. Oh my 
 God, to think of soldiers and parson taking common, and poor folk put in 
 bastile, built on their own land. Aye, my God, I must go, Maister Smith, I 
 must go, I can’t stand it. ’Ecod, but my old head reels when I think of 
 olden times, when folk were cared for, because they were worth summat, 
 but 'ecod, now when machinery does all folk’s “ work ” nobody cares nowt 
 about them. Now, Maister Smith, just see how system blunts all feeling. 
 Eh, my God ! just think of colliery explosion that blew up 95 poor honest 
 hard-working folk; and, ’ecod, all brought in “accident” by damned 
 Lawyer Coroner, and ’ecod, on evidence of chap what done it all. Eh, 
 if 95 folk were killed ’y Devil’s Dust in olden time—’ecod, but we’d have 
 revolution, but now, ecod, it goes on like laming like; machine smashes 
 lass’s hand, then lass’s leg, and then kills lass, and, ’ecod, it makes a bit of 
 fuss at first, then kills other and other, and so on ; until, ecod ! folk, like 
 eels that be s used to skinning, get used to it. Until at last, ’ecod, it’s part 
 of the system—and maisters may murder folk, to warm other folk, ’ecod— 
 ecod, but in ould times, when folk had heart and loved life,—’ecod, but 
 friends and relations would maule coroner and overseer:—they’d call it 
 murder, Maister Smith, but now, it’s “accident,” and man is “firebrand" 
 and “ demagogue” ’ecod, that says owt but it’s all reet. 
 
 Smith. —Well, stay, Robin, stay, I confess that you have good reason to 
 feel excited, but let us prosecute our enquiry, and as the greatest things 
 must have a beginning, perhaps your information may be the means of 
 orginating that beginning, even upon the old common. Now, Robin, as 
 to the question of law, how would you protect labour by law ? Don’t you 
 think that that would be impossible ? 
 
 Robin. —Yea, I do think that it would be impossible to expect that laws 
 made by maister could protect labour for poor folk, that have nowt to do 
 with laws but to obey them. 
 
 Smith. —Well but, now, Robin, how could all the poor people possibly 
 make laws, surely they cannot understand the complexity, the intricacies, 
 and the niceties of law-making. 
 
 Robin. —’Ecod, they’re too nice, intricate and complicated, but I’ll tell 
 thee what old John of Greenfield, Yorkshire prophet, said, when Milton 
 axed him at nomination, “John,” said t’old Lord, “ John,” says he, “ what’s 
 thou know about making laws.” “Nowt,” says John, “nowt about making 
 shoes either; but I know when chap makes a pair that pinches my toes, and 
 damned if he shall make anymore for nfe.’’ Now, that’s just the thing, 
 maister Smith. Poor folk isn’t all going up to “ Hoyle” to Lunnon to 
 make laws, but they want to send chaps there that wont make laws to 
 • pinch their toes, as old prophet said. And ’ecod, if they do, the poor folk 
 
' 49 
 
 tell them at end of year, when account comes in, to go about their business, 
 as laws baint worth poor folk money, as they pinch poor folk toes. 
 
 Smith. —Well but, Robin, what would you have the representatives do 
 
 Robin. —Why, Lord axed old John same question; he says, “ John,” says 
 he, “ what's thou know about making laws.’’ “ I know nowt,” says John, 
 
 “ about making laws, but I know this, I know that all the stuff e’the world 
 were made for all the folk e’ the world, and I arn’t my share of it, and I want 
 laws to give me my share.” Now, maister Smith, weren’t that more sense 
 than all Chambers’rubbish ? and as working folk can’t get their share with¬ 
 out law, ’ecod, they must only combine together, and see if they can’t 
 change law; and keep up wage like by “ trades unions,” and “ combina¬ 
 tions,” until they get law to do it for them. 
 
 Smith.— Well but, Robin, now how could laws possibly interfere with 
 the rate of wage? 
 
