Part Three
[Third letter continued]. I have spent the day in the chapels and school. After dinner, a dissenting minister dropped in and I had a long talk with him; he is coming for a cigarette this evening after chapel. He told me that in all the chapels there was a growing desire among the congregation to have political and social subjects treated in the pulpit, and that it was very difficult for a minister, now, to please. He also remarked that districts in which cooperation amongst the workmen (in industrial enterprise) existed, they were a much more independent and free-thinking set. There is an immense amount of co-operation in the whole of this district; the stores seem to succeed well, both as regards supplying the people with cheap articles and as savings banks paying good interest. Of course I am just in the centre of the dissenting organisation; and as our host is the chapel keeper and entertains all the ministers who come here I hear all about the internal management. Each chapel, even of the same denomination, manages its own affairs; and there are monthly meetings of all the members (male and female) to discuss questions of expenditure etc. In fact each chapel is a self-governing community, regulating not only chapel matters but overlooking the private life of its members.
One cannot help feeling what an excellent thing these dissenting organisations have been for educating this class for self-government. I can’t help thinking too, that one of the best preventives against the socialistic tendency of the coming democracy would lie in local government; which would force the respectable working man to consider political questions as they come up in local administration. Parliament is such a far-off thing, that the more practical and industrious lot say that is gormless meddling with it (useless), and they leave it to the “gabblers.” But they are keen enough on any local question which comes within their own experiences and would bring plenty of shrewd sound sense to bear on the actual management of things.
Certainly the earnest successful working man is essentially conservative as regards the rights of property and the non-interference of the central government; and though religious feeling still has an enormous hold on this class, and forms a real basis for many lives, the most religious of them agree that the younger generation are looking elsewhere for subjects of thought and feeling.
It seems to me of great importance that the political thought should take a practical instead of a theoretical tone; that each section of the community should try experiments on a small scale, and that the promoters should see and reap the difficulties and disadvantages of each experiment as it is executed. There is an immense amount of spare energy in this class, now that it is educated, which is by no means used up in their mechanical occupation. When the religious channel is closed up it must go somewhere. It can be employed either in the practical solution of social and economic questions, or in the purely intellectual exercise of political theorising and political discussion about problems considered in the abstract.
Forgive all these crudely expressed ideas. I have jotted them down just as they have crossed my mind. I am immensely interested in what I hear and see. But it is a daring thing in a young woman to drop “caste”; and that is why I am anxious it should not be talked about. I have sufficient knowledge of men that make them be to me as I choose; but not every one would understand that one had that power, and without it, it would not be a profitful or wise adventure. I have seen two more Aked brothers. They are all delicate-featured melancholy men, with beautiful hands. There is a universal interest in our family. I think they would be somewhat horrified if they knew that this £stirring lass who is up in everything” was one of “the fashionable Miss Potters who live in grand houses and beautiful gardens and marry enormously wealthy men.” But they obviously feel that there is something very strange about me. Their generalisations about “Welsh women” will be rather quaint by the time I go.
On living among mill-hands of East Lancashire [I reflect a few months later] I was impressed by the depth and realism of their religious faith. It seemed to absorb the entire nature, to claim as its own all the energy unused in the struggle for existence. Once the simple animal instincts were satisfied the surplus power, whether physical, intellectual or moral. Even the social intercourse was based on religious sympathy and common religious effort. was devoted to religion. It was just the one-idea’d-mess and transparentness of life which attracted my interest and admiration. For a time it contrasted favourably with the extraordinarily complex mental activity arising in the cosmopolitan life of London—an activity which in some natures tends to paralyse action and dissipate thought.
