Was factory work better than labouring?

[kev67]

There are some interesting bits in chapter 37. Mr Higgins tells Mr Hale and Margaret that he intends to go south and find work digging. They try to persuade him out of it. They tell him he would get paid nine or ten shillings a week. He was being paid fifteen shillings a week in the factory before he lost his job. They say he would have to work outside in all weathers, that he would suffer rheumatism, that he was not used to that work and could not cope with it at his age (45), that the work was extremely dull and stupefying, that the labourers were so exhausted by the end of the day all they cared about was food and rest. This does not sound like Thomas Hardy. The weekly wages are similar to the farm workers' in Far From the Madding Crowd, but their lives do not sound as miserable. Actually, I think the fifteen shillings a week the factory workers were being paid is what Bob Cratchit was paid in A Christmas Carol. I thought that was dramatic exaggeration, but I suppose that it was not utterly implausible. It surprises me that the Hales consider factory work to be easier and more stimulating than labouring. Being tied to a weaving loom for ten hours a day does not sound very stimulating to me. Perhaps this digging they refer to is not farm labouring but navvying, that is digging routes for railways.

Also, this bit in chapter 37:
'How proud that man is!' said her father, who was a little annoyed at the manner in which Higgins had declined his intercession with Mr. Thornton.
'He is,' said Margaret; 'but what grand makings of a man there are in him, pride and all.'
'It's amusing to see how he evidently respects the part in Mr. Thornton's character which is like his own.'
'There's granite in these northern people, papa is there not?'
'There was none in poor Boucher, I am afraid; none in his wife either.'
'I should guess from their tones that they had Irish blood in them...'

That is an outrageous racial slur. My mum is Irish. I am deeply affronted.

Come to think of it, I expect many of those diggers were Irish navvies. Margaret previously referred to 'poor, Irish starvelings' when talking about some Irish workers that Mr Thornton had brought in to break a strike. This was just after the Irish potato famine.

[kev67]

I don't think the Hales could have been referring to railway navvies. They were quite well paid - about 5 shillings a day, a lot more than factory work. The work was hard and dangerous but mot stupefying. They were notorious drinkers and had an uproarious time.

link (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/navvies.htm)

[mal4mac]

If you're 25, and built like a rugby forward, then a navvies job could be interesting for a while, maybe. But surely it's hardly the job for an average 45 year old, worn down by decades of factory work, with a propensity for rheumatism? The farm workers in Hardy are following in a tradition that has lasted for millenia, with slow, gradual change. Here the 45 year olds are likely to get the easier jobs - or have the sense to take long breaks while challenging the younger men to compete with each other :) The young men will be happy to work harder than the 45 year olds - they are likely to be close relations, or respected older mentors. The railway navies are not related to each other, the young men will expect the 45 year olds to work as hard as them, otherwise they lose money. On the farm, if there's bad weather, they can take a break, and there's likely work they can do indoors. On the railway, they will be forced to work, whatever the weather. I watched a documentary some years back about Chinese railway workers in the USA and remember being appalled at how many deaths there were, I doubt UK railway workers had it much better. Quick Google:

"The Sacramento Reporter of June 30, 1870, reported that a train bearing the accumulated bones of 1,200 Chinese workers on the Central Pacific passed through Sacramento. Perhaps this can be considered a minimum figure of the loss in Chinese lives."

http://apa.si.edu/ongoldmountain/gallery2/gallery2.html

[kev67]

Yes, I doubt Mr Higgins could get a job as a navvy, although he his still quite strong and fit for his age. When Margaret and her father describe the work the spade men did, it did not quite sound like navvying. It sounded more like digging out ditches or digging up fields.

[prendrelemick]

This puts me in mind of a couple of books I've read. One was about the navvies and their almost superhuman abilities to shift "muck", an experienced navvy could shovel 20 tons a day - but it took a few years to build up to that level and he would only expect to do this until the age of about 40. During the railway building age they were the working class heroes of the day. As to wages, as you'd expect it depended on supply and demand, if there was lots of work about wages for a good man were good, peaking at about 12 shillings a day . However the gang masters soon began to pay them in tokens that were only redeemable in the company shops - this began as a measure to stop them drinking so much, but soon they realized they made more profit monopolizing the supply of provisions than from the actual groundworks contract.