 Robin. —Eh, deareeme, what rubbish j r ou do talk. Don’t law interfere 
 with every thing. Doesn’t know that there was a time when king and 
 parliament combined to keep up wage and keep down price of food. See 
 here, see all acts of parliament I have here for seven hundred years gone. 
 See here, when all kings, Edwards, Harrys, James, Richards, Old Bess, ■ 
 ’ecod, all had laws to keep down price of food and keep up price of wage. 
 See here, Maister Smith, see old acts, commanding Justices of the peace. 
 Sheriffs, and ’ccod, all officers of the county, to meet and declare the price 
 of food, and to punish all as shall refuse to sell at the rate. ’Ecod, but I 
 remember, aye, its four-score year now, sin’ old Samuel Dodge was put in 
 pillory, and what for, think, Mr. Smith ? 
 
 Smith. —Well, I really don’t know, Robin, but it must be some dread¬ 
 ful crime, as the pillory was a degrading and shocking punishment. 
 
 Robin. —Eh, thou’rt right, Maister Smith. It were a dreadful crime. 
 It were beginning of hard summer, and provisions were getting scarce, 
 and Samuel goes out and buys ' taters, and com, and things as was com¬ 
 ing into market; and when market was opened, there was but little choice 
 for poor folk that wanted to buy, as they were obliged to go to Samuel, as 
 bought stock up. Well, Samuel thought to rise the price abit, and folk 
 went for beadle, and beadle went for justice, and justice corn’d down, and 
 all poor folk flock around him, and I never see such a sight, and justice 
 told beadle to bring Samuel before him, and ’ecod, he was put in the 
 pillory, and justice ordered that all the stuff, should be sold at the rated 
 price. Now, Maister Smith, in them old times, the law called that 
 “ Forestalling,” and it had a great deal about “ Engrossing,” ‘‘ Fore¬ 
 stalling,” and " Regrating,’’ and ’ecod, all them laws meant that folk 
 should he punished, if thpy speculated in the price of poor folk’s food ; 
 and what do you think, Maister Smith, ’ecod, for third offence it was 
 death. Well, now just see here, now look down at big warehouses, full of 
 wheat and oats, and folks starving, and owners buying and piling up, and 
 ’ecod, trying to make a scarcity to get big price for loaf, and ’ecod, they 
 are called “ anti-monopolists.” Why, good God of heaven, if Samuel 
 Dodge deserved pillory, eighty years ago before common was stolen, and 
 we hadn’t one third of our present population to feed, ’ecod, every one of them 
 there rascals with big corn stores, “ Rvgrating ,” “Engrossing and “ Fore¬ 
 stalling,” poor folk food, should he sent to work in chain gang, ’ecod, 
 instead of poor Frost, that felt for poor folk. Why, Maister Smith, ain’t it 
 a common thing now to hear men, them there patriot free-traders, them 
 there chaps as is for cheap food, baint it a common thing to hear them in 
 coffee-shop, aye, and in open street, to speak this way loike, “ Well, mais¬ 
 ter Grudge, bad prospect of harvest this year, now’s the time to buy wheat; 
 its sure to he dear,” and so with ’taters, and beasts, and flour; and ’ecod, 
 if there’s two or three cloudy days, but baker will put sixpence, or happen 
 
ten-pence, a stone on to poor folk flour. Now, Maister Smith, in olden 
 times, some of them there patriots would be put in pillory, and more on 
 ’em would be hung; and ’ecod, now them very chaps does it in open day, 
 and ’ecod, axes folk to send them into parliament, ’ecod, to keep down 
 wage, and keep up price of food. ’Ecod, but they call themselves poor 
 folk best friends, while they’ve got, as old John would say, all the stuff of 
 the country that belongs to all poor folk in the country. Now, Maister 
 Smith, does’nt know, that in reign of Henry the 4th, when landlords were 
 feeding sheep on land, because wool was very dear, and folk couldn’t get 
 food, ’ecod, Hal come down to Parliament, and told Commons, how folk 
 must be fed first, and Commons made law, that Squires and landlords 
 shouldn’t feed so many sheep, as " WOULD PRESS HARD UPON 
 THE MEANS OF SUBSISTENCEbaint that one of the free-trade 
 gammons, Maister Smith, how population presses too hardly upon the 
 means of subsistence ? 
 
