Thus, of a hundred thousand persons born in this country, it has been
ascertained that a fourth of them die before they have reached their
fifth year; and one-half before they have reached their fiftieth year.
One thousand one hundred will reach their ninetieth year. Sixteen will
live to a hundred. And only two persons out of the hundred
thousand--like the last barks of an innumerable convoy, will reach the
advanced and helpless age of a hundred and five years.

Two things are very obvious,--the uncertainty as to the hour of death in
individuals, but the regularity and constancy of the circumstances which
influence the duration of human life in the aggregate. It is a matter of
certainty that the _average_ life of all persons born in this country
extends to about forty-five years. This has been proved by a very large
number of observations of human life and its duration.

Equally extensive observations have been made as to the average number
of persons of various ages who die yearly. It is always the number of
the experiments which gives the law of the probability. It is on such
observations that the actuary founds his estimates of the mortality that
exists at any given period of life. The actuary tells you that he has
been guided by the Laws of Mortality. Now the results must be very
regular, to justify the actuary in speaking of Mortality as governed by
Laws. And yet it is so.

Indeed, there would seem to be no such thing as chance in the world. Man
lives and dies in conformity to a law. A sparrow falls to the ground in
obedience to a law. Nay, there are matters in the ordinary transactions
of life, such as one might suppose were the mere result of chance, which
are ascertained to be of remarkable accuracy when taken in the mass. For
instance, the number of letters put in the post-office without an
address; the number of letters wrongly directed; the number containing
money; the number unstamped; continue nearly the same, in relation to
the number of letters posted, from one year to another.

Now it is the business of man to understand the laws of health, and to
provide against their consequences,--as, for instance, in the matter of
sickness, accident, and premature death. We cannot escape the
consequences of transgression of the natural laws, though we may have
meant well. We must have done well. The Creator does not alter His laws
to accommodate them to our ignorance. He has furnished us with
intelligence, so that we may understand them and act upon them:
otherwise we must suffer the consequences in inevitable pain and sorrow.

We often hear the cry raised, "Will nobody help us?" It is a spiritless,
hopeless cry. It is sometimes a cry of revolting meanness, especially
when it issues from those who with a little self-denial, sobriety, and
thrift, might easily help themselves.

Many people have yet to learn, that virtue, knowledge, freedom, and
prosperity must spring from themselves. Legislation can do very little
for them: it cannot make them sober, intelligent, and well-doing. The
prime miseries of most men have their origin in causes far removed from
Acts of Parliament.

The spendthrift laughs at legislation. The drunkard defies it, and
arrogates the right of dispensing with forethought and
self-denial,--throwing upon others the blame of his ultimate
wretchedness. The mob orators, who gather "the millions" about them, are
very wide of the mark, when, instead of seeking to train their crowd of
hearers to habits of frugality, temperance, and self-culture, they
encourage them to keep up the cry, "Will nobody help us?"

The cry sickens the soul. It shows gross ignorance of the first elements
of personal welfare. Help is in men themselves. They were born to help
and to elevate themselves. They must work out their own salvation. The
poorest men have done it; why should not every man do it? The brave,
upward spirit ever conquers.

The number of well-paid workmen in this country has become very large,
who might easily save and economize, to the improvement of their moral
well-being, of their respectability and independence, and of their
status in society as men and citizens. They are improvident and
thriftless to an extent which proves not less hurtful to their personal
happiness and domestic comfort, than it is injurious to the society of
which they form so important a part.

In "prosperous times" they spend their gains recklessly, and when
adverse times come, they are at once plunged in misery. Money is not
used, but abused; and when wage-earning people should be providing
against old age, or for the wants of a growing family, they are, in too
many cases, feeding folly, dissipation, and vice. Let no one say that
this is an exaggerated picture. It is enough to look round in any
neighbourhood, and see how much is spent and how little is saved; what a
large proportion of earnings goes to the beershop, and how little to the
savings bank or the benefit society.

"Prosperous times" are very often the least prosperous of all times. In
prosperous times, mills are working full time; men, women, and children
are paid high wages; warehouses are emptied and filled; goods are
manufactured and exported; wherries full of produce pass along the
streets; immense luggage trains run along the railways, and
heavily-laden ships leave our shores daily for foreign ports, full of
the products of our industry. Everybody seems to be becoming richer and
more prosperous. But we do not think of whether men and women are
becoming wiser, better trained, less self-indulgent, more religiously
disposed, or living for any higher purpose than the satisfaction of the
animal appetite.

If this apparent prosperity be closely examined, it will be found that
expenditure is increasing in all directions. There are demands for
higher wages; and the higher wages, when obtained, are spent as soon as
earned. Intemperate habits are formed, and, once formed, the habit of
intemperance continues. Increased wages, instead of being saved, are for
the most part spent in drink.

Thus, when a population is thoughtless and improvident, no kind of
material prosperity will benefit them. Unless they exercise forethought
and economy, they will alternately be in a state of "hunger and burst."
When trade falls off, as it usually does after exceptional prosperity,
they will not be comforted by the thought of what they _might_ have
saved, had it ever occurred to them that the "prosperous times" might
not have proved permanent.