The other book, was about factory weavers. It was a highly skilled job that took several years to learn and required deft fingers rather than strength, and a good weaver could demand high wages. I doubt a switch from weaving to front line navvying were possible at that age, but there was lighter work on the sites. During those times many farm labourers went to work on the railways lured away by much higher wages, so pehaps there would've been farm work for him.

[mal4mac]

How were these navvies working class heroes? They sound more like poor sods exploited by robber barons. The "20 tons a day" muscle bound workaholics were probably shunned & laughed at by real working class heroes. The guy who gets away with doing "just enough" is, rightly, admired by his co-workers.

Here's something on navvies:

http://www.nrm.org.uk/RailwayStories/railwayarticles/navvies.aspx

"Tramping from job to job, navvies and their families lived and worked in appalling conditions, often for years on end, in rough timber and turf huts alongside the bridges, tunnels and cuttings that they built. In the 1840s there was no compensation for death or injury, and railway engineers like Brunel resisted all efforts to provide their workers with adequate housing and sanitation, or safe working conditions.

The Woodhead Tunnel scandal – where the death rate among the navvies who built the tunnel, between 1839 and 1852, was higher than that of the soldiers who fought at the battle of Waterloo – led to a Parliamentary enquiry, but its findings were not acted upon for years."

Kind of tarnishes Brunel's image...

Those who created navvy unions are the real working class heroes:

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/work/sullivan/18.html

[kev67]

Higgins and Thornton discuss this in chapter 38. Higgins has come to ask Thornton for a job.

"No! I'd be thankful if I was free to do that; it's for to keep th' widow and childer of a man who was drove mad by them knobsticks o' yourn; put out of his place by a Paddy that did not know weft fro' warp'."

"Well you'd better turn to something else, if you've any such intention in your head. I shouldn't advise you to stay in Milton; you're too well known here."

"If it were summer," said Higgins, "I'd take to Paddy's work, and go as a navvy, or haymaking or summat, and ne'er see Milton again. But it's winter, and th' childer will clem.'

"A pretty navvy you'd make! why, you couldn't do half a day's work at digging against an Irishman."

"I'd only charge half a day for th' twelve hours, if I could only do half a day's work in th' time..."

Earlier Thornton is concerned:

He was trying to understand where he stood; what damage the strike had done to him. A good deal of his capital was locked up in new and expensive machinery; and he had also bought cotton largely, with a view to some great orders that he had in hand. The strike had thrown him terribly behindhand, as to the completion of these orders. Even with his own accustomed and skilled workpeople, he would have had some difficulty in fulfilling his engagements; as it was the incompetence of the Irish hands, who had to be trained to their work, at a time requiring unusual activity, was a daily annoyance.

[prendrelemick]

The "hero" thing is described in "The Railway Navies" by Terry Coleman - it surprised me as well - But they belonged to the heroic age of British engineering ( think oil rig workers of the 70's) they were "the King of Labourers". In 1855 they had their finest hour, literally saving the British army at Sevastopol from starvation by building a railway line from Balaclava in little over a month.

From The Illustrated London News:-

"It is consolatory to Mr Carlyle and the mourners over the degeneracy of these latter days, that there is at least one institution, and at that a pre-eminently English one, which despite climatic drawbacks and all sorts of deteriorating influences, exhibits all its original stamina and pristine healthiness - to wit, the British navvy. Everything we hear and read, from every quarter, testifies to the energetic, skilled, and matured progression of the great undertaking now progressing between Balaclava and the canon-bristling heights of Sevastopol..."

[kev67]

The farm workers in Hardy are following in a tradition that has lasted for millenia, with slow, gradual change




During those times many farm labourers went to work on the railways lured away by much higher wages, so pehaps there would've been farm work for him.