 Smith. —Yes, Robin, certainly, that is one of their savings, and don’t 
 you think there is much wisdom in it ? 
 
 Robin. —Wisdom, yea, great wisdom, in making the philosophy first, 
 and then giving it a good name. But, Maister Smith, was there much 
 wisdqm in taking three thousand acres of “ ould common ” from all folk 
 in parish, and giving it all to one man. ’Ecod, Maister Smith, its the big 
 man with big throat, that swallows up all, and not all poor folk that presses 
 hardly “ upon the means of subsistence.” 
 
 Smith. —Well but, Robin, just see what the wage of a working-man 
 was in those times when the law protected it. We read of 4d. a day with 
 food, and 5d. a day withoutfood, and just see what a difference now-a-days. 
 
 Robin. —Well now, Maister Smith, I’ll tackle thee upon that. A man 
 would get 4d. a day and his food, good food for odd penny. Now, then,Maister 
 Smith, that’s a day’s wage in olden time, feeding five able-bodied working 
 men; and ’ecod! I’d like to see the man now—single man, that could live, 
 as folk did them times, and save four shillings out of every five of his wage. 
 And ’ecod! the four shillings saved, would do as much as four pound 
 now. Now then, Maister Smith, there’s difference of time; and then see 
 that were all done by combination. Look at all them there laws, and them 
 there guilds, we read of in Lunnon—the Mercers’ guild, the Tailors’ guild, 
 the Goldsmiths’ guild, the Clothworkers’guild, the Saddlers’ guild, and all 
 them there guilds for regulating wages—for building alms-houses, and sup¬ 
 porting folk—wasn’t that combination ? And now, ecod! folk is obliged 
 to combine to support one another when they are sick or out of work, 
 and to bury one another whqn they are dead; aye, ’ecod! they’ll let poor 
 folk combine fast enough when it’s to screw pence out of poor folk’s selves, 
 to do what law ought to do for them. 
 
 Smith. —Well, upon my honour, Robin, there is certainly no resisting 
 the overpowering strength of your arguments; but yet, see how different* 
 the appearance of the working classes and their mode of living is, when 
 compared with their former condition and habits. 
 
 Robin. —Former condition and habits ! Why, were didst learn that stuff? 
 
 Smith. --Why, we read daily of the vast improvement made by the 
 working classes. I take my information from the newspaper press, and 
 from the great improvements made in every direction — better clothing, 
 better cottages, better furniture than they could possibly have in those bar¬ 
 barous times. 
 
 Robin. —Barbarous ! you call them ! ’Ecod! I’d combine to-morrow 
 to make us all such barbarians again. I thought I’d hear summut of that 
 sort, and I brought up with me what the King’s Lord Chancellor, Sir 
 John Fortescue, wrote to King’s son, in reign of Henry the 6th; and now, 
 Maister Smith, here it is. Good authority, I think, coming from the King’s 
 
51 
 
 Lord Chancellor; hotter nor all that rubbish in press, of middle folk and 
 Chambers’ tracts. The old English Chancellor says: The King cannot 
 