The same quality of one-idea’d-ness is present in the Birmingham radical set, earnestness and simplicity of motive being strikingly present. Political conviction takes the place here of religious faith; and intolerance of scepticism of the main articles of the creed is as bitter in the one case as in the other. Possibly the Bible, from its inherent self-contradiction, is a more promising ground for the individualism than the radical programme and the less likely to favour the supremacy of one interpreter. Heine said some fifty years ago, “talk to an Englishman on religion and he is a fanatic; talk to him on politics and he is a man of the world.” It would seem to me from my slight experience of Bacup and Birmingham, that that part of the Englishman’s nature which has found gratification in religion is now drifting into political life. When I suggested this to Mr. (Joseph) Chamberlin (a prominent Birmingham Tory politician JKH) he answered, “I quite agree with you and I rejoice in it. I have always had a grudge against religion for absorbing the passion in human nature.” It is only natural that, this being his view, he should find in the uncompromising belief of his own set a more sympathetic atmosphere wherein to recruit his forces to battle with the powers pf evil than in the somewhat cynical, or at any rate infinitely qualified, political opinions of London society. [MS. Diary March 16, 1884.]
To complete the tale, I give the entries and letters relating to other visits in 1886 and 1889 after I had become an investigator in the East End of London.
Part Four
Three years passed away—and Miss Jones again came to Bacup. She had lost her bloom of body and mind; some of her old friends hardly recognised here. The now familiar scene of working-class life had lost its freshness—adventure has lost its charm, and conscience had become more uneasy, even of white lies! So she lived among the people, keenly observant of the larger features of their life—but haunted with a spiritless melancholy. The grand old puritan with his vigorous, homely, religious feeling had passed away; the amiable and gentle John Aked had gone to the rest vouchsafed by heaven even to melancholy Akeds; young children had grown up to years of discretion. Old Bacup remained unaltered among the bleak high hills. The mills, now working busily overtime, nestled in the valley, long unpaved streets of two-storied cottages straggled irregularly up the hills. The old coaching in, with its air of refined age, still stood behind the new buildings representing municipal life; a “Co-op” shop asserted its existence with almost vulgar prominence. The twenty chapels of all denominations, the parish church, and the “gentry-built” new church, stood on the same ground are as yet unemptied. Bacup life is still religious—the book of science, insinuating itself into the mill-hand’s cottage, has not yet ousted the “book of life”. The young man goes to chapel. But he will not teach in the Bible class or the Sunday school. The books from the free “Co-op” library interest him more; his talk about God is no longer inspired by the spirit of self-devoting faith. But Bacup, in spite of municipal life and co-operative industry, is spiritually still part of the “old world.” It knows nothing of the complexities of modern life, and in the monotony of its daily existence likens the hand-loom village of a century ago. The restless, the complicated motive and the far-stretching imagination of cosmopolitanism find no place in the gentle minds of Bacup folk. They are content with the doings of their little town—and say that even in Manchester they feel oppressed and noy “homely like.”
I was interested in the mill-hand’s life. So long as the hours do not include overtime, the work is as healthful to body and mind as it well could be. Sitting by the hands at work, watching the invigorating quickness of the machinery, the pleasant fellowship of men. Women and children, the absence of care and the presence of common interest—the general well-being of well-earned and well-paid work—one was tempted to think that here, indeed, was happiness unknown to the strained brain-worker, the idle and overfed rich, or the hardly pressed very poor. Young men and women mix freely; they know each other as fellow=workers, members of the same or kindred chapels; they watch each other from childhood upwards, live always in each other’s company. They pair naturally, according to well-tested affinity, physical and spiritual. Public opinion—which means religiously guided opinion—presses heavily on the misdoer or the non-worker. The outcasting process, the reverse of the attracting force of East End life, is seen clearly in this small community, ridding it of the ne’er-do-well and the habitual out-o’-work.
There are no attractions for those that have not sources of love and interest within them; —no work for those who cannot or will not work constantly. On the other hand, ill-success and unmerited failure are dealt with gently—for these people are, in the main, thinking of another world, and judge people not according to the position they have scrambled into is this, but according to their place in a future Heaven won by godliness and self-renunciation.
Overtime brings needless waste of strength, taking more from the worker and giving less to the employer. It means an existence of physical drudgery, wearing out the body and— rusting out the mind. It leaves men with no appetite for food and a strong desire for drink—brutalises them by unfitting them for social intercourse or common interest.