During prosperous times, Saint Monday is regularly observed. The Bank
Holiday is repeated weekly. "Where are all the workmen?" said a master
to his foreman on going the rounds among his builders,--this work must
be pushed on and covered in while the fine weather lasts." "Why, sir,"
said the foreman, "this is Monday; and they have not spent all their
money yet." Dean Boyd, preaching at Exeter on behalf of the Devonshire
hospitals, expressed his belief that the annual loss to the workpeople
engaged in the woollen manufacture, the cotton trade, the bricklaying
and building trade, by Idle Monday, amounted to over seven millions
sterling. If man's chief end were to manufacture cloth, silk, cotton,
hardware, toys, and china; to buy in the cheapest market, and to sell in
the dearest; to cultivate land, grow corn, and graze cattle; to live for
mere money profit, and hoard or spend, as the case might be, we might
then congratulate ourselves upon our National Prosperity. But is this
the chief end of man? Has he not faculties, affections, and sympathies,
besides muscular organs? Has not his mind and heart certain claims, as
well as his mouth and his back? Has he not a soul as well as a stomach?
And ought not "prosperity" to include the improvement and well-being of
his morals and intellect as well as of his bones and muscles?

Mere money is no indication of prosperity. A man's nature may remain the
same. It may even grow more stunted and deformed, while he is doubling
his expenditure, or adding cent, per cent, to his hoards yearly. It is
the same with the mass. The increase of their gains may merely furnish
them with increased means for gratifying animal indulgences, unless
their moral character keeps pace with their physical advancement. Double
the gains of an uneducated, overworked man, in a time of prosperity, and
what is the result? Simply that you have furnished him with the means of
eating and drinking more! Thus, not even the material well-being of the
population is secured by that condition of things which is defined by
political economists as "National Prosperity." And so long as the moral
elements of the question are ignored, this kind of "prosperity" is, we
believe, calculated to produce far more mischievous results than good.
It is knowledge and virtue alone that can confer dignity on a man's
life; and the growth of such qualities in a nation are the only true
marks of its real prosperity; not the infinite manufacture and sale of
cotton prints, toys, hardware, and crockery. The Bishop of Manchester,
when preaching at a harvest thanksgiving near Preston, referred to a
letter which he had received from a clergyman in the south of England,
who, after expressing his pleasure at the fact that the agricultural
labourers were receiving higher wages, lamented "that at present the
only result he could discover from their higher wages was that a great
deal _more beer_ was consumed. If this was the use we were making of
this prosperity, we could hardly call it a blessing for which we had a
right or ground to thank God. The true prosperity of the nation
consisted not so much in the fact that the nation was growing in
wealth--though wealth was a necessary attribute of prosperity--but that
it was growing in virtue; and that there was a more equable distribution
of comfort, contentment, and the things of this lower world."

In making the preceding observations we do not in the least advocate the
formation of miserly, penurious habits; for we hate the scrub, the
screw, the miser. All that we contend for is, that man should provide
for the future,--that they should provide during good times for the bad
times which almost invariably follow them,--that they should lay by a
store of savings as a breakwater against want, and make sure of a little
fund which may maintain them in old age, secure their self-respect, and
add to their personal comfort and social well-being. Thrift is not in
any way connected with avarice, usury, greed, or selfishness. It is, in
fact, the very reverse of these disgusting dispositions.

It means economy for the purpose of securing independence. Thrift
requires that money should be used and not abused--that it should be
honestly earned and economically employed--

"Not for to put it in a hedge,
 Not for a train attendent,--
 But for the glorious privilege
 Of being Independent."




CHAPTER III.

IMPROVIDENCE.


"The man who has a wife and children has given hostages to
fortune."--_Lord Bacon._

"In all conditions and circumstances, well-being is in the power of
those who have power over themselves."--_J.J. Gurney_.

"Where is their common sense? Alas, what imprudence! Early marriages;
many children; poor-rates, and the workhouse.... They are born; they are
wretched; they die.... In no foreign country of far less civilization
than England, is there the same improvidence."--_Lord Lytton_.

"No man oppresses thee, O free and independent franchiser; but does not
this stupid pewter pot oppress thee? No son of Adam can bid thee come or
go, but this absurd pot of heavy-wet can and does, Thou art the thrall,
not of Cedric the Saxon, but of thy own brutal appetites, and this
accursed dish of liquor. And thou pratest of thy 'liberty,' thou entire
blockhead!"--_Carlyle_.

"Never did any publike misery
 Rise of it selfe; God's plagues still grounded are
 On common staines of our Humanity:
     And to the flame, which ruineth Mankind,
     Man gives the matter, or at least gives winde."--_Daniell_.


England is one of the richest countries in the world. Our merchants are
enterprising, our manufacturers are industrious, our labourers are
hard-working. There is an accumulation of wealth in the country to which
past times can offer no parallel. The Bank is gorged with gold. There
never was more food in the empire; there never was more money. There is
no end to our manufacturing productions, for the steam-engine never
tires. And yet notwithstanding all this wealth, there is an enormous
mass of poverty. Close alongside the Wealth of Nations, there gloomily
stalks the Misery of Nations,--luxurious ease resting upon a dark
background of wretchedness.