 despoil the subject, without making ample satisfaction for the same; he 
 cannot hy himself or his ministry, lay taxes, subsidies, or any imposition 
 whatever, upon the subject; he cannot alter the laws, or make new 
 ones, WITHOUT THE EXPRESS CONSENT OF THE WHOLE 
 KINGDOM IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED: every inhabitant 
 is at his liberty fully to use and enjoy whatever his farm pro¬ 
 duced, the fruits of the earth, the increase of his flock, and the like: 
 all the improvements he makes, whether by his own proper industry, or of 
 those he retains in his service, are his own to use and enjoy, without the 
 lett, interruption or denial of any. If he be in any wise injured, he shall 
 have his amends and satisfaction against the party offending: HENCE it 
 is, that the inhabitants of England are rich in gold, silver, and all the 
 necessaries and conveniences of life. They drink no water, unless at cer¬ 
 tain times, upon a religious score, and by way of doing penance. They are 
 fed in great abundance with all sorts of flesli andfl.sk, of which they have 
 plenty everywhere-, they are clothed, throughout, in good woollens; their, 
 bedding and other furniture in their houses are of wool, and that in great 
 store ; they are also well provided with all sorts of household goods, and 
 necessary implements for husbandry ; every one, according to his rank, 
 hath all things which conduce to • make life easy and happy.’ ” And 
 after this he observes, that these are the effects of laws, which are founded 
 upon the principle, that “ ‘ a king is given for the sake of the kingdom, 
 and not a kingdom for the sake of a king ’ ” Now, what does say to that 
 style of barbarism, Maister Smith ? 
 
 Smith. —Well, upon my honour, Robin, I really don’t know what to 
 say. One hears and reads of so much stuff in Chambers’ Journal and the 
 newspapers, that I declare I thought the English were barbarians, and all 
 prowling beggars and vagabonds, before the introduction of machinery. 
 
 Robin. —Introduction of the devil! ’Ecod! I’ll tell thee then, Maister 
 Smith, when I was born, that’s now near hand ninety years sin’, King of 
 England hadn’t such a carpet as that, nor King of England hadn’t such 
 cloth as thou hast now, nor such boots nor gold chain; no, ’ecod! nor such 
 
 Smith.— (smiling.) —Ah, ah, ah! Why, perhaps not, Robin; hut see 
 what a palace the Queen has got, and what furniture she has. 
 
 Robin. —Eh, ’ecod 1 that’s not the thing; hut featherbed and bedstead 
 that old folk kept, and that I were born in, is the only good bit of furniture in 
 my house now; and ’ecod ! I can’t live as well as faither, nor as well as 
 I did before common was stole, nor as well as I did before machinery came 
 up. Now, Maister Smith, I’ll tell thee how things were with poor folk 
 «before they were compelled to live from hand to mouth, and when there 
 were very little money in the country; when faither deed, I were twenty- 
 five year of age, and I got acre of land for nine shilling a year. Well, I 
 had grass of cow, and happen a heifer on common, if it weren’t overstocked. 
 And when I had work at my trade, I’d work; and when trade was slack, 
 I’d go in field and I’d work there: and eh, what a Devil’s Dust it were then, 
 compared to now. There weren’t a better labourer in parish; and when 
 poor Robin grew up to be a lad, and after he had done schooling, mother 
 bought loom for him out of milk, butter and vegetables. Mother would 
 say to Robin, “ Now Robin, there’s a good lad, finish thy task early, and 
 thou mun go and settle garden with faither,” or “ Thou mun make hay or 
 weed with faitherand eh, my God! hut the shuttle would fly like light¬ 
 ning, and Robin would whistle, and all young folk would set to reeling and 
 winding to come out at same time wi’ Robin. Oh! but it was a beauti¬ 
 ful sight to see poor folk coming out of a spring morning to see garden 
 
after shower, and then to see them at three o’clock, when day’s work were 
 done inside, running like mad to the spade, and the hoe and the rake, and 
 mother with baby in her arms, looking at faither and children working, and all 
 birds on wall in cages, that would sing as if they thanked God. Aye,dearee me, 
 how the rattle wouldgo thro’village—that Will this, or Ben that.orJack so and 
 so, had first early lettuce, or first bunch of radishes, or first dish of ’taters. 
 Eh, to see them looking at first dish, and then see flowers growing, and 
 see all folk with nosegays, picking and choosing, to see what old Parson 
 Flower liked best on Sundays. Eh, Maister Smith, instead of lashing 
 the flesh off hack of poor babies of nine years of age, mothers then need 
 only say, “Now, Bess, if thou baint a good girl for the rest of the week, thou 
 shan’t have a nosegay for Parson Flower on Sunday;” and the child would 
 be good. I’ll warrant me. Well now, Maister Smith, want of votes to get 
 money to keep French out, took common from me, and machinery took 
 acre of land from me. 
 
