THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



195 



heart stricken, as every American citizen, as 

 every friend of human nature, should be, at the 

 degradation and misery to which her political 

 system has subjected the common laborers of 

 England. To show how much superior is our 

 much abused, and much misunderstood, system 

 of slave-labor, we extract the following account of 

 the nominal freemen of this enlightened country: 



" There are two practices in regard to agri- 

 cultural labor, not universal, by any means, but 

 prevailing in some parts of England and Scot- 

 land, which I may notice. The first is called 

 the 1 Gang system.' In some places, owing to 

 the size of farms being greatly extended, cot- 

 tages being suffered to fall into decay and ruin, 

 laborers have been congregated in villages, where 

 have prevailed all the evils, physical and moral, 

 which are naturally to be expected from a 

 crowded population, shoved into small and in- 

 convenient habitations, and subjected to innu- 

 merable privations. In this case the farmer 

 keeps in permanent and steady employment no 

 more laborers than are absolutely required for 

 the constant and uninterrupted operations of the 

 farm ; and relies upon the obtaining of a large 

 number of hands, or a gang, as it is termed, 

 whenever any great job is to be accomplished, 

 that he may be enabled to effect it at once and 

 at the smallest expense. Under these circum- 

 stances he applies to a gang-master, as he is 

 termed, who contracts for its execution, and 

 through whom the poor laborers must find em- 

 ployment, if they find it at all ; and upon whose 

 terms they must work or get no work. The 

 gang-master has them then completely in his 

 power, taking care to provide well for himself in 

 his own commissions, which must, of course, be 

 deducted from the wages of the laborers, and 

 subjecting them, at pleasure, to the most despo- 

 tic and severe conditions. It is not optional 

 with these poor creatures to say whether 

 they will work or not, but whether they will 

 work or die — they have no other resource — 

 change their condition they cannot — contract 

 separately for their labor they cannot, because 

 the farmer confines his contracts to the gang- 

 master ; and we may infer from the Reports of 

 the Commissioners, laid before the Government, 

 that the system is one of oppression, cruelty, 

 and plunder, and in every respect leading to 

 gross immoralities. The distance to which 

 these laborers go is often as much as five or six 

 miles, and this usually on foot, and to return at 

 night. Children and girls are compelled to go 

 these distances, and consequently must rise very 

 early in the morning and reach home at a very 

 late hour at night. Girls and boys and young 

 men and women work indiscriminately together 

 When the distance to which they go for work 

 is ten miles, they are sent in carts. When the 



distances are great, they occasionally pass the 

 night at the place of work, and then lodge in 

 barns, or anywhere else indiscriminately together. 

 To talk of morals in such a case is idle. One 

 of the gang-masters, who has been an overseer 

 seventeen years, gives it as his testimony, under 

 oath, 1 that seventy out of a hundred of the 

 girls become prostitutes,' and the general account 

 given of the operations of the system shows an 

 utter profligacy of mind in their general conver- 

 sation and manners, when morals must follow 

 of course. If they go in the morning and stay 

 only a little while, on account of rain, or other 

 good cause, they are paid nothing. The day 

 is divided into quarters, but no fractions of time 

 are in any case allowed to them. Then the 

 persons employed are required, in many cases, 

 to deal wiih the gang-master for the supplies 

 they receive, in payment for their labor. The 

 results of such a system are obvious. The 

 work being taken by the piece, the gang-master 

 presses them to their utmost strength. The 

 fragments of days, in which work is done and 

 not paid for to the laborers, are all to the benefit 

 of the gang-master, who, in such case, gets a 

 large amount of work done at no cost. These 

 poor wretches, being unable to contract for them- 

 selves, or to get any work but through him, he, 

 of course, determines the price of the labor, and, 

 one may be sure, puts it down to the lowest 

 point. But his advantages do not end here, for 

 there is no doubt that he gets a high advance 

 upon the goods which he requires them to pur- 

 chase of him, and thus their wages are reduced 

 still lower. No just or benevolent mind, it would 

 seem, can look upon any such system in all its 

 details, as given in the Commissioners' Report, 

 but with a profound sense of its injustice, op- 

 pression, and immorality. 



" One of the gang-masters says, { If they go 

 to work two hours and a half, it is a quarter of 

 a day. If they go a long walk, seven miles or 

 so, and it comes on a wet day, there is the walk 

 all for nothing. Children of the ages of four, 

 five, and six, work in the gangs. They earn 9d. 

 a day, the big ones; the small, 4d.; children of 

 seven years old, 3d. a day.' ' It is the ruin of a 

 girl,' says a parent, one of the laborers, ' to be 

 in such a place as that.' 'My children's hands 

 are so blistered, 1 says another of the parents, 

 '[pulling turnips, that I have been obliged to lie 

 them up every night this winter. Pulling tur- 

 nips blisters the hands very much — they are 

 obliged to pull them up — they must not take 

 turnip crones (a sort of fork) for fear of da- 

 maging the turnips.' 



" ' The gangsman, or leader,' says another 

 witness, ' pays the wages of all employed in 

 the gang, and, of course, makes his profit en- 

 tirely from their labor, as the farmer takes care 

 that the gang system shall not cost him more 

 than the common system of individual laborers. 