Parliamentary reports have again and again revealed to us the miseries
endured by certain portions of our working population. They have
described the people employed in factories, workshops, mines, and
brickfields, as well as in the pursuits of country life. We have tried
to grapple with the evils of their condition by legislation, but it
seems to mock us. Those who sink into poverty are fed, but they remain
paupers. Those who feed them, feel no compassion; and those who are fed,
return no gratitude. There is no bond of sympathy between the givers and
the receivers. Thus the Haves and the Have-nots, the opulent and the
indigent, stand at the two extremes of the social scale, and a wide gulf
is fixed between them.

Among rude and savage people, the condition of poverty is uniform.
Provided the bare appetites are satisfied, suffering is scarcely felt.
Where slavery exists, indigence is little known; for it is the master's
interest to keep the slave in a condition fit for labour, and the
employer generally takes care to supply the animal wants of the
employed. It is only when society becomes civilized and free, and man
enters into competition with his fellows, that he becomes exposed to
indigence, and experiences social misery. Where civilization, as in this
country, has reached its highest point, and where large accumulations of
wealth have been made, the misery of the indigent classes is only
rendered more acute by the comfort and luxury with which it is placed in
immediate contrast.

Much of the existing misery is caused by selfishness--by the greed to
accumulate wealth on the one hand, and by improvidence on the other.
Accumulation of money has become the great desire and passion of the
age. The wealth of nations, and not the happiness of nations, is the
principal aim. We study political economy, and let social economy shift
for itself. Regard for "Number One" is the prevailing maxim.

High profits are regarded as the _summum bonum_,--no matter how
obtained, or at what sacrifice. Money is our god: "Devil take the
hindmost" our motto. The spirits of darkness rule supreme--

          "Mammon has led them on,
Mammon, the least erect of all the spirits
That fell from Heaven."

With respect to the poorer classes,--what has become of them in the
midst of our so-called civilization? An immense proportion of them
remain entirely uncivilized. Though living in a Christian country,
Christianity has never reached them. They are as uncivilized and
unchristianized as the Trinobantes were at the landing of Julius Caesar,
about nineteen hundred years ago. Yet these uncivilized people live in
our midst. St. James's and St. Giles's lie close together. In the Parks
of London, you may see how gold is worshipped; in the East End of
London, you may see to what depths human misery may fall.

They work, eat, drink, and sleep: that constitutes their life. They
think nothing of providing for to-morrow, or for next week, or for next
year. They abandon themselves to their sensual appetites; and make no
provision whatever for the future. The thought of adversity, or of
coming sorrow, or of the helplessness that comes with years and
sickness, never crosses their minds. In these respects, they resemble
the savage tribes, who know no better, and do no worse. Like the North
American Indians, they debase themselves by the vices which accompany
civilization, but make no use whatever of its benefits and advantages.

Captain Parry found the Esquimaux near the North Pole as uncivilized as
the miserable creatures who inhabit the dens of our great cities. They
were, of course, improvident; for, like savages generally, they never
save. They were always either feasting or famished.

When they found a quantity of whale's blubber, they would eat as much of
it as they could, and hide the rest. Yet their improvidence gave them no
concern. Even when they had been without food or fuel for days together,
they would be as gay and good-humoured as usual. They never thought of
how they should be provided for to-morrow. Saving for the future forms
no part of the savage economy.

Amongst civilized peoples, cold is said to be the parent of frugality.
Thus the northern nations of Europe owe a portion of their prosperity to
the rigour of their climate. Cold makes them save during summer, to
provide food, coal, and clothing during winter. It encourages
house-building and housekeeping. Hence Germany is more industrious than
Sicily; Holland and Belgium than Andalusia; North America and Canada
than Mexico.

When the late Edward Denison, M.P. for Newark, with unexampled
self-denial, gave up a large portion of his time and labour to reclaim
the comparatively uncivilized population of the East End of London, the
first thing he did was to erect an iron church of two stories, the lower
part of which was used as a school and lecture room, and also as a club
where men and boys might read, play games, and do anything else that
might keep them out of the drinking-houses. "What is so bad in this
quarter," said Mr. Denison, "is the habitual condition of this mass of
humanity--its uniform mean level, the absence of anything more
civilizing than a grinding organ to raise the ideas beyond the daily
bread and beer, the utter want of education, the complete indifference
to religion, with the fruits of all this--improvidence, dirt, and their
secondaries, crime and disease.... There is no one to give a push to
struggling energy, to guide aspiring intelligence, or to break the fall
of unavoidable misfortune.... The Mission Clergyman," he goes on to say,
"is a sensible, energetic man, in whose hands the work of _civilizing
the people_ is making as much progress as can be expected. But most of
his energy is taken up in serving tables, nor can any great advance be
made while every nerve has to be strained to keep the people from
absolute starvation. And this is what happens every winter.... What a
monstrous thing it is that in the richest country in the world, large
masses of the population should be condemned annually, by a natural
operation of nature, to starvation and death. It is all very well to
say, how can it be helped? Why, it was not so in our grandfathers' time.
Behind us they were in many ways, but they were not met every winter
with the spectacle of starving thousands. The fact is, we have accepted
the marvellous prosperity which has in the last twenty years been
granted us, without reflecting on the conditions attached to it, and
without nerving ourselves to the exertion and the sacrifices which their
fulfilment demands."