 Smith. —Machinery take the acre of land from you! Why, how did 
 machinery do that ? 
 
 Kobin.— How did machinery do it ? Why, God bless my life ! when 
 mill after mill were built, all the land in Devil’s Dust were wanted for banks 
 and churches, and police-barracks, and station-houses, and lock-ups and 
 warehouses, and lawyers’ offices, and shops and cottages for poor devils to 
 starve in ; and ’ecod ! down comes Lawyer Grind, and gives me notice to 
 quit, and sticks up big bills all over my acre of ground that grand-faither 
 held, and faither held, and I held under ’squire. But, ’ecod! Grind bought 
 it, and then were all them bills with “ this eligible plot of ground to be let 
 or sold, for building onand ’ecod ! all gardens in Devil’s Dust, were all 
 served alike—Lawyer Grind, and Lawyer Squeeze, and Lawyer Quill, and 
 all the whole bunch of devils bundled poor folk out. And now, Maister 
 Smith, there’s police-barrack, bank, church, lock-up, session-house, beer- 
 shop, billiard-table, and brothel, all standing on my acre of ground; and 
 ’ecod! if Shoddy Hall, and them there buildings, don’t press hard upon 
 my means of subsistence, I wonder at it: and then who’ll tell me that all 
 the money that I hear of being in the country now, and that forces me to 
 live from hand to mouth, is as good for me as “ common ” and “ acre of 
 ground ?” Altlio’ rich folk like it best, ’cause poor folk-can never learn the 
 value of labour, when machinery does their work,, and it allows rich folk to 
 gamble in their labour, without knowing what profit is made of it. Does’nt 
 that press harder on poor folk y’ Devil’s Dust than all corn-laws ever par¬ 
 liament made ? ’Ecod ! Maister Smith, but we have queer laming now-a- 
 days, ’Ecod ! but they sell poor folk’s land by yard to build on, and steal 
 poor folk’s common ; then ’ecod.' when they’ve took all, they tell us that 
 poor folk’s too many for land. ’Ecod ! it’s rich folk is too many for land; 
 and they tell us to go all the way all over the world for produce of other 
 folk’s land. Now, Maister Smith, the more folk comes into the world, the 
 more land they want; and ’ecod ! the more they wanted, the more rent 
 they must pay for it. So do you see, Maister Smith, somehow or another, 
 poor folk be taxed when they come into the world, they be taxed all the 
 days that they live in the world; and ’ecod ! as old Jem Tot told Parson 
 llarebon'es at vestry, t’other day, ‘ they be taxed going out of the world too. 
 
 Smith.— How’s that’ Kobin ? 
 
 Kobin.— Well, I’ll tell you. Parson and Jim had some words over 
 church-rates, and Jim says to parson, “Why,” says he, “ ’ecod, that thou hast 
 richest farm of ground ’y Devil’s Dust.” “ Why,” says he, “ parson,” says 
 ne, “ there’s acre in Church-yard, and there’s four thousand eight hundred 
 square yards in acre, and ’ecod, large and small, thou pack’st poor folks 
 into about square yard, and makes them pay ten shilling for Hoyle” and 
 . ’ecocl, there’s £2,400 an acre.” “Pooh, pooh,’’says the parson. “ Gammon,” 
 
53 
 
 says Jem, “you puts ’em two deep too; 'ecod, two crops like, and four if 
 be.” Now, baint that a tax, Maister Smith ? 
 
 Smith.— Yes, Robin; but then the working classes have burial societies 
 though. 
 
