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 THE 
 
 CHURCH AND THE MILL 
 
 No. V. 
 
 DURHAM AND THE CARPET WEAVERS. 
 MASTER AND MAN. 
 
 A LETTER 
 
 ADDRESSED TO MESSRS. HENDERSON AND Co. 
 
 REV. EDWARD MONRO, 
 
 INCUMBENT OF HARROW WKALD, MIDDLESKX, 
 AUTHOR OF "PAROCHIAL WORK," "HARRY AND ARCHIE," ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JOSEPH MASTERS, ALDERSGATE STREET, 
 
 Am) NEW BOND STREET. 
 
 MDCCCLIX.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PBINTED BY JOSEPH MASTERS AND CO., 
 
 ALDEESGATE STREET.
 
 A LETTER. 
 
 Dear Messrs. Henderson, 
 
 The truly kind and confiding manner in which you have 
 received me on more than one occasion at the scene of your works 
 in Durham, added to the hearty welcome that has been given me 
 by the men in your employment, induces me to address the follow- 
 ing remarks to you, and to make the condition of your workmen 
 the opportunity of saying a word or two about the condition of the 
 operatives generally who are concerned in employment of something 
 of the same description. 
 
 1. One thing I am much struck with; the more I have seen 
 of the working populations of England the more evident it is to 
 me that there is a distinctive feature and individuality of character, 
 mode of thought and habit of life in each separate body of men, 
 which seems to spring out partly from their peculiar occupation 
 and partly from certain local circumstances which may have given 
 birth to that occupation. 
 
 Man is in some respects the same everywhere ; and the working 
 man of course has certain striking features of similarity with his 
 fellow workmen which are inalienable from his very position, and 
 which give him a claim upon all those who lead a similar life to 
 his own to be recognised by them as brothers. 
 
 But while this is the case the separate and distinguishing fea- 
 tures are very striking, and it appears evident that in proposing any 
 remedial processes for existing evils, whether moral or social, one of 
 the first things to be done is to consider the peculiar circumstances 
 of each body of workmen in order to see what specialty of remedy 
 should be applied to their case. 
 
 One error, which has been very prominent in the working of 
 religion in the last two or three centuries in this country, has been 
 that unwillingness to dive deeply into the structure of the human
 
 soul and disposition, and to make, as it were, a science of the laws 
 to be imposed upon the conduct of those whom we advise. An 
 extreme and somewhat sensitive dread of casuistry and of the sys- 
 tem which has been hitherto so prevalent in certain portions of the 
 Church has led to a great alarm among our Anglo-Saxon preachers 
 of morality and religion at any approach to reducing the human 
 soul to scientific rule. But it is a mistake, and must, I imagine, 
 in the long run lead to very fatal results. It would be as unrea- 
 sonable to expect that we should as successfully gain the ends 
 of health and convalescence for the thousands of sick and wounded 
 in the metropolis by having half-a-dozen hospitals open of a gene- 
 ral nature only, the practitioners in which had never immediately 
 directed their attention to any one particular phase of human dis- 
 ease, as we should if there were a separate hospital and separate 
 treatment under a distinct class of physicians for the disease of the 
 eye, the sufferings of the oppressed mind, the peculiar phases of 
 epidemic, smallpox, typhus fever, or influenza. As the great science 
 of managing successfully the sanitary arrangements made for our 
 masses of population advances, we see the mode of treatment 
 becomes more and more broken up into individual and special 
 processes. 
 
 I would apply the same mode of treatment to the mind and 
 moral condition of man, and most especially to that very important 
 body that represents the manufacturing populations, especially of 
 the north and the middle of England. For instance, the fisherman 
 on the coast will have in his character a certain recklessness and 
 tendency to superstition and a deep natural affection giving him 
 a niche in the great temple of the human race, which is all 
 his own. The collier that works under ground will have very 
 much of the same recklessness to danger and the same absence of 
 a keen sense of peril, but he will show less superstition, a greater 
 inclination to discuss religious points freely, and to accept the latitu- 
 dinarianism of dissent rather than the more narrow and less intel- 
 ligible tenets of a more dogmatical form of truth. The cotton 
 operative will usually betray considerable independence of character 
 and a certain indifferentism of manner when you converse with 
 him, which has been to a great degree brought about by the fact of 
 his working with mates in one shed and under one roof, where the 
 friction of mind with mind has produced a result which solitary or 
 more separate labour can never do. In the pottery districts of 
 Staffordshire we shall find a lower order of intelligence, when we 
 compare their inhabitants with those to which I last referred in 
 Manchester or Preston ; at the same time, there will be a greater 
 appreciation of works of art and a tendency to the cultivation rather 
 of the imagination and of the imitative faculties from the circum- 
 stance of these men having for the subject matter of their daily 
 employment the beauties of form and the splendour of colour.
 
 All this will give to the higher order of the potter a character quite 
 his own and a position in English society which no one will ven- 
 ture to dispute with him. 
 
 In taking this rapid glance of the various forms of labour it 
 would be wrong not to come for a moment south and to recollect 
 that in the glove trade of Woodstock and Yeovil and other places 
 where the manufacture of that article is followed we shall find a 
 certain dulness of general intellect and a tendency to a depraved 
 morality, arising very much in the case of Woodstock from the 
 state of the original race of population which occupies that portion 
 of Oxfordshire. At the same time there is a tendency to inebriety, 
 arising from the di'ought created by the dry dust, which con- 
 tinually rising from the leather causes a distressing dryness in the 
 thi'oat and often leads to early consumption and forms of asthma. 
 
 2. Amongst your own workmen in Durham I have again noticed 
 distinctive and certainly no despicable features which appear to 
 belong especially to those who are at work on the carpet trade 
 of England. Amongst those members of the trade I have come 
 across connected with your factory I have traced results in their 
 character and modes of thought and expression, which may arise 
 not only from their occupation, but also from the peculiar local ad- 
 vantages which they may enjoy. But, as I said just now, these 
 local advantages or disadvantages must be taken into the considera- 
 tion of the philanthropist or of any one who in any way comes for- 
 ward to attempt a remedy for the existing evils of English society. 
 
 It is impossible for any one to visit Durham without being 
 struck with the amazing facilities and opportunities arising alike 
 from nature and art, as from the arrangements and provisions of 
 man, which constitute that city one of peculiar fitness for the congre- 
 gation of large bodies of intelligent persons and for bringing to 
 bear upon those bodies the loftiest and most wholesome influences. 
 Your city rises before the eye of the traveller commanding the 
 position of the capital of the north ; and if certain local advantages, 
 of which no northern traveller can be ignorant can create in New- 
 castle a rival to Dui'ham, I am by no means sure that the latter city 
 with its lofty eminences, its deep and beautiful river channelling 
 the valleys that sweep around the aged cathedral, the singular pic- 
 turesqueness and isolation of the city itself would not lay a higher and 
 more successful claim to pre-eminence than that marvellous murky 
 valley of the Tyne, on either brow of which the enormous town 
 leans, emphatically the offspring and the victim of the subterranean 
 energies which have given birth to her existence. 
 