This class eats too little, and above all, sleeps too little—growing boys getting only six or seven hours’ of bed; and the unfortunate mother who calls them lying awake half the night so as to be in time, and sitting up for the latest and oldest to get to bed. But overtime is forbidden for women and children, and it is here that one sees the benefit of the Factory Acts, and consequent inspection. Laisser-faire breaks down, when one watches these things from the inside. The individual worker cannot refuse to work overtime—if he does he loses his employment. Neither does he always wish to refuse, for many are ignorant of the meaning of constant strain on future life. It is idle to say that this bad effect of overwork is not restricted to manual labour; but is more felt by brain-workers. True, but in one case the remedy is easy to administer, in another impossible. Factories are easily stopped—briefs, consultations and literary study cannot be checked. Perhaps it would be far happier if it could be. [MS. diary, October 1886.]
Letters to my father, October 1886.
(First letter). I should have written to you before, but I have had a wretched cold in my head, which has made me feel stupid. I nearly always have a cold once a year and generally about this time, but it is unfortunate that that it should come in this visit. Still, it has not been bad enough to prevent me from going out among the people. Mrs. Aked, with whom I am staying, is a jolly little Yorkshire widow, delighted with an excuse for going again into “coompany,” so we spend most of our time in and out of the neighbours’ cottages, and very old friends insist on entertaining me. I can assure you “Miss Jones” is a very popular person; and her London experiences draw quite an audience in the cottages in which she takes her “tiffen.” … I am more and more charmed with the life of these people: with their warm-hearted integrity and power to act together. I suppose they are a picked people from among the working class; if not, this section of the working class are more refined in their motives and feelings than the majority of the money-getting or money-inheriting class. There is a total absence of vulgarity; no attempt to seem what they are not, or to struggle and strive to be better off than their neighbours. Then, it is the only society I have ever lived in, in which religious faith really guides thought and action, and forms the basis to the whole life of the individual and community.
The religious socialism of the dissenting communities is very remarkable, each circle forming a “law unto itself” to which the individual must submit or be an outcast. And as all the denominations work heartily together (except the Church, which has here, on account of an ill-conducted parson, a contemptible position), the censorship on private morality is very severe, and a man or a woman cannot well escape it without leaving Bacup. One sees here the other side of the process through which bad workmen and bad characters are attracted to the large town. In East End life one notices this attraction, here one can watch the outcasting force. In the first place, there are no odd jobs in a small community which depends on productive industries. Unless a man can work regularly he cannot work at all. Then a bad character is socially an outcast, the whole social life depending on the chapel and the “Co-op.”
The Co-op furnishes amusement and interest, free of expense to all members, and through the system of deposit accounts, a mutual insurance company. Trade unionism is not strong here; class spirit hardly exists because there is no capitalist class; those mills which are not companies being owned by quite small men of working-class origin and connected with working people. Then, as a great many people have shares in the co-operative mills, there is a recognised desire to keep down wages, which reacts on the public opinion, and makes even the non-owning men take a fairer view of the employer’s position.
Three or four millhands were smoking here yesterday (my cigarettes!) and they were saying that the workers were getting the best of the bargain just at present. There is no bitter, uneasy feeling among the inhabitants of Bacup, for there is practically social equality perhaps this accounts for the total absence of vulgarity. But one wonders what will happen when the religious feeling of the people is undermined by advancing scientific culture; for though the “Co-op” and the chapel at present work together, the secularism of the “Co-op” is half unconsciously recognised by earnest chapel-goers as a rival attraction to the prayer meeting and the Bible class. One wonders where all the feeling will go, and the capacity for moral self-government.
I think the safeguard will be a strong local government, with considerable power to check individual action; and of a sufficiently small area to allow of the working people taking an everyday part, and not only at election times. For the active regulation of their own and their neighbours’ lives will be far less dangerous than theorising and talking about things of which they have no knowledge. They have been trained to act but not to think—and in talking over “imperial politics” they do not show much intelligence—for their own leading idea seems to be to cut down salaries!
Labouchere seems the principal favourite—a man they would not tolerate as a “Co-op” or chapel leader.
I am glad to say that the better class stick with Mr. Chamberlain [my father was an ardent “Unionist” G.O.M. (Grand Old Man, Gladstone JKH) has sadly gone down since I was last here—some good Liberals say openly that he is in his dotage.