And yet Mr. Denison clearly saw that if the people were sufficiently
educated, and taught to practise the virtue of Thrift, much of this
misery might be prevented. "The people," he elsewhere says, "_create_
their destitution and their disease. Probably there are hardly any of
the most needy who, if they had been only moderately frugal and
provident, could not have placed themselves in a position to tide over
the occasional months of want of work, or of sickness, which there
always must be.... I do not underrate the difficulty of laying by out of
weekly earnings, but I say it _can_ be done. A dock-labourer, while a
young, strong, unmarried man, could lay by half his weekly wages, and
such men are almost sure of constant employment."

After showing how married men might also save, Mr. Denison goes on to
say, "Saving is within the reach of nearly every man, even if quite at
the bottom of the tree; but if it were of anything like _common_
occurrence, the destitution and disease of this city would be kept
within quite manageable limits. And this will take place. I may not live
to see it, but it will be within two generations. For, unfortunately,
this amount of change may be effected without the least improvement in
the spiritual condition of the people. Good laws, energetically
enforced, with compulsory education, supplemented by gratuitous
individual exertion (which will then have a much reduced field and much
fairer prospects), will certainly succeed in giving the mass of the
people so much light as will generally guide them into so much industry
and morality as is clearly conducive to their bodily ease and
advancement in life."

The difference in thriftiness between the English workpeople and the
inhabitants of Guernsey is thus referred to by Mr. Denison: "The
difference between poverty and pauperism is brought home to us very
strongly by what I see here. In England, we have people faring
sumptuously while they are getting good wages, and coming on the parish
paupers the moment those wages are suspended. Here, people are never
dependent upon any support but their own; but they live, of their own
free will, in a style of frugality which a landlord would be hooted at
for suggesting to his cottagers. We pity Hodge, reduced to bacon and
greens, and to meat only once a week. The principal meal of a Guernsey
farmer consists of _soupe Г  la graisse_, which is, being interpreted,
cabbage and peas stewed with a little dripping. This is the daily dinner
of men who _own_ perhaps three or four cows, a pig or two, and poultry.
But the produce and the flesh of these creatures they sell in the
market, investing their gains in extension of land, or stock, or in
"quarters," that is, rent-charges on land, certificates of which are
readily bought and sold in the market."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Letters and other writings of the late Edward Denison,
M.P._, pp. 141, 142.]

Mr. Dension died before he could accomplish much. He was only able to
make a beginning. The misery, arising from improvidence, which he so
deeply deplored, still exists, and is even more widely spread. It is not
merely the artizan who spends all that he earns, but the classes above
him, who cannot plead the same excuse of ignorance. Many of what are
called the "upper" classes are no more excusable than the "lower." They
waste their means on keeping up appearances, and in feeding folly,
dissipation, and vice.

No one can reproach the English workman with want of industry. He works
harder and more skilfully than the workman of any other country; and he
might be more comfortable and independent in his circumstances, were he
as prudent as he is laborious. But improvidence is unhappily the defect
of the class. Even the best-paid English workmen, though earning more
money than the average of professional men, still for the most part
belong to the poorer classes because of their thoughtlessness. In
prosperous times they are not accustomed to make provision for adverse
times; and when a period of social pressure occurs, they are rarely
found more than a few weeks ahead of positive want.

Hence, the skilled workman, unless trained in good habits, may exhibit
no higher a life than that of the mere animal; and the earning of
increased wages will only furnish him with increased means for indulging
in the gratification of his grosser appetites. Mr. Chadwick says, that
during the Cotton Famine, "families trooped into the relief rooms in the
most abject condition, whose previous aggregate wages exceeded the
income of many curates,--as had the wages of many of the individual
workmen."[1] In a time of prosperity, working-people feast, and in a
time of adversity they "clem." Their earnings, to use their own phrase,
"come in at the spigot and go out at the bunghole." When prosperity
comes to an end, and they are paid off, they rely upon chance and
providence--the providence of the Improvident!

[Footnote 1: _Address on Economy and Trade._ By EDWIN CHADWICK, C.B., p.
22.]

Though trade has invariably its cycles of good and bad years, like the
lean and fat kine in Pharaoh's dream--its bursts of prosperity, followed
by glut, panic, and distress--the thoughtless and spendthrift take no
heed of experience, and make no better provision for the future.
Improvidence seems to be one of the most incorrigible of faults. "There
are whole neighbourhoods in the manufacturing districts," says Mr. Baker
in a recent Report, "where not only are there no savings worth
mentioning, but where, within a fortnight of being out of work, the
workers themselves are starving for want of the merest necessaries." Not
a strike takes place, but immediately the workmen are plunged in
destitution; their furniture and watches are sent to the pawnshop,
whilst deplorable appeals are made to the charitable, and numerous
families are cast upon the poor-rates.