 Nature does much in forming the character of man. Who can 
 doubt it ? and although there are counteracting causes of every de- 
 scription, the whole history of the formation of character is fre- 
 quently a balance of different influences ; the bright green field 
 studded with the buttercup in early spring, the carol of the blackbird
 
 and the midnight song of the nightingale cannot but affect the 
 child that grows up under their sway, and lead us to expect that that 
 child would come out in a different character to the one that is used 
 to nothing but the sight of Shoreditch Church and the alleys that 
 reticulate the border lands of Bishopsgate Street. 
 
 In the same way I look at Durham as offering very peculiar 
 distinctive advantages to the workman who plies his daily task be- 
 neath the shadow of its walls, over and above the advantages that 
 can be gained by the operative of Manchester, who knows but 
 little of the loveliness of nature beyond the Sunday walk in the 
 fields that surround the cotton capital of the world. 
 
 The view of your ancient church and the mode in which it sits 
 enthroned upon its colossal pile of rock j the sweep of the ma- 
 jestic river; the deep woods that so beautifully fringe the Wear; 
 the low green valleys that trend away on either side^ carrying the 
 eye of the spectator easily and pleasantly from the magnificent to 
 the lovely and the quiet; all this alone must tend to affect the 
 mind of the operative and the character of the youth whose edu- 
 cation is to be received in the city of which I speak. 
 
 But added to this, the work of art is by no means to be passed 
 by. The structure of the Cathedral, those stupendous columns, 
 that vast and sublime nave, and the light and frail loveliness of the 
 Galilee Chapel, the ancient traditions connected with ecclesiastical 
 story mixed up so closely with them all, if duly brought to bear by 
 those to whom the work of moral education is intrusted, on the 
 minds of the intelligent people around you — surely with their his- 
 toric associations could not fail to influence the workmen to whom 
 I refer. 
 
 But when over and above these two features of your city I see 
 the signs of vast endowments, which the piety or the philanthropy 
 of days gone by have liberally flung over the city ; when I am 
 told of the wealth and the almost incredible revenue at the com- 
 mand of your ecclesiastical body and of those entrusted with the 
 education of the youth of the north in connection with Durham 
 University, I am bound to believe, that in the hands of men of 
 personal piety, intelligence and earnest desire to promote the wel- 
 fare of their fellow-creature, there would be no appliance held back 
 which could possibly tend to benefit the multitudes, whose well- 
 being was surely intended by the founders. In fact it would be 
 simple irony to ask the question, whether a body so framed as that, 
 whose members occupy the seats of your ecclesiastical institutions 
 and direct the education of your University, does not throw itself 
 heartily and earnestly into the work of the general education of the 
 young and intelligent adults in the city of Durham. To suppose 
 that they did not do so would be to suppose that they are what 
 they cannot be — men whose actions are inconsistent with their pro- 
 fessions, who care more for their respectability and place in society,
 
 than for wielding conscientiously the powers which God and man 
 have bestowed upon them and that they are using the influence 
 which has been committed to them in the capacity of stewards, as 
 if they were masters and irresponsible lords over God's heritage. 
 God forbid that this should be the case with that illustrious and 
 far-famed society ; a body composed of men, who I am bound to 
 feel from more than one volume which has been indited by their 
 intelligence would be the first to fall in with the cry which is 
 raised so frequently around us now-a-days, that the cathedral 
 bodies should either show that they are leavening the masses that 
 have grown up around the shadows of the respective minsters of 
 our Church in England, or that they should cede their place as 
 stewards who from an unpardonable prejudice or a worse lack of 
 conscientiousness have wasted their lord's money, or done more, 
 deceitfully and dishonourably applied it. 
 
 These three advantages, then, I notice as a cursoiy visitor to 
 your important city, in the arrangements of nature, the forms and 
 powers of art, and in the institutions founded by the benevolence 
 and intelligence of our ancestors. 
 
 Such being my impression, my dear sirs, in which I feel sure 
 you will agree with me, I proceed to discuss more at length the 
 attitude occupied by your own workmen. 
 
 A few weeks ago the operatives in your carpet works invited 
 me to address them in a shed of their factory. By your great 
 kindness the shed was left for themselves to arrange at their own 
 expense and ingenuity. An admirable arrangement was made, and 
 I never remember to have spoken to a body of five hundred people 
 with greater satisfaction than I did that evening, on which occasion 
 one of your own firm came forward with so much warmth and ear- 
 nestness to address your men, and was received so enthusiastically 
 by them, honourable alike to yourselves and to those over whom you 
 exercise control. The meeting to which I refer led to further in- 
 tercourse with some of the more intelligent operatives in private, 
 from whom I gained several points of important information, on 
 which I base some of the inquiries and suggestions which I proceed 
 to make in the following pages. These interviews resulted in a 
 second meeting in the Town Hall of Durham, which was obtained 
 for the purpose by your workmen and was very well filled on the 
 evening on which I came down a second time to speak to them. 
 
 What I noticed in your men geuerally struck me much. I saw 
 a large amount of intelligence, and in some instances an extraor- 
 dinary degree of what I might almost call precocious power. I 
 found this in more instances than one, a fact which led me to 
 feel that in common at least with some of the more important and 
 remarkable bodies of our English workmen the Durham carpet 
 operative will take a high rank. 
 
 But, added to this, I think I may say that I have seldom found 
 
 a2
 
 8 
 
 a greater amount of real affection and heart than I have amongst 
 the men conuected with your operations. I have found much in- 
 telligence and kindliness amongst the cloth manufacturers of Leeds, 
 and other parts of Yorkshire, but I Avas much struck with the 
 thorough good will shown by the carpet operatives of Durham 
 in their great heartiness to receive any one who came forward as 
 their friend, and the way in which they yearned after and valued 
 the expressions of sympathy from their fellow-man. 
 
 These are certainly features, which when combined, cannot but 
 tend to produce an interesting character; indeed I hardly ever ex- 
 pect to come across a body of men who more demanded one's ad- 
 miration and affection, than those connected with the work of which 
 I am speaking. I hope that if it pleases God to spare my life and 
 give me opportunity I may have many more occasions in which I 
 may be connected with them. To meet such men is indeed refresh- 
 ing and inciting to all one's energies in life, and a man's most honest 
 desire would be to reciprocate the benefit which they have granted to 
 him. I do not know that I shall be able directly to point out any 
 further very distinctive feature in the carpet manufacturers of Dur- 
 ham over and above the clothiers of Yorkshire, but in the course of 
 the following observations I may have to make remarks which will 
 tend to bring out indirectly certain peculiar features that belong 
 to them, which I am the more anxious, as I said before, to define 
 and ascertain as clearly as possible, since the remedial process should 
 ever be proportioned to the subject matter to which it is applied. 
 
 3. I will, therefore, leaving the accidental reference to these fea- 
 tures of character, proceed at once to make the suggestions, and ask 
 the questions which to a certain degree may belong to operatives 
 generally, but nevertheless were immediately suggested to my own 
 mind by conversations with yourselves and observations of men in 
 your employ across whom I came. 
 
 a. First, I gathered from three or four of your men a strong 
 view that they had imbibed with regard to strikes generally and the 
 weapons by which the tendency to strikes should be assailed. For 
 instance, I find on reference to the notes of a conversation taken 
 with one of your leading men an opinion put forward, " that all 
 strikes were the work of the less intelligent amongst the work- 
 men dragging after them almost inevitably the more intelligent, 
 who nevertheless dissatisfied with the existing state of things, were 
 keenly sensitive to the impropriety and the inexpediency of this 
 particular remedy." 
 