Tomorrow, if my cold is well enough, I am going to Manchester with the draper’s daughter to buy goods from the Manchester warehouseman. Ask Mary to let me know how you got over your journey; my address is Miss Jones, 5 Angel Street, Tony Lane, Bacup.
[Second letter]. This is my last day here, as I am not going on to Oldham; the weather is so raw and disagreeable and I cannot get rid of my cold. I must tell you something about our daily life.
It begins at 5.30 with Mrs. Aked’s pleasant voice, “Willie, Willie, be sharp, first bell’s rung.” Willie is the youngest son, a pretty blue-eyed youth who “favours” Grandmamma Heyworth. He is tenter to a sheet weaver; is fifteen years old and earns five shillings. The last week his wages had been pulled down from to four shillings and ninepence and he threatens to strike off work, but his mother tells him if does, he shall be “without money.” Titus (the oldest) is off to work the same time (to the Keld (sic) manufacture|) and his mother gives them both a “cup of tea” before they leave. Then the good littler woman sits down to her Bible and struggles through her chapter (she is no scholar) until it is time for Walter to get off to his work (eight o’clock) at the ”Co-op” shop. He is a dull, heavy boy, whose chief interest is in his smart ties. We breakfast at 8.30, Titus and a fellow-worker joining us—bread and butter and teacake and good strong tea. Titus is a good, sensible lad, very fond of music and still fonder of “his woman”—reads a good many “Co-op” books on science, and wins prizes at the night schools. The fellow-worker is an unmarried woman of thirty-seven who says in a cheery way that “she’s had her chance a’ lost it, and canna look for another” (in which sentiment I sympathise!).
Yesterday, I put a shawl over my head and went off with her to the Mill—stayed an hour or so chatting with the hands while they worked. They are a happy lot of people—quiet workers and very sociable—men and women mixing together in a free-and-easy manner—but without any coarseness that I can see; the masculine sentiment about marriage being “that a man’s got no friend until he’s a woman of his own.” Parties of young men and women go off together for a week to Blackpool, sometimes on cheap trips to London—and as the women earn as much or nearly as much as the men (except the skilled work) there is no assumption of masculine superiority. Certainly this regular mechanical work, with all the invigorating brightness of the machines, and plenty of fellow-workers of both sexes, seems about the happiest lot for a human being—so long as the hours are not too long. The factory inspectors keep a sharp look-out on “overtime” for women and children; and this week two masters were fined forty pounds and costs. There is a strong feeling among the hands that overtime ought to be stopped for the men; and I think it would be better if it were. Latterly, Titus has worked on till eight o’clock, and looks thoroughly worn out. It seems to waste their strength compared to the amount of work they do extra, and changes an existence of wholesome exertion into wearisome drudgery. Yesterday I went to midday-meal with my old friend Alice Ashworth—an ugly, rough, warm-hearted single woman of forty, daughter to the delightful old puritan (now dead) we stayed with last time. Poor Alice lives alone in a two-roomed cottage, works at the mill. And has nothing but the memory of her father (who was a leader in all good things) and her strong religious feeling to warm the desolate loneliness of her life. “Ste ye down in the vacant chair, Miss Jones (after a hearty embrace); it does me good to see anyone who loved my father”; and her ugly features were lit up with strong feeling. She talks the broadest “Lankey” (Lancashire accent JKH), sometimes I cannot understand her—and her language is Biblical—all her simplest ideas illustrated with Biblical texts. She is devoted to me, looks upon me with quite a wondering admiration, and yet with a strong fellow-feeling of another “lonesome” working woman. It was a high day for Alice, for she had asked the chapel minister and other friends of former days to meet me at tea. The minister, one of the “new college men,” with measured phrases and long words; a poor exchange for the former minister called of God from among the people,” no more educated than his fellows but rising to leadership by force of character. This man is more of a politician than a preacher— a politician of the shallowest and most unreal type, using endless swords and not touching facts. He has a certain influence over the people, through his gift of the gab; but even they half unconsciously feel that the “real thing” is passing away, and grieve that there are “na more plain men as feel the word of Christ.” He is a snob into the bargain, and speaks of Stephen Gladstone as if he were his most intimate friend—but hen he is not of “Lankey” breed—he is a Welshman. His wife and sister-in-law are of the shabby genteel—aping the ways of the leisured class. Watching him among a large company of clear-headed, simple-minded millhands, mal-using his long words and affectedly twisting his hands, one felt the presence of the “inferior animal,” and dreaded the making of others of the like pattern by the shallow intellectualism of “higher education.”