Things were changing on the farms during the 19th century too. A lot more machinery was being introduced. The population increased fourfold in the UK during the 19th century, so the farms must have increased productivity considerably. This was achieved largely by mechanisation, partly by more scientific methods of farming, such as the crop rotation system. In Tess of the d'Urbervilles there is a chapter in which a northern engineer brings a threshing machine to Flintcombe Ash farm for the day. It was presumably cheaper to hire a threshing machine for the day than to employ large numbers of farm labourers to thresh wheat by hand. Besides, farm work is highly seasonal and Mr Higgins says it is winter. Farm labourers seem to have been evicted from their cottages quite often by the late 19th century. I read The People of Abyss several months ago, a bit of reportage by Jack London about the East End of London in 1902. From the way he described it, no one would have chosen to move from the countryside to a big city slum, but they had little choice. The East End was possibly particularly overcrowded due to immigration from Europe owing to various pogroms. Up north in the mid 1800s, city life may have been a bit better.




I watched a documentary some years back about Chinese railway workers in the USA and remember being appalled at how many deaths there were, I doubt UK railway workers had it much better. Quick Google:

"The Sacramento Reporter of June 30, 1870, reported that a train bearing the accumulated bones of 1,200 Chinese workers on the Central Pacific passed through Sacramento. Perhaps this can be considered a minimum figure of the loss in Chinese lives."



No doubt there were a lot of deaths working on the railway lines, but death was a more common occurrence to people of working age anyway. So far in North and South there have been three deaths. None of them were old. Two of deaths were caused by disease and the other mostly by alcoholism. Infant mortality was high; malnutrition and poverty were widespread. Working class people lived from day to day and did not think too much about the future. At 45, Mr Higgins would be doing well to survive another fifteen years. If a young man could work as a navvy for twenty years, it would probably be worth a (say) 20% chance of dying in an industrial accident. In Britain a lot of those navvies would have been Irish. The population of Ireland had halved during the potato famine. About a million had died and about a million had emigrated with next to nothing, needing to find work. Working on a railway line would have been a no-brainer for them.

[prendrelemick]

A bit off subject, but if you can find it, I would highly recommend Terry Coleman's book, "The Railway Navvies" . I have been rereading it because of this thread. It is that rare mix - both entertaining and informative.

[mal4mac]

"It is consolatory to Mr Carlyle and the mourners over the degeneracy of these latter days, that there is at least one institution, and at that a pre-eminently English one, which despite climatic drawbacks and all sorts of deteriorating influences, exhibits all its original stamina and pristine healthiness - to wit, the British navvy. Everything we hear and read, from every quarter, testifies to the energetic, skilled, and matured progression of the great undertaking now progressing between Balaclava and the canon-bristling heights of Sevastopol..."

Sounds very healthy with the death rate higher than Waterloo!

Interesting that North & South uses the navvies' job as the example of "something you'd be desperate & daft to do", it's usually soldiering or running away to sea that's used in that way.

I can see the best of these navvys, before unionisation, as being like Boxer in Animal Farm - very attractive characters with their necessary job, strength and basic solidarity with fellow workers. But they are not heroes, being a hero requires a certain amount of cognitive strength. They were too gullible, too willing to follow the robber barons, when the robber barons were robbing them of their lives. Remember Boxer's mottos, "I will work harder" and "Napoleon is always right" - hardly heroic, more a gullible fool.

[mal4mac]

If a young man could work as a navvy for twenty years, it would probably be worth a (say) 20% chance of dying in an industrial accident. In Britain a lot of those navvies would have been Irish. The population of Ireland had halved during the potato famine. About a million had died and about a million had emigrated with next to nothing, needing to find work. Working on a railway line would have been a no-brainer for them.

Good points - this explains why the robber barons could get away with it. But why didn't they create better conditions for the navvys? Why didn't the unions not even start to get organised before 1889? Did the Irish navvies play the part of today's East European immigrant workers? Did working class suspicion of the outsider divide the native & immigrant workers thereby making unionisation impossible? The answer, today as then, is, surely, to lose that suspician. "Workers of the World unite!" - a much better slogan...