 Secondly, I found that one objection which was raised to the 
 system of strikes was based upon the continual bitterness and 
 acrimony created between the master and man, and that not only 
 at the time of the strike itself, but for a long time afterwards, so 
 that the bickerings and heart-burnings, disputes and suspicions 
 engendered by them were subjects of the deepest regret to those
 
 who ably advocated the importacce of doing everything to sup- 
 press them. 
 
 Thirdly ; the inevitable ruin that falls upon the men who joined 
 the strike was a reason for which my friend condemned them. He 
 told me a touching tale in illustration of what he urged when he 
 spoke of a carpet operative of intelligence whom he had known some 
 years ago, able to earn a considerable wage, who owing to throw- 
 ing himself recklessly into a strike, was beaten out of house and 
 home with his wife and children, wandered from town to town in 
 Scotland until at last he had changed a house for a lodging, a lodg- 
 ing for a cellar, his own furniture for the miserable arrangements 
 of a hired abode, and those for the straw bed and scarcely a chair to 
 sit on. He told me how he had as the result of his imprudence to 
 watch the gradual decay of health in his wife and children and to 
 follow them to an untimely grave, and himself altogether to disap- 
 pear from the cognizance of his friends, ashamed to meet the eye 
 of those before whom he had been compelled to quail. 
 
 That tale, my friend assured me, was one which fairly illustrates 
 the result of most strikes, where, too often, the intelligent and best 
 operatives are carried away in the stream whose impetus is lashed 
 to foam by the violence of the worst portion of the workmen, and 
 in whose impetuous torrent ai-e too often borne away those who 
 with not sufficient care avoid the danger. 
 
 He again suggested to me that one of the great evils of strikes 
 arose from the certainty of their glutting the labour market and 
 creating so large a body of workmen in the same trade with those 
 who strike as to make the master in the end more than ever inde- 
 pendent of the men, thus preventing the very end which they desired 
 to bring about. 
 
 Now I do not put forward these four or five reasons for con- 
 demning the strike amongst operatives for the purpose of telling 
 you what you must know a thousand times better than myself, but 
 only to base upon them one or two questions and suggestions. 
 
 If the above be the great evils of the strike system, is it not pos- 
 sible that the grievances of the workmen, and the supposed rights of 
 the master might be brought to the bar of something like public 
 opinion even amongst their own body by the intelligent among them, 
 by which means the workmen who really are possessed of wisdom 
 and prudence would have an influential voice in the matter, instead 
 of as in so many of these cases, the whole power being in the hands 
 of the uneducated and very often the profligate; and could not 
 some opportunity be given to enable the powers of moral suasion 
 to be brought to bear in the place of the aggravating and distressing 
 agitation that we have so often of late been compelled to witness 
 in the north ? 
 
 The crying evil seems to be that where very likely there are 
 grievances, a reckless defiance of every simple rule of political
 
 10 
 
 economy, mere brute passions as means of self-defence are the only 
 weapons that are used, and owing to the great preponderance of 
 the second and third rates of character which make up the body of 
 workmen, those who are really intelligent and earnest-minded are 
 compelled either to sit quiet or to be carried away by the stream 
 they cannot resist ; and the hope of real and satisfactory result is 
 torn up by the roots. If this view be the true one, is not the man 
 whose vocation is rather the study of the mind and the moral cha- 
 racter of the human being the person who might suggest remedies 
 as well at least as he who is more immediately versed in the tech- 
 nicalities of business and of trade ? Is not this a question car- 
 ried into the region of morals ? I will show presently more imme- 
 diately the point I am driving at. 
 
 b. I now pass on to another branch of the information that I ga- 
 thered in conversation with your men, and on which again I should 
 wish to build an hypothesis for you either to confirm or destroy. 
 
 I am the more induced to urge this view with regard to strikes, 
 because I notice in the report of the Commissioners appointed to 
 investigate the history of those disastrous outbreaks, which inflicted 
 such great calamity on the operative population of the north some 
 years since, that some remarkable statements were made with 
 regard to the workmen connected with the carpet trade especially 
 at Durham. 
 
 I find, for instance, that a Mr. Andrews, who I understand came 
 up from your manufactory, when questioned before the Select Com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons stated that a feeling was very 
 general in favour of the influence of the master being exercised for 
 the moral and social well-being of the people, independently of 
 their position as mere workmen, as a remedy against strikes. 
 " When a strike took place," he says, " in the cotton manufacture 
 of Manchester some time in the earlier part of last year, the work- 
 men of our great factory at Durham got up an address to the 
 workmen of Manchester, showing the singularly good feeling 
 which always existed in the carpet trade over and above other 
 trades, and particularly illustrating the good feeling in the minds 
 and conduct of the masters in that trade.'' This address, as we are 
 told, showed the position of the men, namely, that during sixteen 
 years they had not had one reduction of wages ; at that day they 
 had a ten per cent, advance, and they earnestly recommended others 
 to wait on their employers and endeavour to bring about an arbi- 
 tration, and to have their disputes settled in this manner. 
 
 Now, if this state of things was effected through the instrumen- 
 tality of the masters' kindness and benevolent interest in the condi- 
 tion of their men, I ask the question, which every ordinary observer 
 would naturally ask who knew as little as myself of the more 
 technical questions mixed up with trade, why, if you have been 
 able to promote so happy a condition of harmony and good will
 
 li 
 
 amoDg the men occupied beneath your roof^ should uot the same 
 influences be brought to bear to amehorate the conditions of men 
 who are concerned in similar works in different parts of the king- 
 dom : and would not this result in averting the formation of unions 
 for strikes ? simply because it would give to the men an impression 
 of an earnest desire existing to do them good, and would win the 
 sympathy rather of the intelligent workmen than the unintelligent 
 and uneducated, and thereby throw power into the hands of those 
 who are most likely to exercise it judiciously and to promote the 
 real interests of their fellow workmen. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, in connexion with this thought I remember 
 that one of your firm in a shed at your own factory, in the presence 
 of your men, made a statement which, I think, had been suggested 
 by the men themselves, that one very effective method that you 
 had adopted by which strikes had been avoided and your men 
 conciliated was the inviting the leading manufacturers to meet to- 
 gether to consider how strikes might be prevented. Mr. William 
 Henderson of Durham, Mr. Cooke of Millbridge, Mr. Crossley of 
 Halifax, and the late Mr. Howard of Leeds met together to form 
 an association of the carpet manufacturers of the North of England. 
 This meeting took place at Barnard Castle in the year 1839, and 
 they drew up a bond of union binding themselves under a heavy 
 penalty to produce an equalization of wages, and agreeing that no 
 master should be allowed to reduce below that scale without the 
 consent of the whole. A more benevolent and just association I 
 scarcely ever read of. 
 
 But I find further, that after this meeting had broken up, the 
 work people of the different works were called together and the 
 masters of the different firms told their workmen that they ex- 
 pected them to promise, that the association of operatives, which 
 was established especially for the pui'pose of strikes, should be 
 broken up. The announcement produced a very hostile spirit. 
 
 Before this time the operatives were by no means on good terms 
 with their employers, and on the announcement of the Barnard 
 Castle meeting bad results were at first expected ; but the mas- 
 ters pledging themselves that there should be no reduction of 
 wages, and that they would endeavour to prevent that i-eduction in 
 any particular firm, greater tranquillity was produced. 
 