But I have got off the “order of the day”.
We generally dine at home off mutton and potatoes, and have gone out “a tayin’” every day. That means going about three o’clock and staying until nine, sometimes the whole party adjoining to another cottage,
The people are wonderfully friendly—the cottages comfortable and well furnished, and the teas excellent. Of course the living is trying to any one unaccustomed to a farinaceous diet, and after a certain time the conversation would become wearisome to our restless, excited minds, always searching after new things. Still, living actually with these people has given me an insight, that is difficult to express in words, into higher working-class life—with all its charm of direct thinking, honest work and warm feeling; and above all, taught me the real part played by religion in making the English people, and of dissent teaching them the art of self-government, or rather serving as a means to develop their capacity for it. It saddens one to think that the religious faith that has united them together with a strong bond of spiritual effort and sustained them individually, throwing its warmth of light into the more lonely and unloved lives, is destined to pass away. For their lives of mechanical work—with the many chances of breakdown and failure meaning absence of physical comfort, they need more than intellectualism—more than any form of “high thinking,” which, even if it were worth anything to those who have it, is beyond the reach of these people from their lack of physical energy.
Intellectual culture is a relaxation to the more active-minded and successful, but it cannot be a resting-place to the worn out or failed lives. “life in Christ” and hope in another world bring ease and refinement into a mere struggle for existence, calming the restless craving after the good things of this world by an “other worldliness,” and making failure a “means of grace” instead of despicable want of success.
Poor Mary! Who has to read this letter to you!
On the last evening of my second visit I told me gentle cousins who I was. I feared that they would be offended: on the contrary, they were delighted, and glad I had not told them before they had got to know me.
The Akeds, mother and son, have been staying with me (I write a year afterwards). They are simple, true-hearted people, strong Christians: I love these Lancashire folk. I showed them all over London; the one thing they delighted in was the endless galleries of books in the British museum (the iron galleries where the books are stored). Olive Schreiner (author of the South African farm) was staying here, she is a wonderfully attractive little woman brimming over with sympathy. Titus Aked lost his heart to her; her charm of manner and conversation bowled over the simple-hearted Lancashire laddie, with his straight and narrow understanding. He gazed at the wee little woman with reverence and tenderness, and listened intently to every word she said. [MS, diary, October 4, 1887.]
Among my dear old friends [I write when visiting Bacup in 1889], with their kindly simplicity. Cousin Titus is now married to a young girl of sweet and modest expression and gentle wats, a fellow worker at the mill. Most days she works with him; but often takes a day off and engages a “knitter” to do her work. Titus reads newspapers and periodicals, and takes music lessons, and attends the mechanics’ institute. The young wife spends her spare time in visiting and needlework, and does not attempt “higher interests.” But she is full of kindness and affection for her mother-in-law, and fairly worships her Titus …. [MS. Diary, Bacup, April 1889.]
… When I was at Bacup [I meditate after my first visit] I felt as if I were living through a page of puritan history; felt that I saw the actual thing, human beings governed by one idea; devotion to Christ, with no struggle or thought about the world; in every action of their daily life living unto God. And I realised the strength of the motive which enlightened persons believe is passing away. I realised the permeating influence, and wondered what would fill the void it would leave. What inspiring motive would take its place? [MS. Diary, February 1884.]
The Bacup adventure gave a decisive turn to my self-development.
Every day actual observation of men and things takes the place of accumulation of facts from books and boudoir trains of thought. Undoubtedly the Bacup trip is the right direction. To profit by that kind of observation I must gain more knowledge of legal and commercial matters, understand the theory of government before I can appreciate deficiencies in practice. The time is come now for a defined object towards which all my energies must be bent. [MS. Diary, January 24, 1884.]
The die was cast, the craft was chosen. Through the pressure of circumstances and the inspiration of the time spirit, I had decided to become an investigator of social institutions.