This habitual improvidence--though of course there are many admirable
exceptions--is the real cause of the social degradation of the artizan.
This too is the prolific source of social misery. But the misery is
entirely the result of human ignorance and self-indulgence. For though
the Creator has ordained poverty, the poor are not necessarily, nor as a
matter of fact, the miserable. Misery is the result of moral
causes,--most commonly of individual vice and improvidence.

The Rev. Mr. Norris, in speaking of the habits of the highly paid miners
and iron-workers of South Staffordshire, says, "Improvidence is too tame
a word for it--it is recklessness; here young and old, married and
unmarried, are uniformly and almost avowedly self-indulgent
spendthrifts. One sees this reckless character marring and vitiating the
nobler traits of their nature. Their gallantry in the face of danger is
akin to foolhardiness; their power of intense labour is seldom exerted
except to compensate for time lost in idleness and revelry; their
readiness to make 'gatherings' for their sick and married comrades seems
only to obviate the necessity of previous saving; their very creed--and,
after their sort, they are a curiously devotional people, holding
frequent prayer-meetings in the pits--often degenerates into fanatical
fatalism. But it is seen far more painfully and unmistakably in the
alternate plethora and destitution between which, from year's end to
year's end, the whole population seems to oscillate. The prodigal
revelry of the _reckoning night_, the drunkenness of Sunday, the refusal
to work on Monday and perhaps Tuesday, and then the untidiness of their
home towards the latter part of the two or three weeks which intervene
before the next pay-day; their children kept from school, their wives
and daughters on the pit-bank, their furniture in the pawnshop; the
crowded and miry lanes in which they live, their houses often cracked
from top to bottom by the 'crowning in' of the ground, without drainage,
or ventilation, or due supply of water;--such a state of things as this,
co-existing with earnings which might ensure comfort and even
prosperity, seems to prove that no legislation can cure the evil."

We have certainly had numerous "Reforms." We have had household
suffrage, and vote by ballot. We have relieved the working classes of
the taxes on corn, cattle, coffee, sugar, and provisions generally; and
imposed a considerable proportion of the taxes from which they have been
relieved on the middle and upper ranks. Yet these measures have produced
but little improvement in the condition of the working people. They have
not applied the principle of Reform to themselves. They have not begun
at home. Yet the end of all Reform is the improvement of the individual.
Everything that is wrong in Society results from that which is wrong in
the Individual. When men are bad, society is bad.

Franklin, with his shrewd common sense, observed, "The taxes are indeed
very heavy; and if those laid on by the Government were the only ones we
had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many
others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed quite as much
by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as
much by our folly; and from these taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or
deliver us by allowing an abatement."

Lord John Russell once made a similar statement to a body of working men
who waited upon him for the purpose of asking relief from taxation. "You
complain of the taxes," he said; "but think of how you tax yourselves.
You consume about fifty millions yearly in drink. Is there any
Government that would dare to tax you to that extent? You have it in
your own power greatly to reduce the taxes, and that without in any way
appealing to us."

Complaining that the laws are bad, and that the taxes are heavy, will
not mend matters. Aristocratic government, and the tyranny of masters,
are nothing like so injurious as the tyranny of vicious appetites. Men
are easily led away by the parade of their miseries, which are for the
most part voluntary and self-imposed,--the results of idleness,
thriftlessness, intemperance, and misconduct. To blame others for what
we suffer, is always more agreeable to our self-pride, than to blame
ourselves. But it is perfectly clear that people who live from day to
day without plan, without rule, without forethought--who spend all their
earnings, without saving anything for the future--are preparing
beforehand for inevitable distress. To provide only for the present, is
the sure means to sacrificing the future. What hope can there be for a
people whose only maxim seems to be, "Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die"?

All this may seem very hopeless; yet it is not entirely so. The large
earnings of the working classes is an important point to start with. The
gradual diffusion of education will help them to use, and not abuse,
their means of comfortable living. The more extended knowledge of the
uses of economy, frugality, and thrift, will help them to spend their
lives more soberly, virtuously, and religiously. Mr. Denison was of
opinion that much of this might be accomplished "within two
generations." Social improvement is always very slow. How extremely
tardy has been the progress of civilization! How gradually have its
humanizing influences operated in elevating the mass of the people! It
requires the lapse of generations before its effects can be so much as
discerned: for a generation is but as a day in the history of
civilization. It has cost most nations ages of wars, before they could
conquer their right of existence as nations. It took four centuries of
persecutions and martyrdoms to establish Christianity, and two centuries
of civil wars to establish the Reformation. The emancipation of the
bondsmen from feudal slavery was only reached through long ages of
misery. From the days in which our British progenitors rushed to battle
in their war-paint,--or those more recent times when the whole of the
labouring people were villeins and serfs, bought and sold with the soil
which they tilled,--to the times in which we now live,--how wide the
difference, how gratifying the contrast. Surely it ought not to be so
difficult to put an end to the Satanic influences of thriftlessness,
drunkenness, and improvidence!




CHAPTER IV.

MEANS OF SAVING.