 The system went on quietly till 1843, when a firm not con- 
 nected with the Masters' Association required a reduction of ten per 
 cent. ; it was an extensive carpet manufactory with perhaps two 
 hundred men employed in it ; the operatives of England and Scot- 
 land raised money for the purpose of enabling the men to strike — 
 and a strike ensued. After it had existed eight months the masters 
 held another meeting, sent a deputation to the manufacturers whose 
 men had struck to propose terms between them and their operatives. 
 They were successful in their generous effort.
 
 12 
 
 This meeting of the masters has continued on the first Thurs- 
 day in July in each year. There is a chairman^ and delegates of 
 the different bodies of workmen ; I find that these delegates are 
 authorized to place before the attention of the masters the com- 
 plaints of the men that they may be immediately examined into, 
 discussed and remedied, should it be thought consistent with the 
 rules of equity and humanity. 
 
 The first application that was made was for an advance of wages, 
 and this was given. The delegates showed reason why a certain 
 kind of work should receive an increase of wages on account of some 
 increased difficulty in the manufacture, and the masters granted it ; 
 two years after there was a request for a further advance, and it 
 was again acceded to. Another request was made, which not being 
 thought to be just, was refused, and no strike ensued. The masters 
 explained freely to the men the circumstances which induced them 
 to refuse it, and the men accepted their statements patiently and 
 approvingly. 
 
 All strikes about wages have since been determined by this asso- 
 ciation. During the time it has been in operation there have been 
 five strikes in the carpet trade unconnected with the association and 
 all these have been settled by the joint effort of the masters and the 
 men. When a firm not connected with the Masters' Association 
 refuses to give the wages, the associated masters and men join 
 together and lay on so much a week on each man to make up the 
 sum to the men on strike and the allowances are according to 
 the number of the family : the young men eight shillings a week, 
 the married men ten shillings, and one shilling and sixpence for 
 each child during the strike. The masters and men in this asso- 
 ciation have always acted in unison, because if the masters out of 
 the association were to reduce the wages, the wages of the whole 
 trade must be reduced at the same time, or they could not go on. 
 
 Now I will go no further into this highly interesting matter at 
 the present moment. It will be found by any of my readers in the 
 evidence taken before the Select Committee of the House of Com- 
 mons upon Masters and Operatives. This, surely, shows the effi- 
 ciency of an approach of the masters towards the men with the 
 view of deprecating the false political economy and averting the 
 miserable moral and social paralysis ensuing upon the men taking 
 the law into their own hands, ignorant of the real value of capital, 
 and the relative value of labour ; and over and above this, opening 
 as it were a court at which the really intelligent and well inten- 
 tioned of their operatives can plead their grievances rightly or 
 wrongly supposed, and gain redress where they deserve redress. 
 This alone shows how beneficial any effort will be which shall tend 
 to bring to bear moral suasion on the operative, and a conscious- 
 ness of sympathy with his position as a human being in the mind 
 of the master over and above the present disastrous method which
 
 13 
 
 is adopted simply ou the hypothesis that the master cares no more 
 for the men than he does for the feelings of the steel that forms 
 the wheels or the handles of his machinery. 
 
 I suggested at the meeting in the Town Hall at Durham, as 
 a part of a plan which might be remedial of the condition of the 
 operative class, that some opportunity should be offered to the 
 various operatives of the different working communities of England 
 to meet through their intelligent and best principled represen- 
 tatives to suggest their own supposed grievances and to bring 
 them by that means to the bar of public opinion ; to give them the 
 opportunity of free discussion and to enable the masters in all good 
 temper and conciliatory good will to appreciate the difficulties 
 of the men. Why should not that be ? Why should there not be 
 some such annual meeting made up of the representative delegates 
 of these bodies, who shall freely, honestly, good-temperedly, and 
 with trust and confidence in those over them discuss and either 
 indorse or repudiate the impressions of ill-usage and oppression 
 from the masters ? 
 
 Another reason why I attach importance to this portion of the 
 Report before the Select Committee is, that it seems to do what I 
 suggested somewhere above, namely, give a distinctive feature not 
 only to the carpet weaver in general, but to the Durham carpet 
 weaver in particular ; it seems to speak for an amount of intelli- 
 gence or moral worth in them, and of the ascendency of the highei- 
 portions of their community over the worse in influencing their 
 councils and directing their will, which I do not know exists in 
 any other community of so much importance and manufacturing 
 energy and talent in England or Scotland. 
 
 While on this head, it may be as well to refer to another point 
 in a great degree related to it, namely, the importance of giving 
 to the men some opportunity of expressing their thoughts through 
 the instrumentality of other processes besides that of public speech 
 and discussion. We have at this moment a widespread and suc- 
 cessful penny and daily press, which represents every phase of 
 political opinion and has its own amount of influence over these 
 men, in proportion as they fall under its sway. 
 
 The present very cheap press gives wonderful facility to the 
 working men to give vent to their feelings with regard to supposed 
 wrongs in the reduction of wages or acts of unkiudness from the 
 master. A newspaper written for the operative alone might, and 
 probably would, degenerate into a purely political engine. I have 
 seen a number of a small magazine called " The Northern Mes- 
 senger," which appears well calculated to further this object. 
 
 I am by no means blind to the great difficulties which might arise 
 in carrying this out ; but I am asking you whether those diffi- 
 culties might not pass away before the enei'gies of men who are 
 really interested in the wellbeing of the operative body. We all
 
 14 
 
 know well how the suppression of free speech has become like the 
 closing of the crater of a volcano, simply the means of making the 
 explosion at last ten times more tremendous still. We all know 
 the "way to escape" that is open to those who are able to give 
 utterance to their thoughts and complaints, which saves, how 
 much heart-bui'ning, how many misunderstandings and what an 
 amount of fostered and cherished animosity ! We all know in our 
 own free and noble country, how much we owe to that independent 
 and manly expression of opinion through the organs of the daily 
 press, which has prevented our being co-mates with the sorrowers 
 m Neapolitan dungeons or the weeping conscripts of Austrian armies. 
 It is on this account that for us no links have been forged which 
 are to clank in the fetters of servitude and that the cry which is 
 first heard by every child that is born into membership with our 
 British communion is the cry of a noble and universal emancipa- 
 tion. How little should we be able to boast of those glorious and 
 blessed heritages, if the sorrows of our people were pent up in 
 the caverns of their own hearts without free vent and expression ! 
 Give to the operative, possessed as he is of intelligence, knowledge, 
 experience, and thought, the credit also of having some desire to 
 act rightly and a large amount of indignation at dishonest or ty- 
 rannical practice. Give to him every facility, should he lack the 
 loftiest powers of education that you yourselves may enjoy, to utter 
 his thoughts through his own peculiar channel and lend a kindly 
 and attentive ear to those expressions, however inarticulate or falter- 
 ing. Surely in proportion as you do this, the internal anguish will 
 be to a great degree soothed, the pent-up storms of passion and in- 
 dignation will find their way out into the realm of intelligence and 
 consciousness of freedom, and that which seemed just now bursting 
 into the thunders of the storm will become the gentle and in- 
 audible whispers of an evening wind. 
 