 Robin. —Aye, aye, there it is, ’ecod, the law let them do that, and bar¬ 
 rister ’ill certify that, and maisters will tell them it’s all reet. Is that com¬ 
 bination ? 
 
 Smith. —Well now, Robin, you are hinting a good deal about the land, 
 but surely you don’t mean to turn poor operatives from the warm atmosphere 
 of a cotton mill to work in the open air. I am sure, Robin, your heart’s 
 too tender for that; and then how could you expect them, some of them 
 stricken in years, to learn the science of agriculture. 
 
 Robin. — ’Ecod, but thou makest me laugh, maister Smith. Thou 
 thought very little of turning poor folk from field and fresh air into, hot 
 oven, and ’ecod, there was no difficulty at all in the way of clodpoles 
 learning new trade when maisters wanted them, but now, ’ecod, folks are 
 thought to forget all about spade and land. Now just look here, maister 
 Smith, if farming were to turn up best for making money, ’ecod, but we’d 
 hear of nowt but the healthy labour of a farmer, the honorable occupation 
 of a farmer, and all newspapers would be crammed full of that like; but 
 now, maister Smith, when rich folk can speculate on poor folk labour 
 without land, and make 30 and 40 and 50 per cent, on it, then, ’ecod, you’d 
 think that a spade was a mariner’s compass, and that hoe and rake were 
 like freemason’s square and compass Why, look here, maister Smith, it 
 took me seven years to learn to make a pair of shoes, and I prick my 
 finger wi’ awl and hit thumb wi’ hammer as often as leather, and burn my 
 hands up when end would miss wax, and cut my hands when I’d be closing 
 before I knew how to work elbow, and other man should cut out for me, 
 but ’ecod, maister Smith, somehow or another natur seems to have cut 
 man out for land, for ’ecod, the very first cabbage I ever stuck in ground, 
 it grew just as well as if I’d sarved mv apprenticeship. I’d go and see 
 farmer Stretch a bit, and go and look at Squire’s gardener, that used to 
 come down ’y season and shew folk what to do, and then, in short time, 
 when all folk ’v Devil’s Dust do grow a bit for pot themselves, ’ecod, but 
 there come six gardeners, and but they had all enough to do. I’d have one 
 a day, and another would have one a day and so on ; they were better 
 combination nor lawyers, maister Smith. 
 
 Smith — Well, upon my honour, Robin, I believe you, and now, Robin, 
 just a single word about early marriages, temperance, early education, a 
 good system of emigration, better ventilation, and cheerful parks for the 
 working class to exercise ih, with mechanics’ institutes as a mental resource, 
 and, as cleanliness is next to godliness—baths for the working classes, 
 versus the land and combination, and, upon my honour, Robin, I’ll be bound 
 by the conscientious impression that your reasoning shall make upon my 
 judgment, and now, Robin, be brief, and then we’ll have a chop and glass of 
 old English ale, and you must drink my toast, or I'll drink vour’s. 
 
 Robin. —’Ecod, that’s fair, and spoke like a man, maister Smith, and 
 I’ll he short. Early marriages. Now, maister Smith, when I was a young 
 man, old folk were always trying to marry young folk before they got too 
 set like, so that they might grow up to one another’s ways, and would 
 luve one another, and help one another, and that would keep young folk 
 out of harm’s way, and make lads and lasses tasty like, and thrifty, lass 
 would learn housekeeping, sewing, and cook a bit, and neighbours would 
 all know it, for mother would tell it, and lad would be neet like in his dress, 
 and work a bit extra to treat lass, and he’d learn to dance in evenings, arid. ’ 
 happen have watch, and bit o’ trinket like ; and then, young folk would ; 
 grow up together, aiijl children would grow up together, and married folk 
 