"Self-reliance and self-denial will teach a man to drink out of his own
cistern, and eat his own sweet bread, and to learn and labour truly to
get his own living, and carefully to save and expend the good things
committed to his trust."--_Lord Bacon._

"Love, therefore, labour: if thou should'st not want it for food, thou
may'st for physic. It is wholesome for the body, and good for the mind;
it prevents the fruit of idleness."--_William Penn._

"The parent who does not teach his child a trade, teaches him to be a
thief."--_Brahminical Scriptures._


Those who say that "It can't be done," are probably not aware that many
of the working classes are in the receipt of incomes considerably larger
than those of professional men.

That this is the case, is not, by any means, a secret. It is published
in blue-books, it is given in evidence before parliamentary committees,
it is reported in newspapers. Any coal-owner, or iron-master, or
cotton-spinner, will tell you of the high wages that he pays to his
workpeople.

Families employed in the cotton manufacture are able to earn over three
pounds a week, according to the number of the children employed.[1]
Their annual incomes will thus amount to about a hundred and fifty
pounds a year,--which is considerably larger than the incomes of many
professional men--higher than the average of country surgeons, higher
than the average of the clergy and ministers of all denominations,
higher than the average of the teachers of common schools, and probably
higher than the average income of the middle classes of the United
Kingdom generally.

[Footnote 1: A return of seven families employed by Henry Ashworth, New
Cayley Mills, Lancashire, is given in the Blue Book, entitled, "Report
of the Paris Universal Exhibition, 1867, containing the Returns relative
to the New Order of Reward," p. 163. Of the seven families, the lowest
earnings per family amounted to ВЈ2 14s. 6d.; and the highest to ВЈ3 19s.
a week.]

An employer at Blackburn informs us that many persons earn upwards of
five pounds a week,--or equal to an average income of two hundred and
sixty pounds a year. Such families, he says, "ought not to expend more
than three pounds weekly. The rest should be saved. But most of them,
after feeding and clothing themselves, spend the rest in drink and
dissipation."

The wages are similar in the Burnley district, where food, drink, and
dress absorb the greater part of the workpeople's earnings. In this, as
in other factory districts, "the practice of young persons
(mill-workers) boarding with their parents is prevalent, and is very
detrimental to parental authority." Another reporter says, "Wages are
increasing: as there is more money, and more time to spend it in,
sobriety is not on the increase, especially amongst females."

The operatives employed in the woollen manufacture receive about forty
shillings a week, and some as much as sixty,[1] besides the amount
earned by their children.

A good mechanic in an engine shop makes from thirty-five to forty-five
shillings a week, and some mechanics make much larger wages. Multiply
these figures, and it will be found that they amount to an annual income
of from a hundred to a hundred and twenty pounds a year.

[Footnote 1: See the above Blue Book, p. 57, certifying the wages paid
by Bliss and Son, of Chipping Norton Woollen Factory.]

But the colliers and iron-workers are paid much higher wages. One of the
largest iron-masters recently published in the newspapers the names of
certain colliers in his employment who were receiving from four to five
pounds a week,--or equal to an annual income of from two hundred to two
hundred and fifty pounds a year.[1]

[Footnote 1: Richard Fothergill, Esq., M.P. He published a subsequent
letter, from which we extract the following:--

"No doubt such earnings seem large to clerks, and educated men, who
after receiving a costly education have often to struggle hard for
bread; but they are nevertheless the rightful earnings of steady manual
labour; and I have the pleasure of adding that, while all steady,
well-disposed colliers, in good health, could make equally good wages,
many hundreds in South Wales are quietly doing as much or more: witness
a steady collier in my employment, with his two sons living at home,
whose monthly pay ticket has averaged ВЈ30 for the past twelvemonth.

"Another steady collier within my information, aided by his son, h as
earned during the past five months upwards of ВЈ20 a month on the
average, and from his manual labour as an ordinary collier--for it is of
the working colliers and firemen I am speaking all along--he has built
fifteen good houses, and, disregarding all menaces, he continues his
habits of steady industry, whereby he hopes to accumulate an
independence for his family in all events."]

Iron-workers are paid a still higher rate of wages. A plate-roller
easily makes three hundred a year.[2] The rollers in rail mills often
make much more. In busy times they have made as much as from seven to
ten guineas a week, or equal to from three to five hundred a year.[3]
But, like the workers in cotton mills, the iron workers are often helped
by their sons, who are also paid high wages. Thus, the under-hands are
usually boys from fourteen years of age and upwards, who earn about
nineteen shillings a week, and the helpers are boys of under fourteen,
who earn about nine shillings a week.

[Footnote 2: See Messrs. Fox, Head, and Co.'s return, in the Blue Book
above referred to. This was the rate of wages at Middlesborough, in
Yorkshire. In South Wales, the wages of the principal operatives engaged
in the iron manufacture, recently, were--Puddlers. 9_s_. a day; first
heaters on the rail mills. 8_s_. 9_d_. a day: second heaters, 11_s_.
7_d_.: roughers, 10_s_. 9_d_.: rollers, 13_s_. 2_d_., or equal to that
amount.]

[Footnote 3: Even at the present time, when business is so much
depressed, the mill-rollers make an average wage of ВЈ5 10_s_. a week.]