 And yet we are told by men who should know better, that it is 
 absurd to suggest to these heaving masses any safety-valves for the 
 expression of their opinion. We are told in sentences really almost 
 ludicrous that the working man does not realise or feel that he is 
 of much importance among the great population of his country or 
 that he throws any considerable weight into the balance of her 
 destinies. We are told that no trash can be greater than that 
 which is talked about giving them the opportunities of expression, 
 before even they have gained the very scantiest knowledge — What ! 
 when men have risen beneath the shadow of the factory, ay, and 
 when at this moment, if I have heard truly, within the walls of 
 your own factory, there ai-e men who have by a continual application 
 of powers with which providence has gifted them, and of high me- 
 chanical genius, invented power of machineiy which not only will 
 benefit their own career through life, not only facilitate the trade and 
 the commerce of their native land, but enable them to walk in the
 
 15 
 
 I'ear of that army in the van of which are receding over the brow 
 of the hill Harvey, Arkwright, and Davy : shall we say, that there 
 are not men who, though they may not be able to appreciate a 
 particular volume on Church History or a particular treatise on 
 scholastic Greek, should yet have the opportunity of expressing 
 their opinions about their daily craft ? Are we to conceive that 
 the whole of human knowledge and experience is to be cut by one 
 knife and into one shape, and that to be weighed and determined 
 by the narrow traditions of university or ecclesiastical lore ? No, 
 this will not do, we must treat men as we find them ; and if one 
 mode of expression is not in the power of those to whom I have 
 been referring, give them the opportunity to express themselves 
 after their own fashion. Impress upon them the convictions of 
 your own wide and unhesitating sympathy, and I believe that alike 
 through the instrumentality of the Masters' Union, and through 
 the bringing to the bar of public opinion for the sake of free discus- 
 sion the wrongs of the master and the rights of the men and with 
 this the opportunity offered to the operative to express his feelings 
 through the medium of the press or the treatise, you may do more 
 than through many other processes adopted to arrest the fatal pro- 
 gress of the strike and to elevate in tone and principle that most 
 influential portion of your fellow-countrymen, the operatives and 
 the workmen of the north. 
 
 Is it not true that, in the most important operative districts in 
 the North of England there is a bitterness between the master 
 and the man that seems to be almost hopeless ? Does not this 
 antagonism exist in such a manner as to destroy all confidence in 
 each other ? And might not this bitterness be to a great degree 
 softened and toned down, if mastei-s would consent to recognise 
 some such opportunity being offered to their men of expressing 
 their opinions freely and openly, and were by their own con- 
 duct to show to their workmen that they do really desire their 
 benefit, elevation, and recognition in the ranks of English society ? 
 I feel that I am not taxing too far your powers of sympathy 
 in this matter when I call to mind a circumstance that I trust 
 I shall not forget, — the presence of your Mr. William Henderson 
 amongst your workmen at a meeting in Durham held in the early 
 part of last November, when, if I remember rightly, he theu told 
 them that it was your conviction that the great reason of the 
 success which they attributed to your influence over the operatives 
 connected with your carpet -works, was the fact of your having 
 shown a strong desire to let the men on all occasions have a 
 free expression of their opinions, and to put that expression for- 
 ward under the belief that they would gain a fair, liberal, and a 
 candid hearing. And, if this be the case, can there be any reason- 
 able objection to the urging, through every means in our power, 
 the establishment of some such social meetin"; ?
 
 16 
 
 There is one point that strikes me as interesting on this matter, 
 and that is, how far any such opportunity being oflFered as I have 
 suggested could prevent the evils that arise, almost of necessity, 
 from the inequality of wages, and the variety of prices in the market 
 of different kinds of produce. These wages, I imagine, must alter 
 from time to time. Wages, like every other mercantile arrangement, 
 must depend on circumstances ; and if trade is prosperous, and 
 wool cheap, masters will be able to give higher wages than when 
 wool is dear and trade flat. A dull trade and high-priced wool 
 will have a material effect on the price of wages. Other circum- 
 stances over and above this may affect the rate of wages, so as 
 to make it unreasonable to keep them up to a certain point. I 
 find, from the report of your own workmen, that some time before 
 the parliamentary commission to which I have had occasion moi'e 
 than once to refer, the masters who were not connected with the 
 Association formed at Barnard Castle reduced their men's wages : 
 the men in the Association never contemplated that their masters 
 would keep the wages up, and instead of making the least complaint 
 they were quite williug they should be reduced in order to meet the 
 other manufacturers in the market. 
 
 Now this speaks wonderful things for the result of this mode 
 of operation, when it appears that not only that most embittering 
 and exasperating of all questions on the mind of the operative, — 
 the variety of wages and the false estimate, very often, of his own 
 powers of labour compared with the application of capital to him 
 — has been toned down, but that over and above that no irritability 
 was shown towards masters in the Association, and that the operative 
 himself seems all but to have suggested the reduction of his own 
 wages in order that a fair equilibrium might be restored in the 
 market generally. 
 
 This seems to me to be so just, fair, and simple a mode of 
 action, that any method which could be adopted that could tend 
 to bring out such a subject is one that every philanthropist and 
 friend to the working orders should promote to the utmost of his 
 power and influence. 
 
 I find that Mr. Andrews tells us very clearly that it was not in 
 the power or province of this Court to settle the price that was to 
 be given for certain work ; but that it would be only when disputes 
 arose between master and men, which, under the present state of 
 circumstances would ordinarily lead to a strike, the aggrieved party 
 might demand an arbitration on the question in dispute, and both 
 parties be bound by the award of the arbitrator. For instance : if 
 a master offered to reduce wages five per cent., and the workmen 
 refused to assent, as the law now stands (referring to the year 
 1856, which I am doing), the result is a strike; but if the men 
 had a right to say they would not accept the terms, but would sub- 
 mit the question to arbitration, and the men appointed one arbi-
 
 17 
 
 trator and the master another^ and the two sat on the case, heard 
 the evidence and gave their judgment, there would by no possi- 
 bility be a strike. 
 
 Perhaps I have said enough upon this question. I feel that, in 
 making any suggestions upon it, I can do so but with one view, 
 namely, that I should take the sentiments of men who are con- 
 nected with the trade, and who, I may suppose, understand the 
 political economy of the matter, as the basis on which to construct 
 an edifice of moral and social arrangement, which falls more imme- 
 diately within the scope of those who outside the works are inte- 
 rested in the condition of the working men. 
 
 c. In days gone by did not those companies of working men which 
 were formed together into guilds take something of the form that I 
 am now urging ? Men met together in the bonds of brotherhood 
 and fraternity. They felt bound to stand by each other in the 
 days of adversity or difiiculty ; rejoiced with each other's pi'osperity, 
 and shed kindred tears with each other's adversity. Even their 
 attachment to families was not sufficiently strong to snap the bond 
 which connected them with mates of the same occupation. These 
 guilds, if I mistake not, were often framed upon religious or at least 
 highly moral laws, were recognised by the employer and were felt 
 to be one of the great preservatives against those disastrous results 
 which, in our day of rapidly-increasing population, the complica- 
 tions and intricacies in the rights of capital and the wrongs of 
 labour are threatening to bring about by the subversion of some 
 of the most important of our social institutions, and to hinder the 
 advance of that civilisation which we had hoped was rapidly ap- 
 proaching its consummation in the land. 
 
