THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



25 



prosperity. Thus, it is not only the selfish principle 

 (or want of " principle") witliin us tliat is appealed. 

 Something more is set before us than the mere 

 advantage to ourselves of having better-fed, better- 

 housed, better-taught " lower orders ;" of having 

 fewer pestilential and feverous courts and back lanes 

 to involve our wealthier mansions in their subtle poi- 

 soning, and having fewer temptations of want and 

 ignorance and vice pressing the poor to rob and hate 

 and attack the rich. Our sense of fairness and honour, 

 our sympathy and generosity are appealed to, and we 

 are constrained to declare whether or not it is fair and 

 righteous that our fellow-citizens, who strain their 

 sinews, waste their energies, and hazard their health 

 and existence most, should eat of the plainest, and be 

 comforted with the hardest. Or, that they should dwarf 

 and dwindle on dry bread, while the more for- 

 tunate and idle partake of the best of palatable 

 luxuries. Our own sense of justness and fitness 

 and propriety tells us that a condition of society 

 in which the workman obtains the least part of Natiu'e's 

 bounties, and does not find that he is " worthy of his 

 hire," cannot be in accordance with the perfect and 

 normal government of the universe by a Providence of 

 equity and mercy. Let us even confess that there is 

 something wrong in our present social and economic 

 arrangements for distributing the profits of the products 

 of labour; doubtless permitted by the Ruler of the 

 nations for a wise and righteous end, but wliich sluill 

 be adjusted and compensated for in that millennial age 

 to which the world looks ever forward. 



Now, no one will suppose that we are going to 

 open up the theories and fallacies of" socialism," or to 

 quarrel with our existing national institutions. All we 

 want to impress upon the true labourers' friends is, that 

 remedial and alleviating measures, good and necessary 

 as they are, can only be of temporary effect, and should 

 not be urged and agitated as if they constituted a com- 

 plete solution of that perplexing problem, the "labour 

 question." True, there is plenty of work for us, at 

 present, in getting such measures as cottage-building, 

 piece-work, allotments, and schooling, admitted and 

 actively set-about in the right quarters ; so that present 

 distress may be allayed, present abuses removed, and a 

 brighter prospect unfolded to the sons of toil. But so 

 long as the framework, customs, and regulations of 

 society permit and establish an imperfect, unequal, 

 and therefore dangerous appropriation by diffe- 

 rent classes of the nation's industrial earnings, all 

 such measures will fail to reconcile the working- 

 classes to their position, or make them as happy 

 and contented as they should be. Anyone who 

 considers the general condition of society at the 

 present day, must see that only by a vast change 

 in the character, sympathies, and customs of the va- 

 rious classes of the community, can there be a period 

 inaugurated in which men shall always be able to com- 

 mand their reasonable share of the national store of 

 food and comforts, as well as of leisure for mental 

 culture. But in effecting this alteration, there 

 is no necessity for any sudden or violent organic 

 change in our social or political state. Nei- 

 ther need we wait until the Christian rule of "doing 

 unto others as we would they should do unto us" shall 

 be the inspiring motive in every man's heart. By 

 means of sentiment and habit slowly growing up among 

 us, and as a step toward the attainment of the pro- 

 phesied world of honest men, we believe it will be pos- 

 sible for all classes mutually to agree as to their respec- 

 tive functions, duties, and just scale of remuneration ; 

 so that inequality and oppression shall bo individual, 

 and no longer inflicted by one entire class upon another. 

 And this time will arrive only when men are qualified 



for the woi'k allotted to them, and when that work is 

 always such as reasoning, reflecting human beings may 

 be satisfied to spend their life in, and earn their living 

 by. This, then, is the point we would enforce — that 

 the only permanent and safe condition of the working- 

 classes is when their position is fairly and honestly as 

 good in its way as that of other classes. When no 

 man who is too weak to rise out of this situation in life 

 need be ashamed of or disgusted with it. 



There are two ways of endeavouring to bring this 

 about — one consisting in measures for securing the 

 labourer better payment for his toil, either in wages, 

 household comforts, or educational privileges ; and 

 the other seeking to improve and elevate the nature of 

 the icork itself, rescuing the workman from occupa- 

 tions purely animal or mechanical, and employing him 

 in such as engage the faculties of his mind. 



We continually hear suggestions for aiding the for- 

 mer, but very seldom for advancing the latter method. 

 One of the saddest facts connected with the condition 

 of many of our working-classes is, that a worse than 

 the primeval curse has fallen upon them. " In the 

 sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat ijread,"was the judg- 

 ment pronounced against Adam and his posterity. 

 Alas ! how many of our labourers have come to suffer 

 this penalty in its narrowed literal meaning — eating 

 " bread" and bread only, often not a sufficiency of that, 

 in recompence for " the sweat of their brow !" But 

 with the pi-ogress of machinery, the increase of popu- 

 lation, and an enormous consumptive demand for cheap 

 articles of prepared food, manufactured apparel, furni- 

 ture, and workmanship of art and ornament, there has 

 gradually crept upon the " operatives" a worse form of 

 laborious occupation than is included in this figure of 

 the perspiring brow — unless, indeed, the expression be 

 not only metaphorical, but symbolical. This may be 

 taken to indicate that fearful, horrible, and cruel wast- 

 ing of the souls of men in forms of labour engaging 

 only their animal power, and calling for no exertion of 

 their minds, which has become a necessity of actual 

 existence to tens of thousands of pale men rightly 

 named " mechanics ;" as also to others proudly class- 

 ing themselves in a higher grade of occupation. Our 

 " mills" and "works" abound with men and women, 

 young and old, who would rejoice might they but vary 

 their bodily labours and revive their mental languor 

 in work that had thought in it — in processes but the 

 least elevated above the monotony of recurrence, repe- 

 tition, and relentless copying. The joiner has scope 

 for contrivance and invention in laying-out a window- 

 sash of a new pattern, or a staircase of novel combina- 

 tion of curve and pitch ; but look at that workman in 

 the tool-factory, who does nothing for days, months, 

 years, but cut out with a turn-saw rough wood handles 

 of a shape marked out for him, never finishing or 

 varying one. Or look, again, at that old man bending 

 over a saw, and tap-tapping its teeth with its ceaseless 

 hammer to give them the right " set." The accurate 

 touch of his blow is marvellous, but for years and years 

 his daily life has been consumed in as unintelligent a 

 task as that of the horse pacing round his infinite mill- 

 walk. 



Bodily toil, even excessive at times, is healthful and 

 invigorating both to the physical and intellectual 

 faculties. But to labour your whole day, and every day 

 for a life-time, at work which has no progress or diver- 

 sity in it, no space for design or the exercising of the 

 gifts of a man's soul ever so humbly upon it— this is 

 true slavery. In extorting such protracted change- 

 less labour of body, or unrelaxed attention, to details 

 admitting of no improvement by the thought of the 

 workman, wo are making not only a slave, but a ma- 

 chine of our brother — causing him not merely to yield 