These earnings are far above the average incomes of the professional
classes. The rail rollers are able to earn a rate of pay equal to that
of Lieutenant-Colonels in Her Majesty's Foot Guards; plate-rollers equal
to that of Majors of Foot; and roughers equal to that of Lieutenants and
Adjutants.

Goldsmith spoke of the country curate as "passing rich with forty pounds
a year." The incomes of curates have certainly increased since the time
when Goldsmith wrote, but nothing like the incomes of skilled and
unskilled workmen. If curates merely worked for money, they would
certainly change their vocation, and become colliers and iron-workers.

When the author visited Renfrewshire a few years ago, the colliers were
earning from ten to fourteen shillings a day. According to the common
saying, they were "making money like a minting machine." To take an
instance, a father and three sons were earning sixty pounds a month,--or
equal to a united income of more than seven hundred pounds a year. The
father was a sober, steady, "eident" man. While the high wages lasted,
he was the first to enter the pit in the morning, and the last to leave
it at night. He only lost five days in one year (1873-4),--the loss
being occasioned by fast-days and holidays. Believing that the period of
high wages could not last long, he and his sons worked as hard as they
could. They saved a good deal of money, and bought several houses;
besides educating themselves to occupy higher positions.

In the same neighbourhood, another collier, with four sons, was earning
money at about the same rate per man, that is about seventy-five-pounds
a mouth, or nine hundred pounds a year. This family bought five houses
within a year, and saved a considerable sum besides. The last
information we had respecting them was that the father had become a
contractor,--that he employed about sixty colliers and "reddsmen,"[1]
and was allowed so much for every ton of coals brought to bank. The sons
were looking after their father's interests. They were all sober,
diligent, sensible men; and took a great deal of interest in the
education and improvement of the people in their neighbourhood.

[Footnote 1: "Reddsmen" are the men who clear the way for the colliers.
They "redd up" the _debris_, and build up the roof (in the long wall
system) as the colliery advances.]

At the same time that these two families of colliers were doing so well,
it was very different with the majority of their fellow-workmen. These
only worked about three days in every week. Some spent their earnings at
the public-house; others took a whisky "ploy" at the seaside. For that
purpose they hired all the gigs, droskies, cabs, or "machines," about a
fortnight beforehand. The results were seen, as the successive Monday
mornings come round. The magistrate sat in the neighbouring town, where
a number of men and women, with black eyes and broken heads, were
brought before him for judgment. Before the time of high wages, the
Court-house business was got through in an hour: sometimes there was no
business at all. But when the wages were doubled, the magistrate could
scarcely get through the business in a day. It seemed as if high wages
meant more idleness, more whisky, and more broken heads and faces.

These were doubtless "roaring times" for the colliers, who, had they
possessed the requisite self-denial, might have made little fortunes.
Many of the men who worked out the coal remained idle three or four days
in the week; while those who burnt the coal, were famished and frozen
for want of it. The working people who were _not_ colliers, will long
remember that period as the time of the _coal famine_. While it lasted,
Lord Elcho went over to Tranent--a village in East Lothian--to address
the colliers upon their thriftlessness, their idleness, and their
attempted combinations to keep up the price of coal.

He had the moral courage--a quality much wanted in these days--to tell
his constituents some hard but honest truths. He argued with them about
the coal famine, and their desire to prolong it. They were working three
days a week, and idling the other days. Some of them did not do a stroke
of work during a week or a fortnight; others were taking about a hundred
Bank holidays yearly. But what were they doing with the money they
earned? Were they saving it for a rainy day; or, when the "roaring
times" no longer existed, were they preparing to fall back upon the
poor-rates? He found that in one case a man, with his two sons, was
earning seven pounds in a fortnight. "I should like," he said, "to see
those Scotchmen who are in the mining business taking advantage of these
happy times, and endeavouring by their industry to rise from their
present position--to exercise self-help, to acquire property, and
possibly to become coal masters themselves."

It had been said in a newspaper, that a miner was earning wages equal to
that of a Captain, and that a mining boy was earning wages equal to that
of a Lieutenant in Her Majesty's service. "I only know," said Lord
Elcho, "that I have a boy who, when he first joined Her Majesty's
service, was an Ensign, and that his wage--to earn which, remember, he
had, under the purchase system, to pay five hundred pounds,--was not the
wage you are now receiving, but the wage which you were receiving in bad
times,--and that was only five shillings a day." It might be said that
the collier risks his life in earning his wages; but so does the
soldier; and the gallant boy to whom Lord Elcho referred, afterwards
lost his life in the Ashantee campaign.

The times of high wages did not leave a very good impression on the
public mind. Prices became higher, morals became lower, and the work
done was badly done. There was a considerable deterioration in the
character of British workmanship. "We began to rely too much upon the
foreigner. Trade was to a large extent destroyed, and an enormous loss
of capital was sustained, both by the workmen and by the masters. Lord
Aberdare was of opinion that three millions sterling were lost by _the
workmen alone_, during the recent strike in South Wales. One hundred and
twenty thousand workmen were in enforced idleness at once, and one
hundred and fifty thousand pounds were lost every week in wages during
the time that they remained idle.