 It might be well to call the attention of every one interested ia 
 this matter to the question of the formation of these guilds. I am 
 not one of those who can imagine that the machinery which was 
 found efficient for the small bodies of society in the reign of the 
 First or Second Tudor, cannot be — if it was really what it pro- 
 fessed to be, viz. founded upon the highest laws of religion and 
 the positive wants of mankind — so extended and made elastic so as 
 to meet the case of the masses and millions of the present age. 
 God, inasmuch as He made the human race, became not only their 
 Creator, but their moral Governor ; and knowing the beings that 
 He had thus formed. He surrounded them with everything that 
 could develope the powers that He had created in germ, and bring 
 to their final development those energies that He had set in motion 
 for eternal happiness. Surely none of those plans and institutions 
 which were at one time evidently recognised as under His favour, 
 — which tended to keep the man by the side of his brother and to 
 reconcile the conflictiog interest of employers and employed, — can 
 be without a substitute and representative in an age like ours, when 
 Manchester has overlapped the borders of its stream, within whose
 
 18 
 
 narrow channel it was shrunk up two hundred and fifty years ago, 
 in such a manner as to make us smile when we watch the im- 
 petuous torrent that has now left no trace of the original shore ? 
 I read that Leeds in the year 1685 consisted — and made a boast 
 of it at the time — of a population of 7,000; it has within less 
 than two hundred years raised that population to 200,000. I 
 cannot conceive that, while this is the case with every intelligent 
 and energetic town of the empire, there are not with the diseases 
 remedies sufficient to meet them ; and growing up by the side of 
 that power which has suggested and invented machinery an in- 
 telligence sufficiently keen and perseverance sufficiently laborious 
 to meet the case of the nineteenth century, as the energies of men 
 originally met the case of the seventeenth. 
 
 4. A further question 1 wish to ask with regard to the con- 
 dition of the woi'kman, and which has been brought beforfe my 
 notice especially by my visit to Durham and your factory is this, 
 — whether the one object which, above all others, the working man 
 of this age yearns after be not sympathy ? I know that sympathy 
 is the highest gift that man can bestow upon his fellow man, and 
 that it is by no means the single claim of the workman that he 
 shall have the fellow-feeling and interest of those around him. But 
 1 think I am not far wrong when I say that there are no men, as a 
 class, in this country that yearn after that sympathy more. And 
 this is very easily explained. In a great many of the Northern 
 districts Socialism and some of the more subtle forms of Ra- 
 tionalism have tended to sap the foundations of Christianity and 
 to shake in consequence the edifice of social and political truth. 
 
 Several names of rationalistic teachers are rife amongst the men, 
 and when speaking of those names and of those who value them, 
 it seems that to the conscious sympathy ofi'ered by such men as 
 Robert Owen and Holyoake, and the occasional lack of sympathy 
 shown to the workmen by professing Christian teachers, is to be 
 attributed much evil. 
 
 If sympathy be the key by which we unlock the door of the 
 human heart ; if it be the sunbeam that warmer than any other 
 will thaw the ice bound like iron around the afiections and ener- 
 gies pent up within and only needing such genial influence to enable 
 them to rill forth fertilizing and gladdening all around ; if this be 
 the case is it likely that the Church in England will ever gain her 
 true position amongst this very influential body, if she is to neglect 
 to make use of so powerful an instrument, while around her are 
 enemies or hesitating friends occupying theirs with so much and 
 such evident success ? 
 
 a. Taking it for granted that the boon which every man asks 
 of his brother is especially that of sympathy, the working man of 
 England seems above all other portions of the population to de- 
 mand it and to expect it. It is to his labour that the commercial
 
 19 
 
 attitude of our great country is to a considerable degree owing. 
 He often invents and the man of capital gains the credit of the in- 
 vention. The machinery that so successfully takes the place of 
 labour, has very often been elaborated through watchful days and 
 wakeful nights by a man who returns to his room to grudge him- 
 self the food necessary for his toil, that he may save through a 
 quarter of a century sufficient to construct the machine to gain his 
 patent. He may, as in more than one celebrated instance, see the 
 hope finally flit like a phantom before his eyes, another elaborate 
 his design, making its honour and success his own, and leave to 
 the true inventor an unhonoured and forgotten name. Surely this 
 feature of our operative population alone demands the greatest 
 sympathy from us. Their continual application to the work in 
 hand, their experience of all the difficulties involved in carrying it 
 out, the intelligence which on all sides is acknowledged to be their 
 inheritance, no doubt brought about by the friction of mind with 
 substantive objects which makes them the men who are more 
 likely than any others to create and give fresh impetus to that 
 power of machinery on which our great commercial name rests, — 
 all this demands our sympathy. 
 
 b. But again the working man deserves our regard from the fact 
 that he is struggling from a condition in society to which in one 
 sense he was not born and to which either the narrow-mindedness, 
 or to attribute a worse motive, the jealous dread of having another 
 tread upon their heels, the working man will be confined by 
 those who are placed in ranks above him. It is to the strug- 
 gling that we yield sympathy, not to him that has gained his 
 position. It is to the drowning mariner that we extend the hand 
 of salvation, not to him that has already reached the shore. It is 
 to the youth who struggles with crippled limb and emaciated form 
 to earn a sustenance for a widowed mother, that we yield the 
 widest as well as the dearest of our heart's affections, rather than 
 to him who gifted with every bounty of a beneficent providence 
 finds it nothing more than to ask to receive liberally all he desires. 
 
 Do not these men by their very attitude expect our interest in a 
 way in which no other portion of the population do who either have 
 gained a position that we cannot better, or are not possessed of that 
 mental power nor received that mental culture which may make 
 them value or struggle after the crown so often denied them ? 
 
 c. There is a third reason why these classes peculiarly want our 
 sympathies. In proportion as the intellectual force has been in- 
 creased the powers of feeling and affection have been equally in- 
 creased. We cannot develope one portion of the human being 
 without the other. It is a monster that is produced by only a 
 single developement. If a man is gifted with the power of grati- 
 tude, and his intellect is developed by a certain form of occupation, 
 by the side of that intellect the germ of gratitude will grow up
 
 20 
 
 also. If there be to that intellect an object offered worthy of its 
 power, the intellect will feed on and be satisfied with that object ; 
 but if there be no such object offered to the germ of gratitude that 
 springs by its side it will take an adverse direction and in the end 
 the power that might have in its finished act become gratitude be- 
 comes the deepest and the most indignant of ingratitudes. You 
 cannot develope the intellectual without at the same time intensify- 
 ing the moral and the sensitive nature. 
 
 If this, then, be the case, and what I have stated with regard to 
 the former of those natures be true in regard to the operative, 
 what vast energies of affection, what powers of tenacious depend- 
 ence, what keen eyes fixed upon the moral guide and teacher, 
 what boundless and fathomless forces of gratitude are theirs, and 
 how magnificent would be the application of any system which 
 was suited to meet all this, if it were applied by men who not 
 only appreciated the system that they worked, but were delighted 
 that the result should be what I am urging — sympathy ! That 
 system is the Church. 
 