54 
 
 would be sound and hearty to earn for children, not to work ’em too 
 young; then, maister Smith, marriage state were a happy one, and, as 
 Chambers says, was "a sacred and proper institution," but now, ’ecod, 
 it’s like cattle market; old men wheedle young lasses and marry to get their 
 wage, and young lads marry old wives to get bit of brass, then, ’ecod, the 
 old man's young wife, and the old wife’s young husband come together, 
 and they make’s what they ealls a moral marriage, and see what a sacred 
 and proper institution that is. See Queen, how folk praised her for 
 marrying so young, and see how folk ring bells and pray, and thank God 
 for all her “ bairns.” Maister Smith, believe me, that there’s nowt like 
 folk that’s to live all their lives together, being welded while they’re both 
 hot; for ’ecod, tliou’U see that a red iron and a cold bar wont unite, 
 maister Smith. 
 
 Smith.— Well, Bobin, we’ll go on step by step, and, I candidly confess, 
 that you have justified the early marriages, and now for temperance. 
 
 Bobin.— Temperance. Give a man a comfortable home, maister Smith, 
 let wife keep key of cock, and then see how soon beer-shops and gin 
 palaces will close shutters, and how folk ’ll open their eyes and stare, and 
 point finger, when they see a fuil drunk instead of working for HIMSELF, 
 maister Smith, mind for HIMSELF. 
 
 Smith.— Well, Bobin, you have completely satisfied me upon that 
 subject: and now for early education. 
 
 Bobin. —Well, maister Smith, let folk marry when they are young, work 
 for themselves, or, if they work for others, let their wage be regulated by 
 what they could earn for themselves, and then folk would educate their 
 own children. Aye, and take a pride in it too, maister Smith. 
 
 Smith.— Capital, Robin, capital, you’re a perfect philosopher, you haven’t 
 lived for nothing, Robin, and now for emigration, are you friendly to that, 
 Bobin? 
 
 Robin. —Yea, maister Smith, that’s the best scheme I hear yet, but 
 ’ecod, I’d let parsons, bishops, lawyers, and all them there idlers go over 
 and consecrate ground first; and then, ’ecod, when shepherds and wolves 
 went, folk would be looking for more hands to come and till soil. Maister 
 Smith, if I had my way, no man that could work, and was willing to work, 
 should ’quit ould'spot as long as there was a hit of ground to he cultivated. 
 
 Smith.— Well, upon my honour, Robin, I think I’m in favor of your 
 cargo, but where would you send them to ? 
 
 Robin.—W hy, to hell, and give ’em Devil for pilot. 
 
 Smith.— Ah! ah! ah! upon my honour, Robin, its only turn about, 
 that’s where they tell poor folk they’ll all go. And now, Robin, what do 
 you say to ventilation, baths, parks, and mechanics’ institutes. 
 
 Robin. —’Ecod, I says gammon to all them; never you fear when man 
 be paid for his labour but he’ll have exercise enough, and he’ll have good 
 air too, and I’ll warrant me he wont want water to wash, and he can make 
 an institute of his own house. 
 
 Smith. —Very good, very good, Robin, very good indeed, but what do 
 you want the land for ? I have told you over and over again that it is not 
 the price of commodities, but the supply of hands that regulates wage. 
 
 Robin. —Well, maister Smith, now that’s just coming to point, that’s just whole ques¬ 
 tion of combination. Trades enter into union and pays their subscriptions into 
 fund, to support the trade when on strike, or to keep the surplus hands, rather than 
 qllow them to compete. Some keep them on tramp, some give them standing wage, 
 some pay them so much a mile and bed and supper money, and so much a Sundays; now 
 that’s taxing poor honest folk that work, to pay honest folk that can’t get work, and the 
 fund is to support the surplus when restriction fails to give all work. Well now, thou’st 
 admitted that 50 hands in a thousand being idle will reduce wage of all thousand, and 
 the trade that they belong to must either support them in idleness out of the “ box,” 
 and they’ll drink then, maister Smith, or, that channel of industry being closed 
 against them, they must open another, and the only one . they have capital for is the