What the employers think of the recent flash of "prosperity," can easily
be imagined. But it may not be unnecessary to quote some of the
statements of correspondents. A large employer of labour in South
Lancashire says: "Drunkenness increases, and personal violence is not
sufficiently discouraged. High wages and household suffrage came upon
the people before education had prepared them for the change."

In a large iron-work near Newcastle, where the men were paid the highest
wages for rolling plates and rails--and where they were earning between
three and four hundred pounds a year--the proprietors observe: "Except
in a few instances, we are afraid that workmen and their families spend
most of their earnings." Another employer in South Staffordshire says:
In the majority of cases, the men employed in the iron-work spend the
whole of their wages before the end of the following week. There are, of
course, some exceptions; but they are, unhappily, very few." Another, in
South Wales, says: "As to the thrifty habits of the men, a small
minority are careful and saving; they generally invest their money in
cottage property. But the great majority of the men spend their money
often before they earn it, and that in the most reckless way. Large sums
are spent in drink: this leads to idleness; and, owing to drinking and
idling, the works are kept short of men until about Wednesday in each
week, when the greater part of the most idly disposed have become
sobered down. Of course, when wages are low, the men work more
regularly. There is less drinking, and altogether the condition of the
place is healthier in every respect both in a moral and physical sense."

Another observer remarks, that the miners of Bilston are about six
thousand in number, and they spend more than fifty thousand pounds
annually in the purchase of ale and liquors. Their improvidence may be
studied with advantage in the Bilston Market. No other market is
supplied with finer poultry, or comparatively to the population, in
greater abundance; and this is chiefly, if not entirely, for, the
consumption of the labouring classes,--for the resident inhabitants, not
directly associated with those classes are few in number. Sordid and
ill-favoured men may there be seen buying on Saturday, chickens, ducks,
and geese, which they eat for supper; and in some instances, bottled
porter and wine. Yet, so little have they beforehand in the world, that
if the works were to stop, they would begin within a fortnight to pawn
the little furniture of their cottages, and their clothes, for
subsistence and for drink.

Mr. Chambers, of Edinburgh, in his description of the working classes of
Sunderland makes these remarks: "With deep sorrow I mention that
everywhere one tale was told. Intemperance prevails to a large extent;
good wages are squandered on mean indulgences; there is little care for
the morrow, and the workhouse is the ultimate refuge. One man, a skilled
worker in an iron-foundry, was pointed out as having for years received
a wage of one guinea a day, or six guineas a week; he had spent all,
mostly in drink, and was now reduced to a lower department at a pound a
week."

Another illustration occurs. A clerk at Blackburn took a house for
twenty pounds a year, and sublet the cellars underneath to a factory
operative at a rental of five pounds a year. The clerk had a wife, four
children, and a servant; the operative had a wife and five children. The
clerk and his family were well dressed, their children went to school,
and all went to church on Sundays. The operative's family went, some to
the factory, others to the gutter, but none to school; they were
ill-dressed, excepting on Sundays, when they obtained their clothes from
the pawnshop. As the Saturdays came round, the frying-pan in the cellar
was almost constantly at work until Monday night; and as regularly as
Thursday arrived, the bundle of clothes was sent to the pawnshop. Yet
the income of the upper-class family in the higher part of the house was
a hundred a year; and the income of the lower class family in the cellar
was fifty pounds more--that is, a hundred and fifty pounds a year!

An employer in the same neighbourhood used to say, "I cannot afford
lamb, salmon, young ducks and green peas, new potatoes, strawberries and
such-like, until after my hands have been consuming these delicacies of
the season for some three or four weeks."

The intense selfishness, thriftlessness, and folly of these highly paid
operatives, is scarcely credible. Exceptions are frequently taken to
calling the working classes "the lower orders;" but "the lower orders"
they always will be, so long as they indicate such sensual indulgence
and improvidence. In cases such as these, improvidence is not only a
great sin, and a feeder of sin, but it is a great _cruelty_. In the case
of the father of a family, who has been instrumental in bringing a
number of helpless beings into the world, it is heartless and selfish in
the highest degree to spend money on personal indulgences such as drink,
which do the parent no good, and the mother and the children, through
the hereditary bad example, an irreparable amount of mischief. The
father takes sick, is thrown out of work, and his children are at once
deprived of the means of subsistence. The reckless parent has not even
taken the precaution to enter a Provident or a Benefit Society; and
while he is sick, his wife and children are suffering the pangs of
hunger. Or, he dies; and the poor creatures are thrown upon the charity
of strangers, or on the miserable pittance wrung from the poor-rates.

It would seem to be of little use preaching up an extension of rights to
a people who are so supinely indifferent to their own well-being,--who
are really unconcerned about their own elevation. The friends of the
industrious should faithfully tell them that they must exercise
prudence, economy, and self-denial, if they would really be raised from
selfish debasement, and become elevated to the dignity of thinking
beings. It is only by practising the principles of self-dependence that
they can achieve dignity, stability, and consideration in society; or
that they can acquire such influence and power as to raise them in the
scale of social well-being.