 But, again, the working man seems especially to need this aid 
 from every one who cares for him, inasmuch as he practically 
 shows, that if one man will not give it him he will seize it from 
 another, and that if he is denied it by systems of truth he will 
 make it his own by appropriating systems of error; and to bring 
 these remarks to their practical point, that if the ministers of the 
 Church of England are too nice, — if the members of our great 
 ecclesiastical bodies in the large cities and towns of this country 
 are too respectable, — if the Clergy of our various parishes are .too 
 much incrusted with the frost of university life, — if our town Clergy 
 are too much occupied with the secularities of their position, — it 
 simply comes to this, that they willingly give over, bound hand 
 and foot, the most noble of the populations of God to the ra- 
 tionalism or the socialism of the atheistic teachers of the day. 
 
 5. This brings me at once and easily to a point of which I wish 
 to ask you a little further. 
 
 First, I have more than once asked of men occupying your 
 position, whether it were possible to bring any immediate religious 
 or moral instruction to bear upon the various populations which 
 work under the roof of a given factory. I have generally, if not 
 always met with the same objection, that the operatives cannot 
 be considered in any other light than simply that of workmen 
 working for so much money, — that any recognition of distinct 
 relationship in any other capacity than that of the mere employ- 
 ment between the master and the men would excite endless mis- 
 understanding and causes of annoyance between the two bodies. 
 
 Secondly, that the fact of the great variety of opinions re- 
 presented in bodies of workmen, some belonging to the Church of 
 England and some Romanists, so many attached to different forms
 
 21 
 
 of dissent and above all so many altogether refusing to accept 
 Christianity, it would be hopeless to bring any one system of 
 religious instruction in any way to bear upon them. 
 
 Therefore it seems that in many cases the workman is given over 
 to a state of hopeless ignorance with regard to the loftiest destinies 
 of his existence ; and this when a vast opportunity is offered by the 
 mere fact of their congregation at one locality, and to a certain 
 degree being under an individual influence in such a manner as 
 scarcely any other body of men in the country is. 
 
 I gather, nevertheless, that you have successfully attempted some 
 operations of the kind that 1 refer to; you have worked some sys- 
 tem of night-schools, in which the men and youths who are 
 employed in your particular factory receive the benefit of evening 
 education ; that you are, more than this, hoping to extend the 
 teaching further by establishing a system of entertainments of an 
 instructive and popular nature in the form of lectures and so forth, 
 which may not only relieve and recreate the mind after the labour 
 of the day, but give to the workmen connected with your factory an 
 associated character, which one would hope to result not only in 
 personal benefit to themselves, but very considerably in healing 
 those differences arising so often from suspicion between the em- 
 ployed and the employer. 
 
 All this strikes me as very important. That any one firm, of 
 experience and caution should have thrown out such a scheme and 
 begun in the very smallest way to work it, and that with the evi- 
 dent result falling under my own eye of the gratitude evinced 
 by the men whom you are trying to benefit, is a reason to make me 
 conceive that such a scheme might be w^orked with the greatest 
 benefit in other smaller bodies of the kingdom. 
 
 I asked this question in a previous letter that I addressed on 
 the subject of the operatives of the North and received for answer 
 from some of those to whom I sent it statements which implied 
 incredulity of success in that mode of operation ; while at the same 
 time in two or three cases I discovered that the effort had been 
 made such as you have attempted and with the same kind of result. 
 
 Now, may I ask you, have you any intention of carrying out 
 further this kind of operation ? do you conceive that it would be 
 possible to extend it so much as to bring the workmen toge- 
 ther for distinct religious services of some sort, not only on the 
 Sunday, but on the week-day? — I mean by offering of prayers in 
 some shed connected with the factory in the morning and evening 
 for all those w'ho are willing to attend for the space of five minutes ; 
 and on Sundays by having a more elaborate service with earnest 
 and well-adjusted addresses to those who might be willing to come 
 together? If so, of course it would be needful to have the right man 
 in the way of a chaplain. If it be at all within your intention do you 
 see any of those difficulties before you which I have just now men-
 
 2i. 
 
 tioned as so frequently put forward by other masters ? Are they 
 indeed insuperable ? Is there no common ground on which we can 
 meet the operatives in England and hope to win over to Christianity 
 men who have begun to hesitate about its truth ? Is there no such 
 force^ no such exercise of the sympathy which I spoke of just now, as 
 to lead us to believe that it would be a formidable weapon of warfare 
 in battering down the middle walls of partition that exist between 
 man and man ? Is it indeed the case that suspicion is so keen and 
 lively on the part of the employed, that they can by no means be 
 brought to believe that the employer intends well, or otherwise 
 than to exercise an undue control over their liberty of thought and 
 conscience when he even breathes a word about the moral or reli- 
 gious wellbeing of his people ? If such a system of operation could 
 be brought into practice, how large surely might be the benefit ! 
 how amazing the remedy which would be brought to bear to prevent 
 some of those disastrous exhibitions of hostility and animosity that 
 we have seen in some of the great factory districts of the North. 
 Christianity has been looked upon for many ages as the great soft- 
 ening and healing power of mankind. We have been told over 
 and over again that Christianity marching in the vanguard of ad- 
 vancing civilisation tends more than any other influence to break 
 down barriers and to draw together others that would stand far 
 apart. We have heard of it as a beautiful and beneficent power, 
 soothing the hatred of the savage and cooling the burning passions 
 of Eastern tribes. We have heard of it as an illuminated atmo- 
 sphere which has shed a lustre upon all those who have lived and 
 moved under its influence. We have heard of it as making one 
 the dark African and the sallow inhabitant of the Pacific, and 
 enabling them to feel that there is for them a recognised brother- 
 hood with the more intelligent, though hitherto proud and reserved 
 European. We have heard of it as able to make men forget 
 every other conceivable difference. Before its magic wand have 
 disappeared the centuries of time and the vast distances of space. 
 If, then, the world has yielded to its force, — if prejudices which have 
 been deeply engrafted into the very trunk of human nature have 
 been held by its influence, — if it has been the successful philosophy 
 which has answered the deep inquiries and satisfied the yearnings 
 of the human mind and soul, why cannot it be brought practically 
 to bear on so small a sphere comparatively, and so natural an op- 
 portunity as that presented by a body of men working under the 
 direction of a single employer under one roof, who have a direct 
 and personal interest in the operations of each other and of the 
 master. 
 
 I should indeed hail the day when men like yourselves will march 
 in the vanguard of this kind of improvement ; and should count it 
 amongst the noblest triumphs of the application of Christian edu- 
 cation in this country, if the masters were to come forward and
 
 23 
 
 demand of the Bishops and the clergy of England means to meet 
 the cases of their hundreds and thousands of workmen. It would 
 be a glorious dawn preparing for a brighter day for the English 
 Church if those operative classes could be brought within its in- 
 fluence ; and such a request put forward by men in your attitude 
 must receive the attention of every person in spiritual and eccle- 
 siastical position in the English Church, must pave the way to an 
 increased amount of existing machinery and of a new kind of 
 machinery altogether, and must call forth a class of clergymen 
 suited to this peculiar mode of fulfilling their vocation, who will 
 be the right men in the right place. 
 
 I know that we are told on all sides that we overrate the attitude 
 of the operative. We are told that education has gone too far ; 
 that it is impossible without the danger of being charged with dog- 
 matism and illiberality even to urge the blessed Name of our Lord, 
 which nevertheless the very objector professes to love, upon those 
 who work for us. 
 
