England Labor Report (1800s) Essay, Research Paper

Labor Report

Our country is in a very diabolical state. We are going through a Jurassic change. We are moving along the roads of improvement along with falling down hill in some areas. Our industries are heightening but one thing we haven’t come to mind about is the workers and there conditions. We shield our selves from what the workers go through. On may take a step into a factory and truly realize the horror. They see the face of suffering and pain. People are treated like dirt. They work for unlimited hours in an environment to what seems like a mud pit. The puddles of green water and the muddy uncovered floors, along with the cramping space is a true suffering. Working all day long in what seems to be the vast out limits of hell.

The harsh conditions in the many industrial towns of England need to be fixed. The overall poverty level has heightened as well as the death rate for persons under 50. Many have come to investigate these poor conditions and yet nothing has been done to stop them, or improve them. Most industrious city’s have relied on the poor to do the dirty work. This is totally based upon the working conditions in the many factories located all across towns in England. The factories are so dirty and unclean, it’s like a pig sty. You would think that that the people inside the factories threw dirt around all day long. The dirt and unclean conditions have effected the health of many. In such harsh conditions how is one suppose to work? Not only is the condition of the factories effecting the workers health, the lack of food and water is also. Workers have to get through the day with getting little or possibly no food, and many of the workers had to eat the food and work at the same time. The food would then get all dirty, thus causing more health problems. The drinking water was found to be contaminated with dangerous bacteria’s and several diseases. All these queries have a multitude of evidence to support it. These are only some of the cruel things factory workers are put to. Just these conditions should be enough to stop all harsh labour of any type.

Some might say “Well, those workers are poor any way”, but even so, they are still human right? No human should ever be forced to work in such a filth filled environment. Men and women of all ages are being forced top work, even children! Even the youngest of all workers doesn’t get to see the light of day cooped up working their little hands starving and seeking rest. We need a change, a change in law. A law to abolish such types of labour. There is a great fury of evidence that has been collected to support the abolishment of this cruel labour.

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Evidence

#1

Frank Forrest, Chapters in the Life of a Dundee Factory Boy (1850)

About a week after I became a mill boy, I was seized with a strong, heavy sickness, that few escape on first becoming factory workers. The cause of the sickness, which is known by the name of “mill fever”, is the contaminated atmosphere produced by so many breathing in a confined space, together with the heat and exhalations of grease and oil and the gas needed to light the establishment.

#2

Elizabeth Bentley, interviewed by Michael Sadler’s Parliamentary Committee on 4th June, 1832.

I worked from five in the morning till nine at night. I lived two miles from the mill. We had no clock. If I had been too late at the mill, I would have been quartered. I mean that if I had been a quarter of an hour too late, a half an hour would have been taken off. I only got a penny an hour, and they would have taken a halfpenny.

#3

First, as to the extent and operation of the evils which are the subject of this inquiry

That the various forms of epidemic, endemic, and other disease caused, or aggravated, or propagated chiefly amongst the labouring classes by atmospheric impurities produced by decomposing animal and vegetable substances, by damp and filth, and close and overcrowded dwellings prevail amongst the population in every part of the kingdom, whether dwelling in separate houses, in rural villages, in small towns, in the larger towns–as they have been found to prevail in the lowest districts of the metropolis.

That such disease, wherever its attacks are frequent, is always found in connection with the physical circumstances above specified, and that where those circumstances are removed by drainage, proper cleansing, better ventilation, and other means of diminishing atmospheric impurity, the frequency and intensity of such disease is abated; and where the removal of the noxious agencies appears to be complete, such disease almost entirely disappears.

Contaminated London drinking water containing various micro organisms, refuse, and the like.

The high prosperity in respect to employment and wages, and various and abundant food, have afforded to the labouring classes no exemptions from attacks of epidemic disease, which have been as frequent and as fatal in periods of commercial and manufacturing prosperity as in any others.

That the formation of all habits of cleanliness is obstructed by defective supplies of water.

That the annual loss of life from filth and bad ventilation are greater than the loss from death or wounds in any wars in which the country has been engaged in modern times.

That of the 43,000 cases of widowhood, and 112,000 cases of destitute orphanage relieved from the poors rates in England and Wales alone, it appears that the greatest proportion of deaths of the heads of families occurred from the above specified and other removable causes; that their ages were under 45 years; that is to say, 13 years below the natural probabilities of life as shown by the experience of the whole population of Sweden.

That the public loss from the premature deaths of the heads of families is greater than can be represented by any enumeration of the pecuniary burdens consequent upon their sickness and death.

That, measuring the loss of working ability amongst large classes by the instances of gain, even from incomplete arrangements for the removal of noxious influences from places of work or from abodes, that this loss cannot be less than eight or ten years.

That the ravages of epidemics and other diseases do not diminish but tend to increase the pressure of population.

That in the districts where the mortality is greatest the births are not only sufficient to replace the numbers removed by death, but to add to the population.

That the younger population, bred up under noxious physical agencies, is inferior in physical organization and general health to a population preserved from the presence of such agencies.

That the population so exposed is less susceptible of moral influences, and the effects of education are more transient than with a healthy population.

That these adverse circumstances tend to produce an adult population short-lived, improvident, reckless, and intemperate, and with habitual avidity for sensual gratifications.

That these habits lead to the abandonment of all the conveniences and decencies of life, and especially lead to the overcrowding of their homes, which is destructive to the morality as well as the health of large classes of both sexes.

That defective town cleansing fosters habits of the most abject degradation and tends to the demoralization of large numbers of human beings, who subsist by means of what they find amidst the noxious filth accumulated in neglected streets and bye-places.

That the expenses of local public works are in general unequally and unfairly assessed, oppressively and uneconomically collected, by separate collections, wastefully expended in separate and inefficient operations by unskilled and practically irresponsible officers.

That the existing law for the protection of the public health and the constitutional machinery for reclaiming its execution, such as the Courts Fleet, have fallen into desuetude, and are in the state indicated by the prevalence of the evils they were intended to prevent.

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As one reads the three inquires of evidence, one might start to realize the truth. The truth about how these people suffered. More will suffer like this if we don’t act now and label these cruel acts of punishment/labour. Laws should be laid down, to keep all men, women and children from suffering. Man is created equal, and if one shall have to go through such pain, we all shall go through such pain.

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