1828.] the Necessity of Climbing-Boys in sweeping Chimnies. 453 



but because they have been accustomed to it they prefer. No man, 

 again, finds or at least he finds it with difficulty any habit in which he 

 has long indulged, and in which all the people about him indulge, cruel. 

 A hundred practices, which it would be impossible now to introduce, 

 being long existent, will be tolerated ; not because they are defensible, 

 but because men's minds are inured, and, in the manner, born to them. 



The case of the unhappy climbing-boys then, we are afraid, is one 

 peculiarly surrounded with all these difficulties. The lower classes and, 

 to do them justice, the middle ones all ignorant and half-informed 

 people hate every innovation that gives them trouble, or that they fancy 

 may by possibility give trouble. Housemaids are naturally jealous of the 

 danger of a little extra labour; and mistresses, of the chance of any 

 extra dirt. The " master-sweeps" can see no reason why should they ? 

 for learning a new mode of performing their work, when the old one 

 answers all their purpose extremely well. A chimney-sweeper as in- 

 stinctively dislikes the disuse of his climbing boys, as a barber hates 

 people who wear their own hair ; or a lawyer, people who talk of " re- 

 form in the practice of pleading." And, in point of fact, the " master 

 chimney-sweeps," very easily assisted by the prejudices of the persons 

 who employ them, do, beyond doubt, covertly oppose the use of 

 machinery by all the means in their power. They wilfully perform 

 the work ill, in a great variety of instances. But they go farther than 

 this ; for-^-that which is a most material " figure to be observed," as 

 Bobadil expresses it, in the management of every doubtful question 

 they charge twice as much to those who choose to use the machine, as is 

 paid by those who consent to use the boy ! 



Now a double amount of payment, and a double amount of dirt to 

 clear away afterwards, are fearful odds for the strongest case of charity 

 that ever was made out to contend against. And the principle is 

 fully approved in the existing instance : the new system is making 

 no way ; and, unless we back our benevolence with an Act of Parlia- 

 ment, we doubt if it is likely to make any progress worth considering : 

 it certainly makes very little at present. It is in vain, we are afraid, 

 that the Committee are using their private efforts, with so strong a force 

 opposed to them. They establish they have tried this experiment 

 vigorously a few traders, at long intervals of distance, who sweep 

 chimnies with the machine only, and do the work at the ordinary price. 

 This will not do it never can do, and never did. Two or three indi- 

 viduals cannot, in any trade, monopolize the business of a whole metro- 

 polis, or even make any sensible impression upon it. " Customers," as 

 they are familiarly called, will employ those agents who are " at hand." 

 All people like to " deal" in " the next street." A resident in Maryle- 

 bone will not employ a chimney-sweeper, or any other trader, who lives 

 at Mile End. Again those dealers who ' e sweep only with the machine," 

 are inconvenient for the purposes of the public. It may so happen 

 that a householder who sweeps ten chimnies with a machine, has one for 

 which a boy is necessary ; then, if he deals with the trader who uses 

 the machine only, that boy has to be sought elsewhere: and then 

 the proprietor of that boy is careless, or insolent, or discontented. 

 And people feel that it is better and, they think, " more fair" to give 

 the whole work to one individual. All these are, no doubt, petty details; 

 but they are the details which, where people are left to themselves, very 

 constantly decide the success of, or failure of, very important measures : 

 and they have had that effect in the present case. In despite of the 