 Such statements sometimes come from men who hold the lamp 
 in their hands which was given them to illumine the darkened path- 
 way of the multitude and while they hold it only permit its light to 
 fall upon their own footsteps and to enrich themselves by the dis- 
 coveries which it enables them to make — when it is by such men 
 that these objections are raisfed, are not their words, their opinions 
 and their arguments to be set at nought before the sounder rea- 
 soning of universal philanthropy and exalted Christianity ? 
 
 6. Since writing the above, I have received a letter written by 
 one of your operatives, to whom I have had to make refer- 
 ence in the past pages, as showing so much intelligence and 
 mastery of the subject before the Committee of the Houses of 
 Parliament. 
 
 He seems in the letter to deplore the many evils that have 
 hitherto existed in the comparative position of master and man. 
 But while he does this he is evidently a thoughtful person, and 
 bases his complaints upon no inferior or floating grounds. 
 
 He expresses in the letter great confidence in that union of 
 masters at Barnard Castle to which I had occasion to refer. He de- 
 precates the union of the men throughout the country against the 
 masters in such a manner as to lead every workman to throw him- 
 self upon the support of his colleagues, or of those who in other 
 districts are employed at similar manufactures so as in a short time 
 to create an unreal and fatal dependence ; and by so doing to im- 
 poverish the condition of those who are flown to as the refuge. 
 The long and short of this appears to be in the estimation of 
 the writer of the letter that nothing is more injurious to the true 
 interest of the working man than that he should realize his only 
 safeguard to lie in the power of united action against the employer, 
 that such a line is injurious to the^ interest of the workman, inas-
 
 24 
 
 much as it creates a false dependence and tends in the long run to 
 embitter feeling between two classes which of necessity must work 
 together before any good result can ensue. Capital must be the 
 parent and protection of labour, while labour must be the opportu- 
 nity for the use of capital. He deprecates a system which tends 
 to glut the labour market — for if the labourer by his acts leaves 
 capital to lie idle, the master will of necessity find if he can (and 
 be can find) other labourers to bring into the market ; and over 
 and above all this he notices the disastrous effect of a continued and 
 unhealed wound existing in the relationship of two of the most im- 
 portant bodies of the society of our commercial empire. 
 
 He mentions with great satisfaction the opportunity that was 
 offered at your institution to the men engaged in the carpet work 
 at Durham and other trades of similar occupation, to come forward 
 at a given time and place, to lay their complaints, whatever they 
 might be, before the board, the masters assuring the workmen that 
 those complaints would be fairly attended to, and that if possible, 
 a remedy would be proposed. 
 
 He attributes the well-being of your large body of operatives in 
 a great degree to your own exertions within the walls of the fac- 
 tory ; to the library, which you initiated and support, the volumes 
 of which are confined to the use of those who work in your sheds; 
 to the establishment lately of night-schools, expressly for your own 
 workpeople both old and young, and to the efforts that you have 
 made to promote a certain social intercourse between yourselves and 
 those under your charge. 
 
 I cannot read the letter without feeling that it reflects hon- 
 ourably on the writer, showing him to be a man of intelligence. 
 He sees that the real remedy for the disease is in the thorough re- 
 generation of the social body ; that there may be faults on both 
 sides, and that both must come forward in the healing of the social 
 wound. 
 
 I notice in his letter that he thinks the great object should be for 
 the employer to try, as far as he is able, to treat his factory as a 
 family or a fraternity, and to create an esprit de corps by founding 
 institutions within the walls which shall be exclusively confined to 
 those immediately in his employ, 
 
 I hear that some others have followed your example. I cannot 
 but feel that it is to you, and such as you, that England will owe, if 
 God spares you time to develope your ideas and full opportunity and 
 scope for their expression, that we shall owe one of the great solu- 
 tions to the vast question which is mixed up with the vital interests 
 of our working classes. It is a social and not a political age. 
 
 I do not on this occasion pass any opinion upon the rights of en- 
 franchisement or the wrongs of disenfranchisement that we hear so 
 much of in the present day. Whether the working classes will be
 
 25 
 
 benefited or injured by the power of voting for our representative 
 bodies, or whether their exclusion in the proposals of certain legis- 
 lators be a permanent injury to the rising class, is a question 
 wdth which I am not at this moment caring to deal. The real 
 remedy lies in the healing of a social wound, in the building up of 
 a social breach : it lies more in the hands of the employer than 
 the legislatoi', more within the reach of the master and the mill- 
 owner than the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the existing govern- 
 ments of the day. 
 
 The true friend of the operative is not he who would fan the 
 flame of political animosity or give energy to the torrent of political 
 ambition, but it is he who convinces the classes amongst whom 
 he moves that the interest of the classes is inseparably connected : 
 that you can no more sever the necessary dependence of capital 
 on labour, and of labour on capital, than you can safely tear the 
 vine from the trellis over which it has climbed, and upon whose 
 support it depends to produce the luxuriant harvest of its fruit. 
 The " coming " and successful man will be he who will show that 
 that universal law of love which a beneficent Creator has founded 
 for the well-being of mankind finds its place alike in the bodies 
 to which I have been referring, as it does in the more minute de- 
 tails of family life or the ordinary relationships of society; and 
 that while this law of love is the only one we can safely fall back 
 upon in its great developements, its many and vast powers of 
 application, we must look upon every party as equally respon- 
 sible for its breach and for its observance, and hail with the great- 
 est gratitude men who shall be pioneers in that advance, and 
 who, while they go axe in hand clearing away the tangled under- 
 wood of intricacies which the false relationships of centuries have 
 permitted to spring up, shall open out new worlds of success, 
 energy, and commercial enterprise by bringing to bear upon them 
 the clear and warm sunshine of reciprocal goodwill and recog- 
 nition of the laws by which our race has been chartered. 
 I remain, dear Messrs. Henderson, 
 
 Yours very sincerely and gratefully, 
 
 Edward Monro. 
 Harrow Weald, 
 May, 1859. 
 
 JOSEPH MASTERS AND CO., PEIMTEES, ALDEESGATE STKEET, LONDON.
 
 BY THE SAME ATJTHOE. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE MILLI 
 
 1. THE LITEEATUEE OF THE MILLION. 6d. 
 
 2. THE " NAVVIES," AND HOW TO DEAL WITH THEM. 
 
 Price 6d. 
 
 3. THE COLLIEE AND THE OPEEATIVE, AND HOW TO 
 
 AFFECT THEM. 6d. 
 
 4. HATMAKEES AND THEIE HABITS. 9d. 
 
 TALES FOR THE MILLION. 
 
 DICK, THE HAYMAKER 4d. 
 
 EDWAED MOEEIS. A Tale of Cottage Life. 2d. 
 
 WALTEE, THE CONVICT. 4d. 
 
 In preparation. 
 THE TALE OE A COTTON GOWN: Manchester Life. 
 THE STOEY OF AN OLD COAT : Leeds Life. 
 
 NANNY : A Sequel to " Harry and Archie." 6d., in cloth, Is. 
 
 HAEEY AND AECHIE ; or, Eirst and Last Communion, and the 
 Danger of Delay. In Two Parts, 6d. each ; or bound together, Is. 
 
 MIDSUMMEE EVE. A Tale of the Fidelity of a Young Girl to 
 the Daughter of her Mistress, and of her influence for good on the father and 
 others. 6d.
 
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