P.S. Hope all you Brits are voting today...

[prendrelemick]

Sounds very healthy with the death rate higher than Waterloo!

Interesting that North & South uses the navvies' job as the example of "something you'd be desperate & daft to do", it's usually soldiering or running away to sea that's used in that way.

I can see the best of these navvys, before unionisation, as being like Boxer in Animal Farm - very attractive characters with their necessary job, strength and basic solidarity with fellow workers. But they are not heroes, being a hero requires a certain amount of cognitive strength. They were too gullible, too willing to follow the robber barons, when the robber barons were robbing them of their lives. Remember Boxer's mottos, "I will work harder" and "Napoleon is always right" - hardly heroic, more a gullible fool.

Just residing in Manchester had a similar death rate to Waterloo.

I think there was a large gap between perception and reality. Victorian society admired them at a distance as a kind of ignorant, noble savage upon whose strong backs the age of progress was being carried. Ok this was the kind of Victorian sentimentality that required plenty of ignorance itself, but it was often the line taken by the popular press of the day (according to Coleman.) and the idea rubbed off. Missionaries were in fact sent into the shanties - with temporary success - (they remained sober until payday.) The Boxer analogy is good, except they were a lot more troublesome and independent and they were paid two or three times the wage of a common labourer.

[kev67]

Friedrich Engels had some interesting points about mill workers in The Condition of the Working Class in England.


The men wear out very early in the consequence of the conditions under which they live and work. Most of them are unfit for work at 40 years, a few hold out to 45, almost none to 50 years of age. This is caused not only by the general enfeeblement of the frame, but very often by a failure of the sight, which is a result of mule-spinning, in which the operative is obliged to fix his gaze upon a long row of fine, parallel threads, and so greatly to strain the sight.
Of 1,600 operatives employed in several factories in Harpur and Lanark, but ten were over 45 years of age; of 22,094 operatives in diverse factories in Stockport and Manchester, but 143 were over 45 years old. Of these 143, sixteen were retained as a special favour, and one was doing the work of a child. A list of 131 spinners contained but seven over 45 years old, and yet the whole 131 were rejected by the manufacturers to whom they applied to work, as 'too old'. Of 50 worked-out spinners in Bolton only two were over 50 and the rest did not average 40 and all were without means of support by reason of old age! Mr Ashworth, a large manufacturer, admits in a letter to Lord Ashley, that, towards the fortieth year, the spinners can no longer prepare the required quantity of yarn, and are therefore 'sometimes' discharged; he calls operatives 40 years of age 'old people'. Commissioner Mackintosh expresses himself in the same way in the report of 1833: 'Although I was prepared for it from the way the children are employed, I still found it difficult to believe the statements of the older hands as to their ages; they age so very early.'
Surgeon Smellie of Glasgow, who treated operatives chiefly, says that 40 years is old age for them. And similar evidence may be found elsewhere. In Manchester, this premature old age among the operatives is so universal that almost every man of 40 would be taken for ten to fifteen years older, while the prosperous classes, men as well as women, preserve their appearance exceedingly well if they do not drink too heavily.

So, Mr Higgins at 45 years old would be an old man, although he is not presented as such in North and South.

[kev67]

Mr Higgins' daughter, who was befriended by Mary Hale, died of a lung diesease. In the television series, it was suggested this was the result of all the bits of fluff that were floating about in the factory. I cannot remember if it was the same in the book. Mr Thornton talked about installing a ventilation machine in his factory to improve the health of his workers, but that the workers complained because eating the fluff made them feel less hungry. The air in some factories definitely did shorten life. I was reading in Engels' book yesterday how many Sheffield steel workers died of lung dieseases in their 20's due to the metal dust they inhaled during their teens. It sounded rather like asbestosis. Earthenware factory workers suffered from similar lung complaints. It sounded horrific, much better to be working in the open air, even if the work is more strenuous. Engels called all these lung diseases 'consumption'. That clears something up for me: I thought consumption was another term for tuberculosis, so I was confused when I read in one place that Emily Bronte died from consumption and somewhere else that she did not die from T.B.